Law, Power, and Justice

MORNING NEWS NOTES

SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2024

HOUSE NOTES:

Mike to Hiram:  Come on. It’s better to take your medicine while it’s fresh.

(Silence)

Mike to Hiram: Don’t be stubborn.

(Audible sigh of exasperation).

(Caterwalling)

Mike: Stop it.  Who is doing what?

Me: Who is it?

Mike: Hiram and Short Change

Me: Who started it?

Mike: Hiram of course, but Short Change is going to finish it.  (To Short Change) You tired of dealing with his bull shit?

Short Change: (Cat utterance, combination of agreement and lament.)

It’s a very dreary Saturday morning.  There’s a fine mist in the air and the coats of the cats are wet even though it’s not really raining.  I walked down to the dock and surprised an otter, who looked up at me and said: “What the fuck are you doing here?”  He then sank into the water and disappeared accompanied by a trail of bubbles. 

All the cats are inside from morning walk. Everybody has had tuna.  The first headline in the New York Times is how much everybody dislikes Biden.  I think the corporate media wants Trump elected.  Then, all they have to do is cover the soap opera.  They love it.  There are two major wars going on in which the United States plays a crucial role and all the corporate media can cover is every minute detail of Trump’s various trials.  Every hack commentator has been on television talking about what might happen in Trump’s various trials, what might happen.  You know, when it happens, let me know, until then I would rather find out what is happening in the rest of the world.

ISRAEL

•        Negotiators from Israel, Qatar and Hamas are scheduled to arrive in Cairo, but the fiasco of aid delivery to northern Gaza on Thursday threatens the negotiations.

•        Hamas calls it systematic killing. 

•        Israel says that many were killed by trampling and aid trucks trying to escape the chaos.

•        Hamas is trying to get high profile prisoners released, while Israel is releasing a list of high-profile prisoners they will not release.

•        (Note: The US is supposed to start dropping aid from airplanes into Gaza, one of the most expensive and inefficient ways of getting aid to a population.)

•        Hamas’s leader, Sinwar, thinks that they can survive Israel’s onslaught, even on Rafah and emerge to claim the leadership of the Palestinian national cause.

•        The militants are now commanded on a day-to-day basis by Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed.  They are avoiding large scale firefights and engaging in ambushes.

•        Even though Netanyahu has promised a “total victory,” Israel is far from eliminating Hamas.

•        Hamas’s strategy is to survive.

CAPITALISM AND THE COURT: EVERYBODY IS FOR SALE

•        Jane Mayer reports that Thomas “shocked the legal community” by appointing Crystal Clanton as one of his new law clerks.

•        Clanton became notorious in 2015 by posting texts that said, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all…I hate blacks.” 

•        But, after rising in legal circles, the right has released a story which maintains that the texts are an example not of her racism, but of her victimhood.

•        In 2017, Clanton declined an opportunity to deny she had posted the texts. 

•        The texts were considered so bad, Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point organization fired her.

•        So, of course, Clanton started working for Genni Thomas and became the couple’s “protegee.”  She lived with the Thomases for the better part of a year.  They encouraged her to go to law school and then helped her secure a prestigious clerkship. 

•        Then, they began to design an elaborate cover story for Clanton.  She had, according to them, been victimized at Turning Point.  A former employee, unidentified, had framed her as the author of the texts.  No motive was given for this supposed framing, nor was it explained why Clanton had never mentioned this devious plot in all the previous years.

•        Then, Clanton maintained that she had been prevented from talking about the frame by an NDA in the case.  She never told anybody about the NDA either and lawyers doubted whether such a NDA could be written.

•        Charlie Kirk, who had supported the story of Clanton’s firing for years, of course, then supported the frame story.

Sources:

Mayer, Jane (2/28/24) The Scandal of Clarence Thomas’s New Clerk.  The New Yorker.

Said, Summer and Chao Deng (3/2/24) Netotiators Scramble… Wall Street Journal.

Walker, Marcus (2/29/24) Hamas is Losing…Wall Street Journal.