The U.S.D.C. for the S.D.N.Y (per Furman, J.) has ordered that Sec. of Commerce Wilbur Ross be deposed in an action brought by New York State challenging Ross’ decision to reinstate a question concerning citizenship status on the 2020 census questionnaire.

Applying well-established principles to the unusual facts of these cases, the Court concludes that the question is not a close one: Secretary Ross must sit for a deposition because, among other things, his intent and credibility are directly at issue in these cases.

The President of the Class of 1968 of Northwestern High School in Baltimore is Michael Switzenbaum.  (Two other members of that class are contributors to the RBC.)  Mike is one of the named plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case challenging the GOP’s gerrymandering of the Wisconsin State Assembly.  I have posted a copy of the amended complaint.

The amended complaint goes into great detail as to the methods by which the gerrymander was effected and designed and the results.  But one need only to read this passage from the first paragraph of the amended complaint:

As explained in greater detail below, the Current Plan [that is, the GOP gerrymander] is, by any measure, one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history. In the first election in which it was in force (2012), the Current Plan enabled Republican candidates to win sixty of the Assembly’s ninety-nine seats even though Democratic candidates won a majority of the statewide Assembly vote. The evidence is overwhelming that the Current Plan was adopted to achieve precisely that result: indeed, before submitting the map for approval, the Republican leadership retained an expert (at State expense) who predicted the partisan performance of each proposed district—as it turned out, with remarkable accuracy.

(Emphasis in the original.)

Obviously, Mike got a good education at our alma mater.

The Department of Health and Human Services has written in a letter to Sen. Patty Murray that it plans to “reallocate” up to $266 Million in FY 2018 to funding for the Unaccompanied Alien Children program.  Included in the “reallocation” are reductions to the National Institutes of Health and refugee resettlement programs.

As reported in Yahoo News:

So far this month, discharges from custody have been running at a rate of around 0.6 to 0.7 percent per day, less than half the 1.5 percent shown in reports obtained by Yahoo News from early April and from late July. Meanwhile the intake of unaccompanied immigrant children into ORR facilities has remained relatively steady, with average daily referrals from Customs and Border Protection in the range of 100 to 200.

“This is not a story about a historically large surge in arrivals,” said Mark Greenberg, a former official with HHS’s Administration for Children and Families. “The story is fundamentally about a significant slowdown in children being released from care.”

So, the Trump Administration puts into place a program that falls most harshly on children and, when called to task, it takes the money from other social programs.

I don’t know which of the following is more morally reprehensible:

1. A senior official in the Netanyahu government seeking to undermine the effort of a group trying to bring democracy to a former Soviet republic;
2. A senior official in the Netanyahu government cooperating in an attempt to slander a group trying to bring democracy to a former Soviet republic;
3. A senior official in the Netanyahu government cooperating in an attempt to slander the Obama Administration; or
4. A senior official in the Netanyahu government crying “anti-Semite” where one does not exist.

Here’s the pertinent passage from the Manafort superseding indictment at paragraph 37 (page 39 of the pdf):

MANAFORT sought to undermine United States support for Tymoshenko by spreading stories in the United States that a senior Cabinet official (who had been a prominent critic of Yanukovych’s treatment of Tymoshenko) was supporting anti-Semitism because the official supported Tymoshenko, who in turn had formed a political alliance with a Ukraine party that espoused anti-Semitic views. MANAFORT coordinated privately with a senior Israeli government official to issue a written statement publicizing this story. MANAFORT then, with secret advance knowledge of that Israeli statement, worked to disseminate this story in the United States, writing to Person D1 “I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom.” MANAFORT sought to have the Administration understand that “the Jewish community will take this out on Obama on election day if he does nothing.” MANAFORT then told his United States lobbyist to inform the Administration that Ukraine had worked to prevent the Administration’s presidential opponent from including damaging language in the Israeli statement, so as not to harm the Administration, and thus further ingratiate Yanukovych with the Administration.

As to the last point, isn’t there a Hebrew translation of Aesop’s fables.

Update: Haaretz is reporting that:

The [indictment] doesn’t name the senior Israeli official that Manafort communicated with. However, in October 2012, at the same time that Manafort was working on this issue, Israel’s then-foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, published a statement attacking the political rivals of Manafort’s clients in Ukraine for espousing anti-Semitism. Lieberman’s statement was featured in reports by a number of American news outlets, including The New York Times and Breitbart.

“Israel is concerned by the recently signed agreement between the Batkivshchyna party and the extremist party Svoboda, who’s anti-Semitic outbursts have caused outrage in Ukraine and Israel more than once,” the statement read. Batkivshchyna, or Fatherland, is lead by Tymoshenko, while Svoboda, or Freedom, is an ultra-nationalist party.

I have uploaded, as a single file, the plea agreement and the superseding indictment with respect to Paul Manafort.  I am not an expert on federal criminal law, in general, or the sentencing guidelines, in particular.  However, my understanding is that, if Manafort is sentenced for 210 months incarceration that is at the lower end of the Estimated Guideline Range (page 4 of the pdf), the effective length of his sentence would be at least 178.5 months, less time already served.  So he would serve at least 14.8 years.  That’s a long time for a 69 year old man.

However, the plea agreement also contains the following provision:

The Government will bring to the Courts’ attention at the time of sentencing the nature and extent of your client’s cooperation or lack of cooperation. The Government will evaluate the full nature and extent of your client’s cooperation to determine whether your client has provided substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense. If this Office determines that the defendant has provided substantial assistance in the form of truthful information and, where applicable, testimony, the Office will file motions pursuant to Section 5K1.1 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Defendant will then be free to argue for any sentence below the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range calculated by the Probation Office, including probation.

Page 8 of the pdf.

This provision gives Manafort a significant incentive to testify both truthfully and with full candor against any and all of the individuals who may have “committed an offense.”

There has to be some nervousness in the Trump household this evening.

In 2000, I sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times that provided in part:

Different lots of ammunition could be tagged by adding trace chemicals to the gunpowder. Individuals could buy only ammunition designed for the types of firearms they are registered to own, and the relevant information concerning each purchase would be entered in a central database.

Because gunpowder spoils with the passage of time, there is only a limited supply of ammunition in circulation.

As a result, effective gun registration could be a reality within a few years despite the millions of guns in circulation.

Today, the NYT is reporting:

[I]n California, which already enforces some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, there is a movement underway against the unfettered sale of bullets.

I guess it just takes time for good policy ideas to percolate up.

Update–See here:

Lanthanide-doped ZnAl₂O₄ spinel was used as a luminescent marker for gunshot residue (GSR). GSR was visually identified on shooters’ hands, as well as on firearms and the firing range. After the shot, GSR was collected and analyzed by several techniques, including FTIR, Raman and emission spectroscopies and SEM-EDS. It was observed that markers provide an optically and structurally unique signature for GSR, allowing their identification by the tested techniques. SEM-EDS shows that lanthanide ions act as a chemical taggant. FTIR and Raman spectra provided a chemical signature of GSR, as well as emission spectra. Thus, it was possible to unequivocally identify GSR, even when lead-free ammunition was used. By employing different emitting centers, it was also possible to distinguish between two types of ammunition, opening a new perspective for traceability.

This strikes me as being too much like Gomer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show.”  But here it is, a criminal complaint filed with the Justice Department accusing Brett Kavanaugh of perjury.

The problem is, of course, that he did commit perjury and 51 Republican senators will nevertheless vote to confirm his nomination to the Supreme Court.

The intensity of the anger against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh can be explained by a combination of several factors.

First, as I show in this chart, Republican Senators represent less than 44% of the population of the fifty states.  And, of course, those senators represent an even lower percentage of the U.S. population since neither Puerto Rico, with a population greater than twenty-one of those states, nor the District of Columbia, with a population greater than two of those states, have a vote in the U.S. Senate.  Thus, Senators representing well less than half of the U.S. population have denied to the Senate all of the relevant documents bearing on the nominee’s fitness for the Court, and, in addition, documents which may show that he lied under oath.  And, of course, their votes will be sufficient to confirm his nomination.

Second, as the most famous Op-Ed in history shows, the president who nominated Kavanaugh is incompetent.

Third, the president who nominated Kavanaugh has, in effect, been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in one federal criminal action and is the subject of at least one other criminal investigation.

Fourth, as Michael O’Hare shows in great detail, if Kavanaugh is confirmed:

[H]e will forever be “the guy Trump nominated to fend off his impeachment”; one of his senate interlocutors wisely said “you will always have an asterisk next to your name”, which is right except that the asterisk will be an indelible and devastating blot. No respectable judge or lawyer will be comfortable citing his decisions; his influence will be restricted to hacks and stooges, and he’s smart enough that he will eventually realize this, but alas, too late.

Finally, Kavanaugh is a threat to our most modern of liberties rooted in the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965).  That case held that while the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy.  The decision overturned a Connecticut law that banned the use of any drug, medical device, or other instrument in furthering contraception.  From Griswold spring Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges.

Now, you might think that, at the least, the precise holding of Griswold, namely that the right to contraception is Constitutionally protected, will never be attacked.  You would be wrong.  Certain forms of contraception such as the so-called “morning after” pill and the IUD, are already under attack.  A Justice Kavanaugh would surely allow such attacks to succeed since he doesn’t believe in the “penumbra” theory that underlies Griswold.

Let me be clear:  It is not the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth item on the list that stokes the anger against Kavanaugh’s nomination, even though any one of the five should be sufficient to deny him a seat on the Court.  The anger is a product of the outrage stemming from the cumulative effect of all five.

Here’s the sentencing memorandum submitted on behalf of George Papadopoulos.  One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry:

Returning to Washington D.C., twenty-eight-year-old George witnessed his career skyrocketing to unimaginable heights. On March 31, 2016, he joined Mr. Trump, Senator Jeff Sessions, and other campaign officials for a “National Security Meeting” at the Trump Hotel. George’s photograph at this meeting flashed around the world via Twitter. Eager to show his value to the campaign, George announced at the meeting that he had connections that could facilitate a foreign policy meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. While some in the room rebuffed George’s offer, Mr. Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr. Sessions who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it.

George’s giddiness over Mr. Trump’s recognition was prominent during the days that followed the March 31, 2016 meeting. He had a sense of unbridled loyalty to the candidate and his campaign and set about trying to organize the meeting with President Putin.

H/T to the Lawfare Blog.

Apologies to Max Shulman.

I think that source documents are important. That’s why I’ve taken to posting here court opinions that are reported on in the press.

I’ve just stumbled upon a website that posts court documents in the Monsanto Roundup litigation, both the federal multidistrict litigation and the state litigation that resulted in a $287 Million verdict against Monsanto.  The site is maintained by U.S. Right to Know which describes itself as “a nonprofit organization working for transparency and accountability in our nation’s food system. We research what goes on behind the scenes in the food industry.”  It is, of course, an organization with a point of view.  However, the selection of the postings on the Roundup litigation do not appear to be biased and there is a broad selection of the filings from both sides.  For instance, the jury instructions requested by Monsanto in the state litigation are posted as are the daily trial transcripts.

A side note:  U.S. Right to Know is also transparent with regard to where its funding comes from and where how it spends its money.