Yahoo Finance Ratfckers Being Sued for Libel? Now This I Find Intriguing.
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favorite Living Canadian)
Now this I find intriguing. Ratfckers being sued…for libel. From FacingSouth.org:
In 2016, Democrat Roy Cooper edged out incumbent Pat McCrory, who did not either take losing lying down or accept the will of the electorate, because he is a Republican and that’s what they won’t do. And it predates the former president*’s seditious exercise of the same bunco scheme.
In North Carolina, the effort was led by the Pat McCrory Committee Defense Fund, which was formed on on Nov. 9, 2016, to contest the results of the close gubernatorial election that took place a day earlier, along with attorneys it hired from Holtzman Vogel (then Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky), a law firm headed by Virginia state Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R) that has offices in Virginia, Florida, and Washington, D.C. Holtzman Vogel partner Jason Torchinsky served as the Defense Fund's counsel.
They oversaw the filing of election protest paperwork with local elections boards, then under Republican control statewide, that charged about 600 North Carolinians in 37 counties with committing voter fraud by voting twice or while ineligible because of a felony conviction. Even after election officials pointed out that the complaints were full of sloppy errors like getting middle initials wrong or confusing juniors and seniors, the filings continued.
OK, so far that’s just a conservative legal clown-show like any other. But when a group called Democracy North Carolina issued a report in April of 2017 showing just how much of a con these protests were, shit got real right quick.
But the lies had consequences: In February 2017, four voters who faced false accusations of double voting filed a libel lawsuit against their accusers, initially naming as the defendant William Porter IV, a local Republican official in Guilford County under whose signature one of the election protests was filed. Several months later, the plaintiffs amended their complaint to include Holtzman Vogel and the McCrory organization. McCrory himself is not named as a defendant, but the suit names four Holtzman Vogel attorneys who were involved in filing the protests: Steve Roberts, Erin Clark, Gabriela Fallon, and Steven Saxe. The lawsuit was brought in state Superior Court in Guilford County and seeks damages in excess of $25,000.
At the moment, the case is back before the trial court. (The legalisms involved are admirably explained at the link.) Porter is out of danger, but the high-priced lawyers are not, about which an appeals court was quite emphatic.
They held that Porter was in fact protected by absolute privilege since he submitted the protest at a local elections board hearing — but that the McCrory organization and Holtzman Vogel attorneys were not. The court noted that not only did the attorneys skip local election board hearings, they weren't even licensed to practice law in North Carolina.
In related news, Pat McCrory is running for the U.S, Senate seat being vacated by RichardBurr. It never stops. It never even slows down.
The War Against The Cure has reached New Hampshire, and the Duckboot Militia is primed and ready to throw down. From the Boston Globe:
The Nashua Board of Education had barely begun its meeting on Oct. 5 when the disruptions began. One man challenged a requirement that all attendees wear masks. They cause pneumonia and bacterial infections, he said.Soon afterward, a woman in the audience was asked to leave when she railed against the policy, which also requires that all Nashua students wear masks in school. Two police officers, stationed just outside the room, watched warily as the woman shouted at board president Heather Raymond. “You’re a child killer and a child abuser!” the woman said loudly as she exited. Raymond adjourned the meeting after only five minutes, according to a video of the session.
Another board member, Gloria Timmons, said she has received alarming threats via social media after she supported the masking policy. One, from Aug. 21, warned: “No communist or socialist should be allowed ANY place in ANY government, but should be hunted down and exterminated along with their followers, just to be sure.” Timmons, who is Black, is a disabled Army veteran and former president of the Greater Nashua branch of the NAACP.
Yeah, like that matters anymore.
The crazy train has picked up such a head of steam up there that the state’s Executive Council, on a party-line vote, rejected $27 million in federal Covid vaccination aid. This has gotten Governor Chris Sununu very frosty.
“I appreciate you have reservations, but they’re based on fantasy,” Sununu directed to Republican councilor Dave Wheeler at one point.It was a contentious gathering, according to local media outlets, with Sununu repeatedly fielding requests to “stand up” against vaccine mandates and appearing perplexed by the decision of the Republican councilors to deny the funds.
This is a very big problem for Sununu, who has designs on the Senate seat held by Democrat Maggie Hassan, who is considered by the smart money to be vulnerable. In the summer, he held solid leads in the polling for a prospective matchup. But he needs the votes of the flying monkeys as much as he needs to be the governor who kept people from dying of preventable disease. I’d feel sorry for him except, you know. I don’t.
Most of the attention concerning the January 6 insurrection this week has been on whether or not the people subpoenaed to appear before the special committee of the House will be treated as harshly as a 14-year old Black kid who jumps a turnstile and skips out on his court date. (Pro Tip: They will not.) But there’s even more intrigue now in the court proceedings concerning the rioters themselves. It appears they may have had more friends in the Capitol Police than we thought. The indictment, via Politico:
According to prosecutors, Riley had never met the rioter he later communicated with but the two shared a love of fishing and were both in the same fishing-related Facebook groups. Riley, according to the indictment, viewed the alleged rioter’s Facebook posts attesting to being inside the Capitol and decided to make contact on Jan. 7.
“I'm a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance,” Riley wrote, according to the indictment. “Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the building is going to be charged. Just looking out!”Prosecutors say the pair exchanged dozens of messages after that until the alleged rioter’s arrest on Jan. 19. Riley subsequently deleted all of his contacts with “person 1” and sent a scolding message on Jan. 21 criticizing him for smoking inside the Capitol.
Not exactly Winston Wolf on the clean-up detail, was he? Meanwhile, I don’t know what in the name of John Marshall’s testicles this judge was thinking. From the Pittsburgh City Paper:
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. granted permission for Jan. 6 insurrection defendant Thomas Fee, a native of Long Island, New York, to travel to Pittsburgh for the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Denver Broncos that took place at Heinz Field on Oct. 10, according to investigate reporter Scott MacFarlane of Washington, D.C.'s NBC4 Fee was charged on Jan. 16 with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building without lawful authority, violent entry, and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds. Court documents claim Fee sent a selfie and video from inside the Capitol and drove to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, returning the day after the insurrection, Jan. 7. Prosecutors did not oppose his travel, according to court filings.
This is not the first time a federal judge has granted a Jan. 6 defendant permission for leisure travel. In February, District Judge Trevor McFadden granted Jenny Cudd’s request to vacation in Riviera Maya, Mexico, a region with many resort towns on the Yucatan Peninsula. Cudd’s request was granted two days after Cudd was indicted on five federal counts, including one felony.
Meanwhile, the kid who jumped the turnstile? He’s still in Rikers because he couldn’t make bail.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Downtown Uproar” (Cootie Williams and his Rugcutters): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1947, is Al Capone’s funeral. Am I crazy or is there snow on the ground? History is so cool.
Sad news from FoodandWine.com. Her Britannic Majesty has been unceremoniously plunked on The Wagon.
Despite not being much of a public drinker, the Queen has long been known to enjoy alcoholic beverages, though reports on the extent of her consumption have varied wildly — including a supposedly misreported story in 2017 that she drank four cocktails every day. For its part, Vanity Fair writes that, up until the recent medical advice, the Queen had a drink "most evenings" — typically a glass of sweet wine with dinner and then often a dry martini in the evenings, as well as the occasional glass of wine before bed. It's also been regularly reported that the Queen is a fan of Dubonnet and gin.
Let the ol’ gal have her Dubonnet, at least. (I didn’t know that her residences were a distillery, or that it produces two different kinds of gin.) The first Elizabeth would have had your head on a pike for even suggesting such madness. It is no longer good to be the Queen.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, State House News Service (via WBZ4)? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Massachusetts is a step closer to becoming the land of the swift-footed lizard after the House passed legislation (H 3190) on Thursday naming the Podokesaurus holyokensis as the official state dinosaur. “In many ways, the objectives of this legislation, the objectives of what became a much larger project, those objectives have already occurred or are well underway,” Lewis, a Framingham Democrat, told the News Service. “Conversations are happening in classrooms about the legislative process. Kids and parents have reached out to state representatives and state senators that they had certainly never reached out to before and in some cases had never even heard of.”
The Commonwealth (God save it!) is on its way to having a state dinosaur! OK, it has a dorky name, but it sounds like it was a slick little number.
The Podokesaurus, otherwise known as the swift-footed lizard, was about three feet long and lived roughly 180 million to 195 million years ago. Its bones were initially found in 1910 near Mount Holyoke College by Mignon Talbot, the first woman to name and describe a dinosaur.
In case you were wondering, and you know you were, nine states have state dinosaurs at the moment—Arizona, Arkansas, California, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming. (Six others have state fossils that once were Dinos.) We really ought to be able to get that up to 50, because they lived then so we could be happy now.
I’ll be back Monday to see if Steve Bannon is greeting the new week in manacles. (Not bloody likely.) Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn mask, and, for the love of god, get the damn shots.
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