Trump v United States On July 1, the United States Supreme Court handed down one of the most important decisions in the history of our democracy. In the aptly named case of Trump verses United States, the six arch conservative justices awarded the ex-president – who appointed three of them – a vast and complex criminal immunity scheme. In three ways the majority delivered Trump a tailor made “Stay-Out-of-Jail” trifecta of expanded constitutional protections for Presidents: First, absolute immunity for crimes committed when a President engages in “core” official acts and a near-conclusive pres ..read more

Two Very Important Supreme Court Decisions When does the government cross the line from using its highly visible bully pulpit to advocate for policies and principles it has every right to promote into the prohibited zone of threatening to use its awesome powers to punish viewpoints it opposes by coercing others to refrain from doing business with the speaker. In two very important recent decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide whether it is still the law of the land that a government entity’s “threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion” against a third party ..read more

  Freedom For Julian Assange! After serving 1901 days in solitary confinement in a tiny cell in the infamous Belmarsh prison in London, journalist and publisher Julian Assange is free at last. Julian gained his freedom pursuit to a plea bargain with the government of the United States which had sought to extradite him and try him under the 1917 Espionage Act He faced a certain conviction in a hostile Virginia court and 175 years in prison on 17 count of conspiracy to commit espionage for receiving and publishing information damaging to the United States government. Julian Assange was for ..read more

A Brief History of Kill Lists, From Langley to Lavender Two artificial intelligence systems are being used by Israel and the United States to compile kill lists of Palestinians in Gaza. They are called Lavender and Where’s Daddy. This has led to the indiscriminate slaughter of whole families and has killed mostly women and children. The CIA and the US military have always tried to use the latest data processing technology to identify and kill their enemies. The history of American government assassinations goes back to collaborating with ex-Nazi intelligent officers after World War II. Guest ..read more

Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden There are defendants in a lawsuit brought in the northern district of California called Defense for Children International– Palestine v. Biden. The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and attorney Marc Vander Hout. We’re going to talk about this lawsuit against President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin. This lawsuit follows a January 2024 historic hearing that included testimony from some Palestinian plaintiffs and witnesses to the scale of destruction in Gaza and its imp ..read more

I Am Gitmo It’s been 22 years since the United States opened its prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Specifically, it was four months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. And that was when we started seeing images of men and boys arriving there, bound and hooded, in orange jumpsuits, confined indefinitely without charges, legal process or trials…. And it was not long after that we began hearing reports that the US government was using torture, and even that prisoners were dying there – again, without even being charged with any crime let alone tried by ..read more

Counter Protest Tactics Attempt To Plague University Anti-Genocide Encampments As the Israel-Gaza War rages on, protests have spread throughout American campuses as students oppose Israeli’s military onslaught and the tragic humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Student have demanded a ceasefire, an end to US military support for Israel and that universities divest from Israel. In response, University officials have suspended and expelled students, banned pro-Palestinian student groups, called in the police and sent mixed messages on students’ right to free speech. At UCLA, a group of counterproteste ..read more

We remember cultural historian and scholar Bruce Franklin. H. Bruce Franklin, a regular guest here on Law and Disorder, passed away last week, on May 19, at the age of 90. He was one of the country’s leading historians, and a scholar in American studies, science fiction, and other diverse fields. Bruce Franklin’s memory lives on through his many books, and his hundreds of professional articles. —   Crash Course : From the Good War to the Forever War US Army Ranger turned conscientious objector Rory Fanning recently wrote in this in The Guardian newspaper: “Last week Sunday ,November 11, w ..read more

The More Effective Of Two Evils The extensive growing repression and censorship in our country is manifest daily. Already some 3000 students have been arrested and many of their encampments on college campuses have been violently closed down. The leading newspaper, the New York Times, has instructed reporters not to use the words “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing.” Journalist Chris Hedges has been removed from The Real News Network for interviewing, Dennis Kucinich, the independent candidate for Congress in Ohio and for not supporting the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden. The necessity for i ..read more

Free Speech: Protest Testing The Limits Of Protection As controversy rages over protests, encampments, and arrests at hundreds of college campuses around the country, in reaction to the war in the Middle East, free speech is once again at the forefront of national debate. Time and again in American history, the nation has been gripped by the complex question of whether certain speech is or is not protected by the First Amendment. Recently, college presidents have been under fire for failing to protect free speech or for going too far in tolerating free speech. Some have been forced to resign ..read more