It's time for the Road to Popehat, that feature in which we check out the traffic logs, see what searches brought you here, and contemplate whether a North Korean warhead's continental EMP pulse would really be such a bad idea.
In today's edition, you have legal questions.
Writing an effective letter to a prosecutor Sit down. I have some bad news for you.
if we tell somebody her photo on facebook is ugly, is that libel or defamation RICO. Definitely RICO.
what happens when dea agents arrest u right there Put down the phone, man. They're going to tase you.
can you sue someone for calling you a miserable fucking cunt No, Mr. President, you can't.
in texas can a spouse file a defamation claim against a spouse You know, I'm not going to be able to make it to Thanksgiving this year. Sorry.
letter to the court apologizing on behalf of my friend for solicitation Your "friend" may want to run that letter past your "friend's" lawyer before sending it to the judge.
amputation penis judicial sentence See! Deterrence works!
Last 5 posts by Ken White
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That's gold, Jerry! Gold!
If you want to write an effective letter to a prosecutor, just make sure it is a confession letter.
Also, leave out half of what you really did so that when they add extra stuff you didn't do, it balances out.
And while it is true you can't sue somebody for calling you "a miserable fucking cunt Mr President," you might be able to have them arrested because cops have immunity and don't have to start following the law until the court tells them to. And that's a later step.
An "EMP pulse" wouldn't be so bad? No, it's actually twice as bad.
I'm going to go out on a very long limb here and say that NONE of these originated from a DOJ IP.
But at least two of them look like they came from the Whitehouse.
Not under the current administration, when the top law enforcement officer in the largest county in the US disobeys that court order, is convicted of criminal contempt of court and immediately pardoned by the President, because rule of law just isn't that important.
@John, an EMP Pulse would affect our ATM Machines so that they wouldn't work when we enter our PIN Numbers, mainly because it would fry their NIC Cards
@I was Anonymous – I'm pretty sure we learned all that studying for our SAT tests.
@Trent:
15th largest. 5th largest in AZ. Plus nineteen AK county-equivalents.
@Trent
Yeah, I spent at least 3 minutes trying to work that in but I couldn't find a way to do it without distracting from the joke. There is just too many fucked up things happening at the same time to cover it all.
I'm still not really sure why pardons can be used against judicial punishments like criminal contempt, it seems to be an accusation by the Court not an accusation by the United States. I would think being pardoned for crimes committed against the United States would only count violations of federal law. For example, it doesn't apply to State charges. It seems to me that strictly reading the text would exclude not only State charges but also criminal contempt because isn't it a basic power of the Court? Doesn't federal code actually only limit the power of the Court in the ways it can punish contempt, rather than being the source of the authority?
Well, if the Court doesn't mind entirely losing their ability to operate independent from the Executive Branch, who am I to complain? I guess 250 years of judicial authority were just a daydream.
Sorry if this is below the blog's explanation threshold, but why is it a bad idea to write a letter to a prosecutor? Is this behavior commonly associated with crankish people? Or is there some other reason?
@MawBTS- read Ken's Post for Oct 24- "In Which My Identity is Sought by a Grand Jury Subpoena."
MawBTS says October 25, 2017 at 11:14 pm:
In the words inspired by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966):
Anything you say can, and will be, used against you.
David says October 25, 2017 at 4:35 pm:
Is that the test administered by the ETS service? Or do they just give the GRE exam?
@MawBTS:
Watch this video. A little long, but worth the time.
@MAWbts &c.
There's a cute little detail in there that while anything you say can and will be used against you, anything you say CANNOT be used FOR you. "Objection, hearsay" and off it goes…
Well, you maybe could sue for harassment if your boss called you a cunt- but outside of the workplace, probably not.
@MawBTS: Unless you get it just right, it tends to come off as "but my friend should be above the law because bros" or "isn't this law kinda stupid anyways" – neither of which makes a judge happy. Basically, always ask the lawyer first.
Pedantic Question of the day: What's an EMP Pulse? I know what an ElectroMagnetic Pulse is but I have no idea what a ElectroMagnetic Pulse Pulse is.
@LocoYokel: It only occurs when a nuclear strike is launched using ICBM missiles.
Oh funny guy eh -Moe Howard
Richard says October 30, 2017 at 9:20 am:
Weren't those limited after the SALT talks led to the START treaties?
I thought the START treaties were the "final countdown" for "the end of the world as we know it"…
@FlameCCT:
Don't get me STARTED.
@LocoYokel: Your argument is an invocation of the etymological fallacy. That the word "EMP"'s etymology is from the words "Electromagnetic pulse" tells us literally nothing about what it means today and how to properly use it today.
People make this same silly argument about "PIN number", "scuba gear" and "ATM machine" too, and it's equally silly. Just like "PIN", "scuba", and "ATM", "EMP" is a word that has its own meaning and there is no particular reason its meaning must remain precisely the same as the words from which it originated.
Acronyms are words. Words evolve. There is no rule that says that a sentence must remain valid if you substitute for an acronym the words it originally stood for.
While we're piling on with the non-legal advice a la David Schwartz, my morning came to a screeching halt when I read @En Passant's version of the Miranda quotation;
No, no, NO, En, it's "anything you say can, and will, be used against you".
This sort of thing is why I don't work as a legal secretary anymore. Other reasons include:
1. A lawyer for whom I worked as a freelance temp offered me a contract for the estimated four months' work. I read it thoroughly, noted a clause offering me a bonus after the first month, and signed. About midway through the third month I mentioned it, only to have the lawyer deny it was there. I showed him my copy and he exploded in fury and accusations that I had somehow forged the carbon copy of HIS document with my "high-level Microsoft Word skills". I asked him to check the copy in his file. He paid me the insignificant bonus (seriously, like eighty dollars) and called the cops to have me thrown out of the office.
2. I had a prominent Houston lawyer for whom I was on a temp-to-perm contract literally reach into my desk while I was sitting at it working, paw through the drawer in which I kept a few personal items, and straight up steal my pocket Bible under my nose without a word of "pardon me" or "may I borrow this". I can only conclude his Satanic Master had ordered him to remove the offending object. I'm an atheist now, but not because of this.
3. They had shouting-match disagreements with me over their suboptimal grammar. "I worded it that way because that was the way I wanted it to sound and I don't care what your manual of style says or the fact that it actually means something different, you do what I tell you."
4. I overheard a lawyer with a JD tell an indigent pro-bono client, "I don't care if you're innocent and have no criminal record; you should plead guilty to save yourself time and money".
Cromulent Bloviator says
Huh? The courts are one branch of the government.
Was Arpaio not convicted of violating federal law?
The United States is a republic. There is no authority other than the Constitution, and laws passed by the legislature in accordance with the Constitution.
The courts were never independent in the sense of being a separate sovereign.