Up in here.

 

As the Biden administration slowly coalesces, there have been many calls for its Justice Department to prosecute Donald Trump for any crimes he may have committed while in office.  

The problem with this agenda is that there is little evidence that Mr. Trump did commit crimes as president. A conviction is all but impossible. 

The calls to investigate him echo the president’s own calls to investigate Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden based on mere many issues worth of it.

The most plausible charge is that Mr. Trump obstructed justice by interfering with, and possibly lying to, Robert Mueller. Critics also argue that Mr. Trump may have broken the law by threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the Ukrainian government announced the opening of an investigation into the Bidens. 

A third possible charge is that Mr. Trump corruptly mixed his financial affairs with government business.

All of these charges would face formidable difficulties in court. No former president has ever been prosecuted for crimes committed during his tenure. Courts tread cautiously when new legal ground is broken, worried about upsetting reasonable expectations about what the law is. And judges interpret criminal laws strictly because the defendant’s freedom is at stake. Just a thought.

Sofisticated..

 

 Fillmore County in 2013 began requiring that the Swartzentruber Amish, who reject modern technology as part of their religion, install septic systems to treat the wastewater from laundry, bathing and cooking – known as gray water. The Amish instead want to reuse that water for irrigation or treat it through less sophisticated systems. 

In an opinion concurring with the Supreme Court's decision, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch said the state courts misread a federal law dealing with how such land use regulations may be applied to religious entities. 

It was the latest example of the Supreme Court siding with a claim of religious freedom in a contest with an asserted governmental interest.  

Having a religious belief is a plus. Just a thought.

Bearcats...

 

A Massachusetts State Police trooper spotted two vehicles in the breakdown lane  on I-95 north. A group of eight to 10 men trying to refuel a vehicle, wearing tactical-style gear and armed with a combination of rifles and pistols.

The trooper asked the men for identification and firearms licenses. "A number of those individuals alight into the woodline with their firearms. A perimeter was quickly established," police said.

"No threats were made, but these men should be considered armed and dangerous. We are asking residents in these areas to lock their doors and remain inside their homes. A heavy police presence will be in this area as well," the Wakefield Police Department wrote in a statement.

 "Once those BearCats pressed the scene and moved them in, it had its desired effect and they were compliant very quickly."

System...

 

Gimmic...

 

Happy Fourth...

 

Corruption...

 

The progressive New York representative  has criticized Vice-President Kamala Harris for saying undocumented migrants from Guatemala should not come to the US.

On her first foreign trip as vice-president, Harris visited Guatemala. At a press conference with Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, the former California senator spoke about investigating corruption and human trafficking in Central America and described a future where Guatemalans could find “hope at home.”

But she also had a clear message that undocumented Guatemalan migrants would not find solace at the US border under the Biden administration.

More or less

 

NEW YORK -Infectious disease experts are weighing the need for booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna mRNA-based vaccines for Americans who received Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine due to the increasing prevalence of the more contagious Delta coronavirus variant

A few say they have already done so themselves, even without published data on whether combining two different vaccines is safe and effective or backing from U.S. health regulators. Canada and some European countries are already allowing people to get two different COVID-19 shots.

The debate centers on concerns over how protective the J&J shot is against the Delta variant first detected in India and now circulating widely in many countries.

Delta, which has also been associated with more severe disease, could quickly become the dominant version of the virus in the United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky has warned.

There is no substantial data showing how protective the J&J vaccine is against the new variant. However, UK studies show that two doses of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccines are significantly more protective against the variant than one.

Trust...?

 

New York City’s Board of Election withdrew data it had released earlier purporting to be the first results of the city’s new ranked choice voting system.

The Board of Elections tweeted that it was aware of “a discrepancy” in its report on ranked choice voting results. It didn’t explain what that discrepancy was or whether it potentially had any impact on the reported results.

The confusion was a black mark on New York City’s first major foray into ranked choice voting, and seemed to confirm worries beforehand that the Board of Election, which operates independently from City Hall, was unprepared for the election.

In an earlier statement before the Board of Elections released theirs, Adams' team initially wrote: "The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions.  

This is a shameful story for this City, and the Country as well. Just a thought

Corrected...

  

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Bill Cosby’s 2018 sexual assault conviction on Wednesday and barred him from being retried, a decision that will pave the way for his release from prison and upend the first high-profile celebrity conviction of the #MeToo era.

The divided court ruled that the 83-year-old comedian — who has served more than two years of a three-to-10-year sentence — had been denied a fair trial, citing an agreement struck with a previous prosecutor that the justices said barred Cosby from ever being charged with the 2004 assault of Temple University employee Andrea Constand.

Justice David N. Wecht, writing for the majority, said Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele was legally bound by that decade-old promise and therefore should not have brought charges when new evidence surfaced in 2015.

Vacating Cosby’s conviction, Wecht said, “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”