Like rapid fire bullets from an AK-47, American gun carnage is set to repeat. Random shooters can fell anyone, anywhere: at church, school, or the Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida.
The Haake Take
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, has no paywall.
During last week’s GOP presidential debate, the candidates punted on climate change. Vivek Ramaswamy exuberantly declared, “climate change is a hoax.” Nikki Haley, whose debate performance was otherwise reasonable, thinks China and India should reduce their carbon output first. Ron DeSantis, who rejected the form of the question, has called climate change “left-wing stuff,” and blames “wokeness” rather than escalating climate claims for the disappearance of property insurers in Florida.
In America’s latest iteration of law vs. scofflaw, Fani Willis has brought the most consequential prosecution in US history. Her 41 count indictment against Donald Trump and 18 of his closest co-conspirators threads the infinitesimal needle between free political speech and fraud, sewing Trump’s falsehoods into a cloak of criminal enterprise beyond the protection of the First Amendment.
Donald Trump’s latest indictment addresses his conduct in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, not his words, just as the protective order entered on Aug. 11 bans witness intimidation, not free speech.
Last week, Ron DeSantis, with a straight face, told reporters he had had nothing to do with the Florida Board of Education’s new curriculum peddling a softer side of slavery. “I wasn’t involved with it. I didn’t do it … It was not anything that was done politically.”
The day before Donald Trump was indicted last week for trying to obstruct the 2020 election, his FEC reports revealed the extent to which he uses his donors’ money, rather than his own, to pay his lawyers.
Watching politicians like Ron DeSantis ignore climate change while the nation cooks is like being trapped in the backseat of a car - windows up and locked - with a crazed driver who won’t stop smoking. Coughing falls on deaf ears. Complaining makes him chain-smoke. Explaining the science of carcinogens and lungs makes him twitch and light cigars - simultaneously.
Every other week another SCOTUS scandal breaks, but no justice is more tainted than Clarence Thomas.
The Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg rivalry, entertaining as it is, dances around a crucial question: How do we reign in extremism on social media? If it can’t be done without offending the First Amendment, how do we bracket and tag misinformation so that people are at least aware that they are being manipulated, not informed?
In 1896, the Supreme Court issued one of the most shameful decisions in US history, Plessy vs. Ferguson. Plessy upheld “separate but equal” public accommodations, barring recently freed black people from “white” accommodations including train cars, lodging, and schools, and justified the murderous scourge of Jim Crow laws.
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