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Appeals court strikes down Florida law keeping ex-felons from voting because they’re poor

 Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…

Ignoring debate drama to impose vote-related courtroom drama instead.

The 11th Circuit yesterday unanimously shot down Florida’s poll tax targeting ex-prisoners (specifically ex-felons, excepting convictions for murder and sexual violence), whose voting rights Florida citizens restored via a 2018 ballot referendum (“Amendment 4”), []

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Kansas justice, where an unpaid medical bill can get you thrown in debtor’s prison

[Judge David Casement]

Coffeyville, in the southeast corner of Kansas, is best known for a botched double bank robbery in 1892 which cost most of the Dalton Gang their []

Protests in Iraq take a new turn, on gender issues

 “Revolution is not nakedness!” is not the kind of slogan one would hear most places. But political protests in Iraq have taken an odd turn this []

New Mars rover delivered to NASA for July launch, 2021 arrival

Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California (the institution founded by L. Ron Hubbard’s onetime colleague in magick, Jack Parsons) completed assembly of the newest Mars rover, provisionally designated “Mars 2020,” on []

Those halcyon days when Roger Stone fronted for Donald Trump against Indian casinos

 Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…

It’s worth recalling just how far back Roger Stone goes with Donald Trump. Back in the early 1990s, just as Trump’s casinos were emerging from bankruptcy, Indian casinos were sprouting up as a result to a change in federal law. Trump viewed []

Why investigate? — Barr so corrupt, he didn’t need to be told to intervene for Stone

[Stone, Trump, Barr]

Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…

[Regarding this story: WH Denies That Trump Pressured Barr To Reduce Stone’s Prison Sentence]

The framing for most of the stories asks whether Trump pressured Barr to intervene on Roger Stone’s behalf, but that’s the wrong question because the answer is []

Chinese government puts ‘citizen journalist’ in suspicious quarantine over virus reporting

 It is difficult to obtain reliable biographic info on Chen Qiushi. From the videos he posts he looks even younger than his 34 years. He has a law degree, if we can go by a troll who posted multiple times on his videos (denounced as a government hack in replies), saying that Chen is only []

Bad Vibrations: More Beach Boys agita, this time over Mike Love’s trophy hunters gig

[The president with Mike Love]

Brian Wilson is the best-known member of the Beach Boys, the 60s hit group with which he has had a contentious off-and-on relationship for years. Recently a petition was forwarded to him asking people to boycott the Beach Boys, and not even buy their old recordings any more. Wilson signed it, []

Barring New Yorkers from Global Entry feels unconstitutional in a hundred ways

Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…

It’s being reported that the DHS is suspending the Global Entry program for New York State residents only. This feels unconstitutional in a hundred ways so settling on just one isn’t []

Lloyd Evans: How to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses without fear

 One of the things we like about Lloyd Evans is that he’s giving advice from his own experience, and he has so much compassion for others attempting to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion as he []