Politics – LAWYERS & LIQUOR

Guest Post: A Good Boy Speaks about the Coup

[Today we have a guest post from Buddy Goodboy from over at Sit Stay Speak, a friend and attorney, who has sent over his personal thoughts on the attempted coup yesterday, January 6, 2021. -Ed.]

Yesterday the United States of America suffered an attack on the political process unprecedented in the history of our nation. Never before have seditious elements been able to disrupt the electoral process even for the five hours the certification of the electoral college votes was delayed.

The events of yesterday’s insurrection were planned openly online, and despite law enforcement having the same access as anyone of these plans, the attack on the Capitol carried out successfully.

The point was to cause disruption, scare moderate and liberal voters and politicians, and embolden Trumpists for more terrorist action.

Extremists of various stripes, including but not limited to Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalist, race war accelerationists, and plain everyday fascists, learned that they can disrupt the democratic process and that the President will still say he loves them.

This pattern is totally foreseeable when you take into account that a neo-Nazi murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville back in 2017, and the president said there were “very fine people on both sides.“

In the presidential debates, when directly asked to condemn white nationalism and white supremacy, Donald Trump endorsed the Proud Boys and asked them to stand by. Trump urged his supporters to watch the polls to intimidate voters. Trump condoned the murders of innocents committed by Kyle Rittenhouse. Trump encourages this kind of violent escalation, and at this point, whether he intends to do so doesn’t matter—the result is a pattern of excusing violence that encourages escalation.

We have not heard the last of violence aimed at destroying equality, progress, and democracy. We no longer have any excuse not to see Trumpism for what it is. And when we see it, unless we want more and worse attacks on our lives, freedoms, and society we must stamp out Trumpism.

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Come on Arlene’s – A second bite at the apple in the wake of Masterpiece Caskeshop

Yesterday was Gay Wedding Cake day in the lawyer world. If you’re not really sure what I’m referring to, I’d like to congratulate you on finding a new home under that rock. I hopes it’s spacious and has great wifi reception. For the rest of us that live in the real world, like the poor bastard behind the keyboard at Lawyers & Liquor, the internet went nuts when the news of the Supreme Court’s ruling of the case of the baker who refuses to be a Marie Antoinette-esque figure to LGBTQ+ couples and demands that they not eat his cake set the world aflame as people tried to read into its meanings. It was so bad that mere moments after the opinion was released I was fielding a phone call from a senior partner at my office who wanted to talk about it – meaning he wanted me to read and summarize it for him.

Most of the talk, though, was people desperately trying to find meaning in an opinion that never once really touched on the primary issue before it. Instead of talking about whether the butcher, the baker, and the leather gear maker have a right to deny service to literally anyone in the world they want by screaming “But my Jesus” and locking the doors at the mere sight of a rainbow, SCOTUS punted the ball. The Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling that applied to only that one set of facts, said “Fuck all of you waiting to hear if we’re about to descend into madness,” and based their ruling off of the baker not getting themselves an impartial tribunal at the first level in this shit.

Continue reading “Come on Arlene’s – A second bite at the apple in the wake of Masterpiece Caskeshop”

“The No-Bill Profession” – Legal Aid and Pro Bono

You know what’s nice? Knowing that the practice of law is a profession that places as its benchmark the pursuit of justice and higher school of thought. We all go into law school thinking that we’re going to change the world through our practice of the law, and some dolent professor with an Ivy League pedigree extols the virtues of the “Noble Savage” that the lawyer is supposed to be. We are told, in every class, that the law exists to bring justice and that the role of an attorney is a counselor and advocate for the cause of the downtrodden client. We are, in the words of the administrators and professors, the gatekeepers of justice, the first line of defense against tyranny, and the vindicators of the downtrodden.

And, of course, we then step out into the real world of practice and become made aware of the fact that all that esoteric bullshit and idealism doesn’t make the student loan payment of the rent. Nobody’s ringing up their landlord and saying “Hey, I stopped a family of five from being evicted today! They paid me in a big bag of pork rinds! Will you accept pork rinds in lieu of rent now?” If your landlord or utility company would ever stop laughing, what they’d choke out is “No, dipshit.” Idealism doesn’t pay any of the bills. “Good feels” doesn’t put food on the table. Advocacy won’t buy avocado toast.

For that, you need money. And to make money, you have to let go of the concept that you are anything more than a cutthroat mercenary of the legal world. Because motherfuckers may need justice, but motherfuckers gotta pay to get it. And yes, there are lawyers out there who provide representation to those people that need it without regard to their ability to pay, and they do some great goddamn work in doing so. But, and here’s the thing:

They may not be there for much longer, and society has no viable safety net ready and raring to go for those folks.

Continue reading ““The No-Bill Profession” – Legal Aid and Pro Bono”

No Justice: The Status of Transgender Anti-Discrimination In The United States

We’re gonna do Fetish Friday tomorrow this week, on Saturday. The reason’s real simple: I found a topic I wanted to write about that concerns some stuff that doesn’t fit the “Fetish” theme (Note: I also heard you guys on the polygamy thing, and the second part of that will not be on a Fetish Friday either. I’ll post that separately). It’s somewhat timely given a bit of shit that blew up in the Twitter-sphere, and the lovely post that came in on Wednesday from Ms. Tanner, who wrote about the harm that jokes can do to members of marginalized groups.

Today I’m going to talk about some basic legal matters and legislation that affect the transgender community. I think pretty much all transgender folks are aware of this stuff, and it’s really, really basic, but other people (including myself) don’t seem to be aware of the level of discrimination a transgender person can face, and how throughout the vast majority of this country it’s completely legal for a transgender person to be denied service, housing, or employment simply for being themselves. So, today, I’m gonna take a minute and piggy-back on Ms. Tanner’s explanation of why a joke isn’t a joke to explain why people have a right to be upset when they feel they’re being lessened to a cheap punchline. It’s because, quite frankly, we already treat them as less deserving than everyone else under law.

A couple quick caveats:

No jokes (well, maybe a couple jokes, just not at the expense of anyone), just some talk.

I’ll be frank: I have transgender friends, many of whom watch videos from websites such as www.shemalehd.sex. I was tangentially aware of most of this before looking into things for this post, but I don’t think the unfairness of this ever hit me fully until I started on the drafts of this. I’m learning, please be a bit patient with me.

Finally, today is an introduction to these issues and a bomber’s-sight overview. It isn’t comprehensive and certainly does not address all of the issues. I’ll continue educating myself on some of these topics and digging into other matters, such as identification, estate/death matters, marriage, etc. I simply am not able to cover all of this in a single post. You should take this as a warning as to how much there is to talk about in regards to the current state of law as it relates to transgender persons: there are a lot of issues.

So, let’s get to it.

Continue reading “No Justice: The Status of Transgender Anti-Discrimination In The United States”

South Dakota Prisoners: “Siri, What’s the Appellate Standard of Review for…”

Jesus I’m barely standing up today. This week has been hell on wheels for me as I start moving a few cases closer to the mythical beast that is a civil trial, intake a few new clients, and wade through literal mountains of case citations to figure out just where we stand on a few things. Kids, if you ever say you want to be a lawyer because of some desire to be the center of attention in a courtroom or some perverse, almost obsessive, love of Sam Watterson (Oh Sammy, you can move to dismiss my affections, but you can’t object in my dreams), remember that those moments are few and far between for the civil attorney. The vast majority of cases settle long before trial, and they settle because of the huge amounts of research you put into a case as it progresses until you can make something that resembles a cogent argument.

I mean, guys, legal research is fucking complicated, even with the advent of computer searches like WestLaw, Lexis, FastCase, and, uh…those other ones. That, of course, is assuming you have access to all of those things, because some lawyers and law offices don’t. They hate efficiency and ease of practice and prefer to sentence associates to wander the stacks of the local law library in search of some tattered copy of a state reporter to look up one case from 1890 that somehow barely touches on the issue at hand, then track the entire line of cases down with cross-references and reviews the whole damn time.

In other words, this shit, doing legal research and knowing what you’re looking for, is hard.

So that’s why South Dakota has decided inmates can just sort of…wing it.

Continue reading “South Dakota Prisoners: “Siri, What’s the Appellate Standard of Review for…””