Ed Whelan, the president of a conservative think tank and a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, has been promising a silver-bullet exoneration of Brett Kavanaugh, the alleged drunken teen sex pest, all week long.

Ken "Popehat" White, a former US Attorney turned criminal defense attorney, notes that the Republican outrage about "flipped" prosecution witnesses is awfully self-serving (given that Trump's bagman Michael Cohen and hushup capo David Pecker have both seemingly turned state's evidence), they have a point, as countless black and brown and poor defendants have discovered in their journey through the American justice system.

John Oliver made fun of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's terrible performance on the talk shows Sunday. Giuliani's "truth isn't truth" statement should surely end up inscribed on both his and Trump's gravestones: a bungled effort to describe perjury traps and other reasons one should generally not talk to cops and most certainly not the FBI. — Read the rest

Ken "Popehat" White (previously), a former Federal prosecutor turned criminal defense attorney, has some excellent advice for all you newbie law-students who are just starting your law school career.

A game of cornhole at the Douglas County Fair in Georgia led to a dispute between players, reports WSB-TV in Atlanta–a dispute that escalated into a fists-flying brawl at the Foxhall Resort.

Alex Cannon was standing so close, he nearly had to duck while filming the chaos.

In New York today, a judge ordered Michael Cohen to reveal the name of a third client, someone who didn't want to be named. It's Sean Hannity. — Read the rest

Ken "Popehat" White (previously) is a former US federal prosecutor whose explanations of the minutae of law have been invaluable to my understanding of the legal controversies swirling around Trump and his retinue.

Swatting is the practice of tricking police SWAT teams into storming your victim's home by phoning in fake hostage situations; it's especially prominent among cybercriminals, gamers and was a favored tactic of Gamergater trolls.

Home security company ADT had an offer its website users couldn't refuse: never criticize the company or its products.

Customers accessing the "My ADT" service were challenged to agree to new terms and conditions, among which was "Will not disparage ADT, ADT's products or services, or any of ADT's affiliates or their products of services." — Read the rest

Instafired White House mistake Anthony Scaramucci took exception to being insulted in an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper. So he threatened to sue its author, bringing upon himself instant if entirely predictable injury.

Scaramucci wasn't backing down as he took to Twitter into the night to blast anyone criticizing his legal action threats.

In the wake of CNN threatening to out a critic if he does not limit his speech in the future, former federal prosecutor and First Amendment champion Ken White has published an eminently sensible post about the incoherence of the present moment's views on free speech, and on the way that partisanship causes us to apply a double standard that excuses "our bunch" and damns the "other side."

Perhaps you are tired of the terminology of online trashtalk, where words (such as snowflake and bro) form billowing epicycles of sincerity, appropriation and reclamation. Me too! Yet there is such a pure beauty to this morning's surprisingly viral portmanteau, Broflake. — Read the rest

One subtext of the investigation into President Trump (especially its political dimensions) is the winking suggestion that the Russia stuff is small potatoes and the meat is in getting to prove everything else the man surely got up to: payola and piss tapes, oh my. — Read the rest

According to a lawsuit, Corey King, a police captain in Washington County, Georgia, conspired with his friends magistrate Ralph O. Todd and Sheriff's Investigator Trey Burgamy to arrest King's ex-wife, Anne King, and her friend, Susan Hines, for a Facebook exchange in which they commiserated over Captain King's refusal to pick up medicine for his sick children.

An all-star team of comics and science fiction people — impressario Glenn Hauman, writer David "Tribbles" Gerrold, and illustrator Ty Templeton — had their kickstarter for a Seuss/Trek parody "Oh, The Places You'll Boldly Go" unceremoniously shut down when the Seuss estate's notorious attack-lawyers threatened legal action, without any regard for the clear fair use at play.

Former federal prosecutor and frequent plain-language law explainer Ken "Popehat" White has done the (American) Internet the immense service of producing a master(ful) post about the First Amendment, explaining why the American constitutional basis for free speech includes abridgments on speech by some private actors and why it can be invoked in civil cases.

For more than four years, we've been writing about Prenda Law, a prolific copyright troll (that is, a company that sends dire legal threats and demands for money to people they accuse of copyright infringement, based on the flimsiest of evidence), whose conduct is so breathtakingly illegal that it feels like satire or performance art (but it's not).

Yesterday, Esquire published this satirical column by @ProfJeffJarvis, a Fake Steve-style parody of journalism professor and media visionary Jeff Jarvis. The real Jarvis did what any self-respecting open-culture advocate would: he issued a vague legal threat and got it removed, thereby ensuring that something humorless and obscure was read by a far larger audience than it deserved. — Read the rest

North Korea has responded to the resignation of high-profile staff at Breitbart and the site's spiteful (and quickly-deleted) response.

The lies of the venomous she-bitch Michelle Fields against TrumpNation and all right-thinking peoples are thus exposed to the ridicule and contempt of the peoples.

The most entertaining chess match you'll watch all year: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, with the black pieces, takes on a trash-talking, fast-fingered hustler. [via]