Non-Sequiturs

* In case you were confused with Trump’s position on white supremacy because he condemned Nazis today, Trump is reportedly thinking of pardoning Sheriff Joe. Actions speak louder than two-day late statements read without taking questions. [The Hill]

* Trump is launching a trade probe of China. Given the general competence of this administration, I expect a full report on Japanese trade practices in a few months. [Talking Points Memo]

* In light of Ken Fraizer from Merck leaving the service of our Dear Leader over Trump’s response to Charlottsville, maybe it’s time to put pressure on other business leaders to distance themselves from Trump? [Going Concern]

* The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced that it would start providing feminine hygiene products for free. I wanted to put one good news story in here, and I thought this was it. But then I starting thinking, “wait, so before now federal prisoners had to pay for feminine hygiene products? And what about state prisons? What other kind of medieval prison conditions do we still allow to persist?” [Law Street Media]

* The doxxing of white supremacists continues. This is my good news story. [Jezebel]

* There’s been a 75% increase in “lawful homicides” in Florida since its “Stand Your Ground” law took effect a decade ago. But there’s also been a 22% increase in straight up murders. So, Florida’s general attempt to kill itself to rid us of their stupidity seems to be going well. [Reuters]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

* SNL’s take on the Mooch. [Huffington Post]

* Outside of the T14, the news for law schools isn’t good. [TaxProf Blog]

* Ethics, smethics. The one thing the Trump presidency is good at is making money — for Trump. [Business Insider]

* Penn Law is bucking the GRE trend. [Daily Pennsylvanian]

* You aren’t being paranoid, they’re coming after your civil rights. [The Slot]

* Advice for providing legal representation to iGen. [Law and More]

* A look at the procedure involved in Sarah Palin’s defamation case. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Who is next on Trump’s Twitter frenemy list? [Salon]

* Anthony Scaramucci may be out of the White House, but he isn’t off Twitter. [Slate]

* A GOP donor has filed a lawsuit over the party’s inability to repeal Obamacare. Shocker — Trump agrees with the suit. [Salon]

* Interesting podcast exploring career options in the law. [Legal Executive Institute]

* Money is the big downside for lawyers considering a career in politics. [Law and More]

* Assessing the threats to constitutional democracy. [Dorf on Law]

* More justifications for going to law school. [TaxProf Blog]

* The new normal: the horrors never stop. [The Hill]

* Which countries have blasphemy laws on the books? [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Which justices dissent most frequently in constitutional cases? The top few probably won’t surprise you, but Adam Feldman has other interesting data too. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* A hefty — think 132 pages — ruling from the Tenth Circuit, overturning a Native American man’s murder conviction and death sentence, could have major implications. [How Appealing]

* Warm words from Eugene Volokh for his co-blogger Nick Rosenkranz, a possible Second Circuit nominee. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* Drew Rossow poses an interesting question: Could Your Roomba Soon Be Sucking Up Your Privacy Rights? [Huffington Post]

* Ann Althouse analysis on President Trump’s controversial “fire and fury” comments. [Althouse]

* “THE HORROR. THE HORROR. Newark Terrorized by Whole Foods.” [National Review via Instapundit]

* What’s the “best” way to end a work email? [Corporette]

* All mistakes are not created equal. [Law and More]

* The Trump grand jury apparently brings out the racist in people. [Slate]

* Not shocking, but still frustrating: Trump DOJ changes course from Obama admin on voter roles. [Huffington Post]

* Up until the moment is gets thrown out of court, this lawsuit will be hilarious. [Salon]

* Attorney and first African-American Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, has a happy ending. [Jezebel]

* The past and future of law reviews. Somehow whenever I think of the future of law reviews, I think of this. [The Faculty Lounge]

* Has anyone else noticed Trump’s lawyers sound a lot different all of a sudden? [Vanity Fair]

* Lisa Bloom’s got a lawsuit against Usher over supposedly giving women herpes. Frankly, that’s not the worst thing Usher’s unleashed on an unsuspecting populace. That’s what he has to answer for. [Jezebel]

* The marijuana crackdown may be coming soon. [Slate]

* This reads like a New York City government scandal, but then you read the details and it’s just… not. [New York Daily News]

* This guy really doesn’t like legal AI. [Legal Cheek]

* It’s been a few days, but here’s a recap of The Legal Geeks’ presentations at SDCC. [The Legal Geeks]

* Today in women’s rights, Ta-Ta Towels have arrived and, well, everything is okay now. [BoredPanda]

* I wonder what Kamala Harris, Deval Patrick, and Cory Booker have in common to get them so much hate from supposedly left-wing sources? Hmm… [Wonkette]

* Apparently six states control the partisan control of the House: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And here I thought I only had to care about those places once every four years. [Election Law Blog]

* There are people, smart people, who are interested in Bitcoin news. Then there are people like me, who have fully dived into all the tables, all the studies, all the future’s predictions, and determined: “I’ll likely be dead before I’m forced to care about Bitcoin, phew.” [Going Concern]

* I, too, am taking my first real vacation since the election. But I’m only taking a week off, not 17 days like the president. I’ll make you a deal, I won’t come back if he doesn’t. [GQ]

* There’s a new study showing the environmental impact — the disastrous environmental impact — of American pet ownership. It’s sobering, and perfect fodder for a Breitbart twist job: “Kill a Puppy to Save the Planet. Study Warns That Pets Cause Global Warming.”

The convoluted, intellectually dishonest take actually gets to the heart of why intelligent people find the right’s resistance to climate change knowledge so perplexing. The Brietbart spin suggests: (a) climate change isn’t real, (b) if it is, then pets don’t contribute to it, (c) if they do, then the left wants the programmatic extinction of pets, (d) if they don’t, then they want you to personally kill your dog.

NOTHING about the spin is supported by even a casual reading of the study. But the bitch of it is, if you gave these Breitbart types the option of either instituting a federal gas tax, or killing the first-born puppies in all the land, they’d be the ones drafting the Moses legislation. [Breitbart]

* You can shake a female co-worker’s hand and not get cooties, I promise. [Adequate Man]

* Why did you decide to go to law school? [Corporette]

* A Freedom of Information Act request has revealed the stunning way the Department of Homeland Security ordered its agents to treat Congresspeople and lawyers in the aftermath of the travel ban. [Daily Beast]

* How will you survive if your legal job is replaced by artificial intelligence? [Law and More]

* Oliver Stone has gotten to the CIA. [Politico]

* Like true crime TV shows? You’ll appreciate Netflix’s new spoof. [Salon]

* The Trump administration does not understand the whole concept of popularity. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* Who can help Governor Cuomo solve his transit woes? [Cityland]

* As I noted in my last nominations roundup, the Trump administration is actually ahead of the Bush and Obama administrations when it comes to judicial appointments — especially with yesterday’s confirmation of Kevin Newsom to the Eleventh Circuit. [How Appealing]

* With Republicans in charge of the presidency and Senate, could breaking up the Ninth Circuit return to the agenda? [Law360]

* And here’s an interesting argument against a split, from the Republican point of view (by Wyatt Kozinski, following in his father’s footsteps). [SSRN]

* Capital punishment: yet another issue where it’s all about Justice Kennedy. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Thoughts from Joel Cohen on the Trump/Sessions troubles. [The Hill]

* How NOT to escape from your law school loans. [Gizmodo]

* If a pizza party isn’t your thing, here are some other ideas for what to eat when working hard at the law firm. [Cater2me]

* Litigation that lawyers can love: Mel Gibson files suit over a dictionary (okay, actually a movie about a dictionary — the Oxford English Dictionary). [Deadline]

* Congratulations to Judge Lorna G. Schofield (S.D.N.Y.) on receiving the Liberty Award from the ABA! [American Bar Association]

* I like football, I really do. But, uggh. It is getting harder and harder to justify. [Deadspin]

* The only law John Kelly will ever have to understand. [Clickhole]

* I mean… this will never get passed. But, legalizing marijuana and combating the racial injustice of the war on drugs is a great idea. [Huffington Post]

* Things don’t look good for public-sector unions in front of the Supreme Court. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* Tips for building a great work style. [Corporette]

* Charting the government’s responsibility for segregation. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

* There’s a club forming for JDs who have been given the boot by President Trump. [Law and More]

* So… who is in charge of Homeland Security now? Asking for all the immigration lawyers who need to fill out the “named defendants” section of their filings. [Politico]

* The Gawker effect is real. Maybe Buzzfeed will save us? [Washington Post]

* Florida law will allow parents to object to the content of their children’s textbooks. I would be in favor of this law if it also required Florida residents to READ children’s textbooks before they object. [Law Street News]

* We’re now at the point where people are reporting on seating arrangements at cabinet meetings. Trump makes us pathetic. [Newsmax]

* Here’s some stuff about trash human, Pete Rose. [The Score]

* Here’s some stuff about trash human, Joe Arpaio. [AZ Central]

* At a rally in front of Long Island police, Trump said that he was okay with police being “rougher” on arrested suspects. And the officers roared their approval. I grew up on Long Island. The first person to ever call me the N-word to my face was a Long Island police officer when I was a tween. I can’t explain to you guys how absolutely chilling and terrifying this moment was for me. I wish you MAGA people, you soft bigots who think that this is a game of your guy versus political correctness, could understand why people like me will never stop fighting people like you. [Lawyers Guns and Money]

* I’ve kind of moved passed the point where the courts tell Donald Trump that he cannot block people on Twitter, because I expect that will be a fairly obvious decision. I’m now wondering if the courts can order the specific performance of Trump unblocking those he doesn’t wish to hear. And, naturally, I’m wondering if people tweeting at him, day and night, things he can’t block, will make him cry. [Slate]

* This guy argues, more or less, that partisan gerrymandering is not the cause of our factionalized democracy, it’s merely one of the results. I think it’s more of a feedback loop: we’re factionalized, which leads to gerrymandering, which leads to more factionalization, and so on, until we get to the point where 60 million people can elect a crazy person to lord over a country of 320 million souls. That also probably explains why Dunkirk is going to win an Oscar. [Election Law Blog]

* I’d like to think of John Roberts vacationing in New Zealand like Gandalf visiting The Shire. I can picture him, smoking some pipe weed, setting off some fireworks, enjoying a moment untrammeled by thoughts of what’s happening back at home in Mordor. [Constitution Daily]

* I assume the GOP will now move onto tax reform, which is codenamed: “Operation Cannot Possibly Fail, Again.” Tax Prof blog has put together a fine collection of links on where we stand with that. [Tax Prof Blog]

* Checking in with white American news sources, it would appear that Fox News doesn’t recognize the defeat of the Republicans’ signature policy proposal for the past seven years as “headline” news. They’re much more interested in getting a special prosecutor to look into a couple of women who hold no public office, and the FBI director who handed them an election. But they’re not totally ignorant of what’s going on. “Couple jump to their deaths because they ‘can’t afford’ health care,” is a below-the-fold story. The Republican plan wouldn’t have reduced costs for this couple, nor made it easier for them to get the mental health services that could have saved their lives. But when you support a president whose stated policy goal is “implosion,” human tragedy furthers your aims. [Fox News]

* In case you missed last night’s dramatic moment:

https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/890815543258865664

* More details on the lawyer who took down the University of Florida’s general counsel. [Deadspin]

* Welp, this is what happens when they stop teaching treason at Harvard Law School. [Salon]

* “Too skinny” is a bad thing when it applies to your health insurance. [The Slot]

* The House Judiciary Committee is just bonkers, y’all. [Wonkette]

* You should probably be stocking up on these. [Corporette]

* Is your privacy taking a beating in the war against opioids? [Overlawyered]

* Advice for lawyers: pick up the damn phone. [Wisconsin Lawyer]

* Rikers Island traded one awful practice for another. [Pacific Standard]

* Will this terrible murder be the beginning of an era of regulation for the cruise line industry? [Law and More]

* President Trump’s personal legal team: “It’s utter chaos. Sometimes it can be like no one knows who is in charge.” [Washington Post]

* Adam Feldman predicts that the travel ban is going down before SCOTUS. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* The Trump tweets on banning transgender individuals from the military aren’t the only bad news for the LGBTQ community today. [Washington Blade]

* A nice win for the First Amendment and public access to court records. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* Ira Stoll wonders (with good reason): why did the New York Times account of this high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit name the law firm, but not the plaintiff? [Smarter Times]

* Clerkships guru Debra M. Strauss, who has written for our pages on the topic, is out with a second edition of Behind the Bench: The Guide to Judicial Clerkships (affiliate link).

* Is Paul Manafort planning on responding to his Congressional subpoena with receipts? [The Root]

* A much needed W for the First Amendment. [Patterico’s Pontifications]

* Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Supreme Court strategy. [Politico]

* This case will make you think about burping more than you care to. [Lowering the Bar]

* Trump can’t stop talking about Sessions. [Huffington Post]

* Your job is killing your posture. Can anything be done to stop you from developing a computer hunch? [Corporette]

* What is Jared Kushner hiding? [Slate]

* Learning the value of being a troublemaker. [Ghostwriting-Speechwriting]

* Maybe I’m biased (I definitely am), but Girl Scouts > Boy Scouts. [Jezebel]

* Michael Phelps did not “race” a shark. I did not really expect Michael Phelps to race a shark, because I know that any shark “winning” such a contest would stop racing and start… eating. And yet, I tuned in kind of hoping that they found some way to put Michael Phelps and a shark in the water at the same time. What I’m saying is: I want the Discovery Channel sued for false advertising. I want to see Discovery outrun some class-action sharks, for my amusement. [Rolling Stone]

* Disrupt the Supreme Court, go to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. [Washington Post]

* A court rules that a 20-day registration cutoff before the election violates the Massachusetts constitution. Given the Puritan roots of the Massachusetts constitution, I wouldn’t be surprised if it only allowed for same-day registration “by ordeal,” though. If you can grab that super-heated stone and walk 20 paces, you can vote as many times as you want. [Election Law Blog]

* The AALS is moving its 2018 conference from Austin to Chicago to protest Texas’s immigration and bathroom bills. Seems like a good move, but a little unfair to Austin. When the Northeast secedes and joins Canada, we should still let people from Austin come visit. [TaxProf Blog]

* Charges against a police officer who could not be convicted of killing a black person have been dropped. Because it is not illegal for cops to indiscriminately kill black people. [The Root]

* Technically, it’s illegal in New York City to park your ice cream truck and still play the ice cream jingle. Of course, someone who complains about the ice cream man in any situation where he is (a) selling ice cream and (b) not molesting children is the scientific definition of a terrible person. The fact that the person complaining is a white lady living in Harlem is just the cherry on top of the soft serving of poop. [Gothamist]

* Akie Abe, first lady of Japan, played Donald Trump so hard. She, evidently, pretended she didn’t know how to speak English to avoid having to talk to our boor of a president. I’m telling you guys: World War III: this time the Axis powers are the good guys. [National Post]

* On this day that Trump turns over his press team, it’s worth mentioning that the media’s war against Trump is doomed to fail. Honestly, this first press conference with Anthony Scaramucci just emphasizes the point. The media asked him two questions in a bunch of different ways: 1. Will you be nicer to us than the last guy? 2. Why does this administration suck? The answers were “sure” and “we’re great,” respectively. [The Guardian]

* Walls don’t just keep people out, they lock people in. Like East Germany before, the White House takes its first totalitarian step to… oh, they’re just banning travel to North Korea. Honestly, that’s a pretty solid idea. [CBS News]

* Kentucky was ordered to pay $222,695 in legal fees to people who had to deal with Kim Davis’s BS. [Louisville Courier-Journal]

* Exxon fined $2,000,000 for “reckless disregard” for sanctions against Russia while current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in charge. In response, Exxon sued the U.S. Treasury Department, naming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as a defendant, arguing they had received a special carve-out. Everything is so dirty. [ABA Journal]

* Remember when Republicans cried and complained and sniggered that Obama was a “Muslim” whenever he would bring over a Guantanamo detainee for trial in the U.S.? The Trump administration just brought over a Guantanamo detainee for trial in the U.S. This administration is very much like Linkin Park, just do what the black guy did but with white faces and more guitar, and people will like it. [New York Times]

* Breitbart is fapping itself over Anthony Scaramucci, so I checked out Red State and found this gem: “Beating the filibuster just takes guts and a desire to win.” The argument is that Republican leaders should not be afraid of a Democratic filibuster on health care, because if Republicans are strong they’ll refuse to conduct any other business until health care gets a vote, and Democrats won’t shut down the government to save Obamacare. Two points: (a) Republicans don’t have 50 votes now, and (b) NOTHING would make Democrats happier than to shut down the entire Republican legislative agenda by making a principled stand defending the right to health care. But hey, if y’all think you have the “guts” to shut down the government in order to “win,” by all means, bring it the eff on. [RedState]

* Mining the 2017 Nordstorm Anniversary Sale for the perfect work — or interview — shoes. [Corporette]

* What would a TV show based on Biglaw look like? Lots of yelling, some tears, general terror. [Law and More]

* Legally speaking — what is snortable chocolate? [LawSci Forum]

* Louis Vuitton wants to go to the Supreme Court. [The Fashion Law]

* Jeff Sessions, and pretty much only Jeff Sessions, is hot for civil forfeiture. [Slate]

* Celebrating seersucker day! [Southern District of Florida Blog]

* New job for ousted Cincinnati Law dean Jennifer Bard. [TaxProf Blog]

* The Supreme Court’s latest ruling in the travel ban litigation: good news for grandparents, bad news for certain refugees. [How Appealing]

* And in the travel ban battle, the parties aren’t pulling their punches. [Democracy in America / The Economist]

* Nor does Joshua Matz: “The Supreme Court is now a co-owner and co-author of the travel ban.” [Take Care]

* Justice Goodwin Liu and a team of Yale Law School researchers have issued an important new report about Asian Americans in the legal profession today. [The Portrait Project]

* A defense of that controversial David Brooks column about salami. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* And a defense of due process when it comes to allegations of sexual assault on college campuses. [The Federalist via Instapundit]

* In other higher-education news, here’s the tweet that got Nick Lutz suspended from the University of Central Florida. [Althouse]

* How do millennials view the legal industry? Drew Rossow and Elan Fields discuss. [Legal Tookit / Legal Talk Network]

* The ethics probe into Scott Pruitt gains steam. [Huffington Post]

* Elon Musk thinks we need to regulate AI now, before it’s “too late.” Yeah, we should probably listen to him, but we won’t. [Recode]

* What’s left after you lose Andrew Napolitano? [Salon]

* Taking the New York bar exam? You’d better be on top of your  lunch plans. [Custom Gourmet]

* If you were in a deposition or otherwise occupied all day today, you missed the rise and fall of another vain attempt by Republicans to score a healthcare win. [The Hill]

* Oh good, the constitutional crisis could get worse. [Salon]

* Shedding the semi-retired label. [Law and More]