Ghost of LL

What Desantis doesn't get is that the MAGAts love Trump not so much for Trump is, but how he acts. They love that he took down Jeb! and scoffed at Little Marco. They love that he's the only one to articulate what they want--to "lock her up." The only way Desantis would take over that enthusiasm is to take down Trump. Christie gets that. He sees that if he can go out there and make fun of Trump and turn him into a figure of derision even in the GQP, he wins. Nobody else gets benefit from that. And if you don't go out and take down Trump, then Trump doesn't get taken down. He will win the nomination from prison. Nobody's going to just lay the nomination at your feet. But that's exactly what Desantis is expecting.

Judge Yeakel approves of your use of the term “pendent jurisdiction” rather than “supplemental” jurisdiction.

The cabin on the Galactic Starcruiser is small, but that view is pretty sweet.

Can y'all appreciate what it must be like to be in the FBI's counterintelligence division right now? I mean, you have an entire party that thinks the current government is lawless and illegitimate. A substantial number of members of that party thinks the president drinks the blood of children. And a bunch have favorable feelings toward Russia. If you're FBI counterintelligence, how do you screen the innumerable Republicans in the federal government, when any of them could be a serious security risk based on their party affiliation and the example set by their party's leader?

I don't think so. Joe Manchin is in it entirely for Joe Manchin. And what does getting 3% in a presidential election and no electoral votes get Joe Manchin? Absolutely nothing. Well, absolutely nothing good. It gets him the everlasting enmity of the Democratic Party and every Democratic officeholder. What Manchin really wants is to stay in the United States Senate. So he's going to run for reelection. And worst case, he loses. But if that happens, he gets a gig on K Street making very serious money because he's known as a dealmaker who has friends on both sides of the aisle. And that very serious money can be used to get an even bigger boat. So maybe it's not as nice as the Senate, but it's not a bad deal at all.

We just went to Fleetwood's last month and had a great dinner. Lahaina isn't just a nice tourist town. It's also a point of cultural significance and history for the Hawaiians. It was the first capital of a united Hawaiian Kingdom. And its high school is the oldest high school in the United States west of the Mississippi. It's really just heartbreaking to see it destroyed like this. That's the dry side of the island. Lahaina and Kaanapali are in the rain shadow of the West Maui Mountain. So it's pretty dry over there in normal circumstances. But they've been in a significant drought for a while that has made it even more severe.

I wouldn't consider non-competes to be "employment law" as such. It's much more contract litigation. I consider "employment law" to be much more in the vein of non-discrimination statutes, wage/hour, ERISA, and the like. But I do know that Kingston has done some non-compete litigation in the past. I think he's perfectly competent to handle this representation. But look--there's kind of a consistent deal with non-compete litigation. The real goal for both sides is to extract a price by which the former employee buys his way out of the contract. Because enforcing a six-month non-compete through litigation doesn't really make a lot of sense for either side. Nobody asked me, but I'll offer an opinion. A TRO without notice just really isn't a thing in federal court. Rule 65 kind of allows for it, but as you can see from the language of the Rule, the burden is pretty damned high. And I really don't understand why you wouldn't provide notice and set it. Call chambers and let them know that you have an emergency motion coming. They'll set a response date and get you squared away. But there's nothing going on that really required the Plaintiff to haul off and seek a TRO without notice. It's just a bit weird.

You haven't been paying attention to Florida. Brightline is operating out of Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm. And next month it opens its high-speed section to Orlando. I think they're planning on extending the line to Tampa in a few years.

I'll look forward to it.

But in electoral politics, the objective is to persuade a plurality of the voters to support you. And that's real difficult when a lot of the voters have no idea what the fuck you're saying. You saw that in the GQP response to Biden's SOTU last year. The Iowa governor would talk about things using these code phrases that, if you didn't watch Fox News or intently follow Trump's social media, you had no idea what she was saying. I was watching with Mrs.LL, who watches a lot of news, and even she turned to me at one point and asked, "what the fuck is she talking about." There's a GQP cult. Of that there's no doubt. But the cult's ability to expand its appeal is really limited by its cult-like behavior.

It's not me who says that (or even really thinks that). It's Plaintiff and Judge Starr, who apparently equate cyberbullying in violation of Southwest's employment policies with an obligation of Plaintiff's religious practice. Personally, I'm with you. Trolling a coworker's Facetrons with videos of aborted fetuses has nothing to do with the Christian faith with which I grew up. Well, fuck me running. I'm an idiot. Sorry, @Litig8r. So, @Lidig8r--what was Southwest's "reprehensible conduct" you referenced yesterday?

I think what you're missing is that in 2023 America, Christian=Asshole And ironically, in most contexts that means that a federal jury will be more employer-friendly than a state-court jury that only draws from Dallas County. I only called you that because you were being a bitchy cunt.

The damages were mostly punitive--$3.5 in punitives against Southwest and $1.0 in punitives against TWU. Only $500K in direct and compensatory damages. Which raises some due-process issues. Yeah, you should. I wonder how Mark's doing these days. Yeah--I would, too (minus the hashtag, because I try not to go around unnecessarily pissing off federal judges).

Fucking movie-theater popcorn is like crack to me. And yes--I have a problem.

Oh, great--so she'll be absent from the Senate for another six months during which time we'll be unable to get any nominees through Judiciary. That's just fantastic.

If you think that Southwest's posting was not in compliance with the Court's Order, then the appropriate remedy is to compel Southwest to post the correct language. Because that's all the Court can do here--coerce compliance. This is civil contempt, not criminal contempt. So the sanction cannot be punitive. It has to be aimed at obtaining compliance with the Court's Order. So how does anti-discrimination training for in-house counsel compel compliance with the Court's Order to post particular language? Even if we assume ADF was a legitimate outfit and not a hate group, how does that training cause Southwest to post that it "will not discriminate" to its employees? Judge Starr is just a really bad judge who abused his discretion here. But the really sad part here is that Southwest probably won't mandamus him on the sanctions order. It'll just comply. Sorry, in-house lawyers. You're going to get to sit through eight hours of christofascist indoctrination. Because Southwest isn't in the business of fighting culture wars against a federal judge. It's in the business of selling airplane tickets to maximize shareholder value. But it's definitely appealing that bullshit judgment.

The EEOC will commonly require a similar kind of statement in a consent decree. I don't think I've ever seen it outside that context, but the Court definitely has authority to require it as part of its equitable powers granted under Title VII. The Court told them to say "will not" discriminate. Southwest wrote that it "does not" discriminate, which to me also implies that it isn't going to start. Neither the Court's Order nor Southwest's posting addressed the past tense. So I don't see how Southwest thumbed its nose at the Court's Order in that posting. In a subsequent posting, it said it disagreed with the Court's Order and would appeal. But that's not contrary to the Court's Order. And even if it were, such an Order would be an abuse of discretion. It's hard to imagine a judge issuing an order that a party can't publicly disagree with its orders. But I'm still waiting for @Litig8r to identify Southwest's "reprehensible conduct." But I should be patient. I'm sure he's just away from Surly for a few minutes with work and family obligations. Certainly he wouldn't be so chickenshit as to drop a troll bomb and then just scurry away. And that's why I have some confidence that the Fifth Circuit is going to reverse. Starr can get away with stupid rulings in individual cases. But the Fifth Circuit has to worry about larger legal principles. A Sikh employer can subject employees to videos of slaughterhouses as a means of convincing them to be vegetarians, as required by the Sikh faith. A Muslim employee can send graphic videos of ISIS beheading people as a warning to his coworkers about what properly can happen to them if they don't accept Islam. That type of behavior is what the Fifth Circuit would be permitting if it were to affirm this judgment. The Fifth Circuit loves white nationalist Jesus. There's no doubt about that. But it loves big business more.

I don’t think you’re appreciating the difference in turnout. It’s not that Trump voters then voted No. it’s that a bunch of Trump voters didn’t vote. And that’s the consequence of the GQP’s dominance among the poorly educated, who don’t vote in off-year elections.

What was “it?” The first communication that used “does” rather than “will?” Because that seems at worst a little sneaky and kinda shit-eating. But probably more likely just a mis-assumption that it was close enough. Hardly “reprehensible.” Or was “it” the subsequent communication reminding employees of the Company’s employment policy against being an asshole and expressing disagreement with the Court’s judgment? Because that seems not just non-reprehensible, but constitutionally protected. Southwest Airlines Co., after all, is a person with constitutionally protected free-speech rights. And unless you think questioning the decisions of the Starr Chamber isn’t constitutionally protected speech, that ought not to be the “it” on which the sanctions are based. But really, it was @Litig8r who deemed something “reprehensible.” And so I’d like to hear from him what he meant.

I’m still wondering what @Litig8r thinks was “reprehensible conduct” by Southwest.

What was the "reprehensible conduct?"

You're wrong on multiple grounds. 1) Look at PACER--it shows that Plaintiff did not seek this as a sanction. This was entirely made up by the Court. 2) Southwest's conduct wasn't "egregious." Southwest's posting to its employees was in substantial compliance with the Court's Order. The Court ordered Southwest to inform its flight attendants that it "will not discriminate" on the basis of religion. Southwest posted that it "does not discriminate." Weird biblical analogies aside, any reasonable reader would interpret that to mean that "Southwest does not discriminate, and isn't going to start doing so." What really raised Judge Starr's ire was the subsequent posting to employees, which basically said "don't be a dick to your fellow employees." That's good advice in any circumstance. And by taking that to be a violation of the Court's Order, Judge Starr is kind of telling on himself and the Plaintiff. Apparently, being a dick to one's fellow employees is protected religious exercise, according to Plaintiff and Judge Starr. 3) If you don't know much about ADL, you ought to educate yourself before posting. ADL has been identified as a hate group by the SPLC. And there's good reason for that. It's positions are strongly anti-gay and anti- . . . well, anti-everything that isn't white Protestant Christian Nationalist. The only thing cited for the proposition that ADL does training sessions is a press release put out by ADL, which is the authority on which the Court relies. But nothing ADL posts on its website reflects that. The only "training" they do is for lawyers to train them to advocate for ADL's Christian Nationalist positions. As set forth on ADL's website, But it's also worth noting . . . 4) The underlying case here is really interesting. Plaintiff's co-worker attended the March for Women, to which Plaintiff took offense. So Plaintiff undertook a year-long cyberbullying campaign of posting pictures of aborted fetuses to Plaintiff's Facetrons and calling her a baby-killer. Southwest counseled her; she kept doing it. So Southwest fired her. Plaintiff sued on the basis that Southwest discriminated against her on the basis of her religious exercise in violation of Title VII. So let's unpack that a bit. Apparently, Plaintiff's religion requires her to bully her coworker. And Southwest is legally obligated to accommodate her religious obligation to bully her coworkers. Discussion of the legal merits of that aside, it is a really weird statement of the nature of Plaintiff's religion.

Three-quarters of the Asian continent's land mass, but a tiny fraction of the continent's population and economy. I don't think anybody is predicting China's economy to collapse. It's having a slow recovery. But its recovery is aided by deep discounts on Russian energy. That's not going to change. Even if Russia were to limit supplies--and Russia really doesn't have any leverage to limit supplies to China; they need the money--that supply would be provided by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And if Russia were to limit supplies to a degree the Chinese found unacceptable, the Chinese have other ways of dealing with that problem.

Yeah--I don't understand what is so mysterious about the resiliency of the Russian economy. The Russian government is spending its reserves. No shit that is keeping the economy going. The question is: what happens when those reserves run out. Presumably, they'll start borrowing. Or maybe they'll just start printing rubles. But in either event, the economic consequences are going to be significant. I mean, for one thing, they're going to have a shockingly high cost of borrowing. Between the danger of western sanctions and the (significant) possibility of non-repayment, I can't imagine the interest rate lenders are going to demand.

Rule 29.3. But don’t be surprised if the Third COA imposes its own injunction.