Criticize judges now. The legal establishment now allows it. Kind of. Because there is the 1st Amendment out there. They know, they know. But they do not care, and lawyers laugh how adorable it is that they do not care.

There is such a thing in the Supreme Law of the Land of the United States of America called the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

And it says, supposedly, that

And, since only Congress can make laws in regards to FEDERAL rights, universal for all citizens of the country, no state government can make such laws either.

Heard it?

I did, too.

Having heard that, I also have this:

That means that, since November 13, 2015 I cannot work BECAUSE I exercised by indigent client's due process and 1st Amendment rights, made motions to recuse a biased and corrupt judge, was sanctioned "for frivolous conduct" by that biased and corrupt judge - and was prohibited to work and earn a living, because of it, without a hearing.

And, according to law professor Margaret Tarkington, discipline of attorneys specifically FOR criticizing judges - as professor Tarkington politely put - "enjoys a recent resurgence".

Usually those who criticize judges in this country are immediately dismissed - first, by the courts, then, by the legal establishment whose livelihood depends (literally, through regulation of licenses) on the courts' whims, and then, by the public who blindly follow whatever the legal establishment and courts tells it, "because they know better" - as the so-called "disgruntled litigants".

In the so-called "Rooker-Feldman jurisprudence", a bar unlawfully created by federal courts to block civil rights litigation in federal court because federal issues "could" be raised before biased state courts - courts use an even better, more smacking, more vulgar word than the "legalese-termed" "disgruntled litigants".

"Losers".  That's what the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the trailblazer of civil rights, called people who preferred to litigate their federal claims (as the law allows them to do) in federal court:

"The Rooker-Feldman doctrine, we hold today, is confined to cases of the kind from which the doctrine acquired its name: cases brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the district court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of those judgments."

So, if you were prosecuted by a corrupt state court, and another corrupt state court denied appeal, and if you want to sue (as the U.S. Congress allowed you) for civil rights violations under the Civil Rights Act in federal court, the federal court will tell you - "'we have no jurisdiction", because you are a - LOSER!  Not that courts are allowed to change their jurisdiction.  Only the U.S. Congress has such authority, under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

But courts still do that.

So, "losers" in a biased state court are not entitled to a legal remedy for violation of federal constitutional right provided to them by U.S. Congress. 

Because - they criticize state judges.

And, for that reason alone they are - how do those backyard bullies in middle school called it - LOSERS!


So, now we established that those who criticize judges are simply losers.

Even Ruth Ginsburg says so - if you complain about a "state court judgement", you are a loser.

So, why listen to losers?  To anything they are saying at all?  They are losers, after all, what good can they say?

By the way, when a lawyer surfaced on my blog with criticism of my criticism of judges and refused to reveal his identity and engage in a public online real-time video-debate, he actually claimed that the identity of the individual who makes a statement does not matter, the truth of the statement matters.

While accusing me of "chasing phantoms", "attacking the wrong targets", "getting confused" and "playing fast-and-loose with the law", and claiming, based on those conclusory allegations, without examples, that such alleged behavior on my behalf hurts my credibility, the patronizing male lawyer did not want to reveal who he is.

When I pointed out his patronizing, and conclusory, criticism from the bushes as lacking credibility, he exploded:

So, here a male attorney (or judge) needed the anonymity to be able to say the word "fuck" to a woman he never saw because she - legitimately - accused him of making unsubstantiated conclusory allegations and patronizing her.

The patronizing male lawyer Coyote Waits taught me, the misguided little woman, that his anonymity does not matter, the truth of his statements - whatever they are - is the same:

"Again, however, I will not debate you live and I will not shed my anonymity.  As a lawyer, I would think you would recognize that an argument should stand on its own." 

So, those who criticize judges are:

• "losers" - as Ruth Ginsburg transparently proclaimed in Exxon Mobil in 2005;
• attackers of the U.S. Constitution - as the President of the American Bar Association claimed in response to President Trump criticizing Judge Robart for his illegal decision;
• bigots - like Donald Trump was in criticizing Judge Curiel, even though he had a perfect right to do so, and did not even reach all problems with Judge Curiel presiding over his case; or
• idiots - as many of the news sources, and public in comments in social media, have branded President Donald Trump was in criticizing Judge Robart for making an unlawful decision, and then the 9th Circuit in making an unlawful decision

(in the 9th Circuit decision, quite likely, Ruth Ginsburg, and the Hawaii State University secretly participated - and the State of Hawaii, on behalf of Hawaii State University, is now the 1st state suing Trump for his 2nd Executive order on immigration, apparently after a consultation with Ruth Ginsburg who is not allowed to practice law and participate in consultations on a case, as a judge, and as an appellate judge on whose table this case may and likely will end - but who will stop her?)

I recently confirmed for myself the attitude toward not even criticism of judges by the legal establishment - simply asking a question.

I asked a question, on the Facebook page of the American Bar Association, what right did the family of Antonin Scalia have to own, control and distribute records related to Scalia's work as a judge (case-related notes and journals)?

The reaction was, immediately, the very same as with Coyote Waits:

(1) I was taught that I do not understand the law by a true guru in trial and appellate law

(by a foreclosure attorney who puts his religious faith - and faithfulness - on his professional profile; who, according to his own admission, has dreamed of becoming an attorney since 12 - dreamed, and dreamed

- and, after dreaming for so long, his dream has become true, and - voila! - after working for the U.S. Attorney's office he somehow left, interned in South Africa and then hit the rock bottom of attorney specialties and became the only associate in a 5-lawyer firm (3 partners, 1 "of counsel" and 1 associate - Lindquist), a foreclosure attorney

So, now his dream has come true and he can proudly cast people out of their homes without any litigation (as it happens in most judicial foreclosures, because people do not have money for an attorney and default), and when the majority of his clients, likely, do not have standing to sue - because of how mortgages are obtained and assigned in the U.S. (I often defended people in such cases and know this particular area of the law very well). 

Lindquist very obviously has to feed two young children of his own (as confirmed by his Facebook profile and his profile on his law firm's webpage), who is completely dependent on the judiciary, so he, of course, will not commit any missteps.

Yet, he had the audacity to undertake to teach me what litigation means, what documents are created in litigation and who those documents belong to. 

And, not to overdo it, he claims on his LinkedIn profile that he "enjoy[s] the human element of practicing law and am motivated by helping people resolve complex and stressful situations".  By working first as a prosecutor, and then as a foreclosure attorney.  Oh, well.

(2) I, and even my husband, were "Googled" and our "record" was found "illuminating" - because I asked a question about a judge!

That was the post:

The article, as I already wrote before, discusses that Scalia's family gave Scalia's "papers", including papers related to his work as a judge on the federal appellate court and in the U.S. Supreme Court (case-related notes and journals) to the Harvard Law Library, with the Scalia's family controlling who gets to get access to it, including a restriction until 2020 on access to court-related records, and a restriction until all presently living judges-participants in those cases will die off.

Here is my question:

Here are the comments:

I answered that notes of judges from court cases are not their own "private notes", moreover, that it is a "common practice" says nothing about legitimacy of such a practice.

Then came the backlash.

Note the tone.

I simply asked a question.

But, through that question, I implicitly criticized a judge.

And, attorney, or law student, whoever he is, David Berry, who boasts on Facebook about his legal education and even puts President Lincoln's picture as his Facebook profile picture, simply cannot have it.

Not knowing me, David Berry immediately concluded, from my question and two comments, that a judge does not own notes from a court case, that I "have no first clue of what s/he is talking about", and asks a counter-question, mockingly, whether the public owns the books Scalia has written, or letters to his friends and wife.

I answered that, while the public does not own the books, the judge did not have the right to write them while rejecting 99% of petitions coming his way, because he has no time (but has time for writing books):

And here comes the cherry on the cake: the next commentator Googled me AND my husband (whose name is not Frank, by the way, but, I understand, "Wendi Lynn" was fuming and in a hurry to post this one) - and found our background "illuminating".  Because I asked a question that criticized a judge by implication:

#AttorneyAaronLindquist was tagged on this one, and immediately "liked" it.  That was on March 7, 2017, a Tuesday, at 9:21 am - attorney Lindquist was supposed to be at work, either in his office or in court, enjoying "the human element of practicing law" and "helping people resolve complex and stressful situations" by stripping them of their homes.   

Something that is being offered in New York, for example, for less than flipping burgers

($50 is the current rate for attorneys appearing in foreclosure proceedings per appearance, for review of documents, judging by proposals that still come to my law office e-mail account despite an automatic reply for 2 years that it is closed - $50 for hours of rush review, note that the offer below is dated March 9, and the appearance is the next day, of a thick file of documents, usually with standing problems, legal research, travel to court, appearance in court, wait time, the wait may be several hours on top of that):

Apparently, on a Tuesday morning at 9:21 am attorney Lindquist had nothing to do other than discussing my own and my husband's background on Facebook, because I asked a question about a judge.

Now, let's say that the very same thing - the bullying and checking the background of a person (and husband of the person) who asked a question - would be happening at a press-conference, I would be the journalist (I am a citizen journalist, and I asked the question as such), and President Trump would be the one I am asking that question, and President Trump would say - "I've just Googled this journalist and her husband and my Google search was quite illuminating".

There would have been hell to pay in the media if the President would do something like that.

Yet, it is a routine occurrence in the "honorable" legal profession to bully people who raise concerns about judicial impropriety before the legal establishment - even if that is done implicitly, through a question.

The reaction spells out the attitude of the "honorable" profession loud and clear - DO NOT attempt to bite the hand that feeds us.

So, here goes the idea of "an argument standing on its own" - and there, there was not even an argument, a question needs to be answered on the merits - got lost upon attorneys-commentators on Scalia and his family treating court notes as their own property.

And all of the above, lady and gentlemen, was only a foreword, a preface, a precursor to - TADA! - a big change in the industry.

Today, on March the 13th of 2017, the New York Law Journal, a "scholarly", but rather, a media source of the legal establishment, published an article in which two authors say that Trump's criticism of a judge is actually:

• good;
• refreshing;
• democratic, and that
• judges need to EARN public trust - not demand and presume it, as they do now.

Wow.

Consider the phrase: "Abraham Lincoln, and before him Andrew Jackson, also had harsh words for the courts. Tough-minded presidents usually do" - after a recitation the "harsh words" that Presidents Roosevelt, and Obama had for judges.

Consider the last paragraph:

"Trump has shifted the burden of proof. If the judiciary is to maintain our respect and our deference, judges across the country must show that their decisions are just not politics by another name. Otherwise, jurists can expect even sharper criticism than Trump's."

And illustrated that judicial decisions are "politics by another name" by pointing out at statements of two judges:

Ruth Ginsburg:

 "He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment".

The article mentioned that Ginsburg later apologized for that particular blunder, but it did not mention that Ginsburg later practically retracted her apology by adding to her previous statement that

• she will leave to New Zealand if Trump is elected (she is still here, so that was a fake statement, she would never voluntarily shed her money and power and disappear away from the limelight), and, recently, that
• "we are not experiencing the best of times" in the U.S., not to mention
• her recent Hawaiian trip during work time in order, likely, to fix a court case against Donald Trump - a trip to the Hawaii State University School of Law employing as professors law clerks of one of the judges who, as part of the 9th Circuit panel, was deciding the case against Trump, while his chambers were "coincidentally" located within 7 miles from where Ginsburg was hosted - and the Hawaii Law School is currently stalling my Freedom of Information request asking for records as to who paid her bills and how much those bills amounted to, that would be a separate blog).

Yet, consider what the "revolutionary" New York Law Journal article said about another blubbering SCOTUS justice, Sonya Sotomayor (I added a link to the 2005 statement to the source):

"Consider the remarks of now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2005.

'All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience. Because it is — court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know.'

Sotomayor drew knowing laughter from the audience because she exposed the hypocrisy woven into our judicial fabric. Judges are supposed to expound law, not make it. Yet, as she revealed, appellate judges make policy all the time. Supreme Court justices even more so.

Sotomayor views judges as having an expertise, a long-range vantage point, and a detachment that qualify them to wield extraordinary powers. By exploiting the law's inevitable uncertainties, judges in the Sotomayor camp have fashioned dubious "constitutional" rights to drive policy in their preferred directions."

The worst of her "offhand remark" in 2005 was that it was made to law students - people who she was teaching by her laughing comments as to what law and justice in the U.S. really is - NOTHING.   What matters is only the law that judges make, illegally, she knows, she knows, but they still do.  And the law students, and their professors, and attorneys who came to listen to her, there is no doubt that they were in that audience, too,  "knowingly laughed" - and that her "offhand remark" in 2005 did not prevent her from becoming a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

The "knowing laugh" part reminds me of what Professor Bogus has said about how brown-nosing the judiciary and endorsing, supporting and approving of judges' most asinine behavior, creates monsters:

In 2009, Sotomayor added to her arrogant "policy" remark in 2005 that decisions are made based on the judge's personal experience and ethnic background - that was here in-famous "Latina woman" remark.  That remark also did not prevent her from being confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

So, given such a seal of approval, no matter what she blubbers, she kept blubbering.

In May of 2016 Sotomayor blubbered some more, now calling for lawyers to be forced into provision of free legal services to close the "justice gap" - created by attorney monopoly and attorney regulation BY courts.

In January of 2017, Sotomayor was part of the panel denying me, without review or explanation of reasoning (of course, I understand that I am not in Finland where people are entitled to reasoned court decisions, at least an explanation why the court considered it unnecessary to enforce their own recent precedents on point and not to enforce the U.S. Constitution) the petition for a writ of certiorari, without recusal of Sotomayor

despite the fact that her own statement (that same "forced labor" statement) was used as evidence in the petition, which required her disqualification, whether I asked for it or not.  I did not ask, but remember why I was suspended in the first place? For motions to recuse a judge. 

Here are excerpts from my certiorari petition that were specifically about the "justice gap", and Justice Sotomayor's comments about it - that would cause ANY honest justice to resign, but, of course, not Sotomayor (remember - " Because it is — court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know).

She knows, she knows, that what she is doing is wrong - but who will stop her?

"The so-called 'justice gap', the lack of skilled attorneys working for the poor in criminal, family and civil rights proceedings, has become a national crisis, to the point that this Court's Justice Sotomayor has publicly stated this year that she would support a mandatory pro bono work requirement as a condition of attorney licensing for all attorneys throughout this country (FN39 to Tony Maura, Sotomayor Urges Mandatory Pro Bono for All Lawyers. The National Law Journal, May 17, 2016).

New York State recognizes that it has a "justice gap" so bad that it bridges that gap with mandatory services of inexperienced (and unlicensed) law students (FN40 to 22 NYCRR 520.16(a):

If the justice gap in New York is so bad that New York mandates or encourages practice of law by unlicensed, inexperienced and unskilled service providers in order to bridge the justice gap for poor litigants, surely, New York must treasure those skilled attorneys who are already providing services to the poor, helping to bridge that justice gap.

Yet, instead, New York removes skilled attorneys who honestly do their jobs for their clients, just because they made motions to recuse a biased judge and were sanctioned by that judge (FN to Matter of Aretakis and Matter of Tatiana Neroni), and does it through disciplinary proceedings where New York courts apply collateral estoppel to a standard of proof artificially lowered to an unconstitutional level in order to allow disciplinary prosecutors to skip evidentiary hearings, without regard whether criticism of the judge was truthful".

*  *  *

I further said in the petition that Sotomayor participated in denying without an explanation or reasoning:

"On the one hand, New York recognizes that the justice gap in the state is so bad that New York mandates or encourages unlicensed, uneducated, inexperienced and unskilled service providers to provide legal services to the poor, in contravention to its own criminal laws and attorney licensing laws.  New York thus exposes indigent litigants to the danger of unskilled and dishonest providers who were never subjected to evaluation by character and fitness committees, which is exactly contrary to the declared reason of why attorney licensing was introduced in the first place - to protect consumers of legal services from unskilled and dishonest providers.

On the other hand, New York removes services of skilled attorneys who are already providing their services to the poor from the reach of those indigent litigants for unconstitutional reasons, disciplining attorneys not for doing a bad job for their clients, but for doing a good job.

Moreover, attorneys so targeted for unconstitutional discipline are, invariably, small-firm and solo criminal defense, family court and civil rights legal practitioners who work for the poor and who raise 'sensitive issues' of judicial misconduct in court, such as in attorney Aretakis' cases and in Petitioner's case.

Under these circumstances, removal of skilled attorneys from the reach of indigent consumers of legal services, specifically because they are skilled, and specifically because they skillfully and courageously argue 'sensitive' issues of governmental misconduct on their clients' behalf, while replacing them with unskilled, inexperienced and unlicensed providers, amounts to an unconstitutional unspoken policy that has the effect of blocking the poor from access to skilled legal services, thus widening the justice gap for the poor while New York pays lip service about its effort to bridge that same gap.

This year, this Court has struck in Whole Woman's Health v  Hellerstedt, 579 U.S. __ (2016) a government regulation of the medical profession which was beneficial as declared, but harmful in effect.  Harmful effect is exactly what occurs when attorney discipline is used in a way harmful to consumers.

Preventing the widening of the "justice gap" is at least as much, if not more, important as preventing the widening of "access to abortion gap".  Access to abortions only affect less than half of this country's population - women of reproductive age - while the justice gap affects the entire population."

So, I spoke about the justice gap, Justice Sotomayor's personally expressed concern about it, and the use of attorney discipline in the State of New York to widen it and to block poor litigants from skilled civil rights attorneys as a matter of policy.

And Sotomayor who made a personal pledge to fight to bridge that justice gap, participated in a decision denying, without an explanation, a petition for a writ of certiorari that could help fight that same justice gap, by preventing removal of skilled civil rights, criminal defense and family court attorneys from the reach of the poor.

Because she knows, she knows, who is going to do anything about it?  And who has the power to do anything about it?

The article in New York Law Journal now says that criticizing judges is actually a good thing.

And that judges, based on Sotomayor's and Ginsburg's statements, are politicians in black robes.

And that they should be subject to criticism, worse than President Trump's, if they fail to show through their decisions that their decisions are not just "politics by another name".

And that, if judges fail to show that, they are not entitled to either respect of deference from the public.

As revolutionary as it may sound, from such an edition as New York Law Journal, the article still fails on one important issue.

It is not President Trump, or presidents of the United States criticizing judges before him, who "allowed" or "open the gates" of criticism against judges.

What allows such criticism and make it healthy and proper is the U.S. Constitution and its 1st Amendment - that same U.S. Constitution that every judge in this country, including Ginsburg and Sotomayor, is sworn to protect.

And not "I know, I know" protect, but really protect.

And people, instead of "knowingly laughing" at the adorable ways judges violate the U.S. Constitution, their own oaths of office and people's rights, should demand action from their representatives in legislatures to introduce strict statutes giving people real remedies in dealing with judicial misconduct.

Without such remedies, they will continue to break the law while arrogantly laughing at us.

We the People, not the judges, are the popular sovereign in this country.

The U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed that in the infamous Dred Scott case (I wrote about it in my blog before).

"The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives."

We dictate what laws exist in this country, not judges.

And we know, we know, that what judges do in refusing to enforce the U.S. Constitution and refusing to give victims of constitutional violations real remedies at law is unlawful, unlawful.

And unconstitutional, unconstitutional.

And they should be held accountable for that.  Really. 

We the People are not laughing.