New York Attorney General as a "cop on the beat"- a cop protecting the criminal and bashing the victim

Nothing reveals certain problems better than statements in election campaigns.

For example, after the disgraceful departure from the position of the New York State Attorney General of the holier-than-thou Eric Schneiderman, there is a new rising star on the horizon, a U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney trying to get into the NYS AG seat.  

Along with announcing that he will seek a Democratic nomination to run for NYS AG, Maloney reportedly claimed the following:

First, Maloney does not even try to hide that the job he is seeking is the "best job" in New York "politics" - so, he is seeking it not for the people, but for his own career, likely to catapult himself later on to higher offices, like a federal judge, a U.S. Attorney, a NYS Governor (the usual path) and then the U.S. President.  Born in 1966, he still has time for that.

As to "doing so much good", I have been writing forever about the many hats that the NYS AG is wearing, which has nothing to do with "doing good".

For example, I wrote about the claims of NYS AG Schneiderman about himself as defender of civil rights.

With statistics showing that Eric Schneiderman is actually representing civil rights VIOLATORS, defending them against their victims - to the point of asking courts to punish victims of civil rights violations for bringing such lawsuits.

Here is my blog article further analyzing statistics of how exactly a NYS AG was "doing good" in quashing civil rights lawsuits, predominantly of the poor and underprivileged New Yorkers whose civil rights were violated by the powerful.

Yet, in the election campaign all New York Attorney General candidates NEVER even mention their role of quashing civil rights and defending civil rights violators.

I wonder, how so?

They know "the law" under which NYS AGs are representing public officials sued for civil rights violations by victims of such violations, right?

They know they are going to be doing it as soon as they are elected, right?

So, why not say it openly - I WILL BE FAITHFULLY BLOCKING VICTIMS OF CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND DEFENDING PERPETRATORS OF THESE VIOLATIONS.

I WILL BE FAITHFULL ASKING FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST THE VICTIMS FOR DARING TO ASK FOR A LEGAL REMEDY.

Because that's the truth, that's what NYS AGs are doing.

To tell people the truth in an election campaign is an intolerable concept in "New York politics"?

By the way, civil rights violations are federal crimes, 18 U.S.C. 242.

So, a NYS AG, in representing public officials sued for civil rights violations, is defending potential criminals - the ones he must prosecute.

But, that conflict of interest never occurred to the New York Legislature to change.

Possibly, because NYS AG represents - instead of investigating and prosecuting for civil rights violations - them, too.

On integrity of prosecutors and regulators of prosecutors, Pennsylvania-style. Time for voters to stop being disenfranchised in the choice of their prosecutors

Oh, the supremely honest Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania.

The court that kept NOT disciplining as an attorney the judge who was selling - for years - kids into kiddie prisons, until the feds locked him up for over 20 years.  And instead disciplining attorneys who reported judicial misconduct so viciously that attorneys preferred to let kid-selling continue rather than lose their licenses and livelihoods.

By the way, the kid-selling judge, when sued by his victims, was still declared immune, because of the "law" that judges invented for themselves - a gift of absolute judicial immunity barring victims of their misconduct and corruption from obtaining a legal remedy for their injuries in court.

“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. 

Oh, the court of supreme integrity, which repeatedly allowed a prosecutor who obtained a death penalty through prosecutorial misconduct, to preside over the same case as a judge, block the condemned TO DEATH prisoner from habeas corpus relief and even have the audacity in authority special opinions blasting the federal defenders who would not shut up defending the condemned-to-death-person against the judge (former prosecutor) own misconduct.

Which allowed a judge who was the target of an elected State Attorney General's investigation (and who had to later resign and pay a fine because of his misconduct that the State Attorney General was investigating) to yank the State Attorney General's law license in order to disenfranchise the State of Pennsylvania voters and remove the State Attorney General from her office.

And which refused to reinstate the law license because it was taken with the help of the target of the Attorney General's official investigation - Judge Michael Eakin, and in retaliation for that investigation.

And that repeatedly refuses to reinstate the law license of attorneys Andrew Ostrowski - who ran for the U.S. Congress on the platform of judicial reform and cleaning up judicial corruption, and of Don Bailey, the former State Auditor, who, using his skills as the former State Auditor, investigated judges and claimed judicial corruption - for which claim he was disbarred.

And that invented a "rule of law", contrary to a state statute, that lay representation of indigent (poor) unemployed before the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Board is allowed by statute - but not if the lay representative is a suspended or disbarred attorney, for those buggers such a lay representation will mean "unauthorized practice of law".  Thus, the extremely honest Pennsylvania Supreme Court has changed a criminal statute to mean different things for different people - exactly what is prohibited in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Attainder clauses (2 of them, for the federal government and for the states), which every single judge of that honest court was sworn to uphold.  So that lawyers who were stripped of their livelihood for their big mouths - publicly raising the issue of corruption of their own regulator - will remain forever tarred-and-feathered and impoverished, without any possibility to earn a living with their skills, while the population desperately needs their skilled services.

THAT honest court now is investigating a prosecutor, for ex parte communications with a former judge.

Now, prosecutors routinely engage in ex parte communications with judges, and are never disciplined.

Why the extremely honest Pennsylvania Supreme Court turned its radar towards prosecutor Stacy Parks Miller?

Easy.

Publicity.

She has caused publicity.

Note that obligations to the public are not mentioned, what is mentioned is violations of a public prosecutor's supposed obligations "to the Board, court and the legal profession".

And those obligations supposedly trump a court-imposed gag order, since the public prosecutor was ordered in a disciplinary proceeding to disclose what a court, another court, prohibited her to do.

So, she had a Catch-22 - disclose it, and be sent to jail for contempt of court.  Do not disclose it, and be stripped of your law license and public office - same as Kathleen Kane was (aided by a fabricated criminal case).

What is wondrous with all of that happening is how people continue to tolerate those jerks ruling access of the public to court at their own personal whim.

A SECOND FEMALE public prosecutor, elected public official, is being yanked out of office through a closed-doors, no-public-allowed disciplinary process.

She may have done something wrong.  But then, the same standards should be applied evenly across the board, and for public officials there is only ONE way to go out of office - impeachment.

Without it, disciplinary process operated by the public officials' competitors or people who she investigate or may investigate in the near future, have no right of undermining her public status.

And, it is time for the Pennsylvania voters to change their state Constitution to remove requirement that any public official should be also an attorney and to actually prohibit such a thing - to prevent cancelling voters' decisions through backyard deals.

Is the US Supreme Court preparing to overturn Roe v Wade?

Looks like that - judging by how they decided the case of the formerly pregnant illegal alien teenager who sought, and received, with the help of ACLU, an abortion.

The reasoning in the extremely short decision was as follows:

1.  The petitioner was pregnant and sought certain relief from the courts based on her pregnancy.
2.  The petitioner terminated her pregnancy and thus mooted (terminated jurisdiction) for her own case.
3.  The petition cannot at the same time end her own case by having an abortion (mooting the case) and continue to claim relief.

Guess what, in Roe v. Wade the petitioner also obtained an abortion before the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed and ruled on the woman's case - human pregnancy is much shorter than the judicial process winding up through courts of different levels, the window for an abortion is even shorter.

In Roe v Wade, a 1973 case, 45 years ago, the same U.S. Supreme Court claimed, in providing a full review of the similarly "mooted" issues, that the situation in the case is prone for repetition, but, due to the time limits of pregnancy and abortion, will always evade review.

In 2018 suddenly the same issues, "prone for repetition, but evading review", are mooted.

Which begs the question - is the U.S. Supreme Court playing games while preparing to overturn Roe v Wade as incorrectly decided without jurisdiction because it was mooted.

Or, is the issue of providing abortions to young women who came to the U.S. illegally so wide-spread and promises such consequences for the government and taxpayers that our "non-political" court was afraid to provide a full review and opinion on the issues involved?

Time will show - likely, soon.

On SCOTUS, the "rule of law" and baking cakes

It is interesting how, in trying to put through a certain agenda, law professors sometimes lose track of what they are doing and reveal to the public something they normally wouldn't.

There is a separation of powers doctrine.

It is a constitutional doctrine.

Every public official in the United States - that is, including every judge - is sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, together with separation of powers built into it.

According to the U.S. Constitution, only the U.S. Congress is allowed to make the law.

Yet, here goes the speech by an Albany Law School professor Vincent Bonventre, the breeder of the future lawyers of America, who openly states that in the "baker's case" where the baker refused to create a cake for a same-sex wedding based on his religious beliefs, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court is "narrow", and the U.S. Supreme Court did not create a broad "rule of law", as the court NORMALLY does.

So, a respected law professor openly admits that the U.S. Supreme Court routinely violates the U.S. Constitution it is sworn to uphold by making the law for the entire country INSTEAD of the U.S. Congress - and that it is now the new "norm".

Hilarious.

The attorney monopoly and the fight for the ultimate penny of the poor

The American Bar Association got concerned about the interesting issue - whether it is "ethical" for a lawyer to ghost-write for a client who is going to court pro se.

A year ago, a federal court has answered "yes" to a lawsuit of lawyers against the Trump administration as to whether they can ghost-write for clients in immigration courts.  I wrote about that lawsuit in detail, here, here, here, here and here.

I also wrote that federal courts are not that forgiving to lawyers who ghostwrite for appearances of pro se clients in their own courts - only in administrative immigration courts.

An article just published by the ABA confirms that the need for ghost-writing for pro se clients who cannot afford the full representation in the case did not go away - and that the ABA approves of the practice, in order to "help" pro se litigants get at least some legal advice and to "even out the playing ground" at least somewhat, if pro se litigants cannot afford the full representation by a representative of their own choice, with or without the ABA approval.

The "innovative" project that caused the ABA's approval (even though federal courts frown on the practice of ghost-writing by attorneys for pro se litigants) is the law firm of a Florida attorney Thomas Ice, The Ice Legal, which, for a fixed rate of $100 a month, ghost-writes pleadings for pro se litigants facing court proceedings, such as foreclosures.

What The Ice Legal does is, basically, is providing retainer/subscription/insurance services for clients for $100 a month - not a full ride, not a full representation, but at least some writing written according to the quagmire of court rules and precedents otherwise incomprehensible for an ordinary American pro se litigant.

That's what the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has been asserting - the right for itself to ghostwrite while the same Project helps the state Attorney General to quash their competition, people who help their clients providing for them not a ghost-writing, behind the scene, bits-and-pieces representation, but a full representation, without an ABA-approved license (which representation in federal administrative immigration courts does not require).

That is what The Ice Legal is using - the justice gap CREATED by the absolute attorney monopoly and then USED by the absolute attorney monopoly in order to, under the guise of helping with access to justice, milk the "unrich" consumers who lose their homes to foreclosures for their very last penny, without providing a full representation in court.

This is happening in the blessed state of Florida where the highest state court currently fights tooth and claw against yet another legal innovation firm, the so-called TIKD firm, opposing its antitrust lawsuit where sanctions against TIKD is demanded.

You know why?

Because #TIKD helps in yet another area of law where the poor grossly suffer because of attorney monopoly and lack of funds to hire an ABA-approved (licensed) attorney.

What TIKD does is a no-no of "attorney ethics".

It guarantees its result in "no points on your license" - or your money back.

Such a guarantee is prohibited by "attorney ethics" rules - invented by attorneys-judges for attorneys in order to quash innovations just like TIKD.

And, TIKD hires attorneys and has them represent clients on a retainer - instead of an hourly rate directly from the clients, which makes such services cheaper for the client.

And, of course, that is a no-no for competing attorneys who try to run TIKD out of business and bury it in sanctions, as the record of TIKD federal lawsuit indicates.

Because, for TIKD's competitors (attorneys), the big bad issue with TIKD is that the owners of the company who arranged such a break for consumers are not attorneys.  

That was not an issue with the U.S. Department of Justice, though, that voiced their support for TIKD in court.

Yet, to protect their own monopoly of the market, TIKD's attorney-competitors engaged, according to TIKD's lawsuit, in a campaign of intimidation of attorneys who work for TIKD, which included collusion with the Florida Supreme Court and its "arm", the Florida State Bar, in order to make the intimidation effective - drop your work for TIKD or lose your license and livelihood.  So much for the care about consumers.

The interesting part though is that greed often blinds people to anything but their immediate need to protect their turf, their money, their income, their monopoly rent.

This is what happened in TIKD.

I should thank the greed of TIKD opponents for the gift to me as a researcher and to all the American public - highlighting a case that is never taught in law schools (for understandable reasons, it is very, very, very unsavory and shows the ABA in the true light - which the ABA does not want the young law students to see).

In their sanction pleadings against TIKD, the TIKD opponents quoted the case Turner v ABA, where several consumers sued the American Bar Association and courts for antitrust activities in collusion, and for their own rights to choose whoever they want to represent them in court, without ABA's or courts' approval.

Since the attorney monopoly is still here, as well as the justice gap that it had created, you know where Turner v ABA ended - the lawsuit was dismissed.  

The full analysis of how and why it was dismissed, and what place did this and other of the various "antimonopoly insurrection" lawsuits play in the development of both the absolute attorney monopoly and the justice gap in the U.S., will be available in the book that I am currently preparing for publication.

Yet, the essence of the lawsuit was that an indigent (poor) consumers asked several courts in several states (24 lawsuits all in all) to allow them to hire an unlicensed court representative to represent them in criminal proceedings in federal court - because the unlicensed representatives knew how to defend them in tax evasion proceedings and assigned licensed attorneys had no clue, and admitted to that.

The big problem for the ABA was that several courts actually granted that request, and thus the ABA's (and the court's) power as regulators of the legal profession, of access to justice by all Americans, could dwindle, and the "right" to monopoly rent, the right to charge excessive hourly rates would also disappear if consumers would turn to unlicensed individuals with lower rates.

24 lawsuits were rounded up and quashed - and the reasoning was as in a conversation through a brick wall where the court would not hear the pleadings of the litigants.

Where the litigants insisted on their right, as legally competent individuals, to choose their own representative in court, the judge - appointed by one of the defendants in the case (!) - asserted the judge's own interest not to allow "everybody from the street" to work in the courtroom.

Of course, power interests of judges - including the presiding judge - won.

Of course, the attorney monopoly stayed for another 43 (as of now) years and the ABA does not show any signs of relenting about its rule in causing the justice gap and loss of legal rights of poor litigants for over a century.

And, of course, the justice gap became wider and wider as a result, so that now attorneys start to exploit their own creation - the justice gap - in "innovative ways", by ghostwriting - The Ice Legal (Florida) and the Northwest Immigration Project (Washington), and my trying to quash TIKD - for being owned by non-lawyers, even though the actual services are still provided by lawyers.

The fight for the ultimate penny of the poor and for control over access to justice by the poor continues.

Yet, the position of the ABA that is now approving ghost-writing shows that the legal profession, with its monopoly, priced itself out of sight of the majority of Americans, runs out of clients who can pay for a full representation, and that an increasing number of lawyers can only survive by "innovatively" picking up bread-crumbs from clients instead of a full representation.  

Give me at least some business.

At least to ghost-write.

Just one pleading.

Please!

May pricing-itself-out of the full representation be yet another sign on the wall for attorney monopoly?

A Freedom of Information Act inquiry was sent to the ABA for the roster of its members

Have you ever wondered why the ABA has a secret membership?

Just go to their website and see that membership in this organization is under a login and a password.

Nevertheless, this Illinois corporation with foreign membership and funded with foreign money (membership fees and donations from foreign members) regulates in the entire United States the very public function of access to justice guaranteed by the Petitions Clause of the 1st Amendment and by the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Without approval of legal education from this Illinois corporation - through accreditation of law schools - no law school graduate can be allowed by state regulators (Boards of Regents, the judiciary) to sit for the licensing exam, called "the bar exam" in the United States.

And, no individual is allowed to represent another individual in court, for free or for money, without a law license - where approval of this Illinois corporation with foreign membership and capital is the condition precedent to even apply for a law license.

Moreover, the ABA undertakes to recommend to Presidents of this country appointments of judges in federal courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus playing a crucial part in the U.S. politics and government.

For that reason, membership in the ABA, in view of its very public functions, should be the matter of public record.

With that in view, I have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the ABA, under the laws of the State of Illinois where the ABA is incorporated.

I will publish the ABA's response in this blog.

Stay tuned.

On the rule of law in the United States - the way the public sees it

The press relentlessly, for the second day, is discussing the supposed FBI raid based on the alleged search warrant allegedly signed by an unknown judge who allegedly allowed the search of the President's lawyer's office by the same agency that has been stonewalling the U.S. Congress for over a year as to the details of its investigation or (non-investigation) of the Clinton Foundation after Loretta Lynch met with Hillary Clinton's husband during that investigation.

Oh, well, nothing to worry there.

What makes me wonder - why wasn't still the judge's name published? 

If a judge signed the search warrant, it is the matter of public record, as well as the search warrant itself. 

Yet, despite a furious press campaign to gain public support for the raid, he actual document authorizing the raid, or the name of the person who authorized it, are kept hidden from some public - even though details are somehow leaked to Preet Bharara, who is a private citizen now, same as you and me, and who was fired by Trump (and has a basis for bias against him). 

So, hidden search warrants, hidden names of judges, politically-motivated raids on president's attorney while stonewalling release of documents regarding corrupt non-investigation of president's losing opponent in the election - what can be wrong?

And, by the way, this type of publicity is called prosecutorial misconduct - pre-trial publicity, leaks to the press - but, of course, not if the target is Trump (after Mueller said Trump is not the target - but, prosecutors have a right to lie to the public, right?).

And, of course, Trump has nothing to worry, he just has to "prove his innocence", as many illiterate commentators say, presumption of innocence be damned - for Trump only, of course.

And, let the attorney-client be damned, too. There are thousands of overnight legal experts commenting on press articles about the raid of a lawyer's office who

• tout the "crime-fraud exception" to the attorney-client priviledge,
• claim that if an UNKNOWN judge ALLEGEDLY signed on an ALLEGED document - it must be the law and it must be well-grounded;
• approve of wholesale fishing expedition of the lawyer's files regarding his clients other than Trump in order to find "something criminal" there, and
• proudly announce that they have nothing to hide, they would greet the FBI to their lawyer's office and will happily allow the FBI to search through their files - and so should everybody else.

This is the level of knowledge of the law, the Constitution and of their own rights by "We the People" in this country.

What people who are nearly dancing in the streets over the raid do not get is that this precedent is now applicable to them and their files at their lawyers' offices, too.

To hell with the law - if Trump is involved. 

And bash anybody who stands up to support the law - as a "Trumpanzee", because supporting the law that MAY benefit somebody they hate makes you a hated person and a Trump supporter.

This is not the rule of law, and not the rule of man either, this is the rule of the crowd that somebody with a lot of money (considering the press campaign) is diligently instigating. 

I did not vote for Trump, but I see that Trump - possibly - is the best thing that has happened to this country. 

At least, his election has become a litmus test clearly showing that we do not have in the United States anything close to a rule of law. 

The law is shaped, twisted and turned by the judiciary against Trump to mean what it wants it to mean, while the judiciary has absolutely no right to MAKE law - it belongs to the legislature alone, constitutional separation of powers 101.

Because of Trump, I have learned that we do not need standing to sue in federal court any more - if you are suing Trump.

We do not need any legal grounds for a preliminary injunction - and to spread it nationwide - if we are suing Trump.

We do not need to prosecute criminals, if they are not in the country legally - because that may get them deported. Hence, the number of filings in New York for felonies (a deportable crime) falls while the population (because of sanctuary city status) grows, and while those who are elected by the people to prosecute crimes choose not to do that - if they will hurt those who already broke the law by coming to the country illegally, making a joke of those who painstakingly waited, and followed the law to get admitted and to immigrate legally.

And, we have do no have a discretion in the federal government as to how to spend discretionary federal funds - that discretion can be forced, by judges, to support states who defy federal laws and harbor illegal aliens, which is a federal crime - and people are dancing in the streets and worshiping the judges.

And, we have state attorneys general who are asserting with straight faces, in lawsuits paid for by taxpayers, that the federal government may not even ask whether a person is in the country illegally, to shape boundaries of congressional districts - because asking a person whether he is in the country legally or not will somehow hurt the state's economy.

If anything, Trump's presidency has shown how easily can "the law" put on its head - and how easily people can be brainwashed to support any idea, no matter how crazy, as "the rule of law".

We can trump (pun intended) the President's discretion by replacing statutory law by judicial discretion - and that judge-made whim is called the new law that people dance in the street to support and wear T-shirts with images of judges who "DID IT" - trumped or tripped Trump.

We do not need clearance to know information regarding national security - we can replace it with a "judicial discretion" to ask Trump's lawyers, during a court hearing live-streamed on the Internet to the entire world, what are the national security concerns for the temporary travel ban from certain countries.

We do not need the right for impartial judicial review - because Trump criticized judges for bias, we can bash him, and everybody else along with him, for insisting on that right and who dares to criticize a judge.

And now, we do not need attorney-client privilege, the 4th Amendment or the right to privacy either. 

We have nothing to hide, we will gladly open our doors, our attorneys' confidential files, or bodies and our thoughts to the government - why not? We did not need those rights anyway.

And, the comments - overwhelmingly - approve of the idea that what a judge say IS the law, anything a judge says IS the law.

That is SOME rule of law, ladies and gentleman.

We arrived at a collective monarchy-by-judges, absolute, boundless, lawless, and well-supported by the subjects, no matter what the collective monarch chooses, on a whim, to do with us.

Congratulations.

This is not about Trump. It is about all of us.

And, by the way - what is the name of that judge who allegedly signed the warrant?

I get only "hahas" from commentators who claim that it was signed by a judge - and, therefore, totally legal.

Whoever knows the name, please, drop me a line.

Thanks.