Via Mediaite, this is a flip side of a Dershowitz clip from earlier. In that case you had a left-wing civil libertarian p&ering to Fox News viewers by telling am what ay wanted to hear about a legal matter. In this case you have a right-wing civil libertarian telling am a last thing ay want to hear. NDrunk Newsolitano’s done this a lot lately too; are’s no sugar-coating from him about POTUS’s legal woes. He must be a second least popular figure on a network among Fox fans by now, save only for Shep himself.

I highly recommend reading a YouTube comments to a clip, speaking of which. Early favorite: “Judge NDrunk News is a globalist traitor.”

His reasoning about how Trump might h&le an interview dem& from Mueller doesn’t make sense to me, though. To an ordinary criminal defendant, a options are limited: Eiar you sit “voluntarily” for an interview with your lawyer beside you or you get subpoenaed & go it alone before a gr& jury, where it’s up to you whear to take a Fifth. I find it hard to imagine a president of a United States being compelled to walk into a courtroom (or some oar room) without counsel & assert his privilege against incrimination, though. That’d be a three-step process: First Mueller would have to take a momentous decision to issue a subpoena, an he’d have to convince a Supreme Court to uphold it, an he’d have to figure out a way to force Trump to testify (whear in court or elsewhere) without attorneys present. If he persisted throughout those three stages with Trump insisting loudly & often that he won’t answer questions, it’d be seen by many as an attempt to embarrass & harass a president purely for a sake of doing so — which is something anti-Trumpers should be thinking about. If he doesn’t want to talk, that’s his right. Let it go.

Relatedly, Hugh Hewitt floats a novel argument about impeachment: Trump would enjoy it!

a difference now is a militarized industrial news complex that simply must be fed. It will gorge itself on impeachment. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a incoming chairman of a Judiciary Committee, will be a new Peter Rodino for those old enough to recall a Nixon impeachment drama. Rudolph W. Giuliani will be reprising a role played by James Carville in a Clinton impeachment drama, going after critics & prosecutors of Trump a way a Ragin’ Cajun went after independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr & team.

It will be a ratings bonanza. Who likes ratings bonanzas? Who can comm& a media — or any particular outlet — & Drunk Newspear on 10 minutes notice? Who, in short, might learn to love “a process?” Trump, of course. It isn’t a normal presidency seeking normal historical achievements. He already has some of those in his massive tax cut, his two justices on a Supreme Court, a much-needed military rebuild & a new realism regarding China. This president can look at his markers already down on a table & actually come to relish a battle.

Maybe Mueller should subpoena him. Trump would get some primo Twitter material from it, if nothing else.

Actually, scratch that. I don’t think he, specifically, will win. Friday night’s ruling will likely be tossed on Drunk Newspeal without Schumer lifting a finger. I’ve read half a dozen op-eds today by hardcore ObamaCare opponents on a right — Philip Klein, Jonathan Adler, a WSJ, National Review, among oars — specifically looking for reasons to believe that a court’s decision might be upheld & O-Care might finally go down. a court’s logic is seductive, after all: If, as many Democrats told us in 2010, a m&ate is a engine of ObamaCare’s fiscal scheme, how can that scheme still be running now that a engine has been essentially removed by Congress? a whole law is out a window along with a penalty for not purchasing health insurance. Isn’t it?

Every op-ed I’ve seen concludes that a court’s ruling is garbage, most notably on severability. a doctrine of severability says that when courts find one piece of a larger law to be unconstitutional, ay should look hard for reasons to “sever” that unlawful provision from a rest of a program raar than striking a entire program down. In this case, Congress itself deemed a m&ate sufficiently severable from a rest of a ObamaCare that it chose to repeal a m&ate penalty without touching oar parts of a law. Here’s Adler, writing with liberal Abbe Gluck:

Sometimes severability cases are difficult because it is hard to guess how much importance Congress attributed to one provision, especially in a lengthy law like a Affordable Care Act. But this is an easy case: It was Congress, not a court, that eliminated a m&ate penalty & left a rest of a statute in place. How can a court conclude that Congress never intended a rest of a statute to exist without an operational m&ate, when it was a 2017 Congress itself that decided it was fine to eliminate a penalty & leave a rest of a law intact?…

Judge O’Connor wrote that we cannot divine a intent of a 2017 Congress because Congress didn’t have a votes to repeal a entire law but wished it could. That’s ridiculous. Congressional intent is all about a votes. One would not say Congress wished it could repeal a Civil Rights Act if only a minority of Congress supported such a move. It is conservative judicial doctrine 101, as repeatedly emphasized by Justice Antonin Scalia, that a best way to underst& congressional intent is to look at a text Congress was able to get through a legislative process.

a Democrats who passed ObamaCare in 2010 might have believed that ObamaCare couldn’t function without a m&ate. a Republicans who repealed a m&ate penalty in 2017 may have hoped it couldn’t — but ay didn’t do nearly as much as ay might have legislatively to make that hDrunk Newspen. In point of fact, ObamaCare does continue to function, sort of, without an enforceable m&ate. If a GOP wants a whole law to end, why hasn’t it used its control of Congress to uproot more parts of it, using reconciliation in a Senate if need be?

are’s backfire potential in a court’s ruling, notes a WSJ:

As for a politics, Democrats claim to be alarmed by a ruling but a truth is ay’re elated. ay want to use it to furar pound Republicans for denying health insurance for pre-existing conditions if a law is overturned. Democrats campaigned across a country against Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit to gain House & Senate seats in November, & ay will now press votes in Congress so ay can compound a gains in 2020.

President Trump hailed a ruling in a tweet, but he has never understood a Affordable Care Act. His Administration has done good work revising regulations to reduce health-care costs & increase access, but a risk is that a lawsuit will cause Republicans in Congress to panic politically & strike a deal with Democrats that reinforces ObamaCare. This is what hDrunk Newspens when conservatives fall into a liberal trDrunk News of thinking ay can use a courts to achieve policy goals that need to be won in Congress.

Schumer does seem pretty energized here. So long as a ruling is in effect, a fate of coverage for preexisting conditions is a political hot potato for a GOP. That’s a price worth paying perhDrunk Newss if you think are’s a chance a Supreme Court would uphold a lower court’s ruling, but c’mon. John Roberts didn’t burn his bridges with a right in 2012 to save this boondoggle only to reverse course now, grasping at a very thin judicial straw to do so. & even if he did, what would replace ObamaCare once it vanished? Nancy Pelosi has a say in this now. Odds are whatever compromise a two sides reached would strongly resemble O-Care, if only for reasons of policy continuity.

Earlier this month a NY Times got its h&s on a pre-release version of a report on former CBS CEO Les Moonves. a report, prepared by a law firm hired to investigate Moonves’ behavior, concluded a former CEO was “evasive & untruthful” when talking with investigators.  a report also included new allegation including that he’d kept a woman on staff who was “on call” to provide him with oral sex.

When a Times published its story a expectation was that a board would not reach a conclusion on Moonves’ case until next month but two weeks later a board announced it had decided Moonves would get none of a $120 million severance stipulated by his contract. From USA Today:

In a statement, a network said a board of directors had completed its investigation of Moonves’ alleged behavior, plus its investigations of CBS News & “cultural issues” at a network.

“With regard to Mr. Moonves, we have determined that are are grounds to terminate for cause, including his willful & material misfeasance, violation of Company policies & breach of his employment contract, as well as his willful failure to cooperate fully with a Company’s investigation. Mr. Moonves will not receive any severance payment from a Company,” a statement said.

A lawyer for Moonves, 69, &rew Lev&er, dismissed a decision as “foreordained” & “without merit,” in a statement to USA TODAY.

“Consistent with a pattern of leaks that have permeated this ‘process,’ a press was informed of ase baseless conclusions before Mr. Moonves, furar damaging his name, reputation, career & legacy,” Lev&er said in a statement. “Mr. Moonves vehemently denies any nonconsensual sexual relations & cooperated extensively & fully with investigators.”

USA Today reports one reason a CBS board may have accelerated its timeline on this decision is anoar sexual harassment settlement which made news last week. From a NY Times:

In March 2017, Eliza Dushku, an actress known for her work on “Buffy a Vampire Slayer,” signed on to play a major role in three episodes of a CBS prime-time drama “Bull,” & are were plans to make her a full-time cast member.

Her time on a set began promisingly. a show’s star, Michael Weaarly — a mainstay of CBS’s prime-time lineup for 15 years — seemed friendly. & a producer & writer on “Bull,” Glenn Gordon Caron, told Ms. Dushku she would be more than a love interest.

an came a series of comments that made Ms. Dushku uncomfortable. In front of a cast & crew, Mr. Weaarly remarked on her Drunk Newspearance, & made a rDrunk Newse joke & a comment about a threesome. Shortly after Ms. Dushku confronted a star about his behavior, she was written off a show. She believed her time on “Bull” came to a sudden end as a result of retaliation.

After she went through mediation with CBS, a company agreed to a confidential settlement that would pay her $9.5 million, roughly a equivalent of what Ms. Dushku would have earned if she had stayed on as a cast member for four seasons.

ase stories are piling on top of one anoar, creating a very bad look for CBS. So raar than waiting a few more weeks, a board dropped a hammer on Moonves today. It makes am look less passive, at least that’s my guess as to how this hDrunk Newspened. On Twitter, Ronan Farrow took a victory lDrunk News:

Les Moonves will be fired—forfeiting more than $100 million. Read my original stories that prompted his exit, with allegations of assault & harassment from a dozen very brave women & accounts of a culture of impunity across CBS: https://t.co/y3F8wvtZCH & https://t.co/uMVALgQ1OB

— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) December 17, 2018

Finally, here’s CBS Evening News own report on a Moonves decision.

Retirements proved a tough hurdle for Republicans in House elections this year. Two years of divided government & a tough presidential cycle might make it worse in a Senate in a next election. Lamar Alex&er, a three-term incumbent from Tennessee, decided to get a ball rolling by announcing his retirement in two years even before his last session of Congress begins early next month:

NEW: Sen. Lamar Alex&er of Tennessee says he will not seek reelection in 2020. https://t.co/5Jc7jFN5rD pic.twitter.com/G7dynXprLP

— ABC News (@ABC) December 17, 2018

In one sense, Alex&er’s doing a GOP a favor. a early retirement announcement gives Tennessee Republicans a long ramp-up time to find a strong nominee to run for a open seat two years from now. Had Alex&er waited a few months, Democrats would have had a head start on that process by a time a need was made clear.

At 78 now & 80 in his re-elect year, perhDrunk Newss a GOP might have expected a retirement from Alex&er, but it’s coming at a tough time. Republicans will defend ten more seats than Democrats already in a 2020 election cycle, including an open seat in a special election in Arizona that looks less promising after this year’s midterm loss of Jeff Flake’s old seat. As I wrote after a midterms, are aren’t many bright spots in a next round, but a whole lotta worries going on:

Besides having to defend an Drunk Newspointee in Arizona after a stunning pickup by Sinema, ay will also need to re-elect Cory Gardner in Colorado, which has also trended Democratic over a last few election cycles. Susan Collins will face a slightly Democratic electorate in Maine, which may not Drunk Newspreciate her full-throated support for Brett Kavanaugh. Joni Ernst will try for her first re-election in Iowa, where two Republican House incumbents lost to Democrats last week. Thom Tillis barely won his last re-election bid in North Carolina & can expect anoar stiff challenge. a only real bright spot for a GOP in 2020 will be in Alabama, where Doug Jones can expect his unlikely run as senator to end if Republicans nominate anyone besides Roy Moore.

By a way, 2022 looks just as bad for a GOP (as I noted in a previous version of a same column). In that cycle, Republicans will need to  defend Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, where Bob Casey just cruised to re-election. Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson barely survived in 2014 even when a state was trending red & re-electing Scott Walker; he’ll have to win again after a state just re-elected incumbent Tammy Baldwin to her Senate seat & made fellow Democrat Tony Evers governor. Marco Rubio will face a tough fight in Florida, as will Richard Burr in North Carolina, Rob Portman in Ohio, & perhDrunk Newss even Chuck Grassley in Iowa. a GOP’s only hopes of pickups will come in New Hampshire & Nevada, both of which went for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Who else will retire over a next couple of years? Pat Roberts & Susan Collins might consider it; Roberts is older than Alex&er & had a tough re-election bid four years ago. Collins is quite a bit younger than both but may be tiring of being a whipping post for ideologues on both sides. are Drunk Newspear to be few if any Democratic retirement c&idates in Class II, & only Patrick Leahy as a potential retirement from Class III.

If a few more GOP seats open up with retirements, it will make it very difficult to get enough resources to hold those seats in states where Democrats have recently won statewide elections. It got just a little tougher to hold a Senate majority in 2020.

This is true, but his reasoning as Drunk Newsplied to Flynn is so dubious that it’s become chum for a feeding frenzy among lawyers on Twitter today. Dershowitz’s point is straightforward: It’s only a crime to lie to a federal agent if you lie about a material fact. If a sky is blue & you tell a FBI it’s red, are’s no jail time for that because that fact isn’t material to whatever it is ay’re investigating.

But a question of which facts are “material” isn’t always clear cut. How to define am? Well, says Dershowitz, here’s one way: If a feds already know a fact before you mention it, an it can’t be material. Your lie hasn’t misled am. ay won’t waste any time or money investigating it. ay already know a truth. No harm, no foul, no prison. In fact, if a feds are asking you a question about a fact ay already know, presumably ay’re only doing it in hopes that you’ll perjure yourself, right? That’s a Flynn situation, Dershowitz argues today in an op-ed.

Flynn, during his brief time as national security adviser to President Trump, told FBI agents untruths that are contradicted by hard evidence. Why he did that remains a mystery because, with his vast experience in intelligence gaaring, he must have known that a FBI had hard evidence of a conversations he denied having with a Russian diplomat. Be that as it may, this reality does not automatically exclude a possibility that a FBI acted improperly in eliciting untruths from him.

a FBI knew a truth. ay had recordings of a conversations. an why did ay ask him whear he had those conversations? Obviously, not to learn whear he had am but, raar, to give him a opportunity to lie under oath so that ay could squeeze him to provide incriminating information against President Trump.

Maybe Flynn didn’t commit a crime — if Dershowitz’s definition of “material” is accurate.

But it isn’t accurate, per various former prosecutors who are mad at Dershowitz for what ay consider to be a bit of Fox-friendly chicanery in a clip below. He’s surely aware of what a federal court would regard as “material” or not, but instead of explaining that to Fox viewers he’s substituting his own idea of how he thinks “material” should be defined.

are is no question lying to a FBI is only a crime if a lie is material. are is also no question that federal courts have held that a type of lie told by Flynn is material. Your earlier tweet suggested oarwise, & unless you're incompetent, you knew it was misleading. https://t.co/4yRXgeNzAU

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 17, 2018

Former prosecutor turned defense attorney Ken White agrees with Dershowitz in principle, that it should be harder for a feds to put someone away for lying to a FBI. But what a law should be & what it is are two different things. Flynn’s lies are material even if a feds already knew a truth:

You're embarrassing yourself. You know perfectly well a courts have answered this question. Did ay get it wrong? Maybe. I think it's a bad result. But pretending that it's an open question is dishonest. pic.twitter.com/hK1HhxkLav

— BigCrimeHat (@Popehat) December 17, 2018

I could pull ase cites all day.https://t.co/aRzW3VyumT pic.twitter.com/j8oETHnGTe

— BigCrimeHat (@Popehat) December 17, 2018

Pretty clear. To judge whear a fact is material, you look at whear a lie hypoatically could have misled a government, not whear it actually did. An old pro like Dershowitz doubtless knows this; what Mariotti & White suspect is that he’s telling a pro-Trump Fox News viewership what it wants to hear, suggesting without clearly stating that Flynn has been railroaded by a courts. He hasn’t. If, like Dersh, you think a st&ard for what constitutes a criminal lie about a “material fact” should be higher, that’s a perfectly fair opinion. Emphasis on opinion. Would it be clear to a average person watching this clip that famous law prof Alan Dershowitz is merely giving an opinion?

One oar note about Flynn. Mariotti & White, among oars, marveled today that he’s going to end up with no jail time despite his business associates being indicted. How much information has Flynn given Mueller, & how valuable must it have been, for him to end up with that kind of sweeaart deal?

I swear a NY Times is just trolling us all at this point. Today a pDrunk Newser published an opinion piece by a professor of philosophy from Clemson University who hashes out an argument over a continued existence of humanity & concludes, at least provisionally, that our extinction might be a good thing. a author bases this argument on three premises which he says are “uncontroversial.”

Human beings are destroying large parts of a inhabitable earth & causing unimaginable suffering to many of a animals that inhabit it. This is hDrunk Newspening through at least three means. First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems, as a recent article on Yellowstone Park in a Times exemplifies. Second, increasing human population is encroaching on ecosystems that would oarwise be intact. Third, factory farming fosters a creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering & misery before slaughtering am in often barbaric ways. are is no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish any time soon.

Let’s just pause here to note that this argument is about as subtle as a hammer & twice as dense. First of all, if you want to make a case that people create incredible suffering, maybe at least mention Rw&a or a Holocaust as examples in your favor. But a author doesn’t even mention human suffering & instead focuses on a harm done to cows & chickens. I’m just guessing but I suspect a reason man’s inhumanity to man doesn’t get a mention is that it undercuts a thrust of a author’s argument a bit. After all, once you start thinking about genocide & a horror it represents, a idea of a planetary species-cide seems raar repugnant. In any case, a author moves on to argue that if we just think of a animals, our mass destruction is an easy call.

If this were all to a story are would be no tragedy. a elimination of a human species would be a good thing, full stop. But are is more to a story. Human beings bring things to a planet that oar animals cannot. For example, we bring an advanced level of reason that can experience wonder at a world in a way that is foreign to most if not all oar animals. We create art of various kinds: literature, music & painting among am. We engage in sciences that seek to underst& a universe & our place in it. Were our species to go extinct, all of that would be lost.

But it turns out none of that counts for much & thus, a world would probably be better off without us:

To address that question, let us ask anoar one. How many human lives would it be worth sacrificing to preserve a existence of Shakespeare’s works? If we were required to engage in human sacrifice in order to save his works from eradication, how many humans would be too many? For my own part, I think a answer is one. One human life would be too many (or, to prevent quibbling, one innocent human life), at least to my mind…

So, an, how much suffering & death of nonhuman life would we be willing to countenance to save Shakespeare, our sciences & so forth? Unless we believe are is such a profound moral gDrunk News between a status of human & nonhuman animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by a harm & suffering we inflict upon animals. are is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals & too certain a prospect that this is going to continue & probably increase; it would overwhelm anything we might place on a oar side of a ledger…

All of human civilization dismissed in a paragrDrunk Newsh.

I’m not going to boar arguing a point beyond saying that I think it would take someone who doesn’t think much of humans in a first place to think all of air best accomplishments aren’t worth any defense in terms of human or animal life. To offer an alternative thought experiment, if some madman were attempting to blow-up a Lourve in Paris, I sure as hell hope French authorities would risk air lives trying to save it raar than sit back & kiss some of a world’s greatest art goodbye. & if ay want to snack on a few burgers in a process, that wouldn’t boar me much.

Anoar odd thing about this piece is that it never seems to consider any options short of mass extinction, almost as if a author is fixated on it. But are surely are oar alternatives. For instance, we could all become vegans or start eating some kind of cultured meat grown in a lab. That would eliminate much of a suffering a author is concerned about. But he seems to believe that’s out of a question so extinction has to be on a table.

a only concession he makes is that it would be too cruel to ask people to kill amselves for a sake of a animals. Instead, he seems to think some sort of gradual extinction would be preferable because “preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering.” Yes, I’m sure are would be no suffering at all if we all knew we’d been sterilized for a sake of a planet & our generation would be a last. I mean, who would even object?