The Full Belmonte, 5/7/2023
‘We started running’: 8 killed in Texas outlet mall shooting
By JAKE BLEIBERG and REBECCA BOONE
“ALLEN, Texas (AP) — Hundreds of terrified shoppers fled in panic after a gunman stepped out of a silver sedan and opened fire at a Dallas-area outlet mall, killing eight and wounding seven before being killed by a police officer who happened to be nearby, authorities said.
The shooting in Allen, Texas, on Saturday was the latest eruption of what has been an unprecedented pace of mass killings in the U.S. Barely a week before, authorities say, a man fatally shot five people in Cleveland, Texas, after a neighbor asked him to stop firing his weapon while a baby slept.
Police did not immediately provide details about the victims at Allen Premium Outlets, a sprawling outdoor shopping center, but witnesses reported seeing children among them. Some said they also saw what appeared to be a police officer and a mall security guard unconscious on the ground….” Read more at AP News
Eight alleged fake Trump electors in Georgia accept immunity deals in grand jury probe
“Eight of the so-called fake electors who sought to give Georgia’s electoral votes in the 2020 election to former President Donald Trump instead of President Joe Biden have agreed to immunity deals with the prosecution, a new court filing shows.
Seven of the electors sat in April for interviews with representatives of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office before accepting the deals, the court filing says. The eighth was out of the country, but also accepted. The filing did not disclose the terms of the immunity deals.
The revelation came in a document filed Friday by the electors’ lawyer, Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow, in response to a request from the prosecution that Debrow be disqualified as the lawyer for the eight electors with immunity deals in addition to two others who do not have immunity deals.
The court filing was first reported by CNN….” Read more at USA Today
Tightening Supreme Court Ethics Rules Faces Steep Hurdles
Revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas’s failure to disclose largess from a Republican donor have highlighted a dilemma.
Democratic lawmakers have called on the Supreme Court to adopt a stronger code of conduct, but legislation to force the court to act would face legal and political obstacles.Credit...Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times
“The drumbeat of revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose lavish gifts and significant financial arrangements with a billionaire Republican donor has put a spotlight on the fact that the Supreme Court has the weakest ethics rules in the federal government.
But it is far less clear that anything can be done about it.
Justice Thomas’s behavior has underscored that financial disclosure rules for justices are porous and that the court has no binding code of ethical conduct like the one that governs lower-court judges. The court has shown no interest in adopting one, and proposals in Congress to force one upon it face steep political and constitutional hurdles.
As a result, even as Supreme Court ethics have become a matter of public policy concern to a degree not seen since 1969 — when Justice Abe Fortas resigned in a scandal over taking outside income from a friend and a Wall Street financier — Washington finds itself grappling with growing questions about the court’s accountability and all but paralyzed over how to proceed….
Congress established federal district courts and appeals courts, and in 1922, it directed the creation of the Judicial Conference, mostly composed of lower-court judges, to manage them. And in 1978, Congress enacted a statute requiring financial disclosures, based on which the Judicial Conference has written detailed regulations.
But while the justices said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that they view those rules and guidelines as important and insisted that they voluntarily follow their substance, the justices have not accepted them as constitutionally binding. Their statement noted the Judicial Conference does not supervise them.
Moreover, both the judicial conference rules and the 1978 statute they are based on have ambiguities. Even after a recent clarification that travel on private jets and to upscale resorts provided by friends must be disclosed, that rule does not apply to stays at luxurious private properties. And there is no maximum value on how much ‘personal hospitality’ a wealthy benefactor can lavish upon a justice or judge.
Congress has also enacted a statute requiring justices to recuse themselves ‘in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.’ But its standards are vague, and the court allows each justice to decide whether to recuse from a particular case and without any public explanation.
In their recent statement, the justices defended that system, arguing they have a ‘duty to sit that precludes withdrawal from a case as a matter of convenience or simply to avoid controversy’ since — unlike lower-court judges — there is no one to replace them.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appended that statement to a letter declining to appear before the committee this week to discuss potential Supreme Court ethics reforms. When that hearing proceeded with other witnesses, its tenor made clear that there is scant prospect of significant bipartisan agreement on any legislation.
Instead, from start to finish, Republican senators defended Justice Thomas’s conduct and denounced a series of reports in ProPublica that have brought to light his failure to disclose myriad types of largess and financial dealings from the Republican donor, Harlan Crow.
Among the disclosures Justice Thomas omitted: gifts of luxury travel, the sale of the home of the justice’s mother to Mr. Crow, and the donor’s paying of two years of private-school tuition for Justice Thomas’s great-nephew, over whom the justice had legal custody and was raising as a son.
In deflecting criticism of Justice Thomas, the G.O.P. lawmakers cited travel provided to Democrat-appointed justices by universities, glossing over the fact that they disclosed the trips.
At its core, though, Republicans’ rejection of any tightening of ethics rules boiled down to casting such proposals as an attempt by liberals to delegitimize the court simply because they do not like the rulings by its supermajority of Republican-appointed justices.
‘This is not about trying to upgrade the ability of the court to be more transparent,’ said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. ‘It’s about an effort to destroy the legitimacy of this conservative court.’
The partisan polarization on display at the hearing underscored that the main theoretical check against extreme misbehavior by a Supreme Court justice — impeachment by the House and removal by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate — is effectively politically impossible, especially if it could potentially alter the court’s ideological composition.
Part of the dilemma lies in the structure of American government, which bestows Supreme Court justices with a unique position. They wield the power to interpret laws passed by Congress as not covering a particular action or as unconstitutional. They also have life tenure, and their decisions are not subject to any higher review.
This structure is meant to protect the justices’ independence to best interpret the law by shielding their judgments from outside political pressures. But it has the consequence of also making it hard to impose real rules on how justices conduct themselves outside their work.
For one, proposals by lawmakers to require the Supreme Court to draft its own ethics code, or to directly impose one on the justices, raise the question of whether Congress has the constitutional power to do so. Even if that were surmounted, it is not obvious how such rules would be enforced.
At the Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic this week, there was broad agreement that the cleanest solution would be for the court itself to voluntarily adopt stronger ethics rules.
Kedric Payne, the vice president and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, testified that the court needed to create an internal office of staff ethics experts to provide guidance and investigate allegations of potential violations by the justices. He said they could do so immediately and it was unclear to him why they had not already….
But enforcement is the rub. A recurring theme in the hearing and the broader discussion of potential change was the lack of an obvious remedy if a justice flouted a rule or contended that it was inapplicable to something he or she wanted to do.
“What is the enforcement mechanism?” Thomas Dupree, a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, asked at the hearing. Raising a constitutional impossibility for rhetorical effect, he added: “Is there going to be some superior tribunal to the Supreme Court that is going to disqualify the justices?”
For the same reason, it is far from clear that Chief Justice Roberts could unilaterally impose an ethics code on the rest of the court, even if he were more inclined to do so than he appears to be. If another justice chose to ignore any edict, the chief justice would have no obvious way to enforce it.
The proposals that have been floated carry drawbacks. One is to have the rest of the court sit in judgment of a ninth who is accused of some transgressions, but the justices are likely to reject such a role for collegiality reasons given the guarantee of lifetime tenure and the size of the court. Another is to have a panel of appeals court judges pass judgment on a justice, but that raises structural problems since they are subordinate judges.
Indeed, it is hard to envision any binding way to enforce a code of ethics on the Supreme Court. But Mr. Gillers said there would still be value in the court adopting one, predicting that justices would be inclined to comply with a standard they took an oath to obey as a matter of honor and to avoid criticism….” Read more at New York Times
Richard Dreyfuss says Oscar diversity rules ‘make me vomit’
Jaws star went on to defend Laurence Olivier’s performance in blackface in the 1965 adaptation of Othello
“Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss has harshly criticized the Oscars’ new diversity and inclusion standards, saying ‘they make me vomit.’
In an interview with PBS’s Firing Line, the co-star of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws told host Margaret Hoover that he disagreed with the new set of rules that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has imposed for films to qualify for best picture nominations.
Hoover said: ‘Starting in 2024, films will be required to meet new inclusion standards to be eligible for the Academy Awards for best picture. They’ll have to have a certain percentage of actors or crew from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.’
‘What do you think of these new inclusion standards for films?’
Dreyfuss bluntly replied: ‘They make me vomit.’
He added: ‘No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is. What are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. You have to let life be life and I’m sorry, I don’t think there is a minority or majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.’
According to the Academy’s new regulations, which will come into effect for the 2025 Oscars, films seeking best picture nominations must meet two out of four requirements.
The requirements include having at least one lead character in the movie be from an ‘an underrepresented racial or ethnic group’, having at least 30% of the general ensemble cast be from at least two underrepresented groups (women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people or people with disabilities), or having the movie’s subject focus on one of those groups.
Dreyfuss went on to defend Laurence Olivier, an English actor who wore blackface in the 1965 British film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Othello.
Blackface is offensive because white performers first started using it to mock enslaved black people in racist minstrel shows across the US in the 19th century.
‘Laurence Olivier was the last white actor to play Othello, and he did it in 1965,’ Dreyfuss said. ‘And he did it in blackface. And he played a black man brilliantly.’
Dreyfuss continued: ‘Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?’
He also said: ‘This is so patronizing. It’s so thoughtless and treating people like children.’
Earlier this year, the Academy president, Janet Yang, explained the Academy’s decision to implement the new changes, telling Sky News: ‘It’s finding the right balance. So, we want rules that make sense, that keep people kind of on your toes about it, but not telling people what to make.’
This article was amended on Sunday 7 May to remove a reference to Shylock, a character in The Merchant of Venice, as a money launderer. He is a money lender.” [The Guardian]
Tiger Woods' former girlfriend accuses him of sexual harassment
“The ex-girlfriend of Tiger Woods has accused him of sexual harassment, saying he pursued a sexual relationship with her when she was his employee and then forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement about it – or be fired from her job if she did not, according to a document filed by her attorney Friday in a Florida state court.
‘Mr. Woods was Ms. Herman’s boss,’ said the attorney for Erica Herman. ‘On Mr. Woods’s own portrayal of events, he imposed an NDA on her as a condition to keep her job when she began having a sexual relationship with him. A boss imposing different work conditions on his employee because of their sexual relationship is sexual harassment.’
The filing is part of a dispute between them that arose after the couple broke up in October.
Herman worked at Woods' restaurant, The Woods, in Jupiter, Florida, when they began their relationship.
She filed a lawsuit in October against the trust Woods established for his residence in Florida in 2017, not against the famed golfer himself.
Herman alleged in that public lawsuit that she had an oral tenancy agreement to stay at the residence for about five more years. She claimed more than $30 million damages after she said she was locked out of the home in violation of the agreement.
Then the dispute got more complicated, leading to the court document filed Friday by her attorney, Benjamin Hodas.
‘Tiger Woods, the internationally renowned athlete and one of the most powerful figures in global sports, decided to pursue a sexual relationship with his employee, then – according to him – forced her to sign an NDA about it or else be fired from her job,’ said the document filed by her attorney. ‘And, when he became disgruntled with their sexual relationship, he tricked her into leaving her home, locked her out, took her cash, pets, and personal possessions, and tried to strong-arm her into signing a different NDA.’… Read more at New York Times
Mage wins star-crossed Kentucky Derby amid 7th death
By BETH HARRIS
Javier Castellano celebrates in the winner's circle after riding Mage to win the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs Saturday, May 6, 2023, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
“LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — After seven deaths raised questions about the future of horse racing, Mage earned a surprising Kentucky Derby victory on Saturday, capping a nerve-rattling day that included two more fatalities ahead of the 149th edition of the world’s most famous race.
Mage, a 15-1 shot, had only one win in his career, giving little indication that he could triumph against 17 rivals in a race that is not kind to the inexperienced.
Still, he made a gutsy stretch run, overtaking Two Phil’s to his inside and winning by a length. Mage, who didn’t race as a 2-year-old, ran 1 1/4 miles in 2:01.57.
Mage joined Justify (2018), Big Brown (2008) and Regret (2015) as Derby winners with just three previous starts.
‘He proved today that it didn’t matter,’ assistant trainer and co-owner Gustavo Delgado Jr. said.
The colt was in the skilled hands of Javier Castellano, a Hall of Fame jockey who hasn’t been as in-demand lately. The 45-year-old Castellano snapped an 0-for-15 skid in the Derby….” Read more at AP News