Texas - WTF is this even - a very short reassurance thread:

1: The Texas "lawusit" against four other "battleground" states in the United States Supreme Court is legally stupid.* It is so legally stupid that I was reluctant to believe that even Ken Paxton would file it.

*My patience level is not ginormous today. Please don't try to explain to me why you think it isn't stupid for whatever other reasons because I'll be making liberal use of the airlock. Thx.
2: Yes, one state can sue another at the US Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court gets to decide whether to take the case. One factor that they will **undoubtedly** look at is the factor of "injury."
Texas is claiming two things. First, that the states have a special interest in who becomes Vice President because of the tiebreaker. Second, that their electors are injured if their votes are "diluted" by electors from states that, in Texas's view, didn't obey their own law.
There is very little argument presented for "injury." Even less - barely a paragraph - was presented for how the defendant states caused that injury.

For lawyers, this is a signal that this is a performance of politics by "litigation" and not a serious effort.
Nonlawyers - who are the audience for this drek - may be impressed by the arguments about how other states violated their own laws.

Lawyers - at least competent ones - will zero in on the alleged injury and the evidence that the injury was caused by the defendant states.
Why? Simple.

Courts care about how the person bringing the complaint was allegedly harmed by the person being sued. If there's not a harm you can sue over and/or you can't show how the person you are suing caused that harm, You Have No Case.
This applies to states, too.

The motion for leave to file doesn't seem to allege an actual injury that courts address, and doesn't really allege how the state in question caused that injury.
Simply put, @JohnFetterman has a better ability to bring a court case against @DanPatrick to recover 2 million dollars in Sheetz gift cards for showing proof of election fraud than the state of Texas has to bring a case against Pennsylvania over the election.
This lawsuit is Texas taking a dump on the rest of the Republic and I'm angry as all hell that those- those people have chosen to do this.

I am not worried in the least about the case.
PS - Akiva looks to be at least as pissed off as I am, and he's being pissed off in more detail.

https://t.co/QRIBlW6qf6
And it's being picked apart here in even more exquisite detail.

I'll let them take it. I looked at the injury section and then deleted the download.

https://t.co/ipbla8ose4
Seriously:
The Republican Party, as a whole, is a clear and present danger to the viability of the Republic.

More from Mike Dunford

I went over the dismissal on my stream, but a few thoughts on where things are at:

1: The Notice of Appeal doesn't shock me; I figured Louie would be this dumb.
2: As was the case with the case at the District Court, it doesn't really matter how vigorously Pence defends this.


3: The lack of standing is so spectacularly, glaringly obvious that it doesn't really matter whether Pence raised certain arguments; they will get noticed by the court.
4: That's because federal courts have an independent duty to ensure they have jurisdiction.

5: Standing is a jurisdictional requirement; no standing means no case.
6: The rules for standing are clear and nothing in the opinion dismissing the case was the least bit controversial in any universe except the alternate one inhabited by Louie and the Arizonan cosplayers.

7: "But it's the 5th Circuit" will be raised both by Trumpistians and those who are exceptionally nervous. There is exactly as much reason to be concerned about the 5th as there was the trial court: ie none at all.

So - my expectations:
Given the timeline, I suspect that Louie will be granted an expedited appeal and will lose on an expedited basis. I also expect that he will appeal to SCOTUS and the appeal there will not be expedited.
OK. The Teams meeting that I unsuccessfully evaded (and which was actually a lot of fun and I'm really genuinely happy I was reminded to attend) is over, so let's take another swing at looking at the latest filings from in re Gondor.


As far as I can tell from the docket, this is the FOURTH attempt in a week to get a TRO; the question the judge will ask if they ever figure out how to get the judge's attention will be "couldn't you have served by now;" and this whole thing is a

The memorandum in support of this one is 9 pages, and should go pretty quick.

But they still haven't figured out widow/orphan issues.

https://t.co/l7EDatDudy


It appears that the opening of this particular filing is going to proceed on the theme of "we are big mad at @SollenbergerRC" which is totally something relevant when you are asking a District Court to temporarily annihilate the US Government on an ex parte basis.


Also, if they didn't want their case to be known as "in re Gondor" they really shouldn't have gone with the (non-literary) "Gondor has no king" quote.

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First update to https://t.co/lDdqjtKTZL since the challenge ended – Medium links!! Go add your Medium profile now 👀📝 (thanks @diannamallen for the suggestion 😁)


Just added Telegram links to
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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.