Latest EU infringement proceedings - includes possible return to EU court to request fines re Polish forest protection and Hungarian law on NGOs; also includes environmental law, racism hate speech law, European Arrest Warrant

Kerala High Court resumes hearing of Bail Application of M Sivasankar, Former Principal Secretary of Kerala Chief Minister

Sivasankar is presently in ED's custody for alleged involvement in the Kerala Gold Smuggling case. He is also being investigated by the NIA and Customs Department.

Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta is arguing for Sivasankar.

He denies ED's allegations that Sivasankar contacted customs officials to clear the baggage alleged to be containing smuggled gold.

Gupta claims statement made by co-accused Swapna Suresh about Sivasankar's involvement are not credible as the same were made after her arrest.

Gupta points out that the correspondence between Sivasankar and Swapna does not disclose any knowledge on the latter's part.

He also tells Court that all of Swapna's statements categorically denied his client's involvement in gold smuggling, until before her arrest.

Charlie Munger on Delayed Gratification:

I've also got the money-sense gene. The first 13 years I practiced law, my income from practicing law was $300,000 total.

At the end of that 13 years, what did I have?

1/

A house. Two cars. And $300,000 of liquid assets. Everyone else'd have spent that slender income, not invested it shrewdly, and so forth.

I just think it was, to me, it was as natural as breathing, and of course I knew how compound interest worked!

2/

I knew when I saved $10 I was really saving $100 or $1,000 ,because of the future growth of the $10.

It just took a little wait. And when I quit law practice it was because I wanted to work for myself instead of my clients, because I knew I could do better than they did.

3/

You only get a few opportunities, and you have to grab them aggressively when they come because even in the most favored life, they're really rare.

I always feel that the opportunities are rare. I only get a few and then I have to seize them aggressively.

4/

Now that lesson I just talked about, it is taught in no business school I know of. But…everybody who has any sense ought to know [that] at the start of life, and practically nobody does.

I just described reality the way it really is.

5/

Virtual meeting to condole passing of Indian jurist and former Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabji

Lalit Bhasin, President of SILF: The law reports are full of the monumental cases in which Soli appeared... during his seven-decade tenure as a lawyer.

#SoliSorabjee

Attorney General KK Venugopal speaks, recounts of the large number of cases in which he and Sorabjee and appeared in together.

#SoliSorabjee

AG Venugopal: When I think of Soli, one would imagine a legend of the law, a great jurist, an attorney general twice over... and above all a lawyer who was innovative and part of the evolution of the Constitution of India

#SoliSorabjee

AG Venugopal: According to me, his success in SR Bommai.. is one of the feathers in his cap...The judgment as a deathblow to the abuse of power by the Centre...

#SoliSorabjee

AG Venugopal: I was appearing (at the time) for Karunanidhi during the height of emergency ...

The allegation that he had taken a bribe was sufficient to dismiss the government in a State, Venugopal recalls.

Look, I get the reasoning behind not calling witnesses. But what gets lost is that yet another rich white elected criminal got away with it. We've had decades of this (GWB lying re WMDs) & Ds have never stopped it. Never. They just sigh & ask for our votes. We want accountability

They've never rid of of the EC, no Healthcare 4all & any gains we've gotten (NRA going bust, BLM showing us inequality) has been citizen advocacy. And citizens SHOULD do that. But we want our Dem reps to accomplish big things, too. We've given them all three branches twice.

So it's a bit difficult to ask us to swallow this "as a win" when a criminal isn't held accountable by the very means he's supposed to be held accountable.

I understand the challenges, I do. But these same naysayers also wrote off Stacy Adams in GA, and look what she did.

Political calculation is important, sure. But it's not the ONLY important thing, either. Sometimes one has to fight to the bitter end over a thing that matters, even if you lose the fight. I don't see that happened here. And it's part of a pattern. If Ds didn't have this pattern-

Maybe I'd be more forgiving, but I'm not. People got away with torture, they got away with illegally selling arms, working with a hostile foreign nation, killing our citizens via negligence, and thus far NO accountability for any of that, and little hope some will come.

In late October 2020, the Edmonton Proud Boys appeared at a People Vs. Predators rally.

One member of this @splcenter-designated hate group is John-Clayton Wilson/Jay Wilson/JC Wilson/JC2theW. (1/10)

@DoxerPb @RuthlessWe @AntifaGarfield @AntiFashGordon @AntifascistF12

JCW is an artist and performer, having done trapeze work. He also operated a YouTube channel, which provides men's rights activist analysis of feminism and the LGBTQ+ community, despite being a member of that community. (2/10)

It's hard to know why JC joined the bigoted Proud Boys, but JC's history of men's rights activism and anti-feminism help the connection make sense.

Here's a sample of some video topics. The language and themes align with the far-right. (3/10)

Still, JC being a member of the LGBTQ+ community makes his decision to join a hate group puzzling for us.

Not that this is unheard of, of course, but these people are not your allies. They aren't even allies with each other and we see this play out all the time. (4/10)

We gave JC multiple chances to get in touch so we could connect him with resources and people who specialize in leaving hate groups. He got the message, but he responded by changing his name and trying to hide his accounts

It's not too late to leave. We can delete tweets. (5/10)