Thread of useful links and phone numbers: Christmas is always a difficult time for many people. This one is liable to be a lot harder for so many more though, and for so many more reasons than many expect. 1/

Let’s talk about this story. It discusses a NJ bill that is designed to make sentencing less harsh. The bill is being held up because a lawmaker introduced an amendment that would eliminate the mandatory minimum for one type of corruption.

First, let's talk about the framing of the story. The lede is about how the lawmaker who introduced the amendment has a girlfriend whose son is facing corruption charges. The story minces no words: It says the amendment was added specifically to help that man.

The idea of powerful people helping each other escape punishment is a powerful one. It is the stuff of headlines and outrage, and so I'm not surprised that this is how the story is being framed.

But there is also another way to frame this story--that most people only appreciate the harshness and injustice of the criminal justice system once they or someone they love have been swept up in it.
We've seen the story before, and it sends us a different message.

The "powerful people get off" framing tells us to be suspicious of leniency & not to trust criminal justice reform.

The "I only realized when" framing tells us that we aren't paying enough attention to harshness & more reform is probably needed.

Good morning, all. There's a little bit of news out of Michigan already this morning - it looks like Judge Parker wanted to start the work week this week with unnecessary and stupid distractions cleared away.

So she dismissed the MI Kraken tentacle sometime after midnight.

It a 36-page opinion.

And it starts out strong.

ACK - my bad -

Sorry. I'm tweeting without caffeine and it shows. The order rejects the injunction, but it doesn't dismiss the case (yet). Skimming ahead, that appears a foregone conclusion, but technically the case isn't dismissed.

Seriously, though - this is yet another judge who is responding to these request to overturn the election with the judicial version of "you want me to *what*? Hard pass."

The judge is being kind to the plaintiffs here and doesn't mention the epiceyeburningdisasterthatwastheoriginalcomplaint. But you'll note that the judge also doesn't mention what claims were in that complaint or whether they are the same as the ones in the 1st Amended Complaint.

1/ I want to briefly tease out Cruz's statement, which will help set expectations about what might happen January 6:

2/ At its heart, the presser states, "we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given' and ‘lawfully certified' (the statutory requisite), unless & until that emergency 10-day audit is completed."

3/ How does a10-day emergency audit happen? Congress would need to enact a statute to amend the Electoral Count Act before January 6, when it's compelled by law to meet. That seems unlikely.

4/ Cruz et al. seem to hold a "thick" view of the Electoral Count Act, adhering to the "statutory requisite," which means that Congress would need to amend or adhere to the statute.

5/ A 10-day audit is impossible under the current statute. Objections to a state are limited to 2 hours' debate. Adjournments are fixed in the statute, too--no recess if you've hit five days:

Today someone showed me an INCREDIBLE piece of evidence that #CraigWright is Satoshi.

This image, sourced from metanet-icu was shared with me.

It appears to be one of Satoshi’s earliest emails to Hal Finney, screen grabbed by Craig when he wrote it.

But, on closer inspection all is not as it seems.

This email was made public by journalist and can be found in a pdf of lots of emails from Satoshi to Hal Finney spanning 10-24 Jan 2009.

I’m not making any claim whether these are or are not

But, the most glaring and immediate problem with the metanet-icu screenshot of the draft email is in the top right hand corner of the image, where the user’s membership expires on 13th of March 2019.

Anonymousspeech is a paid service. The web archive of their product page shows that going back to the earliest snapshots they have never offered a package that lasts more than 2 years.

So the earliest this screenshot could have been made was March

But there’s something else strange about this image as well, and that’s down in the bottom left hand corner.

Anonymousspeech allows a maximum of 50000 characters in an email and has a counter of spare chars at the bottom.

This email has 48932 chars left.