On October 21, 2020, Trevor Till – class president, drum major, lead in the Seneca Illinois High School production of The Music Man, and a gifted pole vaulter, committed suicide, for reasons his mother, Lisa Mara Moore, termed “COVID isolation.” Cut off from school for the last months of his... Read More »
On December 21, 2020, the FDIC ordered New York-based Apple Bank for Savings to pay a fine of $12.5 million. The order was made public on January 29, 2021. The fine was assessed due to the bank’s failure to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and with an FDIC... Read More »
January 20, 2021, was a busy day for White House ethics. In the morning then-president Trump revoked his 2017 ethics policy and, in the afternoon, as one of the seventeen executive orders he signed on his first day, President Biden introduced his own Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive... Read More »
As part of the raft of executive orders promulgated by the new president on his first day in office, President Biden signed the Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. In Section 10, paragraph (c) of the order is the mention that... Read More »
On January 14, 2021, the Department of Defense announced the addition of nine names to an ongoing list of “‘Communist Chinese military companies’” operating directly or indirectly in the United States.” These are companies that are known to be or are suspected of working with the Chinese military, often under... Read More »
A federal judge in California has ordered the seizure of a treasure trove of bitcoin that previously belonged to a group of darknet drug dealers. The 391.5873617 BTC are, as of January 21, worth over $12.2 million and have been in the possession of federal marshals since 2019. The warrant... Read More »
In the wake of the blitzkrieg second impeachment of President Trump, Congress is now faced with the question of how to move forward. The Senate is in recess until January 19, meaning that the earliest possible time it could receive the Article of Impeachment from the House would be 1:00... Read More »
The possibility of President Trump issuing a self-pardon has been under discussion since the beginning of his presidency. In the wake of the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, that possibility once again flirts with becoming a reality. Any discussion of the president’s power to pardon has to... Read More »
On January 7, 2021, Pennsylvania attorney Jerome Marcus requested to withdraw from a suit he initiated on behalf of the Trump campaign in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The suit, filed against the Philadelphia County Board of Elections on November 4, 2020, alleges that “the... Read More »
Whereas President Obama pardoned nearly two thousand people during his two terms in office, President Trump has been more sparing in his use of the power of executive clemency. By far his largest wave of pardons to-date came on December 22 and 23, when he forgave the criminal offenses of... Read More »
Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is apparently under investigation by federal investigators for the Southern District of New York in a probe that sources claim to be “very active.” Investigators are apparently interested in Giuliani’s electronic communications. Either a search warrant or a grand jury subpoena might be used... Read More »
On October 20, 2020, the Department of Justice, abetted by eleven states’ attorneys general, filed suit against Google for violating section 2 of the Sherman Act and operating a monopoly. The result is probably the DOJ’s biggest antitrust case since it took on Microsoft in 1998. Nearly two months later, on... Read More »
In the controversy swirling around COVID-19-related lockdowns, an early hotspot was the state of Michigan, where Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer took sweeping steps in March to mitigate the spread of the virus. Although numerous other states implemented similar measures, the Michigan stay-at-home orders sparked violent reactions, with anti-lockdown rallies held... Read More »
New Jersey has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. Not coincidentally, it also has an attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, engaged in a crusade against firearms. In a 2018 press conference, he stated that “each gun that we take off the streets is a life, or multiple... Read More »
On May 3, 2018, President Trump issued an executive order “to assist faith-based and other organizations in their efforts to strengthen the institutions of civil society and American families and communities.” The order continued: Faith-based and community organizations have tremendous ability to serve individuals, families, and communities through means that... Read More »
