A few years ago, we wrote about how a guy named Dimitry Shirokov, with help from the law firm of Booth Sweet had taken on the "fathers" of copyright trolling in the US, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, who had formed an organization called US Copyright Group…
Country music star Maren Morris is officially parting ways with the genre due to its "misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic" ways, WFAA reports she said in a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times.
According to CNN, the 33-year-old Grammy-winning singer hinted "at the decision in two new songs and music videos released on Friday: 'The Tree' and 'Get The Hell Out Of Here.'"
WFAA notes, "In 'The Tree,' she sings that she's "taking an axe to the tree, the rot at the roots is the root of the problem, But you wanna blame it on me, I hung around longer than anyone should," and "In “'Get The Hell Out Of Here,' Morris sings, 'I do the best I can, but the more I hang around here, the less I give a damn.'"
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Morris also emphasized that "she resents music being used as a 'toxic weapon in culture wars.'"
LA Timesreports:
It's not that Morris, 33, has tired of twanging guitars or neatly cornered rhymes, both of which define the tunes that came out Friday, a decade after she moved to Nashville from her native Texas, first to write songs for established country acts such as Tim McGraw and later to sign a major-label record deal of her own. Rather, she says she's leaving because of what she views as the country music industry’s unwillingness to honestly reckon with its history of racism and misogyny and to open its gates to more women and queer people and people of color.
Regarding the genre, the singer-songwriter told the newspaper, "I thought I'd like to burn it to the ground and start over. But it's burning itself down without my help."
She added, "After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display. It just revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic."
READ MORE: Seeing ‘Red’ after Taylor Swift debacle, lawmakers weigh new policies
WFAA's full report is available at this link. The Los Angeles Times' report is here.
Former senior prosecutor to special counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, pointed to a piece of Donald Trump's recent interview on "Meet the Press" that isn't getting as much attention as his claim that he wasn't listening to his lawyers after all.
Speaking to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Monday evening, Weissmann pointed to Trump's admission that he "knew by 10 o'clock the night of the election" that it was over. Weissmann looked back at Trump's actions at 10 p.m. on Nov. 3, 2020.
"That was something that's got very little attention, and that was something of an effort to stop the count of votes," the NYU professor explained. "And the president and his allies had talked about this before the election, and then tried to put it into effect on the night of the election. They knew there would be this thing called the 'red mirage,' you may remember this Lawrence."
He explained that the way the vote count works is that many states don't begin counting the mail-in votes prior to the election. So, the in-person votes, which are predominantly Republican, will often appear first. The mail-in ballots take longer to open, process and count.
"So, he went out and tried to get states to stop counting votes," explained Weissmann. "That feeds into two of the three charges, like a hand in the glove — which is obstruction and the 241 Civil Rights violation. Because you can't do that. You can't not count American votes. And that was really interesting to me that he was going back to that in this interview, this sort of 'stop the count.' Because that is part of the charges in both Georgia and in D.C."
Former federal prosecutor and University of Alabama Law professor Joyce Vance explained that these kinds of admissions of guilt can end up in court proceedings, even if Trump doesn't take the stand.
"They could play some of these videotapes," she said. "And you could imagine how powerful this would be. I think Mar-a-Lago is a great example where you might, for instance, have people talking about the briefings, the former president received on classified information and its handling. The prosecution could show the jury the documents, and they could look at this incredible video of Trump talking about how cavalierly he handled it, because it was his and he could do whatever he wanted to do with it. It would be a very powerful presentation in mind."
See the full comments in the video below or at the link here.
Senior Mueller prosecutor highlights another of Trump's admissions of guiltyoutu.be
Former President Donald Trump torched his best defense in the election cases against him when he told NBC's Kristen Welker that he doesn't respect his own attorneys and followed his own instincts when he tried to overturn the vote.
Retired Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe elaborated on the legal bungle in a discussion with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"Did the former president undermine his own defense by saying it was his decision to go after the results of the 2020 election?" asked Cooper. "There was talk he was going to argue at trial he was listening to legal advice."
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"I think he threw his own defense not just under a bus but under a freight train," said Tribe, a prominent proponent of the view that Trump is constitutionally ineligible for office. "It's very hard to say that I was relying on legal advice as a defense at trial when you tell the world through Kristen Welker on NBC that he was relying on his own advice. It's said sometimes that only a fool hires himself as a lawyer to defend himself. I don't think Trump is a fool, but he's certainly a narcissist. He just has to say that he is responsible for everything. He doesn't depend on anybody. That's all very nice politically. But in the courtroom, he's just blown that defense, the defense that I was just relying on my lawyers and therefore I didn't have a state of mind that it takes to commit these crimes. He's just blown that out of the water."
"I mean, he did, sort of, you know, hedge it a little," added Cooper. "He said while it was his decision, he also said he, quote, listened to some people. Does that give him wiggle room to still attempt the advice of counsel defense? He also said that, you know, he didn't trust and didn't, you know, respect the lawyers who were arguing the counterargument, which was basically the White House counsel and legitimate attorneys."
"You know, he can say he relied on attorneys and he relied on other people, all kinds of people," replied Tribe. "But the specific defense that says, I was just following the directions of my lawyers, it's a very narrow defense. It's not just, like, saying, you know, I read the papers, I listen to everybody. That won't do. If you are accused of the various crimes that Jack Smith has obtained indictments for and you say that, well, it may be that I did these things, but I was innocent because I was basically a pawn following by lawyer's instruction, that's not an easy defense under any circumstances."
But to say what Trump has said, "then that defense is just not going to fly with the jury, especially if you're not willing to take the stand," he closed. "Because he has a right not to, but the only way he could explain all of that to the jury is by giving up that right and taking the stand. But he's not likely to because everyone knows that he would perjure himself. So, he's really gotten himself into quite a corner."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Laurence Tribe says Trump has torched his best defensewww.youtube.com
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