Thank you, Ed Morrissey
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of joining Hot Air’s excellent Ed Morrissey on his podcast, The Ed Morrissey Show. We mainly discussed the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, especially the explosive, but dubious in parts, testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.
Ed and I agreed that the Committee appears to have shot itself in the foot by having Hutchinson give hearsay testimony on an unimportant matter without knowing what those with first-hand knowledge of the incidents had to say about it. The Committee interviewed some of these key players, but reportedly didn’t get their version of the events in question before having Hutchinson testify in public. Now, these individuals reportedly are poised to contradict her.
Ed went a step further. He believes that even without this blunder, the Committee may be helping Trump by keeping him in the news, riling up his ardent supporters, and turning off other Republicans who perceive the unfairness of these one-sided proceedings.
No room in big law for leading Supreme Court advocate
In my opinion, Paul Clement is as good an appellate advocate as there is practicing these days. Others who follow the Supreme Court more closely than I do have told me the same thing.
Yet, apparently there is no place for him at big law firms. He left King & Spalding because it disapproved of him defending the Defense of Marriage Act. And now, he is out at Kirkland & Ellis.
Clement’s departure came the same day the Court ruled in favor of his (and Kirkland’s) client in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, an immensely important Second Amendment case. As soon as the Supreme Court issued the Bruen decision, Kirkland announced that it will “no longer represent clients with respect to matters involving the interpretation of the Second Amendment.” In addition, the firm said it will withdraw from all pending cases implicating the right to bear arms, including cases Clement has been handling.
Clement had no real choice but to resign. He will start his own firm, along with his long-time partner Erin Murphy. They will do just fine.
But it’s discouraging to see that big law has no place for an attorney who may be the best Supreme Court litigator of his generation. And it’s particularly disheartening that Kirkland & Ellis has no place for Clement.
I don’t know the big law landscape as well as I once did, but my impression is that, with the exception of the Jones Day firm, Kirkland was as hospitable to lawyers on the conservative side of the divide as any big firm in America. (Both firms have plenty of liberal attorneys, as well.)
This, after all, was the firm where Bill Barr practiced. Other key lawyers in the Trump administration also have roots at Kirkland. They include Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel; Patrick Philbin, Cipollone’s deputy; Jeffrey Rosen, the acting Attorney General during the last days of the Trump administration; and Jeff Clark, the Assistant Attorney General who pushed to have the DOJ investigate allegations of voting fraud in January 2021. I understand that none of these four attorneys has returned to Kirkland.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Kirkland’s big-money corporate clients pressured the firm into ceasing its representation of “gun movement” clients. David Lat speculates that, in addition, Kirkland thought this representation would hurt its ability to attract top young lawyers to the firm.
Both explanations ring true. Neither is healthy.
A shift from woke educational priorities in a left-wing enclave?
With primary day approaching in Maryland, the Washington Post asked candidates for the school board in ultra-liberal Montgomery County to list the issues most important to them. The Post asks some variation of this question every election year. .
In 2018, I wrote about the answers the Post received just before election day. Five of the seven school board candidates in that year’s election identified “the achievement gap affecting students of color” or some variation on the same theme as the “greatest problem facing the school system” — a silly response, as I tried to explain in my post.
This time, the Post interviewed the 13 candidates running in primaries in various parts of the school district. They weren’t asked to name the “greatest problem,” but rather to list there top few issues.
I expected that, with this latitude and in the George Floyd era, “equity,” the racial “achievement gap,” or something similar would make almost every list. Instead, only three candidates listed it.
The most frequently mentioned issues were “transparency” (which may encompass more parental say in education, a concern cited specifically by a few candidates); recovery from disrupted education due to the pandemic; school safety; and mental health.
A couple even cited the need to do a better job teaching core or STEM subjects. What a novel concern in the field of education.
I’m not expecting much improvement in local schools in Montgomery County regardless of who is elected to the school board. But it does seem that, even as big law becomes ever more woke, one of the most liberal school districts in America might be edging back ever so slightly from that mire.
Btw, the new rules under the fascist Biden regime: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/people-allowed-white-house-sides-angry-mobs-chasing-supreme-court-justices-dc-restaurants-video/