The Hall of Fire

Posted without comment (because I don't trust myself to comment).

"Of the Rings of Power and Third Age" was not written before LOTR. It was written as part of the drafting of the Council of Elrond chapter.

This is among the information that the SCO was trying to keep private but is coming out because of Judge Cannon's odd rulings.

I am so utterly flabbergasted by the decision to put him on.

It was an incredible miscalculation on the part of the defense team to put him on as essentially there only witness (the only other witness they called was a paralegal in Blanche's office who had put together a spreadsheet of the calls between Cohen and Costello that they wanted to enter into eviden...

I also am unaware of any Tolkien-authored summary of the White Council's subjects of discussion (and I'm pretty closely familiar with the content of the History of LOTR volumes of HoMe. Like Jude and Eldy, I don't really see much of a contradiction here, but I'll give it some more thought.

Wordle 1,067 3/6

One claim made repeatedly by Donald Trump over the past several years was that Michael Cohen only flipped on him to protect his family. Has Trump's defense team tried to make this point? That Cohen (supposedly) lied to incriminate because he didn't want his wife or father-in-law to go to jail? Actu...

Interesting is one word.



Wow. Just wow.

It's way too early to make that call.

The prosecution has rested, and the defense is now trying to call Robert Costello, which the prosecution is objecting to.

ETA: The judge is allowing only limited testimony by Costello. Still should be interesting to see what he says.

It is amazing to me how bad the coverage of this trial in the non-legal media is. The supposedly big news today is that Cohen admitted to "stealing" from the Trump Org by including $50,000 in the reimbursement for payment that he made to the tech company Red Finch when he didn't actually p...

I certainly think the ICC is right to issue warrants for Sinwar and the other Hamas leaders; there is no question that they have violated international law. I think the case for issuing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant is more complicated. Nonetheless, I continue to maintain that the one is indepe...

Wordle 1,066 5/6

Here's what 80,000 people looks like.

Here's some interesting early 1980s commentary I've never read before from the far-left poet Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) about the importance of political incrementalism. Although Baraka was staunchly anti-capitalist, he warned against commentary he'd heard from others on the left about the last presi...

This shows the challenge that Biden faces. It's not that Democrats are unpopular It's he who is unpopular.

She's not even pretending anymore.

Words of wisdom that I fear many in the coming election will ignore.

Excellent thread from the one and only Roger Parloff explaining why the moment on Thursday when Cohen was shown to have misremembered one phone call probably isn't as much of a big deal as many in the media have made it out to be. https://twitter.com/rparloff/status/1792174175773212909 https://twitt...