(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . L.L. #20, May 10 [1] ['The Geogre', 'View Profile', 'Chitown Kev', 'News Corpse', 'Egberto Willies', 'Angela Marx'] Date: 2026-05-10 [Preface:] Young girls do get weary, and old men do, too. This is Laudable Links — a collection of, usually, three articles that link out. The choices are curated and will typically concern courts and law. When I can’t find anything (e.g. Mondays), I may resort to my old life and post a poem. It’ll be laudable, too (and public domain). This morning, we have two about elections/courts and one about the fascism of the DOJ: Ari Berman points out that Republicans don’t need persuasion or electioneering. They just need judges. At Lawfare, Christopher Hardee writes “very strongly” about how false, absurd, and junked-up the SPLC indictment is. At Above the Law, a relatively short piece by Joe Patrice notes that Spam Alito put fabbed evidence in his Callais ca-lah and speculates that Spam don’t care. Cartwheel galaxy, Hubble It isn’t even the Leo Leo project that is cemented the ‘permanent Republican majority.’ Ari Berman is a journalist who specializes in civil rights and elections, and particularly in disenfranchisement. At Mother Jones, which is his home journal, he writes, in light of Callais v. Louisiana, and now Virginia vs. Typefaces, “Republicans Don’t Need to Win Elections Anymore. They Just Need Their Judges.” Callais and now the Virginia referendum being overturned have put Democrats at a national disadvantage in the redistricting war that Donald launched last year. [Quote:|] With the passage of the Virginia map, Democrats had mostly succeeded in reaching a draw with Republicans in the redistricting wars. But with the Virginia map overturned and Southern states—including Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina—rushing to pass new maps before the midterms, Democrats could face a four to five-seat disadvantage heading into November, according to Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report. While that is not insurmountable in a wave election—and Democrats could still pick up two seats in Virginia under the existing map—it gives Democrats little margin for error in the effort to take back the House. [|End Quote] I hate this framing. I am, by nature, a moral critic. A thing is good or bad, right or wrong, and it produces good or bad in the short consequences (for consequentialists) in short or long terms, for narrow or large numbers. The redistricting war is predicated on evil and motivated by evil. The practice of “packing and cracking” is designed to produce winning districts, not representative ones. A flat vote of a state, instead of a woven district, would show voter preferences, but the gerrymander, no matter how it is done, is designed to make representation. This can be reparative justice where there is systemic and legal discrimination, but even then a neutral map across a whole state could obviate the need. [Quote:|] The decision [in Virginia] effectively tosses out three million votes cast in the referendum on a legal technicality. It’s worth noting that voters in red states have not been able to weigh in on any of the mid-decade gerrymanders passed by their legislatures. And while those states have different laws than Virginia, voters in Florida and Ohio did pass prohibitions on gerrymandering that their legislatures flagrantly ignored—but conservative-dominated state supreme courts in those states are unlikely to void the new maps. [|End Quote] Ultimately, this is a point we have made already: our measures meet up with fairness and courts, while theirs meet up with steam rollers, billy clubs, and taunts. Some of us think the answer is for “us” to arm up, but only because crime pays quite well. The featured feature for Sunday telling us what we know already: DOJ is trying to help white supremacists. If you ask yourselves why the Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with an indictment that is facially defective on law and lacking support, you will come to some very sad answers. There cannot be very many satisfactory explanations. One is that Blanche (who has personally announced and taken credit for this indictment) wants to “dirty up” the SPLC to try to prevent any bank from doing business with it. This could be in twisted right winger pique over the “unfair” way that SPLC bankrupted the KKK. Another answer is that Blanche might have wanted to drain the SPLC’s assets by making it defend itself — thus stalling its work in 2026-28. Or, of course, he could be raising a large flag for the white supremacist extremists, the most violent of them, to signal that they have a friend in Washington. Regardless, it’s a collapsing trashpile of an indictment, as Christopher Hardee details in “The Politically Motivated Indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center” at Lawfare. Mr. Hardee discusses the faults with the indictment, and then he goes into detail with a legal analysis. Most of my quotations will come from his writing prior to the legal breakdown, but I will give a brief summary of how he answers the “why” of the “politics” involved. [Quote:|] When the SPLC expanded its public lists of hate groups in the 1990s to include conservative organizations that the SPLC concluded advocate intolerance, even if they do not advocate violence, some conservative groups began to criticize it. The SPLC has also listed a few groups that are not on the right but that the SPLC says advocate hate, such as the New Black Panther Party. [|End Quote] This will play a part in the “why,” he believes. Specifically, he thinks the online “Hate Map” angers far-right wing groups (Christian nationalists come to mind) who don’t advocate violent exclusion, as well as groups that have ‘hate’ for gender non-conforming groups. He thinks the prosecution could be an effort to please such groups. Maybe! [Quote:|] The Justice Department is attacking a leading adversary of violent hate groups by accusing it of secretly supporting the very groups the organization has opposed for decades. Prosecuting a group that the far right opposes by accusing the group of supporting the far right makes this one of the most cynical criminal cases ever brought by the Department of Justice. Whatever one’s view about the SPLC labeling non-violent conservative organizations as hate groups, that is not a crime. [|End Quote] (emphasis added) To indict, there needs to be a crime, and the crime is supposed to be bank fraud. However, the indictment is faulty. Of course there could be a superseding indictment that fixes the errors, but none so far. [Quote:|] The Justice Department alleges that the SPLC fraudulently misled donors by not disclosing that the organization used donor funds to pay informants within the KKK and neo-Nazi groups. The SPLC, however, had no legal duty to inform donors about these activities, which advanced the organization’s mission, any more than the SPLC needing donor approval to engage in any other initiative to advance its mission. [|End Quote] That’s one place where justice will fail, but the biggest one is in the bank fraud: [Quote:|] The indictment also alleges that the SPLC opened bank accounts under assumed business names without disclosing the SPLC’s connection. Yet the indictment fails to allege that the SPLC sought to influence bank decisions, an essential element of the bank fraud offense. The SPLC used assumed names to protect its informants, not to influence the banks. [|End Quote] I mentioned that Blanche has claimed credit for this indictment? He’s done more than that. He has prejudiced any possible jury, and so has K$ Patel. Both have been all over television tainting jury pools. This makes a mistrial motion almost a gimme. [Quote:|] Blanche said that the SPLC is “manufacturing racism to justify its existence. Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.” Blanche continued, “This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.” He accused the SPLC of intentionally supporting the hate groups that the organization has confronted for over 40 years. Patel repeated the accusations, including in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News. And White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt called SPLC a “criminal organization.” [|End Quote] As I said, I’m skipping over the legal analysis, but I haven’t read anyone who has detected legal peril for SPLC. Mainly, there is no crime charged. It is as if the entire indictment is a publicity stunt with a cooperative grand jury an magistrate judge. Can’t blame ChantGPT for this one. The Department of Justice submitted false information in its amicus brief in Callais v. Louisiana and Vineyard Sam Alito quoted it in his controlling opinion in the case. Is our clerks learning? Joe Patrice discusses the materiality of factuality at Above the Law in “Sam Alito Put Fake Facts In A Supreme Court Opinion!?!?“ In the 1710’s, John Arbuthnot, John Gay, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope became the Scriblerus Club. One of the things they did was attack the misuse of reason. Arbuthnot and Gay went after people who used deductive reasoning to argue that what was logically attractive must be materially true. Think of Galileo arguing with the Vatican astronomers. The latter saw the sun spots, same as Galileo. However, they had established that (Major premise) God’s creation is perfect beyond the moon, that (minor premise) freckles, spots, dimming were all signs of imperfection, and therefore, even though they saw the spots, they couldn’t be there. Galileo had to recant his observations. Samuel Alito knows that there is no racism, that minority-majority precincts are not correcting for systematic racism. This is a major premise. He only needs a minor premise (a fact) so that he can get to his conclusion that the VRA is obsolete. [Quote:|] Realizing that a majority of the Supreme Court couldn’t be bothered to conduct superficial fact-checking before signing their names to the opinion would register as an all-timer scandal. But it’s America in 2026, so it barely registers more than a “sure.” [|End Quote] The original report is at The Guardian: [Quote:|] In an exclusive report, The Guardian identified false data included in the Alito authored majority opinion in Callais v. Louisiana. The factual claim, that Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, comes “almost verbatim” from an amicus brief filed by the Trump Department of Justice. Alito cited this data to support the premise that the Voting Rights Act was unnecessary. . . . this is shocking: the same Department of Justice repeatedly caught lying to courts… lied to the Court![|End Quote] So, was Spam so eager to find that The Blacks vote more than whites, so there is no need to give Them their own districts that he ignored the fact that the claim was Lying with Numbers, or was he suffering innumeracy, along with his clerks? Does he even care that the record that will be cited in case law for the next years will include a completely bogus set of numbers? Can anyone think of a reason to extend the benefit of the doubt to this man this year? [Quote:|] let’s give Alito the benefit of the doubt… he probably figured it out it was false and included it anyway. It’s certainly not the first time the Court’s conservatives have embraced falsehood in order to get the outcome they desire. [|End Quote] One question remains. Did all those who signed concurrences ignore the manufactured numbers that Alito pulled from an amicus brief when they pulled out their fountain pens, or did they smile a knowing smile at the thought that, for eternity, it would be true that Black voters voted at a higher percentage than whites in successive presidential elections (so there can’t be any impediment to Black representation)? Let’s look at the shadow court for an answer. [Conclusion:] Sari, folks. I’m more than a bit enervated, and the stories I could find were not particularly exciting. We can make our own fun today, I guess, but after 12:00 PM. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/10/800036334/community/l-l-20-may-10/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/