Legal Realist

Elkhart County man's conviction overturned, released from jail after 27 years Reggie Dillard was released from Elkhart County Jail on Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. His murder conviction was overturned after he served 27 years in jail.

Reggie Dillard's murder conviction is overturned after 27 years of wrongful conviction: www.southbendtribune.com/picture-gall...

MQD being sold as a tool for enforcing the separation of powers but actually being a vehicle for judicial aggrandizement.

FWIW my opinion on MQD remains:

indelible breakdown of how LAPD disrupted a peaceful vigil & then lied about it

I think conservatives deride and mock the sentiment of the Notre Dame College Republicans at their own peril. Their sentiment deserves to be rationally investigated and debated, not dismissed out of hand. There’s at least some truth, and perhaps a lot, to how they describe past events. The left has arguably weaponized or corrupted academia, state bars, the criminal justice system, and other institutions against Republicans. Exactly what they accuse Trump of doing. The tariff case offers an example of the asymmetry: the three liberal justices are quick to find massive authority under cryptic statutory language to support the clean power plan, student debt forgiveness, federal Covid mandates, etc. but they can’t bring themselves to accept a broad delegation to President Trump under much clearer statutory language in this case? It’s totally asymmetrical. Now imagine if we had six of these justices on the court. Perhaps the Notre Dame College Republicans have not identified the correct response. After all the Court’s conservatives struck down those Biden-era efforts. But dismissing their concerns out of hand is not sensible. A lot of young people share their sentiments. And I am eager to explore these motivating concerns on the rationally based podcast.

Of course, Ilan.

I mean this is the same sort of logic that has lead to people remembering Anthony Kennedy, who was a conservative vote *in most cases,* as a borderline Marxist because he wouldn’t overturn Roe and wrote the majority in Obergefell.

"Our wins aren't wins ... they're just correct and normal applications of the law.

"Your wins, on the other hand, are proof the system is biased against us—we, the downtrodden republicans who presently control only 3 branches of the federal government."

ND college republicans: For the last four decades American manufacturing has been systematically dismantled, millions have lost their jobs and livelihoods, critical supply chains have moved to hostile countries, hardware productivity growth has collapsed, and consumption has been increasingly financed by mortgaging off the future to foreigners. He who saves his country violates no law. We urge President Trump to defy the Supreme Court's lawless, disgusting ruling today.

For those getting mad over this, no, we're not against the rule of law in principle, but we acknowledge the obvious fact that it's been dead for decades. Democrats imported 10 million illegal immigrants, locked people in their homes, discriminated against them for not taking an experimental vaccine, and a host of other lawless actions that no court, legal procedure, or concern for "principles" ever stopped. They get elected to statewide office or to local DA positions and decide they're going to unilaterally refuse to enforce laws. They use the Supreme Court to create fictional rights to abortion, homosexuality, and DEI with not even the most cursory preoccupation with "the American tradition." Insisting on legalism with leftists is like playing a soccer game with your feet while the other team scores every goal with their hands. The constitutional order requires a set of assumptions, practices, and norms to properly exist; the founders emphasize this repeatedly. Those norms are dead. The left killed them, and there's no going back.

I’m not saying these posts are indicative of broader GOP thought, but there is something interesting about how many conservatives respond to any judicial loss.

*ahem*

Con Law prof here. You cannot use an executive order to pass legislation.

Can you definitively PROVE it’s not a coincidence, that the judges were biased? Can you show they made an objective error? (And even if you can, can you show it wasn’t a good-faith mistake?)

No? Well then how dare you say law and politics are the same.

Not news to anyone, but being a scotus justice is a lot more like being a figure skating judge than being an umpire.

And, for both, we’re asked to believe it’s an inexplicable coincidence that judges consistently reach opinions that seem to favor their home country/ideology.

Tyler Austin Harper on twitter: I’ve spent the last year working on a story about the Mellon Foundation, the mega-wealthy private nonprofit that has a monopoly on humanities funding in America. The article, about how Mellon has held the humanities hostage to its progressive political ideology, is out today.

hey cool man while you were deep in research or whatever you might want to catch up on some other stuff that has happened in the world in the past year

FBI stymied by Apple's Lockdown Mode after seizing journalist's iPhone Post reporter was compelled to unlock MacBook Pro with fingerprint, however.

FBI agents were able to access the reporter’s work laptop by telling her to place her index finger on the MacBook Pro’s fingerprint reader, however.

Is this Converse? Or is this a suggestion that moderates are actually very attached to their idiosyncratic ideology?

Took you six months to make that point?

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution

I can't improve on what Ricky Revesz said here: "The idea that E.P.A. would not consider the public health benefits of its regulations is anathema to the very mission of E.P.A." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...

Do you want to go through it word by word? I can send you an audio file of me reading it out loud slowly if you're having trouble.

lololol dude I pointed out the intentional thing SIX MONTHS AGO. You're coming back six months later to be like "not what I meant!" Can you not read?

Here's a link, buddy.

bsky.app/profile/lega...

But, tell you what, to save you the trouble of finding old tweets every year ... based on [1] alone, your comment will still be moronic even if he goes the rest of his career losing playoff games.

Uh [1] still applies ... and [2] okay 3 chances?

they are recruiting for the worst, bottom-of-the-barrel chuds imaginable and those chuds are behaving exactly as you'd expect

I would say even for those of us who spend a lot of time reading police shooting cases from the courts of appeals and watching the related videos - and that is a shocking and dismaying experience, I promise you - that one is pretty shocking.

one takeaway from the grok noncon porn thing is that much of the media just isn't interested in an issue they can't pretend has two sides or that doesn't give them an opportunity to shit on the left. Also it would be uncomfortable to justify remaining on twitter after acknowledging it

babe wake up, they're doing insider trading on war crimes

The Trump Doctrine is, essentially: “Who’s gonna stop you?”

You could argue Cheryl Hines is "just a woman who fell in love with the wrong man."

"Falling in love" doesn't force you to cover an election when you have an unreported conflict of interest and are (at least per Lizza) acting as a shadow PR manager for a candidate in the race.

Headling/subhead: In Defense of Olivia Nuzzi: The disgraced journalist is neither victim nor villain—just a woman who fell for the wrong man. By Lisa Taddeo.

Old tweet: "New right wing thing is describing crimes as generically as possible to pretend like they're not crimes. Someone gets convicted of conspiracy and they start yelling 'Wow so it's illegal to make plans with friends now'"

(Caveats: I'm not saying the writer of this piece is right wing or that what Nuzzi did was a crime ... no comment on the illicit recording thing ... but come on.)

Chart from 538 showing win probabilities if you go for 2 vs. go for 1 depending on the margin after the TD (before the extra point try).

This is a little old but if I'm following this chart from a 2017 538 article ... it basically makes no difference. (Margin after the TD would be -9.)

I just wonder if the psychological effects actually manifest in the stats.

I wish the announcers had gotten into the data. Surely "if you're down 15 is it better/worse/the same to go for 2 early or wait and go for 2 later?" is a question there's a lot of data on.