From my family to yours, wishing you a Merry Christmas and a joyful, safe holiday season. đ#SCM #FL20 pic.twitter.com/rO7VVjCggA
— Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (@CongresswomanSC) December 25, 2025
Archive for the ‘Law’ Category
Flaming hyena watch.
Friday, December 26th, 2025Crazy horse people update.
Monday, December 22nd, 2025Tatyana Remley took her own life outside a bar in San Diego Thursday night, authorities confirmed to the Daily Mail.
Remely, 44, died from a âgunshot wound to the headâ after she called her estranged husband from the bar, complaining about her new partner, her husband, Mark Remeley said.
âShe FaceTimed me while in the bathroom stall and told me, âIâm with this guy and heâs being a jerk,ââ Mark Remely told the Mail.
…
In August 2023, she was charged with trying to take out a hit on her ex, along with charges of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle and possessing a firearm in public.
She pleaded guilty to the charges and served one year of her nearly four-year prison sentence.
Flaming hyena update.
Thursday, December 18th, 2025Remember Marty Small, Sr., the mayor of Atlantic City? Charged with beating the s–t out of his teenage daughter?
Merry Christmas! Not guilty on all counts!
Mr. Small was accused of using a broom to strike his daughter in the head, causing her to lose consciousness. At other times in the two-month period, he hit her in the legs repeatedly, causing bruising, and threatened to âearth slamâ her, prosecutors said.
âWeâre not saying there shouldnât be disagreements in the home,â a prosecutor, Elizabeth Fischer, told jurors Tuesday in a closing statement, âbut weâre saying it shouldnât be met with violence.â
The jury began deliberating late Tuesday. Almost immediately, the panel requested to listen again to a recording, made by Mr. Smallâs daughter and her boyfriend, in which the mayor can be heard threatening to slam her to the ground.
Prosecutors had said that the threats were meant to instill terror; Mr. Smallâs lawyers argued that they were the warnings of a parent trying to correct the behavior of a child who, in a video also shown to jurors, was prone to extreme agitation when punished.
âA father takes a phone away from his daughter, and that results in the Tasmanian devil coming out,â Mr. Smallâs lawyer, Louis M. Barbone, told jurors after replaying footage taken during a separate family conflict.
In New Jersey, corporal punishment that is not considered excessive is legal.
The charges against his wife are still pending.
Obit watch: December 11, 2025.
Thursday, December 11th, 2025Three obits today for people who aren’t as notable as usual, but who I find interesting for one reason or another.
Stephen Downing. He was a police officer with the LAPD. One day he picked up the phone at the precinct.
Jack Webb was on the other end of the line. He was looking for a technical advisor for “Adam-12”.
Mr. Downing â who had studied creative writing in the 1960s at what is now California State University, Los Angeles â got the job and quickly surmised that he could offer more than guidance on police policy and tactics. He wanted to write a script.
âWebb said, âItâs harder than it looks,ââ Michael Downing said in an interview, recalling what his father told him. âMy father went home, wrote the script over the weekend and sold it.â
He continued to write scripts (under pen names) while still working for the LAPD.
…
IMDB.
Donald McIntyre, opera singer.
The booming voice of Mr. McIntyre, a giant of a man who once seemed destined for a rugby career in his native New Zealand, rang out for more than five decades in the worldâs major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he had 16 major roles from 1975 to 1996.
But âthe highlight of my career,â as he put it in his 2019 autobiography, was his performance at Bayreuth as Wotan, the king of the gods, in âDas Rheingold,â âDie WalkĂŒreâ and âSiegfriedâ in a groundbreaking 1976 production of Wagnerâs four-opera âDer Ring des Nibelungen,â directed by Patrice ChĂ©reau.
I don’t get to use my “Wagner” tag enough. But anyway:
By presenting the operas, based on Germanic mythology, as a neo-Marxist allegory of capitalist exploitation in the 19th century, Mr. ChĂ©reauâs production â the so-called centenary âRing,â marking the 100th anniversary of the tetralogyâs premiere at Bayreuth â shattered norms and set the stage for decades of updatings of canonical operas.
Audiences around the world were used to seeing Wagner gods and heroes holding spears and wearing pseudo-Norse winged helmets. While some postwar Bayreuth productions had emptied out the stage for radically spare visions of the classic works, putting Mr. McIntyreâs Wotan in an Edwardian frock coat and dressing the Rhinemaidens as cancan girls caused a near riot at the tradition-encrusted summer festival.
As Mr. McIntyre recalled in his memoir, an enraged older lady beat another spectator over the head with an umbrella; âhowls of furyâ greeted his entrance onstage in the frock coat; and the composerâs daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner, a onetime confidant of Hitlerâs, told Mr. McIntyre that if she came across Mr. ChĂ©reau, she would âshoot himâ for politicizing the âRing.â
Over four years, however, with the production revived, revised and refined each summer, many holdouts eventually warmed to it, and at the final performances, in 1980, there was a 45-minute standing ovation. When Winifred Wagner and Mr. ChĂ©reau finally met, she admitted that âmany times I wanted to kill you,â but added, âAfter all, isnât it better to be furious than bored?â
There’s something to be said for that.
George Altman, baseball player. He was one of only three people who played in the Negro Leagues, MLB, and in Japan. (Don Newcombe and Larry Doby are the other two.)
At Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University), he played basketball and baseball. After graduating in 1955 with a degree in physical education, he landed a tryout with the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro Leagues team managed by Buck OâNeil.
Altman took batting practice with the Monarchs before one of their games.
âEvidently I must have impressed them a little bit because as I was getting comfortable on the bench, sitting back to just enjoy the game, Buck came up to me and said, âBoy, youâre in there,ââ Altman wrote. âIt almost scared me to death.â
…
After three months with the Monarchs, he signed with the Cubs and was assigned to the Burlington Bees, in Iowa, in the minor leagues. He was drafted into the Army in 1956, and then rejoined the Cubs organization in 1958. He was promoted to the major leagues the next year.
âThe thing I like about Altman is the fact that he knows where the strike zone is,â [Ernie] Banks told The Sporting News in 1959. âThatâs one thing most young ballplayers donât know about. They swing at anything they can reach with the bat. Altman waits for his pitch.â
In need of pitching, the Cubs traded Altman to the Cardinals in 1962. St. Louis traded him to the Mets the next year, and the Mets traded him back to the Cubs before the 1965 season. By then, he was struggling with injuries, once joking that he played for Blue Cross.
After Altman hit just .111 in 15 games in 1967, his career in the majors was over. Unwilling to quit playing, he joined the Tokyo Orions in Japan. During seven seasons with the team, he hit 193 home runs, becoming a popular player for his slugging and willingness to learn Japanese phrases.
Firings watch.
Wednesday, December 10th, 2025Wow!
Sherrone Moore fired as head coach of the University of Michigan.
The team was 9-3 this season. But it wasn’t a football related firing.
“inappropriate relationship”. “with cause”.
He was 17-8 in two seasons. More from ESPN, but not much more.
Edited to add:
Yet another flaming hyena update.
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025Flaming hyena update.
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025Thereâs been a major shakeup at a Houston-based hospitality company…
“hospitality company”. RCI Hospitality Holdings owns various businesses, including Bombshells Restaurant & Bar, Rickâs Cabaret, Chicas Locas, and Club Onyx.
Anyway:
The HouChron says it is “unclear” why they stepped down, but suggests it might be related to their criminal indictments for bribing a tax auditor.
And if that rings a bell with you now, yes, I covered this back in September. Remember “dance dollars”?
Still no evidence of cocaine being involved in this case, though, alas.
Flaming hyenas update.
Monday, November 24th, 2025The charges against James Comey and Tish James have been dismissed.
The reason is pretty much the usual one:
The charges were dismissed “without prejudice”, meaning they can be re-filed. I assume they will be if Judge Cameron Currie is overruled in this matter.
It would seem to me that, if the charges were filed before the statute of limitations expired, and the judge’s ruling is held to be in error, the charges should be able to be reinstated. But I Am Not A Lawyer.
Youâre going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#155 in a series)
Thursday, November 20th, 2025Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is a Democratic congresswoman from Florida.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted yesterday.
This time around, it isn’t mortgage fraud.
The allegations, announced by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, are related to the family healthcare company where Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother worked in 2021. According to the Department of Justice, their company received a $5 million overpayment of federal covid relief funds.
Prosecutors allege that a âsubstantial portion of the misappropriated fundsâ were then redirected back to Cherfilus-McCormickâs congressional campaign through straw donors and by passing the money through family and friends. âUsing disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,â Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement announcing the indictment.
Also charged: her brother Edwin Cherfilus, Nadege Leblanc, and Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick’s tax preparer David Spencer.
You’re smoking in a no-smoking zone, you tax-fattened hyena!
Thursday, November 13th, 2025And I’m looking forward to full on flames.
Headline on the front page of the NYPost:
Dem repâs $1.2 million DC home target of DOJ mortgage fraud criminal referral
We’re almost getting to the point where “politician charged with mortgage fraud” is the new “car bomb explodes in Beirut”.
But this one is special.
You may remember Eric Swalwell for such hits as “banging a Chinese spy”:
In January 2023, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) kicked Swalwell off the House Intelligence Committee, following reports three years prior that a suspected Chinese spy had infiltrated the congressmanâs campaign â and got close to him.
Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, was a purported honeytrap who entered the US from China as a college student in 2011 â but allegedly spent the next four years wooing state and federal lawmakers to potentially obtain sensitive government intelligence.
At least two mayors of midwestern US cities had a romantic or sexual relationship with her, a US intelligence official and former elected official told Axios in 2020.
You may also remember Rep. Swalwell for threatening to use nuclear weapons against gun owners.
If Rep. Swalwell is convicted (and as much as I despise the man, he is still entitled to the presumption of innocence) he will, of course, lose all rights to own guns. I assume this includes any access he may have to nuclear weapons.
Historical note. Parental guidance suggested.
Saturday, November 1st, 202570 years ago today, United Flight 629 (a DC-6B) disintegrated near Longmont, Colorado. There were no survivors among the 44 passengers and crew.
Youâre going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#153 and #154 in a series)
Thursday, October 30th, 2025Dalya Attar is a state senator in Maryland.
Dalya Attar has been indicted on federal charges of, believe it or not, extortion. Most of the time, it is mail or wire fraud, often in conjunction with bribery. Extortion is so rare, let us savor that for a moment. The indictment was handed down October 23rd, but I’m only seeing reports of it today.
Reports say that there were two people who were “detracting from or negatively influencing her election campaigns”.
This dates back to 2020, when she was working on her re-election to the Maryland House of Delegates. Reports say she had a falling out with a consultant who had previously worked on her 2018 campaign. The consultant became a vocal critic of Ms. Attar, and Ms. Attar wanted her to be “a non-issue in my mind”.
Ms. Attar allegedly conspired with her brother and a Baltimore police officer.
…and others involved in the plot allegedly placed a tracker on the consultantâs car and installed hidden cameras in a smoke detector in an apartment the victim used to rendezvous with her married paramour.
âDamn, I wish I had [the manâs] stamina,â Finklestein stated in a WhatsApp voice message after installing the cameras, according to the indictment.
…
In December 2021, Joseph Attar allegedly met with the man whoâd had an affair with the consultant at a Baltimore-area shopping center and claimed to have âhours of footage of you in bed with [her] ⊠the only thing you need to do is very simple, is go to [the consultant] and tell her, leave Dalya alone. Donât bring her up anymore to anyone. Stay out of this election ⊠and make sure she doesnât do anything against Dalya.â
According to the indictment, Joseph Attar also told the man that if he didnât do what he asked, âIâll share this video with everybody you know, everyone she knows, every Rabbi in town, your kids, your wife, her daughters ⊠I already have all her daughtersâ phone numbers, right? And every shadchan [matchmaker] in Israel who is trying to set up her daughters, Iâll share these videos with.â
Sen. Attar wasn’t elected to the Senate: she was appointed in January, but she is currently running for the seat.
I’m linking to the Sun’s coverage, but it is kind of thin right now. “This article will be updated.” The NYPost is a little more detailed, but also “This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.”
LaMar Cook is a staffer for Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts.
LaMar Cook has been charged with various crimes.
“unlawful possession of a firearm”. As we all know, Bob, Massachusetts never met a gun control measure it didn’t like.
“unlawful possession of ammunition”. See above.
And “trafficking over 200 grams of cocaine”. Way over 200 grams. Try eight kilos of cocaine. Which he had delivered to the state office building he worked in.
As a great philosopher once said, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.“
Obit watch: October 30, 2025.
Thursday, October 30th, 2025Bjorn Andresen. There’s a certain lack of notability here, but I think it is offset by the sadness of this story.
Mr. Andresen was 15 when Luchino Visconti cast him as Tadzio, the object of desire in his adaption of “Death In Venice”.
Visconti called him âthe most beautiful boy in the worldâ.
Visconti was also fixated on Mr. Andresen. During the boyâs screen test, the director asked him to strip to his swimsuit.
âWhen they asked me to take off my shirt, I wasnât comfortable,â Mr. Andresen told Variety after the release of âThe Most Beautiful Boy in the World,â a 2021 documentary about him directed by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri. âI wasnât prepared for that. I remember when he posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that.
âWhen I watch it now,â he said, âI see how that son of a bitch sexualized me.â
He told The Guardian that Visconti was âthe sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.â
…
During the making of âDeath in Venice,â Visconti acted protectively toward Mr. Andresen. But the boy felt unprepared when Visconti took him to a gay club after the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1971.
In the documentary, Mr. Andresen recalled feeling besieged by âvoracious looks, wet lips and rolling tonguesâ and getting drunk to cope with the unwanted attention. He wondered if Visconti, who was gay, was testing him to see if he was also gay, which he wasnât.
…
Over the last 20 years or so, his flowing hair became gray and he obscured his face behind a beard that made him look something like Ian McKellen as the wizard Gandalf in the âLord of the Ringsâ films.
Mr. Andresen continued to act, mostly on television in Sweden but also in films, including a memorable turn in Ari Asterâs 2019 horror movie, âMidsommar.â He was also a keyboard player in a dance band, a composer of jazz and bossa nova music, the arranger of the music for a Swedish production of âThe Rocky Horror Show,â and the manager of a small theater in Stockholm.
Lawrence sent over an obit for Pierre Robert, long time Philadelphia DJ. The NYPost ran one as well.
This isn’t quite an obit, but I don’t know where else to put it. I also don’t quite know how to write about it, so I’m just going to do the best I can.
Officer Lauren Craven of the La Mesa (California) Police Department was killed on October 23rd. She was 25 years old, and had joined the department in February of 2024.
She came upon a deadly rollover crash on Interstate 8 northeast of San Diego just before 10:30 p.m. last Monday, officials said.
She reported the incident over the radio before stepping out and walking toward a car that had flipped over.
Craven was struck by another car, which triggered a chain reaction, smashing into the vehicles involved in the initial crash.
David Pearce was sentenced yesterday.
Pearce met Christy Giles, 24, and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26, at a rave party in Los Angeles and lured them back to his place â plying them with fentanyl-laced coke and drugged drinks and then refusing to call for help when they overdosed.
A witness claimed Pearce said âdead girls donât talkâ when he begged the killer to call 911.
Instead, Pearce dragged their limp bodies into his Toyota Prius and dumped them on the sidewalk in front of two different hospitals.
After the girls were murdered and scumbag Pearce was charged, seven other women came forward and said they’d been assaulted by him.
It came out yesterday, during the sentencing, that one of those women was Ms. Craven.
…
Pearce was sentenced to a total of 146 years in prison for his crimes…
She was assaulted by someone who isn’t even worth being called “human”, but she didn’t let that stop her. She worked her butt off to get through the police academy and get sworn in as an officer, and she died a hero.
Anybody else notice that there’s an awful lot of dust in the air today?
Firings watch (plus, bonus legal news!)
Thursday, October 23rd, 2025I know I’ve been quiet the past few days. There just hasn’t been much going on. But today is shaping up to be interesting.
ESPN is reporting the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. Also arrested: Terry Rozier, guard for the Miami Heat.
According to the NYPost:
Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, has been charged with partaking in an alleged illegal poker ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo crime families, sources told The Post.
A total of 31 people across the country are charged with running rigged games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, sources said.
The players involved were being paid by mobsters to play in card games fixed with technology and card shuffling machines to give the house the advantage, sources familiar with the case said.
The athletes were told to take a dive when they had to and win when they were told. It didnât appear as if they were attempting to pay off any debts, sources said.
Rozier’s arrest is tied to another case.
ESPN is suggesting this might also be tied to the Jontay Porter case.
Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted in court to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season. He is awaiting sentencing in December.
Four men, including Porter, have pleaded guilty in the case. Two other men have been named as conspirators and have been in plea negotiations, according to court filings.
And I did promise a firing, didn’t I? This is a sports firing, but it’s an odd one: Ken Williamson has been “permanently suspended” as a SEC referee.
…following eleven complaints against the seasoned official and his crew during the Auburn-Georgia game on Oct. 11, sources told Yellowhammer News on Wednesday.
âAccording to sources, nine of those complaints were validated by conference officials,â the outlet wrote.
The gameâs biggest controversy came late in the second quarter, when Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold lost the ball near the one-yard line during a QB sneak and was recovered by Georgia cornerback Kyron Jones.
Though multiple angles from ABCâs broadcast appear to show Jackson crossing the goal line before the ball was punched out, officials ruled it a fumble â awarding the Bulldogs possession after the recovery.
Obit watch: October 14, 2025.
Tuesday, October 14th, 2025John Searle, philosopher. He was best known (at least to me) as a critic of artificial intelligence: not what passes for AI today, but the entire idea that computers could become conscious.
Professor Searle sought to solve the long-running debate over the division between the mind and the body by dispensing with the duality altogether. He argued that mental experiences like pain, ecstasy and drunkenness were all neurobiological phenomena, caused by firing neurons. Consciousness is not, he said, a separate substance of its own: It is a state the brain is in, like liquidity is the state of the molecules in a glass of water.
That view underpinned his thought experiment about what he called âthe Chinese room,â which he made the centerpiece of provocative articles in the early 1980s that interpreted nascent research into artificial intelligence.
Suppose, Professor Searle wrote, that he, who did not know a word of Chinese, was locked in a room with boxes full of documents in Chinese script as well as a rulebook, in English, explaining how to match the various Chinese symbols together. It does not teach Chinese; it just says, in effect, âsquiggle-squiggleâ goes with âsquoggle-squoggle.â
People outside the room pass more Chinese documents inside, and Professor Searle sends other documents back, following the rulebookâs instructions. The people passing him documents call them âquestions.â The symbols he gives back they call âanswers.â The rulebook they call âthe program.â And Professor Searle they call âthe computer.â
That situation is equivalent to the workings of A.I., he said. Both involve manipulating formal symbols to simulate understanding.
âNo one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down,â Professor Searle wrote in his first paper on the subject, published in 1980. âWhy on earth would anyone suppose that a computer simulation of understanding actually understood anything?â
Personally, I think that Dr. Searle’s argument that computers can’t think, but at best can do a clever simulation of thinking, somewhat interesting. And if I had ever met the good doctor, I would have told him that I would take this argument more seriously if he could convince me he was actually thinking, as opposed to just engaged in a clever simulation of thinking.
Clark Olofsson, Swedish criminal. I would have skipped this for notability, if it wasn’t for the fact that Mr. Olofsson was one of the two robbers in the “Stockholm syndrome” case. The obit is worth reading, as it casts a somewhat skeptical light on the whole idea of “Stockholm syndrome”.
The term was coined by a Swedish police psychologist, Nils Bejerot, after he was asked to assess the hostagesâ curious behavior during the robbery. But Stockholm syndrome has never been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook of mental illness in the United States.
Some psychologists have explained the behavior as a coping mechanism, seen in victims of kidnappings and among hostages seized by Middle East terrorists, and in victims of domestic abuse. The captives, psychologists say, find a way to self-preservation by siding with their all-powerful captors.
…
…
Although mental health experts have theorized about Stockholm syndrome for half a century, almost none thought to speak to Ms. Enmark, the bank employee central to the drama and the diagnosis.
One psychologist who did was Allan Wade, a Canadian therapist specializing in interpersonal violence, who, after meeting Ms. Enmark, called Stockholm syndrome a made-up concept meant to shift focus from the stumbles of the Swedish police.
âThe whole notion was an accusation,â he told the BBC in 2021. âIt was a way to dismiss what an incredibly heroic woman had been doing for six and a half days to resist, preserve her dignity and look after the other hostages.â