Jussie Smollett's Last-Ditch Effort to Dismiss Criminal Trial Ends in Failure as Judge Delivers a Reality Check
Jussie Smollett will finally face a trial for his 2019 stunt in which he claimed he was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack in Chicago.
On Friday, Judge James Linn rejected arguments from the actor’s lawyer that the charges against him should be dismissed, according to Fox News.
The claim being made was that under a deal with Cook County prosecutors in which charges were dropped without a trial taking place, Smollett performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond.
However, amid a firestorm of controversy over the deal, a special prosecutor was appointed who levied additional charges of lying to police against Smollett. On Friday, Smollett’s attorney sought to wriggle out from under those.
To have Smollett “hauled back into court again” would violate Smollett’s due process rights, attorney Nenye Uche said, according to USA Today. “It’s as clear as day – this case should be dismissed because of an immunity agreement,” Uche said. “A deal is a deal. That’s ancient principle.”
Sean Wieber, an attorney with the special prosecutor’s office, said the claim should be “summarily dismissed.”
“We have already dealt with this before,” he said. “Nothing we’ve heard today changes one iota (of the case). This can be comfortably denied.”
Linn said that he had heard it all before and dismissed those claims, saying he would not change now. “I’m denying the motion to dismiss,” he said.
In a July hearing, Linn explained his reasoning. “There was no trial in this case, there was no jury empaneled, no witnesses were sworn, no evidence was heard, no guilty pleas were ever entered … nothing like that [ever] happened,” Linn said of the case, according to WGN-TV. “There was no adjudication of this case,” he said then.
Smollett’s trial will begin on Nov. 29.
Smollett claimed two masked men approached him as he was walking home on Jan. 29, 2019, and “made racist and homophobic insults, beat him and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing,” Fox News reported. However, the account has since been discredited by the two men Smollett reportedly paid to conduct the “racist and homophobic” assault — Abel and Ola Osundario.
The two men alleged that Smollett transferred the sum of $3,500 to them in exchange for the jumping, hoping to “raise his profile,” according to Fox News.
The actor called the charges brought against him a “dog and pony show,” the outlet reported.
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Biden Supreme Court commission opposes adding justices
The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court released its first report Thursday, suggesting that an expansion of the court would be unlikely to achieve balance and instead recommending the rotation of justices.
"There are also reasons to doubt that Court expansion necessarily would produce benefits in terms of diversity of efficiency," the Commission said in the report. "There is no guarantee that a larger Court would be drawn from a more diverse group of individuals. And a larger court may be less efficient than the current complement of justices."
The report comes after some congressional Democrats earlier this year called for an expansion to the Supreme Court, arguing that Republicans had unfairly obtained a conservative majority after former President Donald Trump was able to fill three vacancies during his single term.
President Biden, who in the past had expressed opposition to the idea of expanding the court, responded to the calls by forming the commission to study court expansion and reform.
But the commission pointed to other risks to expanding the court, including recent polling that indicates the public does not favor court expansion, while noting that expanding the court could lead to a "continuous cycle of future expansions."
"To be sure, any Supreme Court Reform would likely require unified government," the report says. "Nevertheless, we believe it is important to recognize the risk. According to one [purportedly modest] estimate of the consequences of expansion as parties gain Senate majorities and add Justices, the Supreme Court could expand to twenty-three or twenty-nine Justices in the next fifty years, and thirty-nine or possibly sixty-three Justices over the next century."
One idea floated by the commission as an alternative to expansion is a rotation system, which would see judges rotate between service on the Supreme Court and in lower federal courts.
But the report also notes that such a reform could face a "constitutional obstacle," noting that Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution states that "the judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such interior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
The report adds that there are also potential drawbacks to a rotation system even if they were deemed legal, including that such a system could "introduce inefficiencies into the court's work."
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Christopher Columbus's Forgotten Crusade Against Jihad
Another Columbus Day has come and gone. Although it was “celebrated” with the usual denunciations and outraged wokeism concerning the Italian explorer’s alleged “genocide” against the natives, one influential voice came to Columbus’s defense: On October 11, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a proclamation, an excerpt of which follows:
Columbus stands a singular figure in Western Civilization, who exemplified courage, risk-taking, and heroism in the face of enormous odds; as a visionary who saw the possibilities of exploration beyond Europe; and as a founding father who laid the foundation for what would one day become the United States of America, which would commemorate Columbus by naming its federal district after him.
While all this is true, Columbus stands for and is a reminder of something else that is now little known if not completely forgotten: He was, first and foremost, a crusader—an avowed enemy of the jihad; his expeditions were, first and foremost, about circumventing and ultimately retaliating against the Islamic sultanates surrounding and terrorizing Europe—not just finding spices.
When he was born, the then more than 800-year-old war with Islam—or rather defense against jihad—was at an all-time high. In 1453, when Columbus was 2-years-old, the Turks finally sacked Constantinople, an atrocity-laden event that rocked Christendom to its core.
Over the following years, the Muslims continued making inroads deep into the Balkans, leaving much death and destruction in their wake, with millions of Slavs enslaved. (Yes, the two words are etymologically connected, and for this very reason.)
In 1480, when he was 29, the Turks even managed to invade Columbus’s native Italy, where, in the city of Otranto, they ritually beheaded 800 Christians—and sawed their archbishop in half—for refusing to embrace Islam.
It was in this context that Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella—themselves avowed crusaders, especially the queen, who concluded the centuries-long Reconquista of Spain by liberating Granada of Islam in 1492—took Columbus into their service.
They funded his ambitious voyage in an effort to launch, in the words of historian Louis Bertrand, “a final and definite Crusade against Islam by way of the Indies.” (It, of course, went awry and culminated in the incidental founding of the New World.)
Many Europeans were convinced that if only they could reach the peoples east of Islam—who if not Christian were at least “not as yet infected by the Mahometan plague,” to quote Pope Nicholas V (d.1455)—together they could crush Islam between them. (The plan was centuries old and connected to the legend of Prester John, a supposedly great Christian monarch reigning in the East who would one day march westward and avenge Christendom by destroying Islam.)
All this comes out clearly in Columbus’s own letters: In one he refers to Ferdinand and Isabella as “enemies of the wretched sect of Mohammet” who are “resolve[d] to send me to the regions of the Indies, to see [how the people thereof can help in the war effort].” In another written to the monarchs after he reached the New World, Columbus offers to raise an army “for the war and conquest of Jerusalem.”
Nor were Spain and Columbus the first to implement this strategy; once Portugal was cleared of Islam in 1249, its military orders launched into Muslim Africa. “The great and overriding motivation behind [Prince] Henry the Navigator’s [b. 1394] explosive energy and expansive intellect,” writes historian George Grant, “was the simple desire to take the cross—to carry the crusading sword over to Africa and thus to open a new chapter in Christendom’s holy war against Islam.” He launched all those discovery voyages because “he sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes,” who “would aid him against the enemies of the faith,” wrote a contemporary.
Does all this make Columbus and by extension Ferdinand and Isabella—not to mention the whole of Christendom—“Islamophobes,” as those few modern critics who mention the Islamic backdrop of Columbus’s voyage often accuse?
The answer is yes—but not in the way that word is used today. While the Greek word phobos has always meant “fear,” its usage today implies “irrational fear.” However, considering that for nearly a thousand years before Columbus, Islam had repeatedly attacked Christendom to the point of swallowing up three-quarters of its original territory, including for centuries Spain; that Islam’s latest iteration, in the guise of the Ottoman Turks, was during Columbus’s era devastating the Balkans and Mediterranean; and that, even centuries after Columbus, Islam was still terrorizing the West—marching onto Vienna with 200,000 jihadis in 1683 and provoking America into its first war as a nation—the very suggestion that historic Christian fears of Islam were “irrational” is itself the height of irrationalism.
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Texas Senate passes bill requiring students to play on sports teams corresponding with biological sex
The Texas Senate passed legislation Friday that requires students to compete on school sports teams that correspond with the biological sex listed on their birth certificate.
House Bill 25, which passed the Texas House of Representatives by a vote of 76-54 on Thursday, was introduced by Republican state Rep. Valoree Swanson and heads next to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.
The only modified birth certificate allowed is that which has been amended "to correct a clerical error," according to the bill.
"This is all about girls and protecting them in our [University Interscholastic League] sports," Swanson said in support of her bill, according to CBS News. "I'm excited that we have the opportunity today to stand up for our daughters, granddaughters, and all our Texas girls."
Human Rights Campaign Texas State Director Rebecca Marques denounced the bill after the Texas House passed it, saying, "Texas legislators seem to take pride in passing discriminatory bills without any concern for the impact on Texans and the state’s growing negative national reputation."
"Transgender young people deserve the opportunity to play sports with their friends like any kid," Marques added, going on to allege that, "Texas legislators are putting the second-largest LGBTQ+ population in the country at significant health and safety risk.
"Radical policies like the anti-transgender sports ban bill that target children for no reason other than to score political points, making the state less safe and desirable for families to live and work, putting businesses in the state at a competitive disadvantage," Marques continued.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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