Last night the continuing Horror caught up to me. I’ve been pretty combative over the past several weeks and emotional fisticuffs apparently transform one’s sense of horror into action.
But last night I was depressed and today I still am. Over Gorsuch this time, because it’s so bloody permanent. And because without question dark money bought him this seat.
The power of dark money...the Koch Bros Final Solution to Democracy.
I’m sick but it is my character to search for shards of light in all this dark. So I found this article from BuzzFeed, which I’d collected but hadn’t posted.
Source: Trump Can Be Sued For Inciting Violence Against Protesters At A Campaign Rally, A Judge Says
It may lift your spirits a little bit. Here’s how it starts:
Three protesters can proceed with their lawsuit against President Donald Trump and several of his supporters after a federal judge agreed that his rhetoric possibly incited violence at a campaign rally last year, rejecting the president’s defense that it was free speech.
Kashiya Nwanguma, Molly Shah, and Henry Brousseau said they attended the Louisville, Kentucky, rally last March to “peacefully protest Trump.” Several of his supporters then shoved, punched, and forcibly removed them from the event after Trump yelled, “get ‘em out of here” several times.
The protesters had filed a lawsuit after the March 1, 2016, rally, claiming that Trump encouraged violence and that they were the targets of racial and sexist slurs.
US District Judge David J. Hale of Kentucky ruled Friday that the suit against Trump, his campaign, and several supporters can go forward, saying that the protesters have sufficiently proven that their injuries were a “direct and proximate result” of Trump’s actions. They are seeking unspecified financial damages.
“It is plausible that Trump’s direction to “get ’em out of here” advocated the use of force,” he wrote, stating that Trump should have known his statements would provoke violence. “It was an order, an instruction, a command.”
Just in case you have become so despairing you don’t know whether to trust the facts, here’s the Kentucky local paper, the Courier-Journal, stating the same thing.
The judge was appointed by President Obama.
With virtually no respectable research effort, I will state that Hitler was never sued for inciting violence. Indeed, he was, in effect, sued only after he was dead–but the lawsuit was actually against huge German industrialists who, under Hitler, used slave labor.
Which does sound encouraging, doesn’t it? See above, re Koch Bros. Maybe a little bit slow-moving.
“Vicarious liability.” A new term for me. (Maybe all of us can file a class action lawsuit against Trump, citing vicarious liability.)
Let’s see how Black’s Law Dictionary defines it:
vicarious liability (vi-kair-ee-as). Liability that a supervisory party (such as an employer) bears for the actionable conduct of a subordinate or associate (such as an employee) based on the relationship between the two parties. See RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR.
OK, let’s see:
respondeat superior (ri-spon-dee-at soo-peer-ee-ar… [Law Latin “let the superior make answer”] Torts. The doctrine holding an employer or principal liable for the employee’s or agent’s wrongful acts committed within the scope of the employment or agency. See SCOPE OF EMPLOYMENT.
Nah, I could diddle around with this all day. But will stop now.