Category: Crap For Brains

Well, he’s nothing but a stooge, grandstanding again.

Murphy Tries to Re-Impose (and Hike) NFA Taxes After Congress Zeroed Them Out

We’ve been reporting on a rider inserted in the House Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill that would force Washington, D.C. to recognize valid concealed carry permits from all U.S. states and territories (as well as end the District’s “no guns allowed” policy for public transportation, but pro-gun Republicans aren’t the only ones trying to use the appropriations process to change gun laws.

Murphy’s trying to insert a rider into the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill with language to undo the NFA reform included in the OBBB and instead raise the transfer tax on NFA items from $200 to $4,709 for each transfer.

As Brady indicates, the nearly $5,000 that Murphy wants to impose essentially indexes the original $200 transfer tax imposed in 1934 to the rate of inflation over the past 90 years. Still, that’s much higher than what we’ve heard proposed from other anti-gun Democrats in Congress, who’ve talked about tripling the $200 tax once they have hte numbers to do so.

And therein lies the problem for Murphy. He can propose any kind of tax increase he wants, but he basically has zero chance of seeing his proposal included in the MCVARA appropriations bill (which has already passed the House). The Republican majority that voted to zero out transfer taxes on suppressors, short-barreled firearms, and “any other weapons” a couple of weeks ago isn’t going to turn around and vote in favor of dramatically hiking the taxes instead.

Murphy’s offered a couple of other amendments to the appropriations bill as well.

Amendment 2972 would require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to issue a quarterly report on “the number of veterans who should have been reported to the national instant criminal background check system… if such reporting by the Secretary was permitted, and of those veterans, the number of suicides by firearm that occurred in the previous quarter”.

That amendment is a response to another rider that would extend the VA’s prohibition on submitting the names of those veterans who’ve had a fiduciary appointed to handle their affairs to NICS.

A temporary provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 and its extensions (including the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025) prohibited the VA from making these NICS reports without a judicial finding. That provision, though, is set to expire on September 30 unless Congress includes similar language in this year’s appropriations bill.

And Congress has included that language. Section 412 of the MCVARA bill states:

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs under section 5502 of title 38, United States Code, in any case arising out of the administration by the Secretary of laws and benefits under such title, to report a person who is deemed mentally incapacitated, mentally incompetent, or to be experiencing an extended loss of consciousness as a person who has been adjudicated as a mental defective under subsection (d)(4) or (g)(4) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code, without the order or finding of a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.

Murphy’s also offered an amendment that would simply strike that language from the appropriations bill so that veterans who’ve had a fiduciary appointed to help manage their financial affairs to be deemed a prohibited person without a judicial finding of dangerousness.

I doubt those amendments are going to fare any better than Murphy’s attempt to jack up NFA taxes by more than 2,000 percent, but gun owners should still be in contact with their Senators to encourage their opposition; both to these amendments and any others that would negatively impact our Second Amendment rights that might be introduced by anti-2A senators.

In  Re the preceeding:

From the dissent:

“By the majority’s reasoning, any regulation of sales of ammunition is presumptively unlawful, unless the state can produce an identical historical twin,” – Judge Bybee

Yes you moron, they’re literally following Bruen: A law must have an analogue to the Founding Era. Does he think that the Founders were too stupid to have thought of restricting ammunition? That they couldn’t conceive of erecting barriers around it?
There’s no way that judge is that stupid. He’s trying to legislate from the bench and carry water for the demoncraps. No other explanation is possible, and that’s reprehensible.

Well, apparently we were misled earlier.
The partisan hack demoncrap appointed parliamentarian says that a tax law (so specified as such by the writes back in 1934 and so ruled as such by SCOTUS themselves isn’t a tax law that can be dealt with under reconciliation.

Lurch is at it again.

Plus the physical plant needed too

Well, that’s definitely not ‘good behavior’……

Impeach: A Judge Decides to Ignore the Supreme Court on Deportation Ruling

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s deportations to third-world countries can continue without limited notice, blocking an injunction by a little judge who sought to wrest immigration policy away from the executive. The high court slapped down Judge Brian Murphy’s order, but like James Boasberg, another disgrace to the bench, he’s ignoring the ruling.

This isn’t normal. While the president can remove people under the Alien Enemies Act, these judicial insurrectionists tried to claim that due process had to be applied. That’s ludicrous; none of the illegals Obama deported had court dates. It’s another episode of the judicial coup against the Trump administration. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said to be prepared for fireworks over what they will do to hold this little judge accountable.

What Trump’s Critics Still Don’t Understand About Iran.

We are assured that it’s not the group that calls itself an Islamic State because our political leaders and our media have told us so. It’s the same with Boko Haram. They regularly slaughter Christians, women and children included. Spokesmen for Boko Haram say that they represent Islamic teaching, but no: our leaders have assured us that that is not the case. “No religion,” said Obama, “condones the killing of innocents.”

Has the former president contemplated the glorious history of Islam and the glittering deeds of Mohammed? We have it on the highest—and for Muslims, the only—authority that the Prophet regularly slaughtered innocents. Consider, to take just one example,the siege of Medina in the year 627, then home to a Jewish tribe. After a couple of weeks, the inhabitants surrendered unconditionally. Mohammad then had the 600-800 men butchered and sold the women and children into slavery.

“We are not at war with Islam,” our leaders tell us. “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

The impolitic question is, where are all those unperverted Muslims? In the common rooms of American universities? Maybe. In our cities and suburbs? Perhaps. But I think we can agree that it is not (to make an arbitrary and woefully incomplete list) the people behind such actions as

  • The 9/11 terrorist attacks
  • The Bali nightclub bombing
  • The Ft. Hood “workplace violence” event
  • The London tube and bus bombings
  • The Madrid train bombing
  • The Boston Marathon carnage
  • The Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket slaughters in France (“folks shot in a deli” was how Obama described the latter)
  • The Danish shootings by another “Allahu Akbar”-shouting chap.

Islam, or a perversion of Islam? At some point, as Hillary Clinton might put it, what difference does it make? As we contemplate the future of Iran, I would suggest pondering the possibility that, even if “we are not at war with Islam,” Islam may well be at war with us.

Mexico Parrots Democrat Lawfare Despite SCOTUS PLCAA Rejection

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that anti-Second Amendment groups run by the Democrat party have been working closely with Mexican officials to attack American gun rights and subvert the U.S. Constitution. This collusion with a foreign government recently set the stage for the Supreme Court’s rejection of our southern neighbor’s $10 billion lawsuit which aimed to cripple the American firearms industry by seeking an outrageous judgement against Smith & Wesson and other U.S. gun manufacturers. But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, ever willing to blame her own country’s abject failure and corruption on others, another strategy on loan from Democrat cohorts, has decided to push forward with an almost identical lawsuit, this time targeting gun dealers and distributors in Arizona.

Nobody knows more about abusing the U.S. judicial system than Democrats, and all the big names came out to bat for Mexico in its failed Supreme Court challenge of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a federal law enacted in 2005 providing firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers broad immunity from civil lawsuits arising from criminal or unlawful misuse of their products. In both cases, the Mexican government, aka the legal arm of the narco-terrorist drug cartels, claims its damages stem from the illegal trafficking of firearms by the same cartels they work with and take bribes from under their normal course of business.

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Federal Appeals Court Upholds Gun Free School Zones Law

The federal government may legally disarm at least some gun owners on or near school property.

That was the unanimous holding of a three-judge Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday. The panel upheld the conviction of a man charged with violating the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act by possessing an AR-15 in a vehicle he was living in 40 feet from a private catholic school. It ruled that the modern buffer zone around schools comported with historical analogues dating back nearly 700 years in England that prohibited possessing firearms in a manner that might “terrify the People.”

“The ‘why and how’ of 18 U.S.C. § 922(q)(2)(A), as applied to Allam, are ‘consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,’” Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote in US v. Allam. “Put differently, ‘taken together,’ the historical analogues offered by the Government ‘establish that our tradition of firearm regulation supports the application of [§ 922(q)(2)(A)] to [Allam].’”

The ruling leaves intact one of the most expansive “sensitive places” restrictions for firearm possession in all of federal law. It deals a blow to Second Amendment advocates who have long felt that the law’s 1000-foot buffer zone around school property unduly infringes upon gun-carry rights. At the same time, the panel’s narrow ruling tailored to the specific fact pattern of the case may mitigate the fallout for gun-rights advocates.

The panel’s decision focused entirely on defendant Ahmed Abdalla Allam’s conduct surrounding his arrest.

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Tim Walz Reminds Us of Disaster We Dodged in 2024 With Wild Remarks on Our Army, China, and Iran/Israel

One of the best things about President Donald Trump winning and Kamala Harris losing in November is that the insufferable Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, also lost.

Walz is not having a good week. He got flamed big time at the Sanctuary State hearing, where his answers were ridiculous.

But then came his remarks at a Center for American Progress (CAP) event, “What’s Next: Conversations on the Path Forward” with CAP CEO and former Biden official Neera Tanden. Those remarks confirmed again how lucky we are that he is not in power. They were truly next-level bad.

They were talking about the “escalatory” nature of the strikes in Israel and Iran.

Walz said, “Iran has to retaliate, in their mind,” and the “Middle East is back on fire in a way that has now expanded.”

“Now, who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this? Who holds the moral authority? Who holds the ability to do that? Because we are not seen as a neutral actor, and we maybe never were,” Walz said of the United States’ role in de-escalating tensions in the Middle East.

Guess who he thought might be the “neutral actor” with the “moral authority” to negotiate peace? China.

There are so many things wrong with this, it’s just mind-numbing.

He’s saying Communist, oppressive China has more moral authority than we do? How many millions of innocent people has the Chinese government slaughtered over the years? And since when are they a “neutral actor” as far as Iran? Does he not know they support Iran? Or does he not care, given his prior connection to China?

Harris Faulkner noted in the above “Outnumbered” report that China issued a similar statement about being ready to help, and it sounded like Tim received the same memo.

Kayley McEnany called it “one of the most naive articulations of foreign policy” — and she was kind.

Yes, we’re not neutral, nor should we be. Is he nuts? They’ve been our enemy, chanting “Death to America!” for decades since the mullahs took over. So much of what has gone wrong over the years in the region has been because of the failed Obama positions on Iran.

But Walz wasn’t quite done with the radical remarks yet. He was upset that — gasp — we would celebrate the 250th birthday of the Army. Listen as he explains how the preparations for the event offended his delicate sensibilities, that they were “horrific,” “looks wrong, feels wrong.” He’s talking about our military.

Walz explained that he would go somewhere else where they had a tradition of “separation” (not sure what he was talking about). He said, “This was not Pyong Yang on a Saturday.”

He confessed, “This may get me into trouble…but I have never so hoped for rain in my life.”

Then Neera Tanden laughs like it’s the funniest thing ever.

What the heck? He hopes the military is rained on/out. Again, I say, is he nuts? How petty and twisted is this? And he’s comparing our military with North Korea? How could anyone support this character for anything, even dogcatcher, much less for president? But it’s JD Vance, who they termed “weird.”

The 9th Circuit stayed this idiocy a few hours after it was written. They’ll hear arguments on it this coming Tuesday.

About That Judge Who Tried to Strip Trump’s Commander-in-Chief Powers Last Night…

Judge Charles Breyer is another member of this unholy fraternity that’s leading this judicial coup. The man tried to—and this is just beyond laughable—wrest the commander-in-chief role from the executive last night. It lasted about 30 seconds before an appeals court slapped it down for gross overreach. It’s become the hallmark characteristic of this cabal of judges who think they’re the entire government. Once again, we have a clown in robes who would fit better as an MSNBC commentator than a judge.

Charlie, brother of former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and a Clinton nominee, shares a common thread that’s shared by most of these nutty coup jurists: he’s a race lecturer. He’s a hardcore Democrat and has donated thousands to the party. However, that’s the least shocking part. If you wish, you can listen to this panel discussion from 2020 about how the system is racist or something. You know the deal with these people.

Based on his questionnaire, Breyer said he worked on the transition team for the late Terence Hallinan, a far-left district attorney for San Francisco.

Given the current company, are we shocked this man tried for a Hail Mary to strip what is clearly a defined power of the executive? No. Breyer ruled last night that Trump—get this—must return the California National Guard, whom he federalized, to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s control. There’s a riot in Los Angeles; this isn’t some new move, Chuck. Why is it that liberals whose first names begin with Charles all seem to suck so much?

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller months ago warned that if this judicial coup continues to fester in the judiciary, we’re going to have district judges weigh in on troop deployments—that just happened. It’s an outrageous ruling that not even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could stomach it, which they quickly slapped down.

We’ll deal with Charlie and his robed judicial insurrectionists, but first, we need to get the reconciliation package through Congress.

Georgia Supreme Court Upholds Carry Ban For Young Adults Under 21 Years Of Age

We’ve reported a number of times in recent years about the battle for Second Amendment rights for 18-, 19- and 20-year-old Americans. It seems anti-gun advocates think all the other enumerated rights in the U.S. Constitution are fine for young adults, just not the right to keep and bear arms.

In the latest court action concerning that particular subset of American adults, the Georgia Supreme Court on May 28 ruled that the state’s law banning possession or carry of firearms by adults under 21 does not violate the state’s constitution.

In the case,  20-year-old Thomas Stephens, along with gun-rights advocacy group Georgia 2nd Amendment, sued the state to overturn the law after a probate court denied him a weapons carry license. Stephens had argued the court should overturn its rulings in past cases related to the statute, “holding that the Georgia right to keep and bear arms is subject only to a ‘reasonable exercise of police power’ test.”

The court ruling stated: “In sum, Stephens has not offered a compelling argument that the original public meaning of Paragraph VIII is meaningfully different from the construction developed through our Court’s consistent precedent addressing the language of that provision over more than a century. Because he has not established that our precedent construing this language is clearly wrong, we decline his invitation to reconsider it. And because his only argument that the statute he has challenged violates Paragraph VIII requires that we reconsider that precedent, his constitutional challenge to the statute fails.”

Incidentally, the statute in question does have some exemptions, including those under 21 who have received military training or who possess or carry handguns on their property, in their vehicle or place of  business, or for hunting, fishing or sport shooting with a license.

Of course, both laws do violate the Second Amendment, as numerous gun-rights groups have been trying to prove in court over the past several years. However, the results have been mixed.

In January 2024, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, based in Philadelphia, ruled the state’s ban on adults 18-20 from carrying a handgun during an emergency to be unconstitutional under the new standards prescribed by the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Bruen.

“We understand that a reasonable debate can be had over allowing young adults to be armed, but the issue before us is a narrow one,” U.S. Circuit Court Judge Kent A. Jordan wrote in the majority opinion. “Our question is whether the (state police) commissioner has borne his burden of proving that evidence of founding-era regulations supports Pennsylvania’s restriction on 18-to-20-year-olds’ Second Amendment rights, and the answer to that is no.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) recently filed its tenth such suit, this one challenging Connecticut’s ban on adults under 21 purchasing, owning or carrying handguns.

Justice Kavanaugh to Second Amendment: We’re Really Busy Now, Come Back In A Year Or Two

On December 1, 2020, the Maryland ban on AR-15s was challenged. The plaintiffs lost in the District Court and before the Fourth Circuit. In August 2024, a cert petition was filed in Snope v. Brown. The petition sat in purgatory for nearly a year with fourteen relists.

Today, the Supreme Court finally put the petition out of its misery and denied cert. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have granted. Justice Barrett, as usual said nothing. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a very unusual statement respecting the denial of the petition. The first two paragraphs explain why the Maryland decision was “questionable.” If you read these parts, you would expect a grant. Indeed, Kavanaugh as circuit judge had found that the District of Columbia’s ban on AR-15s was unconstitutional. But then, we get to the last paragraph:

In short, under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Circuit’s decision is questionable. Although the Court today denies certiorari, a denial of certiorari does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review.

The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals…..

Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decision making on the AR–15 issue.

 Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.

My mouth nearly hit the floor when I read this. Kavanaugh all-but signals that he will be a fourth vote to grant cert. He does not identify any vehicle problems, or reasons why the Maryland petition should not be granted. Does he really think that rulings from the Ninth Circuit will help much in the deliberations? These courts will all rule against the Second Amendment. Nothing is in doubt. The upshot is that the Court is really busy with other stuff right now, and you all should just come back later. The Second Amendment could take a sabbatical for a year or two until the docket lightens up. Indeed, this case has been pending for nearly four years. Maryland gun owners will just have to chill.

Of late I’ve been praiseworthy of some of Kavanaugh’s actions, but this is the sort of Kavanaugh opinion that infuriates me. And where is Justice Barrett on these issues? A decade ago in 2015, Justice Scalia dissented from denial of cert in Friedman v. Highland Park, a challenge to an assault weapon ban.

This issue isn’t new. I think this term will be remembered as the term in which Justice Barrett’s slide became indisputable. I started tracking it years ago, but it is hard to ignore now.

Kostas Moros

May as well do a proper thread on this. Read for my analysis/cope.
Snope denied. The Supreme Court has forsaken us.
Kavanaugh says they want more percolation, apparently.
First up is Kavanaugh, in a statement respecting the denial of cert. (Basically a concurrence in denying it) Not that it will matter until SCOTUS actually polices the antigun circuits, but Kavanaugh confirms we are right that: a. there is a “common use” test. Antigun states have denied this, arguing there is no such test, or if there is, it’s only “commonly used for self-defense.” b. it is historically-based (i.e., not part of the phony “plain text” analysis). Antigun states have argued it’s at the plain text step.
Not strong enough to get granted cert now though, I guess?
Sure, but the antigun circuits will absolutely take this as an affirmance of the terrible Fourth Circuit ruling. SCOTUS needs to accept that it must actively police those circuits, or just admit it has no interest in protecting the Second Amendment so we stop wasting our time.
While they didn’t join this statement, this is Barrett and Roberts speaking too, it’s pretty clear. Kavanaugh wouldn’t write with such confidence (i.e. “presumably”) if he didn’t think they – or at least one of them – was on board to hear such a case soon. You are free to think I am coping – I can’t blame you for having zero confidence in the Court after this. It’s just how I read it. Even if I am correct, that wouldn’t make it okay. Another year or two of denied rights is incredibly damaging. As I have pointed out before, our lives are not that long, and not having our Second Amendment right fully realized for another year or two is a real loss. Moreover, there is absolutely nothing to be gained from percolation. Only antigun circuits ever here AWB cases, and their rulings are all very similar to each other.
We love you Justice Thomas, thanks for always being a real one.
I don’t like Justice Thomas embracing the plain text “step.” I guess I now have to concede there is such a step, bummer.
That said, the plain text is not hard to meet in an arms ban case, as Thomas points out.
Now that Thomas has confirmed I was wrong and there is a “plain text” step, I now urge the Supreme Court to gut it and make Bruen the one-step test it should be. Antigun circuits will always place “too high a burden” on Plaintiffs to avoid the historical analysis. The plain text step, if it is too exist, should be no more than a simple qualifier, not some rigorous analysis.
to* exist.
So while Thomas does reject my view that there is no meaningful plain text step, he does agree that it isn’t a hard step to meet.
Beautifully written. Too bad it is in a dissent from denial of cert, and not the first line of a per curiam ruling.
Thomas deals with the 4th Circuits dumb slippery slope argument.
Thomas agrees that percolation has no value.
He concludes by pointing out the Court’s logic in VanDerStok could allow for the federal government to declare AR-15s to be “machineguns” and ban them. A future Dem administration will no doubt try this.
So, what’s my speculation?
I think there was clearly a lot of negotiating behind the scenes, and Roberts/Barrett or one of them just doesn’t want another controversial issue on their plate right now.
They promised Kavanaugh they’d take up the issue soon, but who knows if they will keep that promise (no doubt the stream of Trump admin cases will continue for the whole four years). Hopefully the USDOJ will support the Duncan cert petition to add some pressure for a grant. If they deny Duncan, then the next best candidate is probably the Illinois cases about to be heard on final judgment by the Seventh Circuit.
It is interesting that Kavanaugh had no similar statement for Ocean State Tactical. As a judge on the DC Circuit, he dissented from an opinion (Heller II) upholding an AWB, but said as to magazines he would have remanded for further proceedings. It’s possible Kavanaugh is against AWBs, but would be accepting of a magazine capacity limit. I certainly hope that isn’t the case. I can’t blame anyone for dooming at this point, but we’ll keep doing the best we can. We need Justices Thomas and Alito replaced by fire-breathers like VanDyke who don’t care about suffocating decorum traditions and will openly call out their colleagues when they are being hacks. Thomas and Alito are the best justices on the Court, but they are aging and it is critical they be replaced with equally-strong but younger judges.
Finally, the percolation excuse must be especially frustrating for the Snope plaintiffs. Let’s say in a best case scenario, Kavanaugh is being truthful, and SCOTUS does grant a similar case and strikes down AWBs. The Snope plaintiffs are still out all of their legal fees, which do not get reimbursed if you are vindicated two years later. You only win back fees if your case wins. So they are just SOL.
Very cool SCOTUS, thanks.

Demoncraps and Men

Democrats are spending $20 million to win back men—but until they understand what men actually want, they’ll keep buying maps without learning the terrain.

Since last November, Democrats and their friends in the media have spent a great deal of time wondering what they can do to win back male voters. Now they’re prepared to spend a great deal of money to help them figure it out. The “gender gap” in American politics was traditionally about Republicans’ inability to win over a majority of women voters, but this imbalance has more than evened out over the last few election cycles. Today, the Democrats’ struggle to win male voters—and young male voters, in particular—is as pronounced—if not more so—than their opponents’ struggle with women. Some of them, at least, would like to know why and would like to spend $20 million of their donors’ money in the process.

The explanations and consequent solutions offered so far range from the seemingly practical to the hopeless to the head-scratching. One might think that $20 million would buy something more insightful than this, but then, this is the same party that triumphantly chose Tim Walz as its vice-presidential nominee, fully expecting him to be the answer to their gender gap problem. Or in other words, don’t hold your breath.

In reality, the odds that the contemporary Democratic party will be able to win back men, now or in the foreseeable future, are vanishingly small. The party, as it is currently constituted, lacks both the will and the ability to make the changes that would be necessary to do so. What I mean by this is that the contemporary Democratic party is built on a handful of foundational notions that are, by and large, incompatible with the goal of appealing to men.

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These Are Trained Judges, Readers! Don’t Try This Yourselves at Home!
Readers of today’s opinion in Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP v. Executive Office of the President (which I think got it largely right in its substantive analysis), might notice that it included 26 exclamation points (not counting one in a quote from President Trump). Here is just a subset:

The Founding Fathers knew this! …

Please—that dog won’t hunt! …

The causal chain contains at most two links, and it is certainly not highly attenuated! …

Please! …

I agree! …

Taken together, the provisions constitute a staggering punishment for the firm’s protected speech! The Order is intended to, and does in fact, impede the firm’s ability to effectively represent its clients! …

Thus, to the extent the President does have the power to limit access to federal buildings, suspend and revoke security clearances, dictate federal hiring, and manage federal contracts, the Order surpasses that authority and in fact usurps the Judiciary’s authority to resolve cases and sanction parties that come before the courts! …

I appreciate that the author is a federal judge, and I’m not, but my sense is that the exclamation points do more to detract from the persuasiveness of the opinion than to advance it. And even if it works for a judge, I would strongly recommend lawyers to avoid such massive use of exclamation points—indeed, even any use of exclamation points. (“Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi,” as my father liked to quote.)

To pass along again (albeit imprecisely) an exchange I blogged about in 2007,

[Talk had turned to effective legal writing; B is a smart soon-to-be-law-student.]

A. Another thing I learned about legal writing: Don’t use exclamation points for rhetorical emphasis. And all-caps — don’t do that, either. Bold is also very bad. So is italics: It’s OK to use it to highlight important terms in quotes, or terms that you’re trying to distinguish from each other in your arguments, but don’t use it as an exclamation point.

B. But what then are you supposed to use for rhetorical emphasis?

A. How about … forceful arguments?