Inching toward justice

 At last, Trump has run out of legal tactics to postpone his hush-money trial ("We want delays," he said in February, showing his hand).  Appellate Court Justice Cynthia Kern rejected his Article 78 attempt to get Judge Juan Merchan's gag order repealed on the tired old ground of "First Amendment harms."  How's a man supposed to run for president if he can't slander a judge's daughter?  But it was Steven Wu of the Manhattan DA's office who summed it up:  "This is not political debate.  These are insults."

Trump really does not want to face Stormy Daniels in court, nor listen to her describe the ninety seconds of vanilla ecstasy she shared with him.  It would sink his reputation as a sex machine who doesn't need to rape women who are "not my type."  After all, he paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about that (and according to Daniels, sent one of his torpedoes to threaten her and her daughter with bodily harm).  This case is eating at him more than the business fraud, more than the stolen classified documents bordering on treason.  This is about Donnie Juan, who cheated on his post-partum wife because he had needs and Melania's body had produced a baby and even milk.  She was no longer the surgically enhanced Barbie doll he married.  She might even have "blood coming out of her...wherever."  Ew, icky.

Here and there this spring, green shoots of justice appear.  Aimee Harris of Palm Beach -- when did that become an epicenter of criminality? -- will serve a month in prison and four months of house arrest for stealing and selling the diary of Ashley Biden.  The comedy team of Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl will pay $1.25 million to New York for their robocall scheme to discourage Black voters, a stunt AG Letitia James calls "depraved."  They may face more charges in Michigan.  Allen Weisselberg, former cooker of books for the Trump Organization, is on his way to Rikers Island to serve five months for perjury.  The "Goon Squad" who were too viciously racist even for Mississippi received state sentences on top of the federal ones they already got for torturing Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker in Braxton last year.  Whatever you think of the Michigan law, the parents of school shooter Ethan Crumbley were sentenced to fifteen years for manslaughter because they gave the troubled fifteen-year-old a semiautomatic weapon days before he killed four fellow students at Oxford High School.

In civil suit news, rheumatologist Derrick Todd is alleged to be an equal-opportunity sex offender.  More than two hundred men and women who saw him at the distinguished Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston say he unnecessarily groped their genitals and breasts while performing vaginal and rectal exams that were borderline unnecessary.  Why Todd is not facing criminal charges like Larry Nassar is anyone's guess.

Trump's team of legal beagles subpoenaed ex-DA investigator Jeremy Rosenberg for documents in the Stormy Daniels trial.  Or tried to.  It appears they served the wrong Jeremy Rosenberg.  Another delaying tactic or the difficulty of finding competent lawyers who want to work for Agolf Twitler?  Does it matter?

Wayne Allyn Root, the Billy Graham of the dentally challenged, is back with a list of all the miracles Trump performed last week, proving his resemblance to Christ.  Not one of them involves healing the blind or raising the dead, or even serving lunch to a multitude.  They're all about benefiting Trump:  he got his bond reduced, went public with his collapsing social media company, clawed his way into the Forbes 500 (which he pretends to despise), turned a policeman's wake into a photo op, etc.  Surprisingly, Root doesn't credit him with the eclipse.  Christ could have told him that the only correct position on abortion is not to mention it at all.