Losing My Perspicacity January 10, 2025

In partnership with

Good morning and Happy Friday! I hope that if you’re reading this from anywhere affected by the LA wildfires, you and your loved ones are safe, and that your most important property is where you can easily retrieve it.

The California fires continue to dominate the headlines across the country and, if you’re able to scroll past all the rhetoric coming from the right, you’ll find thousands of people doing all they can to help those who have been displaced. Over at the newsletter Organizing My Thoughts, Kelly Hayes has put together a list of resources that need additional funding to meet demand. I’m a monthly donor to Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen, which is already on the ground and feeding people in Pasadena. I was also able to split a donation to the LAFD, United Way of Los Angeles, and the LA Regional Food Bank via Act Blue. The Humane Society of Pasadena also need help to deal with the influx of injured animals.

I know it seems like there is so much suffering and so little we can do from a distance, but there is some reason for hope. First, the Santa Ana winds have reportedly died down in the area, which should give firefighters a chance to gain a foothold against the fires. Secondly, the Biden administration announced that the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cost of the fires of the initial response to the fires. This money will go towards debris removal, shelter care, and first-responder pay for the next 180 days. This is what I want my tax dollars to be used for — not tax loopholes for the rich.

If you’re looking for something you can do, find an organization that speaks to you and give what you can. If you can’t do that, something we can all do is push back against the misinformation that is spiraling out of control online, just as we saw after the flooding in North Carolina. No, the iconic Hollywood sign has not burned down — that was an AI image.

Typically, this is where I’d ask you to consider subscribing to LMP, but I’d rather people use whatever donations they can make to help mitigate the cost of disaster relief out west. A reminder: While the news is awash with reports of wealthy celebrities who have lost their homes, the vast majority of the victims are “regular,” non-wealthy Americans with far fewer resources. At the time of writing this newsletter, 179,000 people are under evacuation orders around LA. If you want to do something to help keep LMP alive, clicking on the ad below is a huge help.

The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

If you're frustrated by one-sided reporting, our 5-minute newsletter is the missing piece. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you comprehensive, unbiased news—free from political agendas. Stay informed with factual coverage on the topics that matter.

Join for free today!

Today: Raskin, Crockett, and Johnson push back on Samuel Alito; More evidence of Mark Zuckerberg’s nefariousness; former Titan Frank Wycheck suffered from CTE; Karen Pence remembers; WADA kicks the US off its board; and an extremely relatable Jimmy Carter story in The High Note.

Here we go.

Raskin, Crockett, and Johnson push back against Trump and Alito

On Wednesday, we learned that President-elect Trump had spoken via telephone with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (easily our worst SCOTUS justice in all categories save Clarence Thomas) just hours before Trump’s legal team filed an emergency motion to halt his sentencing today on his criminal hush money trial.

This immediately raised alarm bells in the legal world. Parties to a lawsuit, any lawsuit, may not have solo (or ex parte) conversations with a presiding judge hearing their case. At a bare minimum, the legal representative for the opposing side must be present. This is an incredibly low-level legal principle, meaning that if you don’t learn it on the first day of law school, you learn it on the second. Typically, parties don’t speak to the judge at all outside of open court, and then only if asked to do so. Lawyers are supposed to do the talking for their clients. In all my years as an attorney, I don’t think a client ever accompanied me into a judge’s chambers more than once — and that was an extenuating circumstance. It simply isn’t done.

According to Alito, this conversation was just fine and totally ethical because the only thing they talked about was a low-level job for one of his former clerks.

If you believe that Trump, who has all the self-control of a toddler after a sugar high and before naptime, and Alito, who is part of a court with a loose grasp on judicial ethics AT BEST, had nothing better to discuss than an insignificant job for a former law clerk on the same day Trump appealed to SCOTUS to prevent his criminal sentence; I’ve got some horse ivermectin to sell you.

Thankfully, the Congressional resistance is starting to emerge, and representatives Jamie Raskin, Jasmine Crockett, and Hank Johnson all demanded that Alito recuse himself.

It’s worth noting that Raskin, Crockett, and Johnson are all lawyers, which is probably why they were able to object so quickly. The media that published the initial reports of the call didn’t seem to catch on to the fact that Alito and Trump probably violated a major legal principle by speaking.

In the end, the Court denied Trump’s request to halt his sentencing and a 5-4 decision. Alito, along with Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh all said they would have sided with Trump.

By the time you read this today, Trump will no doubt have worn out his phone keyboard, ranting on Truth Social all night. Sentencing is set for Friday morning at 9:30 am ET. While jail time is not on the table, we could wind up with a POTUS who is on federal probation.

What a time to be alive.

Mark Zuckerberg is a disingenuous creep

That headline isn’t news, I agree. One day after announcing that he was ditching fact-checkers and moving his moderation team to Texas (one person pointed out that he’s not so much “moving” the team as firing the team and hiring a new one), Zuckerberg came out with the same, tired, jab at those leaving the platform as the trolls use on X.

I'm unsure when acting according to your conscience became "virtue signaling" and something to be derided. What say do we have in the world of oligarchs and billionaires, if not small acts based on our beliefs?

The cynical right has this notion that no one actually cares about anything; that people do things only for appearance's sake. But many people do care, and the only votes we have when it comes to corporate malfeasance is to take our business elsewhere. Vote with your wallet.

Anytime someone accuses others of "virtue signaling," I see them accusing other people of having a conscience and doing what they believe is right. Much like the right has used the word "woke" to denigrate those who care about other people.

Signal your virtues. It's one of the few things we have left.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch reported today that Zuckerberg gave his AI engineers the green light to “use” (read: steal) copyrighted content via a program called LibGen, and then allegedly tried to strip the content of its attribution to hide its nefarious behavior.

This detail came to light via the court filings of a lawsuit brought by authors suing Meta and Zuckerberg for using their content (without permission) to train AI models. As Open AI founder and accused child rapist Sam Altman has admitted, it’s impossible for AI to make money without stealing copyrighted works from creators.

As I wrote earlier this week, Zuckerberg is almost certainly sucking up to Trump to get the FTC to either drop or significantly scale back its suit against Meta, but there’s not much he can do about lawsuits from private individuals.

Former Titans star Frank Wycheck suffered from CTE

At this point, it would be more surprising to learn that an NFL player did not have CTE at the time of his death.

Wycheck passed away in 2023 at the age of 52 after hitting his head following a fall in his Tennessee home.

In 2023, a study at Boston University found CTE present in 345 of the 376 brains of NFL players that it studied. The study is somewhat self-validating, as the brains of players whose families suspected them of suffering from CTE were donated, but that number is still incredibly high.

As of October 15, the NFL reported 44 concussions this season.

Karen Pence remembers

At least someone in that family has the cajones to stand up to Trump.

Mike Pence shook the hand of the guy who was willing to literally sacrifice him to a bloodthirsty mob. Ridiculous behavior.

WADA kicks USA of their board

Last Spring and Summer, I wrote extensively about the battle between the World Anti-Doping Agency and the US Anti-Doping Agency over WADA’s refusal to discipline Chinese swimmers who were found to have used banned drugs. As a result, the US pulled its significant funding from WADA, saying we had lost faith in the organizations ability to police performance enhancing drug use by elite athletes.

On Wednesday, WADA retaliated by kicking the US off their board.

This is going to work out great.

The High Note

Each day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, as the world (literally) burns around us. Today, please enjoy this extremely relatable story about President Jimmy Carter, which his grandson, Jason, told at his funeral.

This story reminds me of when my great aunt would call to tell me she couldn’t get the TV remote to work, then proceed to push the buttons on her landline phone while pointing the receiver at the TV.

Survive and advance today, do good where you can, and don’t let the bastards get you down.

See you all on Monday.