Let’s Enjoy Some Normal Crazy

Having trouble deciding what to stream next? I’m here to help — there’s a cornucopia of entertaining video out there for you to while away the hours.

I have a recommendation.

Binge the Judicial Protest channel on YouTube. Here, at least as of this writing, were a dozen videos for your viewing pleasure. Three of them featured “Minneapolis’s Most Crooked Attorney.” If you’re thinking that attorney must be really terrible, you’d be wrong. You’d be wrong because the films are about three different attorneys.

You also could have found Minneapolis’s “Worst Attorney,” “Most Abusive Attorney,” “Most Crooked Attorney,” and, in a strange change of theme, “Sexiest Attorney.”

(NOTE: Since I wrote the above, the crooked and sexiest attorney videos were taken down. I suspect there might have been a sternly worded letter from the law firm the artist hates. There is more to enjoy, however: new videos about “openly racist” and “corrupt” judges, and a judge who “crucifies and tortures priests.”)

Viewer warning: The videos are not for the sensitive or faint of heart. Mostly they seemed to be odd rants about lawyers in one law firm, accompanied by strange images and videos. The ones about crooked attorneys all had someone lying in a bathtub waving legs in the air. I’m not sure, but I think that’s the universal symbol for corruption.

There’s also a video about a federal judge who used to be with the law firm the channel hates complaining that her firm didn’t represent George Floyd while he was alive. If only every law firm could have represented George Floyd….

I realize all this may seem like high-concept absurdist art, but there may be a reason behind all this. Not a good reason, mind you, but a sort of reason. It seems that the fellow who posted these videos likes to post this sort of thing about people that he’s battling in court. As far as I can tell, it’s not a successful litigation tactic.

I know this because a federal judge in Minnesota this month upheld sanctions against a guy named Brock Fredin for posting videos and creating websites about a federal magistrate and a group of lawyers. Most of those videos seem to be gone from YouTube.

I don’t know about you, but this made me nostalgic. Remember the good old days when insane arguments in court weren’t being made on behalf of politicians? If we can get back to run-of-the-mill normal insanity, there could be hope for us all.

In the meantime, I leave you with my favorite part of the judge’s ruling contained in a footnote: “Fredin belatedly casts these videos as ‘satirical spoof law firm advertisement[s].’ The fact that Fredin used this argument as an opportunity to further insult Kreil’s counsel is not lost on the Court. (See id. at 24 (describing one of Kreil’s attorneys as ‘an objectively unattractive woman’).”

If only we could call opposing counsel ugly and be done with the matter.

Open anonymity? If you want to be anonymous, should you get up and speak at an open meeting?

I would have said no, but now I’m not so sure after seeing a class action filed last week in Cook County, Illinois, against the village of Oak Lawn for requiring speakers at open meetings to provide their names, addresses and topics.

I have no idea why the town needs addresses or why speakers couldn’t make up names and addresses, but a local lawyer felt strongly enough about this to file a suit claiming the requirement violates the First Amendment.

I’m not sure how, but the suit quotes the amendment barring abridgement of speech and then claims the amendment “guarantees not only the right to speak freely, but also speak anonymously.”

When you’re at a public meeting in front of everybody? Are people in full-face masks or hoods at these meetings?

Yeah, I know us journalists like to say the First Amendment protects our secret sources, but none of those sources are viewable on local cable.

I figure there must be some strange things going on in the village of Oak Lawn to cause this paranoia.

Wanna bet? Some people can’t resist a wager — even if the stakes are deadly.

A couple of Larry Flynt/Hustler casinos and their employees last week filed a suit in Los Angeles claiming that Covid-19 stay-at-home orders were unconstitutional infringements on the right to liberty.

Part of their argument was that less than 10% of Los Angeles County residents had tested positive for Covid-19. So the odds were in their favor and they wanted the right to gamble — with their lives.

Anybody want to bet on how well this lawsuit does?

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