Salisbury News

Monday, July 23, 2018

Who Owns the Moon? A Space Lawyer Answers

Most likely, this is the best-known picture of a flag ever taken: Buzz Aldrin standing next to the first U.S. flag planted on the Moon. For those who knew their world history, it also rang some alarm bells. Only less than a century ago, back on Earth, planting a national flag in another part of the world still amounted to claiming that territory for the fatherland. Did the Stars and Stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?

When people hear for the first time that I am a lawyer practicing and teaching something called "space law," the question they ask most frequently, often with a big smile or a twinkle in the eye, is: "So tell me, who owns the moon?" [Moon Master: An Easy Quiz for Lunatics]

Of course, claiming new national territories had been very much a European habit, applied to non-European parts of the world. In particular the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English created huge colonial empires. But while their attitude was very Europe-centric, the legal notion that planting a flag was an act of establishing sovereignty quickly stuck and became accepted worldwide as part and parcel of the law of nations.

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Trump Responds To "Inconceivable, Perhaps Illegal" Cohen Tape Revelation

Having withheld his comments all day Friday to the NYT revelation that his former lawyer Michael Cohen secretly recorded one of their conversations before the 2016 election dicussing a payment over the story of a former Playboy model's alleged affair with Trump, Trump broke his silence on Saturday morning using his favorite medium.

"Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!" Trump tweeted.

McConnell Calls Dems’ Bluff, Threatens Election Eve Vote on Kavanaugh

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is threatening to tee up a November vote on Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh if Democrats do not drop their extensive request for records, according to a Friday Politico report.

Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), are demanding documents, perhaps up to one million pages of them, spanning Kavanaugh’s career in the George W. Bush White House as he comes up for Senate consideration. Breitbart News’s Senior Legal Editor Ken Klukowski opined Friday that Schumer’s move was “merely an obstructionist tactic to push his confirmation into 2019 to harm Republicans in the midterms, and hoping to retake Senate control so they can keep the Supreme Court seat open until 2021, after the next presidential election.”

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End Times at the DC Corral

Personally, I believe that the plodding, implacable Robert Mueller, white knight of the Deep State, will flush the Golden Golem of Greatness out of office, probably on some sort of money-laundering rap having nothing to do with “Russian meddling.” Anderson Cooper will have a multiple orgasm. Rachel Maddow will don a yellow hard-hat and chain-saw a scale model of Mar-a-Lago to the glee of her worshippers. The #Resistance will dance in the streets. And then what?

I doubt that Mr. Trump will go gracefully. Rather he’ll dig in and fight even if it means fomenting a constitutional crisis. He’ll challenge Mr. Mueller on veering into matters unrelated to alleged Russian pranks in the 2016 election. He may well attempt the self-pardoning gambit. He will have a lot of support out in the Deplorable gloaming. But, at some point, I expect a bipartisan consensus to emerge in Congress that the guy has got to go. He’s making it impossible to conduct even the routines of bribery and domestic collusion that Washington exists for. Nobody is getting paid — at least not the bonuses they’re accustomed to seeing.

The 25th amendment is still the best tool for the job. Unlike impeachment, it doesn’t require much in the way of standards of evidence or any Mickey Mouse niceties of due process. It doesn’t take months and months of tiresome legal gamesmanship, no committees or reports. You just get a small number of cabinet members and congressional leaders to agree that the President is “unfit” — which can mean anything, really — and he’s chopped. General Kelly may be enlisted to pry Mr. Trump’s smallish fingers from the doorjamb and shove him into the waiting limo in the porte cochère for the long sad ride up the Jersey Turnpike.

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Trump: I Could Be Putin’s ‘Worst Enemy’ if Relationship Doesn’t Work Out

President Donald Trump, under fire for being too cozy with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he could be Putin's "worst enemy" if their relationship deteriorates and called predecessor Barack Obama a "patsy for Russia."

Trump told CNBC in an interview airing Friday he had been "far tougher on Russia" than possibly any U.S. president, ever, pointing to his recent attack on Germany for their proposed second natural gas pipeline deal with Russia.

"Look at the sanctions I've put on. Look at the diplomats I threw out," Trump said. "Look at all of the things that I've done. Nobody else did what I've done. Obama didn't do it. Obama was a patsy for Russia. He was a total patsy."

Trump referenced Obama's hot mic moment in 2012 where he told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more "flexibility" after his election was over, calling Obama's statement "stupid."

"Getting along with President Putin, getting along with Russia is a positive, not a negative," Trump said. "With that being said, if that doesn't work out, I'll be the worst enemy he's ever had. The worst he's ever had. I think he knows that, though. I'll be his worst nightmare, but I don't think it'll be that way. I actually think we'll have a good relationship."

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Hillary Clinton claims US has suffered a 'successful cyber attack on our electoral system'

Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the latest White House controversies, blasting President Donald Trump over his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Clinton spoke on Saturday evening at OZY Fest in New York's Central Park, where the digital magazine's investor Laurene Powell Jobs quizzed her for her take on current events and trends.

Jobs, the widow of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, asked Clinton about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's latest indictment, of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for their alleged role in leaking stolen Democratic National Committee emails.

'What does all this mean? It's fair to say that it means that this was a very wrong, and unfortunately successful, cyber attack on our electoral system,' the former Democrat presidential candidate replied.

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Opens August 3rd at Regal in Salisbury

Republican governor of Maryland says he'd REJECT an NRA endorsement

Maryland's Republican governor told a group of students from a school where a teen fatally shot his ex-girlfriend and then himself that he'd reject a National Rifle Association endorsement if it were offered.

Gov. Larry Hogan made the statement while meeting with students on Thursday, sharing a photo tagged as having been taken in Annapolis.

The students met with Hogan following the March 20 attack against their fellow classmate, Jaelynn Willey, 16, who died two days after being shot in the head by 17-year-old Austin Wyatt Rollins, who later took his own life.

The bullet that Rollins fired at Willey, which eventually killed her, also struck Desmond Barnes, 14, in the leg.

The NRA endorsed Hogan in 2014 and he's now seeking a second term.

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Baltimore mayor sues over climate change after de Blasio's case gets thrown out

As one climate lawsuit gets thrown out of court in New York, another one takes its place in Baltimore.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced the lawsuit Friday in joining about a dozen other cities and states in suing fossil fuel firms for their role in causing global warming.

"The East Coast’s 5th largest city today joined a growing number of communities that are trying to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for knowingly contributing to what one of the industry’s own experts described as the 'potentially catastrophic' consequences of climate change," the mayor's office said in a statement.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Baltimore, targets many of the energy firms that dot the landscape around Charm City. Most notably, Consol Energy's coal export terminal, the only one like it on the East Coast, that handles much of the U.S. coal industry's shipments abroad.

The lawsuit also targets oil giants BP, Marathon, Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Citgo, and many others.

The lawsuit was filed about 24 hours after a court in New York rejected a similar lawsuit in New York filed by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

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First Liquor Trade Group in the Country Endorses Marijuana Legalization

It has been reiterated many times by many people that a legal cannabis industry is going to challenge the dominance of an old and established liquor operations. Alcohol businesses are aware of this threat and hence they often found lobbying against the legalization measures in different states.

However, with the evolving cannabis landscape, it seems like the alcohol industry is also gradually accepting the legitimacy of the strain. Recently, the first alcohol trade group in the country has recognized the states’ right to legalize cannabis.

The Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA), a body that represents 80 percent of the alcohol wholesale market of the country, have a drastic change in its policy. It has demanded the federal government to not interfere in the states’ matter of legalization. The press release issued by the group mentions that the collective legal cannabis operations of the country generated the economic activity of seven billion dollars in 2016.

WSWA’s executive vice president of external affairs, Dawson Hobbs, has compared the budding cannabis industry to the struggling alcohol economy of the 1930s. He thinks that cannabis right now is facing the same challenges faced by the alcohol industry in the era of prohibition.

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Julian Assange to be handed over to UK officials: Report

Ecuador officials are planning to withdraw asylum protection for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and hand him over to British authorities.

Lenin Moreno, Ecuador's president, met with British officials in London Friday to finalize the agreement, according to the Intercept.

Assange has been at the embassy since 2012 and will be handed over to the British government within a few weeks. He may be kicked out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London as early as this week, the Intercept's Glenn Greenwald reported.

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It's Time For Ocean City Maryland To Start Recycling

It makes absolutely no sense for this resort town to allow such mass pollution.

I am calling out the Mayor and Council in Ocean City, start recycling now. We need your leadership on this matter. Wicomico County is doing an incredible job and MAKING MONEY doing so. This helps relieve taxpayers on tax increases and it just makes sense.

Same Paper, Same Dates, Different Markets. What did you just learn? Feeling Manipulated Yet?

Breaking News: President Trump threatened Iran on Twitter, warning in capital letters of severe "consequences," after a speech by the country's president

President Trump threatened Iran late Sunday, warning of severe “consequences,” as rhetoric between the two countries’ presidents escalated dramatically.

Mr. Trump, in an all-caps message on Twitter addressed to President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, wrote that the country would face “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED” if he continued to threaten the United States.