#ted olson

Dylan and singer-songwriter Mimi Farina relax at the Viking Hotel in Newport, R.I., in July 1964. John Byrne Cooke Estate/Getty Images~~~ The Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet, focuses on Dylan’s early 1960s transition from idiosyncratic singer of folk songs to internationally renowned singer-songwriter. As a music historian, I’ve always respected one decision of…

Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:

Theodore Olson, the iconoclastic appellate lawyer behind George W. Bush’s victory before the Supreme Court in 2000, died on Wednesday. He was 84. Olson was widely condemned on the left for his role in stopping the vote count in Florida, which denied Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore an electoral college victory to accompany his popular vote win. Bare-knuckle legal tactics from Olson plus a “Brooks Brothers riot” and infamous “hanging chads” were key to Bush’s ultimate success.

It came as a surprise, therefore, to liberals, conservatives, and the LGBTQ+ community alike, when Olson took on the effort to strike down Proposition 8, the notorious gay marriage ban passed by California voters the same night that Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Olson invited David Boies, his former nemesis in the Bush v Gore battle, to help overturn the ballot initiative. “It is a conservative value to respect the relationship that people seek to have with one another, a stable, committed relationship that provides a backbone for our community, for our economy,” Olson later told the Los Angeles Times. “I think conservatives should value that.”

Olson said he endured the wrath of the conservative establishment as a result; conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh denounced him on talk radio and dinner invitations in Washington dried up, despite Olson’s status as a fixture in conservative social and political circles. His wife, Barbara Olson, was a firebrand conservative commentator who died in the plane that struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

[...] Donald Trump tried to recruit Olson twice to defend him in criminal investigations and was rebuffed on both occasions. Olson and Boies denounced Trump in an op-ed for The Washington Post over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The pair also wrote a memoir together, Redeeming the Dream: Proposition 8 and the Struggle for Marriage Equality, published in 2014.

Brady Appeal: Money En Banc

DATELINE: Who do you Anti-Trust?   It’s money in the bank for sure when the en banc Circuit Court of judges hears a case. For Tom Brady, he may be inflating the stakes for the NFL. Raising them to the United States Supreme Court with the former Solicitor General soliciting a free pass for Tom is the stuff of anti-trust breaking. Having chosen a dangerous path, the fools supporting Roger Goodell…