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A person walks through shops at Hudson Yards lit with some of the 2 million lightbulbs used for Christmas decorations, on Nov. 23 in New York City.Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

For years beginning in the mid-2000s, a roughly four-block plot in downtown D.C. was a concrete wasteland. The site, the former location of the citys convention center, was used as a parking lot, an intercity bus terminal, and, for less than a year, a tennis stadium. But mostly it felt like a black hole where street life, commerce, and most forms of human activity simply ended. Then-Mayor Anthony Williams badly wanted to develop the area into a cohesive, mixed-use community that included a public library and affordable housing, imagining a place as critical to the economic and social fabric of D.C. as the Inner Harbor is to Baltimore.

The resulting $950 million, 10-acre development is CityCenterDC, a shimmering maze of restaurants and stores that opened in 2013. Far from Williams inclusive pitch, however, it features luxury ground-floor retail (Gucci, Ferragamo, Herms) that anchors similarly luxurious office, condominium, and apartment buildings. Some 500-square-foot studio apartments start renting at $1,900 per month; other units go for more than $14,000. White House aide Stephen Miller bought a CityCenterDC condo, as did former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and former Attorney General Eric Holder.

At the end of 2020, though, the CityCenter area is only a little bit busier than it was in its parking lot days. Behind all the floor-to-ceiling glass, pert, well-pressed salespeople tinker with clothes in empty stores, with security guards poised blankly at the gilded doors. The developments public plaza echoes with the sound of bubbling fountains, but in the absence of passersby the effect is just eerie. At all hours of day, venturing into CityCenter has the distinct feeling of walking through an immaculately maintained theme park after closing time.

Across the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic has sapped Americans appetite for fancy projects like this, in no small part because the cross-section of upwardly mobile people who can afford such apartmentslike well-off students, high-earning young professionals, or people with second homeshave fled urban city centers or scaled back on spending.

In Manhattan, there is blood on the streets, one property management executive told BisNow in September about the boroughs luxury rental housing market. Rents there have plummeted 19 percent since this time last year, with the worst loss in demand occurring among luxury housing. One brokerage firm told BisNow that they saw between an 18 to 23 percent dip in rental prices since last year; in the Upper East Side, one of the citys most notoriously expensive areas, there were 1,300 one-bedroom apartments on the market this fall, more than four times the number that were available this time last year. Joy Construction, a company that manages apartments in the glittering behemoth of Hudson Yards, dropped rental prices there by 15 percent. That still wasnt enough to move interest, its executives said.

In Los Angeles, vacancies in luxury apartments are nearing 5 percent. L.A.s downtown, which saw the largest number of newly built luxury units in the past decade, has been hit particularly hard, with rent prices dropping nearly 8 percent since January of this year, according to L.A. Magazine. Back in D.C., the vacancy rate for luxury housing topped 10 percent this summer. Now the average rent for a luxury apartment in D.C. is $2,387 per month, about $300 less than it was last year.

The coronavirus pandemic has sapped Americans appetite for fancyprojects.

Some of the diminishing appeal of luxury apartments and condos is obvious. To the extent that developments like these achieve community, they do so primarily through the wink-and-nod of a shared class status, or through amenities like pools, saunas, and gyms, the last things that anyone fearful of catching a deadly respiratory disease wants to use. Several cities, too, are reimplementing restrictions on group activities in the face of a rising third wave of COVID cases.

The crisis in luxury housing is also an example of the pandemic accelerating a trend rather than creating one. Even before COVID-driven job losses forced people to downsize, developers chased luxury housing on a scale no market could match. In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that builders in the U.S. were on track to create more new units of housing in 2020 than in any year since the 1980s. The catch was the 80 percent of those expected 371,000 new rentals are Class A properties geared toward high earners. Given the high cost of land and labor, its simply easier to turn a profit building housing for the wealthy, developers said.

Its exactly that kind of thinking that has driven urban development for the past two decades. Because what makes luxury apartments so undesirable nowcentral locations in cramped downtown corridors, with shared amenities that encourage social engagementis exactly what has made city leaders bend over backward to accommodate that kind of development. Few ideas have been championed so greatly in this generations return to urbanism movement as walkability, both to work and to recreation, to bars and shops and restaurants and home again. In this world, ease of movement is analogous to community building.

Urban development on the scale of Hudson Yards, CityCenterDC, and Chicagos revitalized Navy Pier became the shortcut to that ideal. (Being able to live, work, and play in one single place has become the mantra for this kind of development.) Ive heard the council members and people in our community talk about a legacy change, and I think thats how I would characterize this, one community development director in South Carolina said last year about a proposed $250 million mixed-use development. Its just a legacy for our community.

But only delusions of grandeurof slippery ideas like permanence and placemaking, which is developer lingo for this particular kind of urban revitalizationcould encourage the idea that raising entire glossy neighborhoods from scratch would make cities more livable or civically minded. And as it turns out, the things cities chased for so long are part of the reason people are turning away from them.

Developers have long argued that they continue to bet on the top of the market because its less profitable to build and subsidize below-market-rate housing. But is it really? While luxury units are losing customers, vacancies are low in more affordably priced units as tenants flock to cheaper options. (In some cases, rents in lower-income neighborhoods have actually ticked up.) The markets that are now seeing minor rebounds in leasing this winter, like New York, are among those that saw the greatest rent decreases. And the kinds of businesses communities are rallying to support arent the Chanel in CityCentertheyre the bodegas, bookstores, and niche mom and pop shops that have been decimated during COVID-related stay-at-home orders.

Those wont bounce back immediately, and in some places, they might not reopen at all. But as cities look to a post-COVID future, its worth considering that this kind of development is easier to encourage, and arguably more gratifying for communities. For most jurisdictions, its cheaper to relax strict zoning codes that would prevent a coffee shop from opening on the ground floor of a residential street than it is to entice developers with a multimillion-dollar tax break.

Its unlikely that lawmakers in D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago will ever give up completely on designing playgrounds for the wealthy, in part because their property and sales tax dollars help generate local revenue. But the pandemic has helped clarify that for the average city dweller, when the going gets rough, people dont turn to new communities for supportthey go home. If it took a pandemic to help hollow out CityCenter, the soaring income inequality thats likely soon to follow could finish the job.

Property management companies with a financial stake in luxury buildings have already hinted that they cannot sustain their COVID-level losses indefinitely. But cities have shown that theyre inclined to subsidize this kind of housing anyway, even if it doesnt mirror community need. For now, it seems, thats the primary form of community development that urbanites can expect.

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Luxury Ghost Towns - Slate

With so much pearl-clutching by the left and the media over delays and disruptions of the ongoing presidential transition, it helps to put things in perspective by reviewing how things went for President-elect Donald Trump during his transition period, starting from Election Day 2016 to his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017.

Before and during Trumps transition period, he and his campaign were under investigation by President Barack Obamas FBI based on the baseless Russia election conspiracy.

Just two weeks before Trumps inauguration, with Obamas blessing, FBI Director Jim Comey met one-on-one with Trump in New York to inform him of the salacious details of the so-called Steele Dossier (a collection of fabricated nonsense financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign).

But the purpose of Comeys briefing was not to inform or enlighten Trump, but rather to gather information on him for the ongoing sham investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane.

After Comey told Trump about the bogus dossier, he dashed off to a waiting FBI vehicle where he had arranged to have a classified laptop waiting for him. Comey typed up the memo about the Trump briefing while being driven to the FBIs building in New York, where he scurried to a secure room to gab with the Crossfire Hurricane team waiting back at FBI headquarters in Washington.

Nothing says smooth transition like gaslighting the president-elect and reporting your impressions to FBI headquarters, right?

Incoming presidents traditionally are given leeway to pick their Cabinet officials. Thats supposed to be the normthe president was elected by the people, and therefore should be allowed to select the top officials to run the executive branch.

After Obamas election, Senate Republicansthen in the minorityvoted for Obamas Cabinet nominees in large numbers. Top nominees such as Hillary Clinton for secretary of state, Eric Holder for attorney general, and Peter Orszag for director of the Office of Management and Budget, were confirmed 94-2, 75-21, and by unanimous consent, respectively.

That tradition ended after Trump was elected. Trumps nominees for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson; attorney general, Jeff Sessions; and director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, squeaked by their confirmation votes with 56-43, 52-47, and 51-49, respectively. A collective total of only five yea votes were cast by Democrats for those three nominees (three of the five votes coming from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.).

But for the fact that Republicans controlled the Senate by a razor-thin majority, Trump would have begun his term without these crucial Cabinet officials.

Rather than give deference to the presidents Cabinet nominees, Senate Democrats joined the #Resistance from the get-go.

Trump has been criticized in the press for using the postelection months at the White House to cement his legacyimplementing regulations, appointing allies to advisory boards, auctioning off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, etc.

The Washington Post is unhappy with these actions, scribbling that the whirlwind of activities has bucked tradition of past presidents who have deferred on major policy actions during the lame-duck period.

The Post and other Democrats have a short memory. If theyd only read what The New York Times reported after the 2016 election it would be clear that Trump has plenty of precedent to rely upon.

On Dec. 31, 2016, the Times reported:

With less than three weeks before the Obama White House is history the president is using every power at his disposal to cement his legacy and establish his priorities as the law of the land. He has banned oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, established new environmental monuments, protected funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantnamo Bay, criticized Israeli settlements and punished Russia for interfering in the recent elections through cyberattacks.

Those all sound like major policy actions, dont they? If Trump is bucking the tradition of past presidents, as the Post alleges, it must be presidents from the past other than Obama.

Should Trump sit idly by instead of cementing his legacy? Should Senate Republicans give a Biden administrations Cabinet nominees more deference than Democrats gave Trumps nominees in 2017? Should John Durham (now a special counsel) end his probe into the origins of the FBIs ridiculous Crossfire Hurricane investigation?

A case can be made that Trump and Senate Republicans should treat the Democrats past behavior as water under the bridge. Be the bigger political party, as it were. Perhaps thats whats best for the country.

Time will tell, but its unlikely that former Vice President Joe Biden will suffer the same shoddy treatment that Trump got during his presidential transition. However, Republicans can certainly make a good case that its the transition Biden would deserve.

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Leftists Are Upset With the Ongoing Presidential Transition. Let's Look Back at How They Behaved in - Daily Signal

By Clark Kauffman| Iowa Capitol Dispatch

Tyson Foods CEO announced Thursday he has hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to lead an independent investigation into a lawsuits claims that managers at one of the companys Iowa plants placed bets on the number of workers who would contract COVID-19.

The claims of a betting pool at the food giants Waterloo, Iowa, plant,first reported by Iowa Capital Dispatch, are just one set of allegations Tyson is facing in lawsuits across the country.

In Iowa alone, at least three coronavirus-related cases, involving a total of five plaintiffs, are pending in state and federal court. Other COVID-19 lawsuits, filed on behalf of dozens of workers, are pending in Texas courts.

In response to the latest allegations involving a betting pool among managers at the companys Waterloo plant, Tyson Foods president and chief executive officer, Dean Banks, said Thursday in a written statement:

We are extremely upset about the accusations involving some of the leadership at our Waterloo plant. Tyson Foods is a family company with 139,000 team members and these allegations do not represent who we are, or our core values and team behaviors. We expect every team member at Tyson Foods to operate with the utmost integrity and care in everything we do.

We have suspended, without pay, the individuals allegedly involved and have retained the law firm Covington & Burling LLP to conduct an independent investigation led by former Attorney General Eric Holder. If these claims are confirmed, well take all measures necessary to root out and remove this disturbing behavior from our company.

Our top priority is and remains the health and safety of our team members.

Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International labor union, which represents many of the workers in the Waterloo plant, also issued a statement on Thursday:

Americas meatpacking workers are dying on the frontlines of this pandemic, putting themselves in harms way to ensure our families can put food on the table this Thanksgiving, Perrone said. This shocking report of supervisors allegedly taking bets on how many workers would get infected, pressuring sick workers to stay on the job, and failing to enforce basic safety standards, should outrage every American.

Perrone said the allegations are evidence that the Trump administration and Iowa Gov. Reynolds care more about industry profits than protecting Americas frontline workers … We are continuing to call on elected leaders to implement an enforceable national safety standard, increased access to PPE and COVID-19 testing, and rigorous proactive inspections.

More than 1,000 Tyson employees at the Waterloo plant a third of the facilitys workforce have contracted the virus since the beginning of the pandemic and at least five of the workers have died.

Nationally, at least 4,600 Tyson employees in 15 states have been infected with COVID-19, and at least 18 have died. According to theMidwest Center for Investigative Reporting, there have been at least 42,000 infections tied to meatpacking facilities in at least 470 plants in 40 states, and at least 215 deaths are associated with 51 plants in 27 states.

Tyson Foods hasseveral facilities in Missouri. In June, the company reported that 371 employees at its chicken processing plant in thefar southwestern corner of Missouri had tested positive for COVID-19.

The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting has found 1,146 COVID-19 cases tied to meatpacking plants in Missouri, along with four deaths. However, they note that those numbers reflect what has been publicly reported; there might be more that have not been publicly identified.

In Texas, at least three lawsuits have been filed against Tyson one by a group of 12 employees at the companys plaint in Center, Texas, one by 41 employees of Tysons Amarillo plant, and one by the family of a deceased Tyson employee.

In one of the Texas cases, employees allege that Tyson Foods forced workers at one plant to continue to show up during the COVID-19 outbreak at a time when Gov. Greg Abbotts stay-at-home order was in effect. The lawsuit also alleges that the company did not give workers proper personal protective equipment and did not provide employees with workers compensation insurance.

The lawsuit claims that in lieu of workers comp, Tyson implemented its own Workplace Injury Settlement Program wherein Tyson had employees sign liability releases before they could claim any benefits for on-the-job injuries. In many cases, the lawsuit alleges, Tyson had employees sign away their right to sue, and then either denied the workers benefits or paid out very smalls sums of money.

A common element of the lawsuits is the allegation that Tyson had plenty of advance notice as to the impact the virus was likely to have on its workforce in Iowa and other states.

The plaintiffs note that Tyson Foods has extensive business interests in China, with one of the companys subsidiaries operating a facility in Hubei province. In January 2020, the companyformed a corporate coronavirus task forceafter observing the impact the virus had on its operations in China.

On Jan. 11, Chinese state media reported its first known death from COVID-19, and by February, Tyson had allegedly halted operations at some of its facilities in China and scaled back operations in others.

On March 8,three COVID-19 cases were reported in Iowa, and four days later Tyson Foods barred all non-essential visitors from entering Tyson offices and facilities and mandated that all non-critical employees at its corporate offices work remotely.

On April 6,Tyson temporarily suspended operationsat its Columbus Junction, Iowa, plant after more than two dozen employees tested positive for the virus. Despite that, employees of Packers Sanitation Services Incorporated allegedly moved back-and-forth between the Columbus Junction and Waterloo plants, working at both facilities without being quarantined and without being tested for COVID-19.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued general guidance on preparing workplaces for the virus was early as March 9. But it wasnt until April 26 that the agencies published additional guidelines that were specific to meat and poultry processing plants.

By that time, state lawmakers in Iowa had already filed an OSHA complaint against Tyson Foods in response to workers claiming they did not have sufficient personal protective equipment; social distancing measures were not being implemented or enforced; and nurses at the Waterloo Facility were unable to accurately conduct temperature checks.

On April 20, Iowas OSHA office inspected the Waterloo plant and later reported it hadfound no regulatory violations.The plant closed two days later and reopened in May with new safety measures in place.

The federal OSHA office, meanwhile, offered tosupport meatpackers in any litigationbrought by workers or their families due to workplace exposure to the virus, assuming the companies made a good faith effort to comply with voluntary mitigation guidelines.

Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group, has argued that state and federal efforts to provide legal immunity to businesses that demonstrate an effort to comply with federal guidelines could cripple the ability for workers and tehri families to sue, even in cases of gross negligence. The organization notes that guidelines from the CDC are just that suggested guidelines, not mandatory regulations, which means that compliance is discretionary and businesses need to show only that they considered following the suggested measures.

Where regulatory standards give near-total discretion to businesses, as is the case with the CDC guidelines, a compliance defense amounts to immunity even when the entities do almost nothing, Public Citizen reported in inan August reporton mitigation compliance.

This was originally published on Missouri Independent.

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Tyson hires former AG Eric Holder to investigate claims of betting on worker COVID infections - Columbia Daily Tribune

As President-Elect Joe Biden assembles a Cabinet, one of his most consequential decisions will be to choose the man or woman who will serve as the nations 85th attorney general. The eventual nominee will bear the heavy burden of restoring public confidence in the Department of Justice (DOJ), an institution whose most basic guiding norms have been upended, and whose dedicated but beleaguered career public servants have been subject to repeated attacks from the outgoing president and Attorney General Bill Barr.

Biden will choose from a pool of many qualified individuals. But, in our view, the key credentials of the next AG should be significant prosecutorial experience at the federal or state level and an abiding fidelity to the apolitical administration of justice, even if doing so results in outcomes that do not politically benefit the new administration. Such a choice would go a long way toward reassuring the public and rank-and-file DOJ attorneys and law enforcement agents that the incoming leadership understands that the Departments mission is to pursue impartial justice, guided by evidence and law, free from partisan considerations.

There may be no agency head more central to the effective functioning of American democracy than the attorney general. As the nations chief law enforcement officer, the AG must make real the constitutional promises of equal protection and due process under law. Once the AG emerges from the political process of presidential appointment and Senate confirmation, he or she must abstain completely from partisanship. The DOJs Justice Manual spells this out clearly: The rule of law depends upon the evenhanded administration of justice. The legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence.

Every day the attorney general is confronted with decisions testing his or her commitment to this ideal. Robert Jackson, who held the position before his appointment to the Supreme Court, once observed:

The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations. Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizens friends interviewed.

Any hint that political considerations influenced a prosecutorial decision undermines public confidence in the even-handed administration of justice.

Because the role of the attorney general is so sensitive, the positon should be filled by individuals who need no on-the-job training. Both of the Senate-confirmed attorneys general who served during the Obama administration Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch had served as career federal prosecutors for significant periods in their careers. Both came up through the ranks and understood what it means to work in the trenches. Both possessed the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to win the confidence of the thousands of career public servants who carry out the day-to-day work of the Department. And both understood their roles as stewards of the Departments core value of fair and impartial administration of justice free from partisan political considerations. [Full disclosure: Ronald Weich, one of the authors of this piece, led a team assisting Holder through the Senate confirmation process and co-author Edgar Chen was part of the DOJ Legislative Affairs team handling Lynchs confirmation.]

The core value of nonpartisan justice has been sorely tested in recent years. The outgoing attorney general argued recently that career prosecutors could not be entrusted with difficult decisions and that political control over law enforcement was necessary and desirable. Meanwhile, Trump himself famously lamented, Wheres my Roy Cohn? in seeking an attorney general whose first priority would be to serve as fixer and personal lawyer for the president. Paradoxically, Trump held a misguided admiration for the relationship between Holder and President Barack Obama, erroneously viewing it as one of personal fealty and believing that protection of the president was the principal criteria for leading the DOJ: I will say this: Holder Protected President Obama. Totally protected him. Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, Ill be honest. This statement revealed the presidents deeply flawed and sub-elementary grasp of concepts such as rule of law. Holder got the last word: I had a president I did not have to protect.

While Holder was indeed a trusted adviser to Obama, that role was separate from his duties as attorney general. Holder, who had come up through the Department as a career public corruption prosecutor and later served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and deputy attorney general, took great pains to ensure that law enforcement decisions were strictly insulated from White House participation. In fact, there are several notable instances when Holder acted in a manner that did not favor Obamas or the Democratic Partys political interests.

Those events include:

In all these cases, decisions by the attorneys general (and we use the plural here to include Sessions correct recusal) were based on ethics rules; respect for the non-partisan, apolitical work of career investigators, prosecutors, and professional responsibility officials; and the willingness to buck political affinity in order to adhere to established principles, and in the case of the Stevens prosecution, overturning the decisions of career prosecutors only because clear and blatant ethics or judicial violations were unambiguously documented.

In recent days, career prosecutors have demonstrated their commitment to the apolitical administration of justice. When Attorney General Barr took theunprecedented step of authorizing federal prosecutorsto pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certificationof elections, contrary to longstanding DOJ policy, the Director of the Departments Elections Crimes Branch resigned in protest and at least 16 career federal prosecutors assigned to monitor electionsoffered a public rebuke of Barrs action, arguing the need to avoid speculation that it was motivated by partisan political concerns. These career civil servants placed principle over partisanship, even at great risk to their livelihoods. Whomever Biden selects as AG must share their determination to do the right thing, even at the risk of offending the occupant of the White House.

The Department of Justice is the only federal agency named after an ideal. The next attorney general should remain true to that ideal and follow in the examples described above by previous attorneys general and career prosecutors who have risked their positions and indeed careers to do what is right, in order to preserve the constitutional principles upon which justice in this nation is predicated.

See the article here:
The Next Attorney General's Allegiance Must Be to the Rule of Law - Just Security

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The fact that there are state election boards currently contemplating invalidating tens of thousands of votes is the only thing that keeps this off the top of every news outlet right now but the Attorney General potentially using his office to help his private book of business is not great.

Last night, Reuters broke the story that Attorney General Bill Barr, while working at Kirkland & Ellis, represented Caterpillar in a billion-dollar tax case that miraculously was dropped by the DOJ one week after Barr took over the Justice Department:

A week after Barr was nominated for the job of attorney general, Justice officials in Washington told the investigative team in the active criminal probe of Caterpillar to take no further action in the case, according to an email written by one of the agents and reviewed by Reuters.

The decision, the email said, came from the Justice Departments Tax Division and the office of the deputy attorney general, who was then Rod Rosenstein.

Ah, well, if Rod Rosenstein blessed it while fresh off telling his department to kidnap children then it must be legit! This is a quick reminder that no one should ever do business with these dirtbags forever looking your way, King & Spalding clients. The Justice Department makes mistakes but when the allegation is you stole 2.3 billion from the government the question is whether it should really be $1.8 billion, not maybe its zero.

Potential conflicts of interest, whether real or apparent, often arise when high-powered lawyers switch between private practice and government service. Bruce A. Green, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Fordham Law School, said it is not unheard of for attorney generals to have clients who had business before the DOJ. He noted that in 2009, President Barack Obamas attorney general, Eric Holder, recused himself from a case involving Swiss Bank UBS, a prior client.

But Green said he could not recall a case where agents were told to take no further action on a matter involving an incoming attorney generals former client without some kind of explanation. Why would you just stop? he asked.

Why the f**k indeed!

Caterpillar was routing profits through Switzerland where they had negotiated a massive tax break for themselves. Those facts dont seem to be in dispute. They just said their massive dodge scheme was legal. A grand jury had already heard these allegations and said, Yup, those guys look dirty. The DOJ sent agents to raid Caterpillars corporate offices, which and I cannot stress this enough as a former white-collar defense attorney myself is NOT NORMAL. Usually in cases against a blue chip company the government will just politely ask you to turn over documents. They raid your offices when they think youre laundering El Chapos money, not when they think youve under withheld.

Say what you will about the United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration but it does not pursue criminal matters against corporations lightly. This was a case that they clearly saw as a slam dunk and one that every level of the Justice Department was cool with pursuing from 2017, when the grand jury rendered its thoughts, until the week after Barr got the job.

And then it all stopped. When Caterpillars defense attorney became the Attorney General.

If the country ever gets a chance to come up from a rampaging pandemic, economic meltdown, and bungling coup attempts, hopefully this can get more attention.

Exclusive: U.S. investigators were told to take no further action on Caterpillar, ex-client of Barr [Reuters]

Joe Patriceis a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free toemail any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him onTwitterif youre interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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Bill Barr Did WHAT? How Is This Not The Biggest Story In The Country Right Now? - Above the Law