The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled, in United States v. Benton (8th Cir. May 11, 2018) that three officials from Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign committed criminal acts by (1) paying an Iowa State Senator for various services, including his endorsement, through a sub-contract with a video production vendor and (2) reporting the purpose of the expenditure as "audio/visual services."

Broward County Election Official Brenda Snipes is finally starting to face the music for her years of admitted vote fraud and incompetence. Ironically, it was for her efforts regarding a Democrat Primary for then DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman that she is beginning to face the music:

The RNLA recently announced two initiatives to honor its Founding Chair Bob Horn: re-naming the Chairman's Award in his honor to the Robert J. Horn Chairman's Award and establishing the Bob Horn Fund for Law Students to encourage law student participation in the RNLA:

Today, the Senate confirmed Judge Michael Brennan to the Seventh Circuit and invoked cloture on Joel Carson (Tenth Circuit) and John Nalbandian (Sixth Circuit).  The Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported Mark Bennett (Ninth Circuit), Nancy E. Brasel (D. Minn.), Robert R. Summerhays (W.D. La.), and Eric C. Tostrud (D. Minn.) to the Senate.

As we highlighted earlier this week, this is an important week for many of President Trump's judicial nominees, especially circuit court nominees. Several noteworthy events happened today.

Although Howard Kurtz probably would not put it this way, he is a dying breed of journalist. He believes in journalists reporting the news andnot journalists writing their preferred narrative. His new book Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War Over the Truth details how many of his fellow reporters have declared war on journalism itself. As he writes in the afterword:

This week is a busy and important one for judicial confirmations.  First, the Senate is taking confirmation votes on six excellent circuit court nominees: Michael B. Brennan (Seventh Circuit), Joel M. Carson (Tenth Circuit), Kurt D. Engelhardt (Fifth Circuit), John B. Nalbandian (Sixth Circuit), Michael Y. Scudder (Seventh Circuit), and Amy J. St. Eve (Seventh Circuit).  The Senate invoked cloture on Judge Engelhardt's nomination this evening, 64 to 31.

RNLA member Prof. Brad Smith wrote about the first judicial opinion issued by Judge James Ho, one of President Trump's nominees to the Fifth Circuit:

Ed Whelan summarized the current state of the judicial confirmation process on Tuesday in National Review (emphasis added):

Last Friday, the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas' voter ID law, which it had amended in 2017 in response to an earlier en banc Fifth Circuit decision.  Judge Edith Jones wrote for the three-judge panel in Veasey v. Abbott, noting the irony that the plaintiffs were challenging, and the district court found invalid, the very interim remedy that both the plaintiffs and the district court had agreed to in 2016 (internal citations omitted):