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From Judge Beth Bloom in Mac Isaac v. Twitter, Inc., decided Monday (but docketed Tuesday), dismissing a complaint filed Monday (for more on the case, see here):

This cause is before the Court upon a sua sponte review of the record. On December 28, 2020, Plaintiff filed a Complaint for Defamation asserting a single count for libel per se and seeking damages, including punitive damages equal to $500,000,000.00. According to the Complaint, Defendant made false statements that Plaintiff is a “hacker” in reference to materials obtained by the New York Post and shared on Twitter in an exposé concerning the contents of Hunter Biden’s computer hard drive. For the reasons set forth below, the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction.

“Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. They possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute, which is not to be expanded by judicial decree.” … “Indeed, it is well settled that a federal court is obligated to inquire into subject matter jurisdiction sua sponte whenever it may be lacking.” “The jurisdiction of a court over the subject matter of a claim involves the court’s competency to consider a given type of case and cannot be waived or otherwise conferred upon the court by the parties. Otherwise, a party could work a wrongful extension of federal jurisdiction and give courts power the Congress denied them.” … Accordingly, “once a federal court determines that it is without subject matter jurisdiction, the court is powerless to continue.”

The Complaint alleges that Plaintiff is a resident of Delaware and that Defendant is a Delaware corporation “with an office in Dade County, Florida.” The sole basis for subject matter jurisdiction is diversity of citizenship. For a court to have diversity jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a), “all plaintiffs must be diverse from all defendants.”

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332(c), “a corporation shall be deemed a citizen of every State … by which it has been incorporated and of the State or foreign state where it has its principal place of business[.]” Thus, accepting the Complaint’s allegations as true, the Complaint fails to allege complete diversity. Therefore, the Court is without subject matter jurisdiction over the instant action.

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Please feel free to write comments on this post on whatever topic you like! (As usual, please avoid personal insults of each other, vulgarities aimed at each other or at third parties, or other things that are likely to poison the discussion.)

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12/31/1884: Justice Stanley Forman Reed’s birthday.

 

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After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, took to the streets for 108 days in a row, setting buildings on fire and scuffling with local and federal law enforcement as well as fellow Portlanders. As the summer wore on, protesters began entering residential neighborhoods in the early morning hours, shining lights into windows and telling people to literally and figuratively “wake up” to a world they say is made intolerable by racism, income inequality, the presidency of Donald Trump, and more.

Veteran journalist Nancy Rommelmann knows Rose City like the back of her hand, having lived there for 15 years. Nick Gillespie spoke with her in August about the roots of the unrest, what she learned while covering the demonstrations for Reason, and what might be coming next.

Q: Tell me about the protesters we see on the national news. 

A: For the most part, in my experience, they’re kids.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: I’m in my 50s. I’m a mother. They’re in their early 20s and sort of ungainly, like kids in their early 20s can be. I’ve had them be, one-on-one, exceptionally polite to me: offering me a doughnut or a water, or “Can I wash out your eyes?” [after I’ve been hit with tear gas]. They will claim they are taking care of each other, and in a certain sense, they are.

I have had them be extremely obnoxious to me. They stole my phone. They come up and yell in my face. They want [you] to know that they’re there with their baton.

I’ve also had a few—very few—actually talk to me.

Q: When you see somebody walking down the street carrying a bat, that’s very provocative.

A: It is provocative. And usually you’re not seeing one person. They move in groups, whether it’s three people or six people or 600 people. And this is deliberate, to say, “We are here.”

It’s sort of the magic outfit. “I put this on, I am part of a group. And as part of this group, I will be intimidating. I don’t need to talk to you about things. You will not film me. I’m not going to hit you with my baton—probably—but I’m going to let you know that I’m here with my baton.”

Q: The protests started after the death of George Floyd, but they changed when Donald Trump signed an executive order to protect federal buildings using federal law enforcement. 

A: This was like sticking a neon sign on the [federal courthouse in Portland] saying, “Attack me.” Now you have a locus, you have a place to express your rage. Peaceful protest had been sort of tamping down because, come on, six weeks? Eight weeks? Maybe I want to stay home and watch a miniseries.

But [the arrival of federal police] reignites it, and we see the grief and outrage over George Floyd taking on another dimension, which is, “We are against Trump and his goons.”

Q: What happens after the feds arrive? 

The first night I was there, the feds are inside [the courthouse]. And occasionally, like once every half-hour, something is announced: “This is federal property, get away from the building.” Which does nothing. The people outside are trying to provoke a reaction. After about two and a half, three hours, they finally got it, which was tear gas was thrown out [by the feds].

So everybody falls back, and then everybody starts screaming, “I can’t believe they tear-gassed us!” And it’s like, well, it’s not a good thing. Nobody wants to be tear-gassed. But you’ve been pelting the building with flaming trash for three hours, provoking a reaction. So you got the reaction.

Q: You’ve talked to a bunch of protesters over several months. What do they want?

A: Some of these people are 20 years old, and I have said to them, “What is it that you want?” And it’s like, “DEFUND THE POLICE.” All right. So then where do we go from there? “Well, we could have nurses.” I mean, these are the little answers you get.

There may well be a somewhat workable manifesto. But if antifa is decentralized, there’s not going to be one policy paper of where we’re going from here. I don’t think the average protester is prepared to have that discussion with you beyond the six or seven slogan-encapsulated principles that they are working toward.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity. For a podcast version, subscribe to The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie.

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Daniel and Norris Keating saw a barrel marked “flammable liquid” floating in the waterway behind their Clearwater, Fla., home. They pulled it out and saw it was further labeled “ethyl alcohol.” Daniel Keating called county officials to see about dropping it off at a hazardous waste drop-off site. Instead, he ended up with firefighters coming to his home and telling him that since it was now on his property he’d have to pay to have it disposed of. The contractor who handles such work for the county told him it would cost $1,500 to get rid of the barrel. Instead, Keating called a local TV station. Once a reporter started making some calls about the matter, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection agreed to retrieve the barrel.

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