MLB Predictions for 2024

I was 28 positions off in last year's preditions. Best division was the AL West, where I predicted the finish perfectly. Worst were the AL East and the NL Central, with eight positions off in each.

Once again the losers were easier to predict than the winners. I correctly predicted the last place team in five of the six divisions, but the first place team in only three divisions.

There were a number of disappointing teams. Top on the list was the Cardinals, who inexplicably finished last. The high-spending Yankees and Mets were next on the disappointment list, each finishing fourth after I had slated them both for first. The biggest surprise was the Orioles, who won the AL East.

And now on to the new year.

AL East: Yankees, Orioles, Rays, Blue Jays, Red Sox

AL Central: Twins, Tigers, Guardians, White Sox, Royals

AL West: Astros, Mariners, Rangers, Angels, A's

NL East: Braves, Phillies, Mets, Marlins, Nationals

NL Central: Brewers, Reds, Cubs, Cardinals, Pirates

NL West: Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Giants, Padres, Rockies

Ranking the First 95 Oscar Winners

In honor of the 96th Oscar ceremony last night, a web site came out yesterday with a ranking of the first 95 winners of the Best Picture Oscar. I have a strong reaction to this misguided ranking.

Four are clearly ranked way too high. These are, with the ranking in parentheses: Lawrence of Arabia (11), West Side Story (15), Rocky (19), and My Fair Lady (24). These are all mediocre films that had no business winning an Oscar, let alone being ranked in the top quarter of Oscar winners. Boo.

Forrest Gump at 75 is ranked way too low. This film is a wonderful achievement and deserves to be higher. Same with The Bridege on the River Kwai at 57, Patton at 40, No Country for Old Men at 39, and In the Heat of the Night at 26.

Supreme Court Embarrasses Itself in Colorado Election Case

The Suprme Court has once again injected itself into a political thicket, with predictably embarrassing consequences. By ruling yesterday that Donald Trump must remain on the Colorado ballot, the Court ignores the plain text of the Constitution. The result is that the Court will continue its descent into irrelevancy.

The Court obviously decided how it wanted to rule, and then searched for some legal justification. Usually, the Court is able to come up with a plausible rationale for its concluson; but here, there was no plausible rationale, so the Court had to simply ignore the law and make something up.

The Constitution gives each state legislature the power to choose the electors from that state to the Electoral College. If they want to, they could choose them directly, rather than having the voters decide. These days, each state has elections, but the power to run those elections rests with the state. There are no federal questions involved.

Colorado ruled that Trump's participation in an insurrection disqualified him from its ballot, in accordance with the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that Colorado couldn't apply the 14th Amendment, because Congress had not passed any "enabling legislation". This despite the fact that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the insurrection provision cannot apply absent enabling legislation from Congress.

The irony is that five of the conservative justices, who like to advocate for a literal interpretion of the Constitution, chose to completely ignore the text of the Constitution.

An interesting aspect of the written opinions is that the five men constituted the majority, while the four women concurred in the result but wrote concurring opinions complaining that the majority had gone too far, deciding issues that didn't need to be reached to decide the case. And the four women included conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with the three liberal justices.

In my Constitutional Law class, many years ago, we learned that the Supreme Court doesn't get involved in "political questions". There was a good reason for this, as the Court is supposed to be above politics. The idea is that political questions should be decided in the political arena, not in the legal arena. Sadly, the current Court ignores this time-honored principle, and in the process has disgraced itself.

Fascinating Hearing in the Georgia Election Interference Case

I was fascinated this past week by the closing arguments in the defendants' motion to disqualify DA Fani Willis from the Fulton County case. On the surface, it apeared unlikely, even silly, that the DA would be disqualified for having a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired. The evidence presented by the defendants was designed to show that the relationship already existed at the time the special prosecutor was hired. Both the DA and her boyfriend denied this. They acknowledged that they had met at a judicial conference a couple of years earier, but insisted that the romantic relationship started much later.

The two of them also insisted that DA Willis did not benefit financially from the relationship. They claimed that Willis reimbursed her boyfriend with cash for her share of the expenses incurred during their many trips together. There were no records presented by either side as to how she acquired the cash, or why she didn't write a chcek to her boyfriend. But here's the kicker--since this was the defendants' Motion, the burden of proof is on the defendants, not the state, and the defendants produced nothing to refute what Willis was claiming, as far-fetched as her story seems.

The facts paint a sorry picture. Willis paid her hired special prosecutor $700,000, and the case hasn't yet gotten close to trial. In the closing arguments, defendants' counsel talked as if a speech Willis gave at a church was almost as serious a problem as the special proesecutor mess. Prosecutors are not supposed to speak out publicly about a pending cvase like this, as it can poison the jury pool. In addition, she gave an interview to a writer who was writing a book on the case, further poisoning the jury pool. Also, she contributed to the campaign of someone running against a person she was prosecuting in an earlier corruption case, showing a pattern of politically-motivated behavior on the part of a DA, who is supposed to be above partisan politics.

All of the defendants' counsel were very impressive in their closing arguments. Trump's attorney was especially imporessive (unlike the attorneys in his other cases, who have been largely incompetent). The prosecutor fron the DA's office seemed relatively inept by comparison.

Fortunately for the state, the Motion will be decided by how the judge applies the facts and the law, and not by the ability, or lack thereof, of the attorneys in the case. It is a much closer case that it had initially seemed, and it could go either way. The judge expects to have a decision within the next two weeks. If Willis is disquaified, the case will likely fall apart as a new team would have to start from scratch.

My guess is the judge will rule that the defense has not proven that DA Willis received a financial benefit from her hiring of the special prosecutor, and that she can therefore stay on the case, although he will surely chastise her for her ethical lapses. Put another way, the defendants have not proven that the DA's conduct, as reprehensible as it has been, has deprived them of their right to a fair trial. The Fulton County voters will eventually have the final say if and when DA Willis runs for re-election.

Update on March 16th.The Judge has ruled and it is in line with my comments. DA Willis can stay on the case, but only if she gets rid of the special prosecutor who was her former lover.

What bothers me is the Judge's reference to "the appearance of impropriety". When I was in law school in the early '70s, I was taught that part of the lawyer's ethical duty was to avoid "the appearance of impropriety". But my understanding is that at some later point this was removed from the ethical rules, with "actual impropriety" becoming the new standard.

Apparently Georgia still has this outdated standard, which is not surprising from a deep South state. Still, I cannot argue with the idea that there is something rotten here, and I can't escape the idea that DA Willis is way over her head. The fact that she could not find any better qualified special prosecutor than someone who has zero experience with RICO cases shows just how weak her overly ambitious endeavor is. The Judge's observation that there is an “an odor of mendacity" about the testimony of DA Willis and her lover will continue to cast a dark cloud over the prosecution. The chance that Trump will be convicted in this case is close to zero.