Ward on Words

On Sept. 15, 2025, Trump filed a $ 15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and other parties. The pleading runs 84 pages. On Sept. 19, 2025, Judge Steven D. Merryday, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, issued a four-page ruling ripping Trump's pleading to shreds . (It's short, to the point, and definitely worth the read.)  The ruling allows Trump's team to refile within 28 days and requires that the new pleading cannot exceed 40 pages. In his spare, four-page ruling, Judge Merryday provides multiple lessons in writing that all of us could benefit from following, lessons that I would like to share here: Lesson 1) Cogently present the issue: "In this action, a prominent American citizen (perhaps the most prominent American citizen) alleges defamation by a prominent American newspaper publisher American newspaper publisher (perhaps the most prominent American newspaper publisher) and by several other  corporate and natural persons.   ..." Les...

Trump and Vance have taken to social media in the last 24 hours to showcase their utter disdain for the rule of law, due process and the Constitution. Their actions are impeachable offenses but unfortunately for US patriots and constitutionalists, their party is 100 percent on board with authoritarianism. I don't know how you can look at the events of this week and come to any other conclusion.  First, JD Vance used social media to let everyone know that extrajudicial murders conducted by US military are fine by him. His statement was in response to the Trump administration's boast that the US military blew up a boat in international waters, killing all 11 people on board. Trump and his team claimed without evidence that the people on the boat were smuggling drugs  to the US from Venezuela and thus, the US government acted as judge, jury and executioner, no evidence or trial needed to prove any guilt before execution.  In response to this act of violence, JD Vance did wha...