Nick DeBenedetto

Attorney at @IJ. Coffee guy. Opinions are my own.

[Nick DeBenedetto @NJD_636]

Last week, my @CatoInstitute colleague @Thomas_A_Berry and I wrote an op-ed in @USATODAY highlighting the threat to free speech posed by government officials with #QualifiedImmunity who target online pranksters. https://t.co/c9Dxo6D2oD

[Short Circuit @ShortCircuit_IJ]

Our Latest Podcast: SWAT Teams at the Supreme Court

With @JeffreyHRedfern & @NJD_636!

https://t.co/L7zqqIbKUE

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Twenty five years ago today, forty people who had never met decided to die on purpose so that strangers in Washington would not have to.

United 93 should have left Newark at 8:00 a.m. It sat on the taxiway in a line of airplanes and did not get airborne until 8:42. Forty two minutes late. That delay handed the people in that cabin the one thing nobody else in the sky that morning was given. Time, and the truth.

When four hijackers took the cockpit at 9:28, both towers were already burning. The passengers picked up the seatback airphones and called home, and their families told them what was happening in New York.

So they knew. That is what separates Flight 93 from everything else that happened that day. Every other victim died without warning. These forty had roughly half an hour to sit with the knowledge that they were already dead, that the only question left was where the airplane would land and how many people it would take with it.

Think about who they were.

Captain Jason Dahl was flying that trip because he had swapped for it, so he could get home for his fifth wedding anniversary. His first officer was LeRoy Homer Jr., Air Force Academy class of 1987, a C-141 pilot who had flown in the Gulf War and into Somalia, a major in the Reserve, with a wife and a ten month old daughter at home. Both men fought for that cockpit and neither of them gave it up willingly.

Todd Beamer's wife Lisa was pregnant with their third child. Jeremy Glick's daughter was twelve weeks old. Tom Burnett had three little girls. Lauren Grandcolas was pregnant and flying home from her grandmother's funeral. Deora Bodley was twenty. CeeCee Lyles was a flight attendant who had been a police detective in Florida and had four sons. Sandy Bradshaw had two small children waiting in North Carolina.

Not one of them had a reason to be brave. Every single one of them had a reason to sit still and hope.

Listen to what they said instead.

Tom Burnett told his wife Deena, don't worry, we're going to do something.

Sandy Bradshaw called her husband from the galley and told him she was filling coffee pots with boiling water. Then she said she had to go and hung up on him.

Honor Elizabeth Wainio told her stepmother, I have to go, they're breaking into the cockpit, I love you.

Todd Beamer stayed on the line with a phone operator named Lisa Jefferson for thirteen minutes, gave her his home number, asked her to tell his wife he loved her, and asked her to say the Lord's Prayer with him. Then she heard him set the phone down and say to the men beside him, are you ready, okay, let's roll.

They took a vote first. On a hijacked airliner, with a man at the front claiming to have a bomb, they held a vote, because they were not going to force anyone else to die for their decision.

At 9:57 they came up the aisle.

The recorder caught six minutes of it. A galley cart driven into the cockpit door. Men shouting. The hijacker at the controls throwing the airplane into rolls and dives trying to knock them off their feet, and failing, because they kept coming. At 10:00 he asks the man beside him whether to finish it. Twenty five seconds later you can hear an American voice screaming, in the cockpit, if we don't we'll die. At 10:02 the hijackers are yelling at each other to put it down.

They put it down. At 10:03 a.m., in an empty field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 130 miles and twenty minutes short of the United States Capitol, where Congress was still inside the building.

The men who hijacked that plane were willing to die for their cause. So were the passengers. The difference is that the hijackers wanted to take thousands of people with them, and the passengers of Flight 93 made sure the only people who died were themselves.

Forty of them. Salesmen, flight attendants, a college student, a retired ironworker, a judo champion, two pilots fighting to the last second for a control yoke. No weapons, no training, no orders, no chance.

They are the only Americans on September 11, 2001 who saw it coming, understood exactly what it would cost them, and walked into it anyway.

[Spike Cohen @RealSpikeCohen]

This man's name is Rick Rescorla.

22 years ago today, Rick disobeyed orders, and saved 2700 lives.

Rick was the head of security for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He warned that the Towers' basements were vulnerable to attack.

His warnings fell on deaf ears.

Then the 1993 attack happened, and people started listening to him.

After that attack, Rick implemented regular evacuation drills, using his megaphone to direct the thousands of employees out of their offices, down the stairwells, and out of the building to safety.

Born in Cornwall, Rick would sing Welsh and Cornish songs from his megaphone, as he directed the employees out of the building.

He would routinely tell all of the employees: in an emergency, no matter what chaos is happening around you, no matter what anyone tells you, leave your offices, go down the stairwells, and leave the building.

Rick told his wife Susan that he suspected another attack on the World Trade Center would happen, this time by air.

And 22 years ago today, on September 11, 2001, that attack happened.

When the first plane hit the North Tower, the Port Authority announced over the South Tower's speaker system "Please do not leave the building. This area is secure."

Rick ignored them.

"The dumb sons of b------s told me not to evacuate," he said to his best friend Dan. "They said it's just Building One. I told them I'm getting my people the f--k out of here."

And so Rick picked up his megaphone as he had done so many times before, told his employees not to listen to the orders, and directed them out of the building.

His Cornish songs helped keep their nerves calm as they evacuated, even after the second plane hit their Tower.

Once he had successfully evacuated his employees, Rick went back to look for survivors.

But first, he called his wife Susan.

"Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life."

Rick rushed back to the South Tower.

That was the last time anyone saw him alive.

All but 6 of the more than 2700 Morgan Stanley employees survived.

Had they obeyed the Port Authority, they would all be dead.

Thankfully, they listened to Rick instead.

Rest in Peace, Rick. Thank you for your service.

[Sterling Snow @sterlingmsnow]

I reread this every year.

I cry like a baby every year.

Todd Beamer died a father, husband, and hero.

Todd: Hello… Operator… listen to me. I can’t speak very loud. This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco. Our plane has been hijacked.

Lisa: I understand. Can they see you?

Todd: No. There are three that we know of. They have knives — razor knives, like box cutters. Someone announced from the cockpit there was a bomb. It sounded fake.

Lisa: Your name?Todd: Todd Beamer. United Flight 93.Todd: They killed one passenger in first class. They forced most of us back. Fourteen of us here. Five flight attendants. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor.

Lisa: Are you okay?

Todd: We’re going down… wait. No. We’re leveling off. We changed directions. We’re flying east again.

Todd: A guy named Jeremy called his wife. She told him two planes hit the World Trade Center. Lisa, is that true?

Lisa: I have to tell you the truth. It’s very bad. Both towers are gone. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Our country is under attack. I’m afraid your plane may be part of their plan.

Todd: Oh God. Lisa, will you do something for me? Call my wife and my kids. Promise me you’ll call.

Lisa: I promise.

Todd: Our home number is… You have the same name as my wife. Lisa. We’ve been married ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her I love her. I’ll always love her. We have two boys — David, he’s 3, and Andrew, he’s 1. Tell them their daddy loves them and he is so proud of them. The baby is due January 12th. I saw an ultrasound. We still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy.

Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.)

Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol.

Todd: I understand. I’ll be back.

Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot.

Lisa: What are you going to do?

Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out.

Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.

[Patrick Jaicomo @pjaicomo]

I’m very much looking forward to watching my @IJ colleague Sam Gedge argue Jouppi v. Alaska before the U.S. Supreme Court this term.

[Josh Windham @windyjosh92]

Yep yep yep!

[Katrin Marquez @KatrinMarquez]

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously rejected the open fields doctrine as a matter of state constitutional law!
Congrats to @IJ's 4A (and state equivalent) warriors, especially @windyjosh92

[Katrin Marquez @KatrinMarquez]

Third cert grant in an IJ case for OT26! Gonna be a good year for liberty!

[Dan McLaughlin @baseballcrank]

Go Ben go.

[Clarence Maximus @ClarenceMaximus]

From the closing paragraph of Paul Johnson’s “A History of the American People,” written in 1997 but still true today:

“[T]he story of America is essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence. America today, with its 260 million people, its splendid cities, its vast wealth, and its unrivaled power, is a human achievement without parallel. That achievement—the transformation of a mostly uninhabited wilderness into the supreme national artifact of history—did not come about without heroic sacrifice and great sufferings stoically endured, many costly failures, huge disappointments, defeats, and tragedies. There have indeed been many setbacks in 400 years of American history. As we have seen, many unresolved problems, some of daunting size, remain. But the Americans are, above all, a problem-solving people. They do not believe that anything in this world is beyond human capacity to soar to and dominate. They will not give up. Full of essential goodwill to each other and to all, confident in their inherent decency and their democratic skills, they will attack again and again the ills in their society, until they are overcome or at least substantially redressed. So the ship of state sails on, and mankind still continues to watch its progress, with wonder and amazement and sometimes apprehension, as it moves into the unknown waters of the 21st century and the third millennium. The great American republican experiment is still the cynosure of the world’s eyes. It is still the first, best hope for the human race. Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint an expectant humanity.”

Happy 250th, America!

[Arnold Schwarzenegger @Schwarzenegger]

Happy Independence Day!

There’s a story from the end of the Revolutionary War I want to tell as we celebrate America’s 250th Birthday, and it’s one everyone in the world can learn from.

George Washington, at that moment, after commanding the American forces to victory, was the most powerful man in the new country. Many people talked about making him King of America.

Across the ocean, King George was sitting with an American painter, and asked what he thought Washington would do now that the war was ending. The painter said he believed he would go back to his farm.

The King said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

As the war officially ended, Washington came to speak to Congress and said, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of Action.” He returned his commission they’d given him in 1775 - after more than 8 years of leading the Americans to victory without pay, and he was home at Mount Vernon for Christmas.

Of course, he was elected as our first President a few years later, and after two terms, showed the same selflessness again when he willingly gave up his power and went back to Mount Vernon again.

That’s true greatness. He had all the power in the world. But power, alone, does not make you great.

Washington’s greatness came from being a true servant - to a cause much bigger than himself. His greatness was his complete lack of selfishness.

The whole story of American Independence is a story of selflessness. It’s a story of people who set their self-interest aside and worked for each other.

We’ve all heard the line about “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Apparently, Ben Franklin might have actually never said that.

But that’s fine, because the same mentality is right there in the last line of the Declaration of Independence, published on this day 250 years ago:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

We mutually pledge to each other.

No one was in this alone. No one was in it for themselves. This was a group of people with different backgrounds who were in it for each other.

Today is a reminder: greatness comes from what we do for each other, never what we do for ourselves.

That’s a lesson that applies no matter what country you call home.

It’s a lesson that doesn’t require any law passed by a politician, because, let’s be honest, if you’re waiting for selfless politicians, I really hope you are not holding your breath.

All of us have the power to be there for the people around us. For our families and friends. For our neighbors. For everyone.

All of us can reach for greatness.

It’s as simple as looking beyond yourself, seeing past the mirror, picking your eyes up from your phone, and pledging to be there for each other.

Happy Fourth. May you all find your own version of greatness today by lifting each other up.

Lift up your neighborhood. Lift up America. Lift up the World.

[Judge Don Willett @JusticeWillett]

One nation in all of human history staked its existence on a single blazing truth: every soul enters this world crowned in God-given rights beyond the reach of any earthly power. 250 years later, America remains the boldest wager ever placed on human liberty. ❤️ 🤍 💙

[Nick DeBenedetto @NJD_636]

@EHamiltonEsq I have a hard time imagining the Court granting cert if there aren’t 5 votes to strike down the bans.

[Nick DeBenedetto @NJD_636]

@theadamkraut @2Aupdates The compelled speech angle of such a law would be interesting to explore as well! https://t.co/hnCjw2qUTR

[Nick DeBenedetto @NJD_636]

@senatorshoshana @CodfishJohnny Will do!

[Nick DeBenedetto @NJD_636]

@senatorshoshana @CodfishJohnny Indeed! And the longer you sit with it, the more bonkers it gets! If you are interested, our opening brief is due to CA8 on 7/6.

[Institute for Justice @IJ]

Bar Censored, Can't Use the Word “Barbershop”

[Nick DeBenedetto @NJD_636]

@senatorshoshana @CodfishJohnny My case!

[Villanova MBB @NovaMBB]

NCAA Champions - NBA Champions! 🏆

[Susan Falvey @FalveyKStars]

The Goats. That’s the Post. @jalenbrunson1 @CoachJayWright @nyknicks @NovaMBB