Wednesday
Feb282024
Leap Year Day 2024
The New York Times is liveblogging the dueling Biden & Trump trips to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Texas. David Goodman of the New York Times: "A federal court in Austin on Thursday blocked the implementation of a Texas law that would allow state and local police officers to arrest migrants who cross from Mexico without authorization, siding with the federal government in a legal showdown over immigration enforcement. The ruling, by Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas, was a victory for the Biden administration, which had argued that the new state law violated federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution. The Texas law had been set to go into effect on March 5 but will now be put on hold as the case moves forward. In granting a preliminary injunction, Judge Ezra, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, signaled that the federal government was likely to eventually win on the merits." The AP's report is here.
Olympia Sonnier & Garrett Haake of NBC News: "When Donald Trump speaks at the southern border in Texas on Thursday, you can expect to hear him talk about 'migrant crime,' a category he has coined and defined as a terrifying binge of criminal activity committed by undocumented immigrants spreading across the country.... But despite the former president's campaign rhetoric, expert analysis and available data from major-city police departments show that despite several horrifying high-profile incidents, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States." Read on. The reporters cite numerous stats that defy Trump's scare tactics.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post puts a positive spin on the Supreme Court's framing of the question it will consider in regard to presidential immunity.
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court's decision to hear Donald Trump's audacious claim of presidential immunity from prosecution ... all but guarantees one of two terrible outcomes. Either the former president's trial ... will now not take place until after the 2024 election, or it will be held in the final months before Election Day. The justices are not entirely responsible for this mess, but they have just made a bad situation far worse than it needed to be. My beef isn't with the court's decision to hear the case -- it's with the outrageously lethargic timing. It would have been far better for the court to have taken up the issue back in December, when special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to leapfrog the federal appeals court. Now, two and a half months have gone by.... Worst of all, especially given this timetable, the justices could have allowed trial preparations to go forward while the case was briefed, argued and decided.... And there might be more delay -- we'll find out, eventually -- built into the way the court has framed the question it wants to decide[.]" ~~~
~~~ Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog: "Early on, I called this federal election subversion case potentially the most important case in this Nation's history. And now it may not happen because of timing, timing that is completely in the Supreme Court's control. After all, this is the second time the Court has not expedited things to hear this case. This could well be game over."
Illinois. Rachel Leingang of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state's ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts. Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday." Related story linked below.
Richard Fausset & Danny Hakim of the New York Times: "Terrence Bradley, an Atlanta-area lawyer, had been billed as the star witness in the effort to disqualify Fani T. Willis, the district attorney leading the election interference case against ... Donald J. Trump in Georgia. But when Mr. Bradley took the stand this week -- and twice earlier this month -- he was a deeply reluctant witness.... But hundreds of text messages obtained by The New York Times show that Mr. Bradley, a former law partner and friend of Mr. Wade, helped a defense lawyer to expose the relationship between the two prosecutors. The texts reveal that Mr. Bradley, who served for a time as [prosecutor Nathan] Wade's divorce lawyer until the two men had a bitter falling-out, assisted the effort to reveal the romance and provide details about it for at least four months -- countering the impression he left on the witness stand that he had known next to nothing about the romance." This story covers the same subject as Nick Valencia & others addressed earlier (linked below).
Remembering Mitch. Robert Reich on Substack: Mitch McConnell has "been a truly awful public official. McConnell has always put party above America. Remember when he said his most important goal as Senate leader was to make Barack Obama a one-term president?... Despite his opposition to Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election -- admitting publicly that Trump 'provoked' the attack on the U.S. Capitol -- McConnell voted to acquit Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021.... This is the man who refused for almost a year to allow the Senate to consider President Obama's moderate Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland. Then, when Trump became president, this is the man who got rid of the age-old Senate rule requiring 60 senators to agree on a Supreme Court nomination so he could ram through not one but two Supreme Court justices, including one with a likely history of sexual assault. This is the man who rushed through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big corporations and wealthy Americans -- a tax cut that raised the government debt by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, and failed to raise wages, but gave the stock market a temporary sugar high because most corporations used the tax savings to buy back their own shares of stock."
Israel/Palestine, et al. New York Times: "Israeli forces opened fire on Thursday as a crowd gathered near a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed aid in Gaza City, part of a chaotic scene in which scores of people were killed and injured, according to Gazan health officials and an Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The details of what happened were unclear, with officials from both sides offering starkly different accounts of the event. The Gazan health ministry said in a statement that more than 100 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a 'massacre.' The Israeli official acknowledged that troops had opened fire, but said most of the people had been killed or injured in a stampede several hundred yards away. Gazans, especially in the north of the territory, have become increasingly desperate for food." This is part of the NYT liveblog. ~~~
~~~ CNN's liveblog for Thursday is here.
Ukraine, et al. Putin Threatens "Destruction of Civilization." Anton Troianovski of the New York Times: "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said the West faced the prospect of nuclear conflict if it intervened more directly in the war in Ukraine, using an annual speech to the nation on Thursday to escalate his threats against Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin said NATO countries that were helping Ukraine strike Russian territory or might consider sending their own troops 'must, in the end, understand' that 'all this truly threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization.'" The AP's story is here.
And Seth relives his historic brush with ice cream. Thanks to RAS for the link:
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
Only voters can save American democracy from the malignant, fascist forces on the right.
** Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to decide whether ... Donald J. Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, further delaying his criminal trial as it considers the matter. The justices scheduled arguments for the week of April 22 and said proceedings in the trial court would remain frozen, handing at least an interim victory to Mr. Trump.... The Supreme Court's response to Mr. Trump put the justices in the unusual position of deciding another aspect of the former president's fate: whether and how quickly Mr. Trump could go to trial. That, in turn, could affect his election prospects and, should he be re-elected, his ability to scuttle the prosecution.... By some rough calculations, the trial could be delayed until late September or October, plunging the proceedings into the heart of the election...."
"The Supreme Court's brief order said the court would decide this question: 'Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: The framing of that question is worth exploring. The good news: the question demonstrates that the Court will not even consider Trump's double jeopardy claim that he cannot be tried again for the same crimes the Senate tried him for in his second impeachment trial. The bad news: (1) By exploring the question of the "extent" of immunity, the Court is suggesting that Trump may have immunity from some or part of the charges brought against him, so it may have to decide myriad questions on every insurrection-y thing Trump did. The Court is asking a wider question that Trump raised, the kind of question so complicated, Laurence Tribe said, that it may raise issues that will bounce back and forth among the district, appeals & Supreme Courts. "This is a formula for indefinite delay," Tribe said. (2) The reference to "alleged" official acts flat-out takes Trump's side: he of course is the party who is "alleging" everything he did surrounding the insurrection was an official act. ~~~
~~~ CNN's story is here. The AP's report is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "By deciding to take up Mr. Trump's claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office -- a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution -- the justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.... With each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one." MB: In fairness to the confederate Supremes, they are corrupt. They know we know it, and they really don't care. It is in their interests to help Donald Trump, and that's what they're doing.
Marie: As several anchors & reporters pointed out on CNN & MSNBC Wednesday, the Supremes' months-long delay has effectively scuttled the big case. However, I'd like to point out a few mitigating factors. (1) The idea that ordinary voters would actually listen to and understand the evidence presented in court is rather fanciful. You might pay close attention, but a mom who works just doesn't have the time or the interest. (2) There's nothing that says Trump will be found guilty. One Trumpy juror could hang the jury. Or the jury could find him not guilty (okay, not likely). And the upshot would be that Trump could trumpet his victimhood, and many Americans would be persuaded that the system was "rigged" against him. (3) If Trump were found guilty, he would appeal. So it would be easy for those voters who say, "Ooh, I wouldn't vote for him if he was guilty of a crime," to revise that position to, "Well, his conviction might be overturned, so I don't know if he's really guilty." These trials are not the be-all and end-all that will spare a once-great nation from a tragic fall. And the trials most likely will go on eventually -- unless we elect Trump.
A Miracle in Florida. Devlin Barrett & Perry Stein of the Washington Post: "The federal judge overseeing ... Donald Trump's criminal trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents ruled Wednesday against his lawyers' bid to see more of the classified filings prosecutors have submitted -- concluding that the access Trump's team sought was not typically granted in such cases and that withholding the information would not hamper his defense. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon issued a nine-page order rejecting Trump's arguments for his lawyers to see prosecutors' filings under Section 4 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a law designed to shield national security secrets at issue in criminal trials. Cannon plans to hold a key hearing in the case Friday, where she will discuss the trial schedule, evidence disputes between prosecutors and defense lawyers, and a related disagreement over proposed redactions to court documents.... Cannon's ruling follows a similar judgment that she issued Tuesday, in which she denied requests by lawyers for Trump's co-defendants, Waltine 'Walt' Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, to have access to some of the classified information."
Way last week, Trump was too rich to post bond in the E. Jean Carroll case. (Story linked yesterday.) This week ~~~
~~~ Ben Protess & Kate Christobek of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump offered a New York appeals court on Wednesday a bond of only $100 million to pause the more than $450 million judgment he faces in his civil fraud case, saying that he might need to sell some of his properties unless he gets relief. An appellate court judge promptly denied Mr. Trump's emergency request to halt the financial judgment, but the former president is not out of options. Mr. Trump can try again with a panel of five appellate court judges, which will entertain his request next month. However that panel rules, the request represented a stunning acknowledgment that the former president, who is racing the clock to secure a bond from a company for the full amount if he does not produce the money himself, lacks the resources to do so. If he fails, the New York attorney general's office, which brought the fraud case, could seek to collect from Mr. Trump at any moment, though it is expected to provide him with a 30-day grace period until March 25.... The appellate court judge ... granted the former president's request to temporarily pause [a three-year ban on running his company and a ban on obtaining a New York bank loan]...." This is an update to a story linked earlier yesterday. (Also linked yesterday.) A CBS News story is here.
Nick Valencia, et al., of CNN: "A key witness in the push to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from the Georgia election case against Donald Trump had a much deeper involvement in the effort than was previously known, according to hundreds of text messages obtained by CNN. The 413 texts between Terrence Bradley and Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for one of Trump's co-defendants, reveal months of communications between the two, underscoring the extent to which Bradley assisted Merchant's pursuit of evidence to back up claims Willis and her top prosecutor, Nathan Wade, engaged in an improper romantic relationship.... The ... text messages show Bradley calling Merchant his 'friend,' offering unsolicited advice, and also bashing Willis and Wade, Bradley's former law partner.... The text messages raise questions about Bradley's credibility, and the degree to which Merchant appeared to rely on his claims that she was then unable to substantiate elsewhere. They also shed new light on his testimony [Tuesday] and how it failed to meet the expectations of defense attorneys who had billed Bradley as the star witness in their bid to disqualify Willis."
Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "A state judge in Illinois ruled on Wednesday that ... Donald J. Trump had engaged in insurrection and was ineligible to appear on the state's primary ballot. The decision creates uncertainty for the state's March election, in which early voting is already underway. It also adds urgency for the U.S. Supreme Court to provide a national answer to the questions that have been raised about Mr. Trump's eligibility to appear on ballots in more than 30 states. The judge, Tracie R. Porter of the State Circuit Court in Cook County, said the State Board of Elections had erred in rejecting an attempt to remove Mr. Trump and said the board 'shall remove Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the general primary election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed.' But the decision by Judge Porter, a Democrat, was stayed until Friday, which means Mr. Trump can remain on the Illinois ballot at least until then." The NBC News story is here. CNN's report is here.
Maggie Haberman & Andrew Higgins of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump will meet privately with Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, at Mr. Trump's club in Florida next week, according to a person briefed on the plans. Mr. Orban is a right-wing nationalist who has waged an aggressive campaign against immigration and has declared that the West 'is at war with itself.'... Like Mr. Trump, he has sometimes appeared sympathetic to or admiring of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.... He is a longtime ally of Mr. Trump and has close ties to the populist conservative movement in the United States. Mr. Trump has frequently praised Mr. Orban at rallies and in speeches since leaving the White House. Their meeting, which is scheduled to take place at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach next Friday, underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump has tried to establish himself as a sort of president-in-exile." MB: More likely Trump is hoping Orban will give him some tips for dictators.
Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: "A federal appeals panel on Wednesday denied former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows's request for a new hearing on whether to move the Georgia election interference case against him from state to federal court, a shift he had sought on the grounds that he was a federal officer at the time of the actions that led to his indictment. The two-sentence ruling by a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit represents yet another setback for Meadows.... That same panel ruled in December that Meadows was not entitled to a trial in federal court, but Meadows had subsequently asked for a fresh hearing before the full 11th Circuit. Now, Meadows's only remaining recourse is to seek a review by the U.S. Supreme Court."
Katie Rogers & Lawrence Altman of the New York Times: "President Biden on Wednesday was declared 'fit for duty' by his longtime doctor, who said that the president had undergone an 'extremely detailed' neurological exam that did not turn up evidence of stroke, neurological disorders or Parkinson's disease. In a summary of Mr. Biden's third presidential physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Dr. Kevin O'Connor did not say whether the examination contained common tests for assessing cognitive decline or detecting signs of dementia that are often recommended for older adults. Dr. O'Connor said that a team of doctors, including a neurologist, two orthopedists and a physical therapist, examined the president, whom Dr. O'Connor described as an 'active 81-year-old white male.'" The report provides more details.
Arelis Hernández of the Washington Post: "As President Biden and Republican contender Donald Trump head to Texas on Thursday, the cities each has chosen to plant their flag on immigration are a study of contrasts. While both hug the Rio Grande, that's about where the similarities end.... Brownsville ... is nestled within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection sector that has long seen the highest levels of migration. But even when border crossings surge, the shocks are quietly absorbed. Residents donate supplies and help orient the new arrivals on how to navigate their way to their final destinations. Three hundred miles upriver..., Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has transformed [Eagle Pass] ... into a military front line on immigration. Razor wire and rusted shipping containers warn migrants to stay away. And military trucks and rifle-carrying troops occupy the city's biggest park.
** Buh-bye, Mitch. Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "Senator Mitch McConnell, the longtime top Senate Republican, said on Wednesday that he would give up his spot as the party's leader at the end of this year, acknowledging that his Reaganite national security views had put him out of step with a party now headed by ... Donald J. Trump. 'Believe me, I know the politics within my party at this particular time,' Mr. McConnell, who turned 82 last week, said in a speech on the Senate floor announcing his intentions. 'I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.' His decision, reported earlier by The Associated Press, was not a surprise. Mr. McConnell suffered a serious fall last year and experienced some episodes where he momentarily froze in front of the media. He has also faced rising resistance within his ranks for his push to provide continued military assistance to Ukraine as well as his close-to-the-vest leadership style." The AP's report is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Worth remembering: we have the courts we have because Mitch McConnell. As former Sen. Al Franken said on MSNBC, without McConnell, the Supreme Court would be 5-4 liberal/conservative. Obama appointee replacing Scalia; Biden replacing Ginsburg. Moreover, Mitch refused to bring forward many of President Obama's nominees to lower courts, thus giving Trump a chance to flood the lower courts with Federalist appointees. And Mitch's refusal to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial -- and bring along more GOP senators -- is precisely why we're in the mess we are today.
Congress to Keep the Lights on for a Few Weeks. Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "Congressional leaders said on Wednesday they had agreed to another short-term stopgap spending bill to head off a partial government shutdown at the end of the week, paving the way for a temporary path out of a stalemate that has repeatedly threatened federal funding over the past six months. The deal, initially floated by Speaker Mike Johnson, would extend funding for some government agencies for a week, through March 8, and the rest for another two weeks, until March 22.... The deal paved the way for a vote in the House as soon as Thursday to keep the government open, with the Senate expected to follow suit before a midnight deadline on Friday.... The White House signaled its support for the agreement shortly after it was announced." (This is an update of a story linked yesterday.) NPR's story is here.
Scott Wong of NBC News: "After a convincing special election victory, New York Democrat Tom Suozzi was sworn into the House on Wednesday night to fill the vacancy left by last year's historic expulsion of Republican George Santos. Suozzi's swearing-in further reduces House Republicans' razor-thin majority -- one of the smallest ever -- to 219-213 at a time when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been struggling to corral his rank-and-file members and carry out the basic functions of government. The return of Suozzi, who previously served in the House, means that Johnson's leadership team can afford only two GOP defections on any vote if all Democrats vote in opposition." See also New York state Congressional map change; story linked below.
Matt Viser & Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "Hunter Biden, delivering his long-awaited deposition before a GOP-led congressional impeachment inquiry, testified Wednesday that he never involved his father in any of his business decisions, and he accused House Republicans of having 'built your entire partisan house of cards on lies.' At the start of what was seven hours of contentious questioning and adamant rebuttals, President Biden's son gave a statement that was defiant, emotional and combative.... Emerging from the hearing, Republicans could not point to any major new revelations and Democrats argued that the record argues strongly for shutting down the impeachment effort."
Kayla Guo of the New York Times: "A Republican senator on Wednesday blocked quick passage of a bill that would establish federal protections for in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments in the wake of a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos should be considered children. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, objected to approval of the measure, which would establish a federal right protecting access to I.V.F. and fertility treatments, scuttling its chances for now. Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, sought to pass the bill on Wednesday under a procedure that allows any one senator to object and stop it in its tracks, effectively daring Republicans to oppose it and highlighting divisions within the G.O.P. on how to handle the issue.... Ms. Duckworth previously tried to pass a similar bill with unanimous consent in 2022, but Ms. Hyde-Smith objected." For more details, see CNN's liveblog, linked yesterday.
Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court wrestled on Wednesday over whether the Trump administration acted lawfully in enacting a ban on bump stocks after one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. The justices appeared split largely along ideological lines over the ban, which prohibits the sale and possession of bump stocks, attachments that enable semiautomatic rifles to fire at speeds rivaling machine guns.... [The case turns on] the power of administrative agencies -- in this instance, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A decision is expected by late June.... At issue is whether a bump stock falls within the legal definition of a machine gun. If the court deems a bump stock can be used to make a gun into a 'machine gun,' then it can be prohibited as part of a category heavily regulated by the A.T.F. During less than two hours of arguments, the justices appeared to struggle to make sense of the mechanics of gun triggers and the value of a ban for gun owners and the wider public."
Carlos Lozada of the New York Times: "With contributions by dozens of conservative thinkers and activists under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, the [887-page 'Mandate for Leadership -- the Conservative Promise'] announces itself as part of a 'unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, Jan. 20, 2025.' There is much work ahead, it states, 'just to undo the significant damage that will have been done during the Biden years.'... What is most striking about the book is not the specific policy agenda it outlines but how far the authors are willing to go in pursuit of that agenda and how reckless their assumptions are about law, power and public service.... [The book is] about consolidating authority and eroding accountability for the long haul.... It portrays the president as the personal embodiment of popular will and treats the law as an impediment to conservative governance.... 'Mandate for Leadership' is about capturing the administrative state, not unmaking it.... [The book promotes] the philosophical and legal concept of 'ordered liberty,' in which individual rights are weighed against social stability."
~~~~~~~~~~
Idaho. Mike Baker of the New York Times: "Executioners in Idaho abandoned their attempt to use lethal injection on one of the nation's longest-serving death row inmates on Wednesday after repeated tries to tap into a vein were unsuccessful. Public defenders representing the inmate, Thomas Eugene Creech, and witnesses said that officials had tried to stick needles in each of Mr. Creech's limbs before halting the effort. Mr. Creech's death warrant was to expire at the end of the day, and he was returned to his cell. It was Idaho's first attempted execution in more than a decade. The failure was the latest in a series of botched executions around the country, often stemming from executioners having trouble finding veins."
New York. Azi Paybarah of the Washington Post: "Lawmakers in the Democratic-led New York legislature approved a new congressional map Wednesday with slight adjustments made to the boundaries of a few districts after earlier this week rejecting a map drawn by an independent commission. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced on social media later Wednesday that she had signed the new map into law. The new map comes ahead of the June primaries in a state that is expected to play a crucial role in determining which party will win control of the House. In 2022, the GOP flipped four House seats in New York, helping the party wrest control of the chamber back from Democrats. The New York Republican Party said Wednesday evening that it would not contest the new map in court."
Texas. Ben Brasch & Maria Paúl of the Washington Post: "The state of Texas executed Ivan Abner Cantu, a 50-year-old Dallas native who maintained his innocence and garnered support from celebrities asking for his life to be spared, on Wednesday evening. Cantu's execution -- the first one carried out in Texas this year -- comes more than two decades after he was convicted in a fatal shooting in 2000. Yet, his advocates long pleaded for Cantu to have another day in court -- claiming that prosecutorial and defense misconduct, the discovery of physical evidence and a witness's admission to lying during the trial should have warranted a pause to the execution."
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Israel/Palestine, et al. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Thursday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "At least 30,035 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the enclave's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The figure, which comes as aid groups warn of widespread hunger, underlines the scale of devastation in less than five months of war, launched by Israel in response to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that left about 1,200 dead. Negotiators are discussing a weeks-long cease-fire to release Israeli hostages and allow in aid, but Israel and Hamas have downplayed any immediate progress.... Gaza is on the brink of famine, humanitarian groups say, as the volume of aid has plummeted in recent weeks and convoys struggled to travel amid intense bombardment and disruption at border crossings."
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Reader Comments (20)
Why bother?
Rule of law has been officially declared dead by the Trump Supreme Court. These crooks make the Nazi sondergericht courts look like the soul of honest jurisprudence. At least the Nazis actually went through with trials.
Not the Roberts Court.
And not only have they scuttled the insurrection case, they’ve made sure the stolen documents case will never go to trial either. The criminal delay arranged by Roberts and his band of legal cutthroats just handed Loose Cannon the perfect excuse to shelve that case as well.
A previous Party of Traitors court stopped an election and handed the victory to the loser. This court is trying something similar, doing whatever is in their power to ensure a Trump victory.
I’ve previously pointed out the incredible, unearned luck that has followed this fat fuck his whole crooked life. But this isn’t luck. This is outright crushing the rule of law to benefit their chosen candidate. This is dealing from the bottom of the deck, loading the dice, tilting the table, pick your own rigging the game analogy.
They had at least a chance to maintain a whiff of legitimacy by simply acknowledging that the immunity claim was bullshit and letting the chips fall where they may. Nope. Not good enough. This isn’t putting a finger on the scale, this is throwing the scale out the window.
Legitimacy has never been a concern for these crooks. Their goal is power. That’s it.
And this isn’t the end of it. Now that they’ve publicly declared which side they’re on, there’s no reason not to go whole hog on any future issues affecting the upcoming election. Look for additional attempts to rig the game as November draws nearer.
Worse than the fucking Nazis.
One more reason to hate Merrick Garland. Had he done his goddam job, it wouldn’t matter if Herr Roberts and his crooked court delayed the trial six months. There’d still be enough time for the justice to take its course. He couldn’t be bothered.
And if you don’t think this won’t further embolden election interference by PoT apparatchiks around the country, you haven’t been paying attention. The Supreme Court has come right out and said “We’re for Trump! We’re helping the Orange Monster steal this election. You should too! We won’t stop you. The law doesn’t matter. Do your worst. We’ll look the other way.”
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-ice-cream-alzheimers-fox-
news-watters-1874124
Fox News host Jesse Watters says President Biden's love of ice
cream is a sign of Alzheimer's disease.
He explained that ice cream is "a favorite for people with diminished
faculties."
Pray for me with my diminished faculties. I even went so far as to
buy an Italian gelato and ice cream machine and have used it for over
30 years.
And our little tourist town of under 1,000 population has three ice
cream shops. I don't see busses of Alzheimer's patients unloading here.
What gives?
Forrest,
It’s Jesse Watters and phony baloney fiction writers (and not good fiction either) like him on Faux and Newsmax and those other raggedy ass right-wing media shit shoveler outlets who display diminished mental capacity. Or maybe diminished isn’t the right word…how ‘bout “never had”?
Here’s a cookie, Jesse, now be a good boy, go back in your room and play with your automatic weapons.
As Marie points out, at this point, the only hope this country has is at the ballot box. But we have idiots like those Never Bidens in Michigan who will show up to throw the election to Trump. The last resort of democracy is also why we’ll be seeing a full court press to make sure voting is made as hard as possible.
Democrats really need to come together here and make the case for Joe Biden (and it’s not like that’s hard…he’s been a solid president) and fuck all this blather about an open convention. The clock is running out on the United States as we know it and people are talking about Biden stepping aside. Are they insane?
I listened yesterday to some idiotic twenty somethings complaining that they’re being told about how important this election is. They pretty much all get their news from Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok, so clearly they’re well informed (twenty second snarky videos are always full of solid information) and to a person they pooh-poohed warnings about Trump.
One idiot said he’d vote for Trump because it’s time for a change, for something new. Something new? He was obviously in a drug fueled haze during the Trump Debacle. We KNOW what Trump did, what he stands for, and what he’s planning: dictatorship. There’s no secret here. The only change will be from America to A banana republic.
I grieve for this country.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4495124/hunter-biden-asks-
gop-about-jared-kushner/
While being grilled by Republicans about his business deals, Hunter
turned the question back on his interrogators.
"What about that 2 billion dollar Saudi investment made with Jared
Kushner?"
Hunter's business deals were with corporations, not foreign governments.
I wonder what the Saudis expected in return if and when Jared gets
back in office with his father-in-law.
I don't think Jennifer is a lawyer, but...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/29/supreme-court-trump-immunity-jan6/
Like the rest of us, she too has been parsing the way the SCOTUS framed the immunity question and finds more light than dark in her analysis.
I was very much in need of some comic relief earlier this morning, when what to my wondering eyes did appear, but RFK, Jr. having an obvious heroin flashback.
Upon hearing the news of the Turtle’s imminent sliding into his shell for good, candidate What About Me calls for Senator What About Me to become the new Senate Minority Leader. That’s right. Aqua Buddha for minority leader. Why? Because, according to Kennedy, Li’l Randy shows “good judgment”. Says the former heroin addict who is clearly having judgment issues of his own.
I guess by “good judgment”, he means a self-certified eye poker who made up his own “medical test”, which he passed with flying colors. Wow! A guy who continually provoked a neighbor by dumping crap into the guy’s yard until he invited a violent response. Very mature. A guy who called National healthcare a “gulag”, who said he’d have voted against the Civil Rights Bill, who voted to outlaw the ACA, who insisted on the worst kind of healthcare lies during the Covid pandemic, attacking a real epidemiologist, Anthony Fauci, at every turn, just to get his name in the papers. A guy who once told students at the University of Louisville that misinformation was a great tactic to use against a competitor. He’s great at it.
This from an op-Ed in the Louisville Courier-Journal from last year:
“As a Ph.D. in communication, I’ve taught a variety of classes with a conflict management component over the years. I see Rand Paul through that lens and he has few limits to ‘winning’ at any cost, often divisive and dangerous. Paul seems committed to celebrating and exploiting misinformation as a personal and political strategy.”
But good judgment. Right.
Okay, maybe not as funny as I thought.
Seth Meyers talks about his now infamous trip to get ice cream with Biden and shows off his comedy chops.
Did any of the lawyers show the Supremes the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting so they could see how well bump stocks work? Though knowing many of them that could make them more likely to overturn the ban.
Lotsa things for me to learn this AM. Two from crosswords: The country where Paddington Bear originated: Peru. That ackee is a fruit, and from my wife who might have gotten it from the NYT word of the day, a big word to say leap year that I'd never heard of.
Wikipedia:
"A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year that contains an additional day (or, in the case of a lunisolar calendar, a month) compared to a common year."
Probably the only one here who didn't know those things. Hard to beat "bissextile."
Calendar craziness
"To tame a hopelessly disorganised Roman calendar, Julius Caesar added months, took them away, and invented leap years. But the whole grand project was almost thwarted by a basic counting mistake."
@Ken Winkes: Hmm, if I were a bissextile person -- which, as far as I know, I am not -- I might co-opt Sadie Hawkins Day as the one day I could come out of the closet.
@Ken Winkes: Jennifer Rubin is a lawyer, but not, you know, a Constitutional scholar.
I don't see the Court's decision to hear the case in the rosy glow Rubin views it, but I hope she's right. I think it's more likely that the Court's framing of the question allows the confederate "jurists" to base their decision on questions like, "Was Donald Trump performing an official duty when he was urging Mike Pence to follow temporary presidential* lawyer John Edwards' advice?" Then these corrupt patsies can "reasonably" decide, "Why, yes, yes, he was. A president* must have the ability to consult with his vice president as well as counsel in all matters." "So was the 'hang Mike Pence' thing okay?" "Why, sure."
BTW, I've had another thought about these
scumbagsjustices. In order to bring a case before the Supreme Court, only four Supremes have to agree to hear it (grant cert). So let's say only four of the Supremes agreed to hear the Trump immunity plea. (And I don't know that to be the case.) And let's say the reason for the 2-1/2 week delay in making their announcement was that the other five justices were trying mightily to talk at least one of the four out of hearing the case. And let's say one of those who wanted to hear the case was Clarence Thomas -- in fact, that's almost a certainty.Have we mentioned that Clarence Thomas -- by any ethical standards known to our society, as well as to the specific judicial standards the Court recently pretended to impose on itself -- should be recusing himself from anything having to do with an illegal series of incidents in which his own wife was intimately involved?
IOW, if only four justices agreed to grant cert, and one of the four was Thomas, he should not have had any say at all. Without Thomas, in my imagined scenario, the Supremes would not have taken a case that nearly every legal pundit says should have been DOA. Three is not a big enough crowd.
You just know that, were this a case that threatened the anti-abortion crowd, or a case that involved restricting gun sales, or anything that could be interpreted as infringing on the broad rights claimed by Christian Nationalists, they’d hear those cases tomorrow.
Phone call for Justice Roberts, 9 AM: “Chief Justice, they wanna take our guns away!” “No problem, c’mon in. We’ll hear your case by noon today, issue our gun friendly ruling by 10 o’clock tomorrow morning. Don’t worry about a thing!”
They even agree to expedite made up shit, hypothetical cases! “Help! Icky gays might one day ask me to build them a website! I need relief from the what-if!” “No worries. We’ll hear that hypothetical made up bullshit case tomorrow then make a broad ruling based on something that never happened.”
But a case involving one of their own on trial for trying to stay in power by force? Overthrowing the government? Where people were killed?
Meh. We’ll hear that case…um…two years from now.
In the past I’ve referred to these scumbags (you were right the first time, Marie) as peddlers of casuistry, specious legal arguments built on innuendo and outright fabrications. But they don’t even bother with that anymore. Now they’re like “Ya know what? Don’t even bother. Pack up your 200 years of legal precedence, your hundreds of amicus briefs, your recusal requests that will never be heard, and your bullshit Constitution, and hit the road. We win. You want an argument? Okay, how’s this: you lost. Now beat it.”
If I were Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor, I would resign and scream bloody murder from the rooftops. I know they won’t because they don’t want to make it “political”. But it IS political. It’s always political with this court. Justice? The law? They never matter to these assholes. It’s all a game to them. And like Trump, they cheat.
And here’s how this might play out. The traitors are in a bit of a bind. They can’t say “Presidents are immune” because some Democrat President, like Joe Biden, might be able to tell Comer and Jordan to fuck off. Can’t allow that. So they might take a page out of the Scalia playbook, like he did when he installed Bush as the winner. “This is a one time only ruling and can never be used again (unless it’s a Republican).” Or they’ll just find for some limited immunity and drag it out long enough for Trump to evade Justice altogether. Cuz they always win.
Sure, Little Johnny might toss out a sop ruling now and then, but never about anything that really matters to the right.
I’m betting Putin, at this minute, is emailing all his judges, pointing with pride to this court saying “That’s how it’s done, guys!”
You'd think we would be used to it, by now: events happening that are against everything liberals stand for...But no. Everyone wearing a legal hat was so sure that the SC would not take up the ridiculous assumption that everything that Orange Slimey Slug has ever done was okey dokey, and he has immunity with impunity. To eternity. I agree with AK, with everyone. Read a piece by Thomas Hartmann last night that someone sent me, and the future is completely bleak. I was naive pre-1/6/21 and was pretty sure nothing would happen but noise (another wankfest, as Charlie likes to say--), and peaceful transition was a given. People said otherwise, but I ignored them. I was a bit afraid when Poops-His-Pants was suing everyone and every state in sight, but the courts resolved that. Can't say that here. The confederate justices are crooked and thus so is the court. There has been relatively little justice, and Merrick Garland is a t*** in the punchbowl, and the creepy Fed and Heritage societies are now in charge. Thanks, SC--
As for that other t*** in the same punchbowl, the world's most evil, terrible Senator, Moscow Mitch-- Hope he drops, painfully, dead soon.
@Akhilleus: I agree that the Supremes are not going to grant every president* immunity for life. And I think that's why they framed the "issue" as they did. In this way they can "examine" each specific bad act for which Trump is charged and explain it away as an official act -- like the one I imagined about the Trump-Pence conversations. So then if Biden -- or any future Democratic president -- does something they don't like, they can isolate that action, too, and decide, wow! it's totally criminal!!!
They're not as stupid as they are diabolical.
This Trump case should be a 9-0 decision telling the lump to shut up and take his punishment like the pathetic whiny loser he is. Unfortunately we have a majority of whiny right-wing losers on the court as well. A co-conspirator's husband helping oversee the outcome. One of Lump's lawyers name checked Kavanaugh not long ago as owing them and him and two others owe their kushy appointments to the loser. This is also the court that had Four justices side with Texas a month ago on whether they or the US government are in charge of the border. They have shown they don't care about the actual law, the constitution, precedent, standing, or even innocence. They have every political and ideological reason to help the criminal stay free and gain power so that they can keep exercising their own powers unchecked.
Trump and the Confederate Supremes have some competition.