Yeah this one is almost scarier than any other for the precedent it sets. While most of the actual decisions this term were bad but par for the course of a conservative majority court (with a few pleasant surprises like rejecting racial gerrymandering, dismissing independent legislature theory, and reaffirming Native adoptions) this case was uniquely dangerous for being just conjured from thin air. The idea that you can take an issue to court over something that was proven to be entirely hypothetical prepares the way for more ready-made cases designed to create a particular legal outcome.
The SCOTUS has been a force resisting civil rights and good governance for pretty much all of American history.
Too many middle-aged and older people these days grew up under the Warren court, but the Warren court was a fucking blip. An anomaly. An aberration.
They looked at the clock of the court, saw the sun high in the sky, saw the hands pointed at noon, and thought to themselves "Ah, everything is working fine." But the clock's dead broken and has been for centuries.
Agreed. I would like to see a radical restructuring of the court, with additional justices to provide a better plurality of opinion and a non-partisan ethics oversight committee with the power to force recusals and bring criminal charges to justices that fail to disclose conflicts of interest.
Desegregation, right to a defense attorney & Miranda rights, ending mandatory school prayer.
But also colloquially the era stretching a bit beyond where the court had a Liberal vision often including decisions in the 70s/80s decisions like roe v wade
This is what they do. They get out ahead of bad news for him by announcing it themselves and downplaying the wrongdoing. They seek to control the narrative, normalize what he did, and plant seeds of doubt. When the consequences hit, his supporters will be outraged due to all this brainwashing.
I think they're setting the stage for more Jan. 6 events.
they're doing their best to cause as much chaos as possible, yeah.. that's all they've got.. like comic book villains throwing babies out windows so Spidey can't end their reign of terror..
It's the right play politically. Consider if the roles were reversed.
If Bernie Sanders was arrested for breaking into Walmart headquarters and demanding they unionize, he'd absolutely say something like "It's not about breaking the law, it's about standing up for the millions of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet while the Walton family continues to amass wealth. That's what this is about. It's not about me, it's about us."
His supporters believe in his cause and they'd absolutely eat that up. I don't really get why people are so into thuggish authoritarian rule - but if that's what gets you up in the morning, then seeing Trump admit to this is surely exciting.
I was trying to come up with a hamfisted analogy and clearly missed the mark.
I'm pretty sure Bernie has actually been arrested at civil rights protest, so that's probably a better example. I actually think that makes him more qualified to be president.
Presumably trump enthusiasts feel similarly about his mounting list of felonies. I think that should immediately disqualify him from being considered as a candidate, but a lot of people obviously don't and I have to assume that's because they believe in authoritarian psuedo-dictatorship in the same way I believe in civil rights.
In a rational world this would completely shatter his chances for any presidential nomination from a major party (or probably the first indictment would)
However, there are a good number of people who believe so firmly in trump that they'll view this in exactly the same light as a left wing leader being arrested at a civil rights protest or admitting they smoked weed. To them this is a feather in his cap, it burnishes his credentials as being anti-establishment and proves whatever batshit conspiracy theories he's spouting.
I think democrats are too quick to overlook that risk and I think that's dangerous.
We all know that Bernie’s arguments have always been sincere and fact based. We know that Trumps are dishonest and held for his convenience, but the magas Don’t know or don’t care
It’s subtle only in the sense that most regular people don’t know what the black sun is. My wife got me this keychain that had some pagan symbols on it with a black sun snuck in as well, she had no idea until I told her.
I admit I got all the way to the end waiting for the swastika, and figured, "eh, well it must be that thing."
Thing is, while I find this entirely plausible, unless there's an archive.org of the tweet before deletion, I don't think we can credibly tie this back to anything DeSantis wanted or approved.
He's in my top 5 list of people actively trying to destroy the US, but unless the provenance of the linked video can be proven I don't see this going anywhere. Folks who hate him aren't surprised, folks who don't will ask for more proof, DeSantis will deny if he acknowledges it at all.
My only pushback is how much evidence do you need? He's anti-latin, anti-gay, anti-teans and uses neo-nazi imagery.
Anyone that's willing to ignore one of those because it's not explicit enough, is highly suspect.
I completely agree with you, but that still leave the minds that will be changed by this existence of this video at zero, the way I read it. Yes it's appalling, but he was appalling before the video too.
Absolutely fair point I'm just saying I don't think the existence of this moves the needle in any way in the current environment. It can't even be used in a campaign smear against him without being verifiable as to its origin and his approval of it.
TL;DR: Entertaining, but not whatsoever the immediate career destroyer that it could have been, or that we all would have hoped for.
Ballot measures are a great way to distill trust in democracy in a population. Directly voting on single issues is a great way to show that democracy matters especially since people views on a single issue are usually much clearer than party votes. This is classic undemocratic behavior.
Okay so there's an aspect of law that's really needs to be considered when we talk about this 3rd indictment. Motive. So Trump's lawyers are asking the public to simply look at the actions that were taken. Which are questionable, needs a judge to iron out, but not massively culpable for the particular crimes Trump is being indicted on.
But when we look at what the DA is submitting before the judge, we see Trump talking, having arguments about knowing that what they are doing is questionable, and still continuing those things to elicit a much larger plan of delaying the counting of votes. This is where the conspiracy sets in.
It isn't that the actions themselves warrant the greatest concern, it's the underlying motive Trump had for doing the things he did that moves it into potentially criminal actions.
Like filing a lawsuit isn't any kind of bad thing. But if you file a lawsuit knowing that you're just doing it to enact some other aspect outside of justice for a perceived wrong, that's a frivolous lawsuit or can be a violation of the False Claims Act. Say your former boyfriend or girlfriend accuses you of some crime because you broke up. Filing the lawsuit isn't wrong in of itself, but when you consider the background details for why this lawsuit exists, oh boy are you in trouble now.
And that's where we are at with Trump. His angry speech is just that, a speech, but when there's emails going around indicating that Trump needs to fire up the group so they'll go marching on the Capitol, and that during that invasion of the Capitol Trump will start calling key people to try and get different slates accepted to be counted. Well now all that combined, that's the problem. No one thing in isolation is some massive "Oh no", but all together and it begins to become clear that the entire point was to "convince by any means necessary" any hold outs to Trump's idea of how the election should progress. That is a violation 18 USC §§ 1512(c)2.
From Trump's lawyer:
What’s the unlawful means? There was an effort to get alternate electors, which is a protocol that was used in 1960 by John Kennedy. And it was a protocol that was constitutionally accepted
And the thing is, it isn't that he just tried that. It's that there is a stack of emails and text indicating that the people attempting to work with Trump to do that thing knew that they were doing something that wouldn't be accepted by Congress, were told by members of Congress that they wouldn't accept it, and that a "plan" to "convince them" that they should accept it was needed to get them to accept it. That's the massive difference. It isn't the action in isolation that's at issue, it is Trump's team indicating that they will need to, in broad terms, help convince members of Congress to accept that new slate. That's interference. If you've cannot accept the answer and then motivate yourself to do things to change that answer you've already gotten, that's interference. Just like you cannot just keep on, keeping on in a courtroom after a Judge has ruled. It's over with, you got your answer.
So yeah, there's an attempt by Trump's lawyers to grossly simplify the conspiracy their client is currently facing. This is a pretty age old tacit of being a lawyer. It's like those bad videos where people jump out of nowhere on purpose to be hit by a car, then attempt to sue the driver, and then they fail at their act. Yeah, you can simplify that as "oh well they're just trying to cross the street..." But it's the motive that drove them to do the thing they did, they were motivated to do something in the commission of highly questionable conduct for monetary gain. So maybe they we're able to successfully convince the insurance you hit them or you had a dashcam. So technically speaking, they didn't get away with it. But just because they didn't actively defraud your insurance does not mean they did not still commit a crime.
That's the really important aspect of these new charges. All of the actions in of themselves aren't gross violations of the law, but they are manifest of a something deeper that was being carried out to defraud the US Government and overturn an election. That deeper part is what this indictment points out.
FATHER: Please, please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. We are here today to witness the union of two young people in the joyful bond of the holy wedlock. Unfortunately, one of them, my son Herbert, has just fallen to his death. But I think I've not lost a son, so much as... gained a daughter! For, since the tragic death of her father —
RANDOM: He's not quite dead!
FATHER: Since the near fatal wounding of her father —
RANDOM: He's getting better!
FATHER: For, since her own father... who, when he seemed about to recover, suddenly felt the icy hand of death upon him, —
[ugh]
RANDOM: Oh, he's died!
FATHER: And I want his only daughter to look upon me... as her own dad — in a very real, and legally binding sense.
Events don't have to happen at the capital. Local governments could have problems. We'd have fewer problems if Republican leaders were more willing to throw Trump under the bus instead of trying to court his base.
It seems crazy to me that currently it takes just 50%+1 to change the state constitution. That being said, fast-tracking a special election to raise the threshold to 60% before an amendment polling at 59% goes to the vote is the worst kind of anti-democratic behavior. They're trying to change the rules halfway through the attempt.
On August 8, Ohioans will vote on Issue One, a ballot measure that would increase the threshold of support required for amendments to be added to the Constitution, raising it from a simple majority to 60 percent of the vote. It’s hard to overlook the connection between Issue One and the proposed amendment on abortion rights, which would grant individuals the right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” with regard to abortion, contraception, miscarriage management, and fertility treatment.
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