SCOTUS

[dislaxxic]

Having been inside, I take great comfort from, & have great confidence in, the Hatch Act.

Jeebus Friggin Christmas...do you seriously not understand the Colossal Hubris involved in that statement in light of the Trump Junta's behavior from 2017-2021?

I'd say "unbelievable", but this is Randy Frickin' Rad/Salty Swab we're talking bout here...

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[dislaxxic]

Can the President Send SEAL Team Six to Assassinate His Rival? After Monday, Yes.

...the court claims that it has this method of originalism that requires us to look at the text of the Constitution as it was originally understood. So you would expect, in a monumental decision like this—granting immunity to a former president’s “official acts”—that the Constitution would say something about presidential immunity. But it doesn’t. There was a disagreement at the founding about this: John Adams, for instance, defended the idea that presidents are immune from prosecution, which suits his disposition toward an aggrandized idea of presidential power. On the other side, though, there was James Wilson; at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, he said the thing that we thought defined our Constitution until Monday—that no person, not even a president, is above the law, and the president can be prosecuted.

So it’s not like there was some universal understanding of presidential immunity at the founding. There’s no textual evidence in the Constitution. The Framers just disagreed when they talked about this issue. So the idea that this is based on originalism is false. And the main precedent they do rely on, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, gets extended way beyond what it actually said. I’d argue Roberts is saying something contrary to what that case actually said. And we have stronger cases on the other side, like U.S. v. Nixon, which held that a president facing a criminal subpoena is not above the law. They may claim to respect precedent, but they’re not doing it. They may claim to respect text, but they aren’t. And they may claim to respect history, as if the Framers sort of agreed about this, but that’s not true either.

[snip]

I love Justice Sotomayor’s two citations to the Dobbs decision in her dissent. She makes the scathing point that “it seems history only matters to this court when it is convenient.” And that’s the whole ballgame. The court will cherry-pick whatever fits its narrative, then ignore everything else. In this instance, it’s especially egregious because the Framers knew how to put immunity in the Constitution—they gave it to members of Congress, after all, but not the president. And now, centuries later, six justices decide they know better than the Framers.

When it came to reproductive autonomy, the conservative justices said, We have to leave this to the people and their representatives—it’s just a matter of policy. But when it comes to making the president a king and undoing the compromises of the Constitutional Convention that established the executive as it existed until Monday morning? All that can be wiped away with a bit of gauzy rhetoric about how important it is to have an “energetic” executive.

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[njbill]

And the very stable genius has now said he wants to execute Liz Cheney. You know, try her for treason, then execute her. Oh, to the video and transcript guys, he didn’t use the word “execute.” Yeah, but we know what he means.

Heaven help us if this very dangerous man is elected in November now that his Supreme Court has given him a never-have-to-go-to-jail card.

Retribution and revenge. Hell has no fury like a Donald Trump scorned. Predicted in the last or second to last season of Homeland.

[DMac]

Scoreboard update:

Reported posters with the win.
gfy, nothing to see here, takes the loss.
Predictable outcome holds.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Sotomayor's SEAL Team 6 example. Did she really put that in her opinion ?
She's a fool. She insulted some of our most courageous, selfless defenders.
She's running scared from the panicked Dem mob who want to push her out before Biden's term ends.

The specific example WAS BROUGHT UP IN ORAL ARGUEMENT BEFORE THE SCOTUS as you well know. Donald Trump is a despicable human being who mused in meetings about "why can't we shoot illegals in the legs" as they try to cross the border. Moronic support of him and his notions of governing are SERIOUSLY gonna start a civil war at this point...

Numbnuts

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The original question was posed by the DC Court of Appeals....and they REJECTED IT OUTRIGHT as criminal activity and no immunity.
If I recall correctly, there were CRICKETS at the time from Salty Gaslight .

Troll on Saltine.

You guys crack me up. SO if the DC Court of Appeals rejected, why would a SCOTUS judge even broach the topic?

Orange Fatso appealed their decision to SCOTUS. What planet are you on?

I feel sorry for whoever succeeds VADM Frank Bradley as commander of JSOC. That person may likely be the one who decides if a Trump order to deploy DEVGRU is a legal order given SCOTUS’ cowardly ruling that purposely leads to a need for interpretation.

...VADM Bradley will have the problem sooner than that. If anyone issues such an unlawful order, it will be from CiNC Biden -- target = candidate Trump, now that Biden's lawfare campaign has imploded. Biden has tried everything else.

I've been more cautious than some others in my assessment of comments you've made in the most recent years, but this one has cemented my opinion. Yep, you're full on MAGA. Your comments for being for the man's policies, but not the man, are a complete smoke screen.

I pointed out that his mask slipped a long time ago. I saw the cues that I have come to recognize….Like dogs having a natural instinct through centuries of breeding. You come to recognize things. In the old days, lives depended on the subtle recognition of threats.

[MDlaxfan76]

Having been inside, I take great comfort from, & have great confidence in, the Hatch Act.

Jeebus Friggin Christmas...do you seriously not understand the Colossal Hubris involved in that statement in light of the Trump Junta's behavior from 2017-2021?

I'd say "unbelievable", but this is Randy Frickin' Rad/Salty Swab we're talking bout here...

..

dementia perhaps?

[OCanada]

The decision itself joins Dred Scott and a couple of others as being the worst ever. It destroys one of the lynchpins of our form of government. A form that has allowed us to become the greatest in the world.

When LBJ withdrew Nixon won the WH. Not a comforting thought. I believe the lines are so firmly drawn there will not be as much movement between the parties. Are Trump’s poll numbers inflated? Will Dems stay home and allow Trump to win?

I grew up in a world that will likely no longer exist in another 5 years.

I was talking to a neighbor who volunteered she was supporting Trump bcs she is a business woman and he is a business man. I certainly hope i am wrong but Trump’s first term was very harmful w/o the planning that has gone into the coming term if he wins.

[RedFromMI]

The decision itself joins Dred Scott and a couple of others as being the worst ever. It destroys one of the lynchpins of our form of government. A form that has allowed us to become the greatest in the world.

When LBJ withdrew Nixon won the WH. Not a comforting thought. I believe the lines are so firmly drawn there will not be as much movement between the parties. Are Trump’s poll numbers inflated? Will Dems stay home and allow Trump to win?

I grew up in a world that will likely no longer exist in another 5 years.

I was talking to a neighbor who volunteered she was supporting Trump bcs she is a business woman and he is a business man. I certainly hope i am wrong but Trump’s first term was very harmful w/o the planning that has gone into the coming term if he wins.

In reality, a Trump presidency/dictatorship would be unpredictable and therefore negative for some sectors of business. His plan for tariffs would reignite inflation in a bigly way and the middle and lower classes would have the brunt of the burden on their pocketbooks. Yes the oligarchy would potentially get more tax breaks, but anyone who is not lockstep with TFG will be constantly looking behind them for the inevitable backstabbing from Trump.

Not a reality that is good for anyone in America and not one I want to see ever in my lifetime.

[dislaxxic]

Dahlia is, QUITE RIGHTLY, stunned and PISSED at John Roberts and the other radical partisans on his court...

Don’t Be Hysterical, Ladies. Daddy Chief Justice Knows Best.

Last week, finding himself furious at the court’s per curiam decision to hold off on deciding a big abortion case about the kinds of miscarriage care states may withhold from pregnant women in emergency rooms, Justice Samuel Alito excoriated his colleagues for punting. In his view, as he put it—in an opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch—the ​court’s “about-face” on taking, then running away from, the EMTALA abortion case was “baffling” because “nothing legally relevant has occurred” since the court granted an emergency stay in January and plonked itself into a dispute before it went through the appeals process. It was an easy case, he sniffed. Many amicus briefs had been filed, he huffed. Why had the court balked at the last minute? Thinking. Thinking. Then: “Apparently,” he hypothesized, “the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents.”

That’s right. The majority of the court (and all of its females) found the issue too “emotional” to do the hard work of denying women in acute medical emergencies abortion care.

Had he given his word choice 10 seconds’ further thought (or even conferred with his wife, who is by all accounts “fond of flags”), Alito might have taken out that “emotional” crack before attacking Amy Coney Barrett’s defection in this matter, in the time between the accidental release of the draft decision and its final publication the next day. He did not.

It’s gross, but not unexpected, that often when the court fractures along gender lines, as it has frequently this term, you will hear a whole lot of the jovial “Calm down, little missy” talk that you might recall from 1950s sitcoms.

It is nevertheless pretty jarring to hear that kind of condescension trotted out by Chief Justice John Roberts, in the democracy-altering immunity decision handed down Monday. The court granted itself the imperial authority to confer upon the president powers of a king, but although Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said as much in their respective dissents, it fell to Big Daddy Chief Justice Roberts to intone to his readers that their aggregated dissents strike “a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today.” Implying that the dissenters were overreacting, and without ever attempting to address the substance of their claims, Roberts accused them of “fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President ‘feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.’ ”

Roberts, that blinkered butthole (yes, you heard that right), is like an ostrich with his friggin' head in the ground. "Extreme hypotheticals"??!? The guy is absolutely delusional if he thinks The Moron is NOT going to initiate the most outrageous, unprecedented executive orders of all time if he is given the opportunity. HE HAS ALREADY DONE IT, FERCRISSAKES!!

You know who understands full well what happens when the full power of the state is conscripted into an effort to belittle and degrade women? Donald Trump. He used those powers to commit election offenses in order to silence Stormy Daniels; he used those powers to turn crowds of his fans against Nancy Pelosi and her husband. He used those powers to seat three justices who would make it their life-tenured duty to harm women in service of protecting fetal personhood. Weaponizing the power of government to hurt women and other marginalized communities is the beating heart of Project 2025. Immediately after the immunity decision came down, Trump celebrated it with a Truth Social post singling out Liz Cheney, former Wyoming congresswoman and impeachment effort leader, calling for her to be prosecuted by way of military tribunal. “Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason,” the post read. “Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.”

This isn’t hypothetical. This isn’t fearmongering. This is how Trump lives and will continue to live. It is how he governs and how he will continue to govern. Women who point this out as clear and obvious truths are maligned and dismissed as irrational. It’s almost as if the conservative justices’ commitment to originalism requires them to believe that women who raise any objection to their tidy paradigms should be viewed as either empty vessels or scheming witches. It’s almost as if they wish to lay down the tracks for just such a project. It’s almost as if in granting Donald Trump immunity, they may have found their path there.

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[CU88a]

The irony of this decision as the July 4th Holiday is upon us...

[Kismet]

The idea that people (leaders) can't be held criminally responsible for their official acts is essentially undemocratic.
Didn't we deal with that in Nuremberg where Article 7 prevented defendants from claiming sovereign immunity?

[a fan]

The idea that people (leaders) can't be held criminally responsible for their official acts is essentially undemocratic.
Didn't we deal with that in Nuremberg where Article 7 prevented defendants from claiming sovereign immunity?

American Republicans don't care, because they think this only applies to "their guy".

Joe can now threaten to pull aid from Ukraine (an official act)...if Burisma doesn't wire the Biden family a check hundred million.

You know, the very thing TinFoilHatNation is convinced Biden did, but didn't? Well, now that's legal.

And these morons are happy about this outcome.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.threads.net/@frederickdscio ... 11g3oG3_YQ

[njbill]

Roberts is now running neck and neck with Roger Taney for the title of worst Chief Justice ever.

Sad, there was a time when I thought he cared about the Court and its legacy, not to mention his.

Putting aside the horrendous series of decisions he has joined, he has been an abject failure at reigning in the ethics “excesses” (to be kind) of his fellow Justices.

Now that the Supreme Court has green lit such actions, Biden should order the IRS to go after Clarence for his failure to pay income taxes on the millions and millions of dollars in payments he has received from Republican donors over the years.

[jhu72]

Roberts is now running neck and neck with Roger Taney for the title of worst Chief Justice ever.

Sad, there was a time when I thought he cared about the Court and its legacy, not to mention his.

Putting aside the horrendous series of decisions he has joined, he has been an abject failure at reigning in the ethics “excesses” (to be kind) of his fellow Justices.

Now that the Supreme Court has green lit such actions, Biden should order the IRS to go after Clarence for his failure to pay income taxes on the millions and millions of dollars in payments he has received from Republican donors over the years.

+100

.... the court that sanctioned public corruption. Pathetic. History will not be kind to these losers.

[RedFromMI]

A rather cynical take I saw on Twitter this morning was essentially that Roberts set up the court to server as a block on the Ds should they win, and reserved a ton of power for themselves to insulate them from the chaos that will ensue if Trump is reelected.

It's not just him - the rest of the six seem to be going along quite willingly.

[a fan]

Roberts is now running neck and neck with Roger Taney for the title of worst Chief Justice ever.

Sad, there was a time when I thought he cared about the Court and its legacy, not to mention his.

Putting aside the horrendous series of decisions he has joined, he has been an abject failure at reigning in the ethics “excesses” (to be kind) of his fellow Justices.

Now that the Supreme Court has green lit such actions, Biden should order the IRS to go after Clarence for his failure to pay income taxes on the millions and millions of dollars in payments he has received from Republican donors over the years.

+100

.... the court that sanctioned public corruption. Pathetic. History will not be kind to these losers.

And it would be an "official act".


Has anyone noticed that not one of the Forum's Republicans have come on to tell us this was bad decision on the part of the SCOTUS?

They can't muster the strength to have an opinion? Cool.

[njbill]

A rather cynical take I saw on Twitter this morning was essentially that Roberts set up the court to server as a block on the Ds should they win, and reserved a ton of power for themselves to insulate them from the chaos that will ensue if Trump is reelected.

It's not just him - the rest of the six seem to be going along quite willingly.

I have been thinking the same thing. If he loses, Trump will try the same BS he tried last time with his challenges. This time the Supreme Court will (lawlessly) uphold one of his challenges to give him one of the key states.

[MDlaxfan76]

Roberts is now running neck and neck with Roger Taney for the title of worst Chief Justice ever.

Sad, there was a time when I thought he cared about the Court and its legacy, not to mention his.

Putting aside the horrendous series of decisions he has joined, he has been an abject failure at reigning in the ethics “excesses” (to be kind) of his fellow Justices.

Now that the Supreme Court has green lit such actions, Biden should order the IRS to go after Clarence for his failure to pay income taxes on the millions and millions of dollars in payments he has received from Republican donors over the years.

+100

.... the court that sanctioned public corruption. Pathetic. History will not be kind to these losers.

And it would be an "official act".


Has anyone noticed that not one of the Forum's Republicans have come on to tell us this was bad decision on the part of the SCOTUS?

They can't muster the strength to have an opinion? Cool.

small correction, MAGA Republicans.

[dislaxxic]

Interesting post from Marcy Wheeler about how badly John Roberts mangles the words of our first president in his famous Fairwell Address...

SPIRIT OF REVENGE: JOHN ROBERTS SAYS JOE BIDEN CAN DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION OF GINNI THOMAS

Roberts had the audacity, for example, to quote from a passage talking about how unbridled partisanship could lead to foreign influence, corruption, insurrection, and authoritarianism and suggest he was preventing that, rather than immunizing it.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. [my emphasis]

As I described in the initial release of Ball of Thread, the podcast I’m doing with LOLGOP, the Republicans on SCOTUS really believe Trump’s garbage claims that his prosecution was about revenge and despotism, rather than an effort to stave it off.

Trump has gotten people who claim to care about the country to view up as down, fascism as freedom.

Never mind that a court riddled with corruption scandals invoked the passage of the Farewell Address warning against it.

Between the shock of the overall holding and the obsession with Joe Biden’s poor debate, though, there has been little focus on an equally troubling part of Roberts’ opinion: one sanctioning the wholesale politicization of DOJ.

In light of the unbelievably unconscionable decision, is it really so "radical" to discuss things like increasing the number of justices or forcing term limits on them??

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