Democrats are incensed over a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling that grants Trump broad prosecutorial immunity in a case centering around Trump’s election integrity claims in 2020.
Nothing has changed. All this SCOTUS decision does is reaffirm 235 years of precedent on presidential immunity for "official acts". Keep in mind that this decision also protects Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Joe Biden from frivolous prosecution.
A lot of pontificating about the (119 page) Immunity decision. Interesting to read the (actual) opinion/dissent when reflecting on hyperbole in the 'news.' Here's a snippet from page 50: "The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the re- sponsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution."
Democrats brought this on themselves. Trump would not have been in front of the Supreme Court claiming absolute immunity (absurd on it's face, but you always ask for more that you will get in a negotiation) if not for the Democrats authoritarian extra-democratic efforts (CO Supreme Court) and law fair to bury him rather than sell their candidate and policies to the American people.
We are here 248 years and 45 presidents after the Founding having to ask for an official Constitutional position because Democrats have again treated our institutions and traditions with contempt and distain.
The trajectory of the Left is the same throughout history the world over, the cry for tolerance becomes authoritarian control of the language and conversation, and when the lies and gaslighting no longer work, the violence starts and the institutions that do not serve the Left must be destroyed.
"To the extent that the majority’s new accountability paradigm allows Presidents to evade punishment for their criminal acts while in office, the seeds of absolute power for Presidents have been planted." Trump v. U.S., Justice Jackson, dissenting.
I previously opined that contrary to the fears of many progressives/liberals about Trump, we don't really face any danger that he might take us down the path that Germany took with Hitler. I based this opinion on the limitations that are imposed on every President by our Constitution and laws. Well, so much for that. With yesterday's presidential immunity decision, we now face the danger that if a President has enough cooperative judges on the Supreme Court, Congress cannot pass any law that he is bound to respect in the performance of his official duties. Impeachment being Congress' only recourse, a President will only need one-third of the Senate on his side in order to do whatever the hell he pleases.
Trump is not my only concern. The door that the Court just opened can swing either left or right; meaning that the despot who eventually passes through it could be either "progressive" or conservative.
If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the Founding Fathers turning in their graves.
In close election after close election in Iowa, I saw the Democrats "hold back" the Democrat precincts in Des Moines and then suddenly, at the end of the night, turn in just enough ballots from those precincts to flip the victory to the Democrat candidate. When I moved to Virginia I watched the same thing happen, only there the Democrats held back precincts in northern Virginia’s Fairfax County (DC suburbs) as well as Richmond. In 2008 Acorn was put out of business for cheating on behalf of Obama, although McCain's support dropped so much after the stock market crash that Obama would have won without the Acorn cheating. In 2012 on Fox News, Bob Beckel, the token Democrat on The Five, started to brag about how the Democrats used to hold back the voter in Fairfax County, realized what he was about to admit to, and cut himself off. For a nearly a quarter century before 2020 I'd been saying, "in any close election, count on the Democrats to cheat their way to victory."
In 2020 the Democrats cheated openly and notoriously. Thousands of voters across the country testified to the cheating. We have film footage of Democrats locking Republican poll judges out of glass classrooms to count by themselves, even taping paper over parts of the windows to keep the locked-out Republican poll judges from seeing (or directly filming) their cheating. People found mail trucks full of ballots pre-marked for Biden. Democrats in some precincts even pretended to end counting for the evening, such as for an alleged burst pipe, only to return and do the rest of the counting later that night and present Republican poll judges with a fait accompli in the morning. It might be politically inexpedient to admit that you know that they cheated, but that doesn't change the fact that they cheated, and not for the first time, but for the first time so openly and notoriously, in 2020.
I never gave you grief for denying the cheating, and I'm not surprised you got grief. Some 70% of Republicans believe that Democrats cheated their way to the presidency in 2020. Even if only 7% had believed it, however, it still would have been true. I would have been frustrated the way I was in the two decades before Rush Limbaugh popularized the term "liberal media" that virtually nobody but me could see it. It was clear to me as far back s the early 1970s that not only the news media but people in the entertainment media preferred (Northern) Democrats to Republicans, and liberals to mushy moderates (there being virtually no real conservatives back then). Liberal news and entertainment figures particularly hated Richard Nixon, but they managed to trash even someone so nice as Gerald Ford. As it turns out, however, a supermajority of Republicans could see that the Democrats cheated their way to victory in 2020, so I haven't been alone for twenty years on this one and didn't feel frustrated by your denial of the truth. You and I agree virtually all the time, so there was bound to some time when we didn't. I just didn't think it would be on something as obvious as Democrat cheating. :-D
If Democrats cheated so blatantly, why did Republican judges (including even some appointed by Trump) reject each and every challenge to the election results? Why did Trump's own attorney general (Barr) find nothing wrong?
First, Neil, let me ask you, did you see the film footage of Democrat judges counting ballots in a sealed glass room and taping up paper to block the locked out Republican judges from seeing? Did you read or hear about how the Democrats in one precinct pretended to send everyone home over a burst pipe and then "counted" the rest of the ballots with the Republicans gone? Do you know about the Democratic Party officials who ruled voters who violated their own state laws could still have their votes counted? These are obvious cases of cheating, regardless of whether every Republican or no Republican admits it.
As for why establishment Republicans refused to acknowledge the cheating, you ask an excellent question. It's simply not possible that every single case was false out of thousands of accusations, and we saw some of them with our very eyes. Why wouldn't any of these establishment Republicans admit that there was any wrongdoing? Does anyone doubt that Mayor Daley of Chicago cheated JFK's way to the presidency in 1960? Even liberal history books say it was likely. I saw cheating again and again in close statewide races in both Iowa and Virginia, and Bob Beckel actually started to brag about that very thing on The Five before he realized what he was saying and cut himself off. In 2000 Florida officials tried to cheat their way to an Al Gore victory by recounting only in the Democrat-majority counties, since recounts almost always end up with more votes for the majority party in a precinct. Acorn was put of business after rampant cheating for Obama in 2008. So why is it that some Republicans should deny that there was any cheating for Biden in 2020 by Democrats?
I think that goes all the way back to the 2016 primary. Jeb was the presumed nominee and establishment favorite, but he self-destructed by making pleasing Trump the centerpiece of his campaign. Rubio had already committed political suicide as part of the Gang of Eight, leaving establishment Republicans a choice between Trump and Cruz. Many of the establishment Republicans are moderates who hate Cruz both because he's smarter than they are and because his presence reminds them that just because they seem conservative compared to our leftist Democrats doesn't make them principled conservatives. House Speaker John Boehner actually called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh" for sticking to conservative principles in the face of Boehner's efforts to appease Democrats in Congress. Trump had a reputation, deserved or not, of being a wheeler-dealer, and so much of the establishment thought they could cut deals with him and so supported him against Cruz.
The very first deal Trump tried to cut was with Democrats to raise taxes! Mitch McConnell, who at that time appeared attached at the hip to Trump and did a record job of approving Trump appointees, politely reminded Trump that he's a Republican now and shouldn't be cutting deals with his former party. McConnell and other establishment Republicans, furthermore, found that Trump did little to nothing to forward their agenda of, say, cutting taxes, and that they had to bear all the burdens themselves. They found too that as Obama had done for Republicans, Trump did for Democrats, being a massive fundraiser for the other side and helping the other side gain ground in all sorts of local elections. Establishment Republicans also paid the price in media abuse for every obnoxious thing Trump said or did, and those were virtually nonstop. By the time the 2020 election rolled around, much of the Republican establishment decided they'd rather endure 4 years of doddering Biden than four more years of paying for Trump's personality.
Some of the Republicans who were happy to sit by and let the Democrats get rid of Trump by cheating were conservative Republicans. Although Trump and his allies at Fox News managed to paint the Never Trump movement as Republican in Name Only, the Never Trump movement actually started among conservatives who objected to a rich, liberal New York Democrat switching parties, insulting his liberal former buddies, and pretending to be conservative. Remember that our own Erick Erickson was among the first to warn that Trump was no conservative at all, and uninvited him from that year's Red State convention. The National Taxpayers Union had an entire website dedicated to explaining why Trump was anything but a conservative. Many conservative elected officials too were happy to see him go. All they had to do was say nothing, and do nothing, and the Democrats got rid of Trump for them.
Hey, a fellow conservative has invited me over for the Fourth so I need to get some other things done beforehand, so I’ll just wish you a happy Fourth of July!
I don't see how the Dems can run Biden this year. I don't see how they can replace him with anyone but Kamala. She'd be historic, the first black female (DEI) President. That would cause huge #s of SJWs to vote for her to show just how non-racist/anti-racist they are. And it would help the Dems regain some of their slipping numbers among Blacks.
If it's someone other than Kamala, Blacks - especially Black Females - will abandon the party en mass.
Chicago has the potential to be VERY interesting this summer.
Unless they can persuade him not to run again, it would be hard for them to replace him. The rules of the Democratic Party require the delegates pledged to him to vote for him on the first ballot, and he has filled the positions of authority in the party and convention with his own supporters. It's not impossible that enough of Biden loyalists would revolt and throw out the rules in his favor and choose someone else, but just very unlikely.
I’m sorry but Fulton county cannot defend its vote tally’s in the last election. Disqualify Fulton in all future elections until they come clean about 2020.
The fist big lie was Trump-Russia collusion. Then it was Trump obstruction of justice. Then Hunter's laptop. Hilary still claiming Trump is illegitimate. Now the big lie of Joe Biden's health. And then the Twitter Files and evidence that Democrats in agencies strong armed the media and tech to silence Republicans... this is the cheating thumb on the scale that invalidates the Democrat claim of Trump's "big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen.
Any way you slice it, Democrats are the Big Lie owners. The party is even more prone to denying the holocaust today.
The Founders put a lot of thought into the Constitution, but they could not think of everything. It's a rather lose document that has been expanded upon to the tune of thousands of pages of legal opinions. I have to admit to being pretty upset at the SCOTUS ruling today. One might say even depressed about it. But it is what it is, and I suspect it's probably a correct decision although I do plan to read the dissent.
But, we didn't have to be here. We didn't have to have a ruling on the rather obscure question of presidential immunity, something that has been a significant matter only once before, during Watergate. Maybe we should be thankful that it never occurred to Richard Nixon to sue over the question of absolute presidential immunity. I am thankful that Richard Nixon was capable shame. He may not have admitted to it, but his resignation implies as much.
Y'all remember shame? I was raised Catholic. I'm very familiar with the concept but then I'm 73 years old. Contemporary American Christianity doesn't see to apply that to the political realm anymore. If it did, Donald Trump would never have gotten the nomination in 2016 and we wouldn't be in this particular political mess. We'd probably be in some other undeterminable political mess but not this. And the Supreme Court would not be having to parse the intricacies of presidential immunity because we elected someone who has used the legal system his entire live to screw people. And now he's screwed the entire country.
I don't know what going to happen in November. All I know is I have a very bad feeling about the future if Donald Trump is elected. He must feel invincible today. And that scares me, a lot. I may be wrong about him. I hope I'm wrong. But if the past is any indication of the future. I don't think I am.
I can't fathom why anyone is surprised or disappointed about the ruling on immunity. It is not only common sense, but has been an implied situation since the beginning. If a president did not have immunity for official acts in office, he could be charged for any number of things by opponents after he was out of office. This did not give him immunity for private acts. He can't use the military to dispatch a political opponent.
In more than two centuries, only two former Presidents (Trump and Nixon) have needed immunity from criminal prosecution. The others having not been criminals, they had no need for immunity.
And the President's use of the military is not a "private" act within the meaning of the opinion. (You might want to read it.)
I'm disappointed that we had to have a decision in the first place. But not for Donald Trump's actions we would not have to explore the "outer perimeter" of presidential immunity. The Court felt compelled to return the case to the District Court in order verify what was personal action versus presidential action. They needed to do this because he won't be the last president. They are establishing precedent.
My point is we're in unexplored legal territory because of Trump. But for him and his pathological need to push the legal envelope we would be here. We haven't been here for 235 years.
And I think, if elected he will be emboldened to push things even further. And that is what scares me. The path to authoritarian behavior is being laid. And not just for this Republican president but also for the next Democratic one, too. You'll love it when THAT happens.
Well, to your point, I think the idea that he "pushed the legal envelope" to an extreme is very debatable. Just because some feel that way, it does not mean that he really did anything extraordinary. To me, pushing the legal envelope is crafting a multitude of cases with very loose interpretations of what constitutes a crime to take out a political opponent.
There is no ammunition for anyone in the ruling. It simply protects the president, whoever it is at any given time, for decisions he makes, even if they turn out to be bad ones or wrong ones.
The problem is the ruling is now making it very clear exactly how much bad can be done by the president with immunity. Before Mr Trump there were boundaries established by prior behavior in the office.
John Adams famously said that and I’m paraphrasing here,”our constitution was designed for a moral and religious people. It can work with no other.”
Mr Trump is neither moral nor religious and his actions in his first administration, before he took office and since I think make that case.
Don't you know Neil, when our society blesses Lawfare, there is no requirement that an actual law was broken. I think we have seen clearly, that lawyers can conjure up crimes and achieve conviction.
This ruling, protects the president...regardless of party.
Actually, this ruling allows the President to commit crimes, regardless of party. But my point was that there is no law against performing one's job in such a way that illegals are let into the country.
I agree with you about Trump possibly feeling invincible. He shouldn't. He needs to work on his message, reach out to independents, and run like he is way behind. I hope you are wrong and that you will be pleasantly surprised if you find you are if Trump should win.
Wikipedia reminded me of what I already knew, the concept of the Big Lie originated in Mein Kampf, that is, the use of the Big Lie as a propaganda tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Good job Joey you answered all the questions so now you can have ice cream a good night sleep and we will juice you up in the morning so you can work from 10 to 4 and do it again tomorrow
The prospect of a Democratic President undertaking criminal behavior with impunity scares me just as much as with Trump. Whether Republican or Democrat, we should all be concerned over where this could lead.
SCOTUS really had a no-win situation. They voted to allow presidents to get away with murder if they could argue it was part of their official duties; the alternative is to allow successive administrations to prosecute the previous one over anything they didn't like.
While this might be attractive if you want to send Biden to jail for fraud for trying to pay off student loans without an act of Congress (or Obama droning American citizens without a trial), one can see the problem here.
The remedy for the first case is impeachment. The remedy for the second case is Mutually Assured Destruction.
Great one, Erick. It's easy to see how people can easily believe the election was stolen, when you see Democrats with their media vanguards, squashing all attempts to give them push back on anything they do, think and say. Trump's supporters are fascists, the border is secure, Biden is a savant genius and a cross-fit guru, their gaslighting adds up to make them unbelievable on anything. I'm all for looking forward, but I think if the truth can ever be known, maybe a decade from now, we will learn that democrats cooked the books...because the said they didn't.
It's like when MSNBC starts stating that joe Biden is whip smart and peppering everyone with questions in meetings...I immediately go the other way. Besides him ever being whip smart is quite the reach in his prime and less so in his adding days.
Nothing has changed. All this SCOTUS decision does is reaffirm 235 years of precedent on presidential immunity for "official acts". Keep in mind that this decision also protects Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Joe Biden from frivolous prosecution.
A lot of pontificating about the (119 page) Immunity decision. Interesting to read the (actual) opinion/dissent when reflecting on hyperbole in the 'news.' Here's a snippet from page 50: "The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the re- sponsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution."
Speaking of lies, i think Praeger U poses a good question: https://www.prageru.com/video/lying-liars?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_10315740
The media told many deliberate lies about the Trayvon Martin case as well.
Democrats brought this on themselves. Trump would not have been in front of the Supreme Court claiming absolute immunity (absurd on it's face, but you always ask for more that you will get in a negotiation) if not for the Democrats authoritarian extra-democratic efforts (CO Supreme Court) and law fair to bury him rather than sell their candidate and policies to the American people.
We are here 248 years and 45 presidents after the Founding having to ask for an official Constitutional position because Democrats have again treated our institutions and traditions with contempt and distain.
The trajectory of the Left is the same throughout history the world over, the cry for tolerance becomes authoritarian control of the language and conversation, and when the lies and gaslighting no longer work, the violence starts and the institutions that do not serve the Left must be destroyed.
"To the extent that the majority’s new accountability paradigm allows Presidents to evade punishment for their criminal acts while in office, the seeds of absolute power for Presidents have been planted." Trump v. U.S., Justice Jackson, dissenting.
I previously opined that contrary to the fears of many progressives/liberals about Trump, we don't really face any danger that he might take us down the path that Germany took with Hitler. I based this opinion on the limitations that are imposed on every President by our Constitution and laws. Well, so much for that. With yesterday's presidential immunity decision, we now face the danger that if a President has enough cooperative judges on the Supreme Court, Congress cannot pass any law that he is bound to respect in the performance of his official duties. Impeachment being Congress' only recourse, a President will only need one-third of the Senate on his side in order to do whatever the hell he pleases.
Trump is not my only concern. The door that the Court just opened can swing either left or right; meaning that the despot who eventually passes through it could be either "progressive" or conservative.
If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the Founding Fathers turning in their graves.
In close election after close election in Iowa, I saw the Democrats "hold back" the Democrat precincts in Des Moines and then suddenly, at the end of the night, turn in just enough ballots from those precincts to flip the victory to the Democrat candidate. When I moved to Virginia I watched the same thing happen, only there the Democrats held back precincts in northern Virginia’s Fairfax County (DC suburbs) as well as Richmond. In 2008 Acorn was put out of business for cheating on behalf of Obama, although McCain's support dropped so much after the stock market crash that Obama would have won without the Acorn cheating. In 2012 on Fox News, Bob Beckel, the token Democrat on The Five, started to brag about how the Democrats used to hold back the voter in Fairfax County, realized what he was about to admit to, and cut himself off. For a nearly a quarter century before 2020 I'd been saying, "in any close election, count on the Democrats to cheat their way to victory."
In 2020 the Democrats cheated openly and notoriously. Thousands of voters across the country testified to the cheating. We have film footage of Democrats locking Republican poll judges out of glass classrooms to count by themselves, even taping paper over parts of the windows to keep the locked-out Republican poll judges from seeing (or directly filming) their cheating. People found mail trucks full of ballots pre-marked for Biden. Democrats in some precincts even pretended to end counting for the evening, such as for an alleged burst pipe, only to return and do the rest of the counting later that night and present Republican poll judges with a fait accompli in the morning. It might be politically inexpedient to admit that you know that they cheated, but that doesn't change the fact that they cheated, and not for the first time, but for the first time so openly and notoriously, in 2020.
I never gave you grief for denying the cheating, and I'm not surprised you got grief. Some 70% of Republicans believe that Democrats cheated their way to the presidency in 2020. Even if only 7% had believed it, however, it still would have been true. I would have been frustrated the way I was in the two decades before Rush Limbaugh popularized the term "liberal media" that virtually nobody but me could see it. It was clear to me as far back s the early 1970s that not only the news media but people in the entertainment media preferred (Northern) Democrats to Republicans, and liberals to mushy moderates (there being virtually no real conservatives back then). Liberal news and entertainment figures particularly hated Richard Nixon, but they managed to trash even someone so nice as Gerald Ford. As it turns out, however, a supermajority of Republicans could see that the Democrats cheated their way to victory in 2020, so I haven't been alone for twenty years on this one and didn't feel frustrated by your denial of the truth. You and I agree virtually all the time, so there was bound to some time when we didn't. I just didn't think it would be on something as obvious as Democrat cheating. :-D
If Democrats cheated so blatantly, why did Republican judges (including even some appointed by Trump) reject each and every challenge to the election results? Why did Trump's own attorney general (Barr) find nothing wrong?
First, Neil, let me ask you, did you see the film footage of Democrat judges counting ballots in a sealed glass room and taping up paper to block the locked out Republican judges from seeing? Did you read or hear about how the Democrats in one precinct pretended to send everyone home over a burst pipe and then "counted" the rest of the ballots with the Republicans gone? Do you know about the Democratic Party officials who ruled voters who violated their own state laws could still have their votes counted? These are obvious cases of cheating, regardless of whether every Republican or no Republican admits it.
As for why establishment Republicans refused to acknowledge the cheating, you ask an excellent question. It's simply not possible that every single case was false out of thousands of accusations, and we saw some of them with our very eyes. Why wouldn't any of these establishment Republicans admit that there was any wrongdoing? Does anyone doubt that Mayor Daley of Chicago cheated JFK's way to the presidency in 1960? Even liberal history books say it was likely. I saw cheating again and again in close statewide races in both Iowa and Virginia, and Bob Beckel actually started to brag about that very thing on The Five before he realized what he was saying and cut himself off. In 2000 Florida officials tried to cheat their way to an Al Gore victory by recounting only in the Democrat-majority counties, since recounts almost always end up with more votes for the majority party in a precinct. Acorn was put of business after rampant cheating for Obama in 2008. So why is it that some Republicans should deny that there was any cheating for Biden in 2020 by Democrats?
I think that goes all the way back to the 2016 primary. Jeb was the presumed nominee and establishment favorite, but he self-destructed by making pleasing Trump the centerpiece of his campaign. Rubio had already committed political suicide as part of the Gang of Eight, leaving establishment Republicans a choice between Trump and Cruz. Many of the establishment Republicans are moderates who hate Cruz both because he's smarter than they are and because his presence reminds them that just because they seem conservative compared to our leftist Democrats doesn't make them principled conservatives. House Speaker John Boehner actually called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh" for sticking to conservative principles in the face of Boehner's efforts to appease Democrats in Congress. Trump had a reputation, deserved or not, of being a wheeler-dealer, and so much of the establishment thought they could cut deals with him and so supported him against Cruz.
The very first deal Trump tried to cut was with Democrats to raise taxes! Mitch McConnell, who at that time appeared attached at the hip to Trump and did a record job of approving Trump appointees, politely reminded Trump that he's a Republican now and shouldn't be cutting deals with his former party. McConnell and other establishment Republicans, furthermore, found that Trump did little to nothing to forward their agenda of, say, cutting taxes, and that they had to bear all the burdens themselves. They found too that as Obama had done for Republicans, Trump did for Democrats, being a massive fundraiser for the other side and helping the other side gain ground in all sorts of local elections. Establishment Republicans also paid the price in media abuse for every obnoxious thing Trump said or did, and those were virtually nonstop. By the time the 2020 election rolled around, much of the Republican establishment decided they'd rather endure 4 years of doddering Biden than four more years of paying for Trump's personality.
Some of the Republicans who were happy to sit by and let the Democrats get rid of Trump by cheating were conservative Republicans. Although Trump and his allies at Fox News managed to paint the Never Trump movement as Republican in Name Only, the Never Trump movement actually started among conservatives who objected to a rich, liberal New York Democrat switching parties, insulting his liberal former buddies, and pretending to be conservative. Remember that our own Erick Erickson was among the first to warn that Trump was no conservative at all, and uninvited him from that year's Red State convention. The National Taxpayers Union had an entire website dedicated to explaining why Trump was anything but a conservative. Many conservative elected officials too were happy to see him go. All they had to do was say nothing, and do nothing, and the Democrats got rid of Trump for them.
Hey, a fellow conservative has invited me over for the Fourth so I need to get some other things done beforehand, so I’ll just wish you a happy Fourth of July!
I don't see how the Dems can run Biden this year. I don't see how they can replace him with anyone but Kamala. She'd be historic, the first black female (DEI) President. That would cause huge #s of SJWs to vote for her to show just how non-racist/anti-racist they are. And it would help the Dems regain some of their slipping numbers among Blacks.
If it's someone other than Kamala, Blacks - especially Black Females - will abandon the party en mass.
Chicago has the potential to be VERY interesting this summer.
Unless they can persuade him not to run again, it would be hard for them to replace him. The rules of the Democratic Party require the delegates pledged to him to vote for him on the first ballot, and he has filled the positions of authority in the party and convention with his own supporters. It's not impossible that enough of Biden loyalists would revolt and throw out the rules in his favor and choose someone else, but just very unlikely.
I’m sorry but Fulton county cannot defend its vote tally’s in the last election. Disqualify Fulton in all future elections until they come clean about 2020.
I’m talking about when he returns to office. This election is over
The fist big lie was Trump-Russia collusion. Then it was Trump obstruction of justice. Then Hunter's laptop. Hilary still claiming Trump is illegitimate. Now the big lie of Joe Biden's health. And then the Twitter Files and evidence that Democrats in agencies strong armed the media and tech to silence Republicans... this is the cheating thumb on the scale that invalidates the Democrat claim of Trump's "big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen.
Any way you slice it, Democrats are the Big Lie owners. The party is even more prone to denying the holocaust today.
The Founders put a lot of thought into the Constitution, but they could not think of everything. It's a rather lose document that has been expanded upon to the tune of thousands of pages of legal opinions. I have to admit to being pretty upset at the SCOTUS ruling today. One might say even depressed about it. But it is what it is, and I suspect it's probably a correct decision although I do plan to read the dissent.
But, we didn't have to be here. We didn't have to have a ruling on the rather obscure question of presidential immunity, something that has been a significant matter only once before, during Watergate. Maybe we should be thankful that it never occurred to Richard Nixon to sue over the question of absolute presidential immunity. I am thankful that Richard Nixon was capable shame. He may not have admitted to it, but his resignation implies as much.
Y'all remember shame? I was raised Catholic. I'm very familiar with the concept but then I'm 73 years old. Contemporary American Christianity doesn't see to apply that to the political realm anymore. If it did, Donald Trump would never have gotten the nomination in 2016 and we wouldn't be in this particular political mess. We'd probably be in some other undeterminable political mess but not this. And the Supreme Court would not be having to parse the intricacies of presidential immunity because we elected someone who has used the legal system his entire live to screw people. And now he's screwed the entire country.
I don't know what going to happen in November. All I know is I have a very bad feeling about the future if Donald Trump is elected. He must feel invincible today. And that scares me, a lot. I may be wrong about him. I hope I'm wrong. But if the past is any indication of the future. I don't think I am.
I can't fathom why anyone is surprised or disappointed about the ruling on immunity. It is not only common sense, but has been an implied situation since the beginning. If a president did not have immunity for official acts in office, he could be charged for any number of things by opponents after he was out of office. This did not give him immunity for private acts. He can't use the military to dispatch a political opponent.
In more than two centuries, only two former Presidents (Trump and Nixon) have needed immunity from criminal prosecution. The others having not been criminals, they had no need for immunity.
And the President's use of the military is not a "private" act within the meaning of the opinion. (You might want to read it.)
I'm disappointed that we had to have a decision in the first place. But not for Donald Trump's actions we would not have to explore the "outer perimeter" of presidential immunity. The Court felt compelled to return the case to the District Court in order verify what was personal action versus presidential action. They needed to do this because he won't be the last president. They are establishing precedent.
My point is we're in unexplored legal territory because of Trump. But for him and his pathological need to push the legal envelope we would be here. We haven't been here for 235 years.
And I think, if elected he will be emboldened to push things even further. And that is what scares me. The path to authoritarian behavior is being laid. And not just for this Republican president but also for the next Democratic one, too. You'll love it when THAT happens.
Well, to your point, I think the idea that he "pushed the legal envelope" to an extreme is very debatable. Just because some feel that way, it does not mean that he really did anything extraordinary. To me, pushing the legal envelope is crafting a multitude of cases with very loose interpretations of what constitutes a crime to take out a political opponent.
More ammunition for the Democrats when they return to power.
There is no ammunition for anyone in the ruling. It simply protects the president, whoever it is at any given time, for decisions he makes, even if they turn out to be bad ones or wrong ones.
The problem is the ruling is now making it very clear exactly how much bad can be done by the president with immunity. Before Mr Trump there were boundaries established by prior behavior in the office.
John Adams famously said that and I’m paraphrasing here,”our constitution was designed for a moral and religious people. It can work with no other.”
Mr Trump is neither moral nor religious and his actions in his first administration, before he took office and since I think make that case.
Exactly...He could be charged for letting illegals into the country and killing Americans.
There is no law against that.
Don't you know Neil, when our society blesses Lawfare, there is no requirement that an actual law was broken. I think we have seen clearly, that lawyers can conjure up crimes and achieve conviction.
This ruling, protects the president...regardless of party.
Actually, this ruling allows the President to commit crimes, regardless of party. But my point was that there is no law against performing one's job in such a way that illegals are let into the country.
I guess accessory to a crime probably counts. Probably more of a crime than making up numbers on a bank loan anyway.
Anyway, this dead horse is dead.
I agree with you about Trump possibly feeling invincible. He shouldn't. He needs to work on his message, reach out to independents, and run like he is way behind. I hope you are wrong and that you will be pleasantly surprised if you find you are if Trump should win.
Me too. But I still have lingering aftereffects. Some of them good. Like the concept of shame.
Wikipedia reminded me of what I already knew, the concept of the Big Lie originated in Mein Kampf, that is, the use of the Big Lie as a propaganda tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
“Donald Trump knows who he is and remembers who he his, unlike Joe Biden”.
So, when are you going to just come out and endorse Donald Trump?
Does stating that fact mean that he wants to endorse Trump?
I think so. But I don't think he will.
Good job Joey you answered all the questions so now you can have ice cream a good night sleep and we will juice you up in the morning so you can work from 10 to 4 and do it again tomorrow
The Dems are going to make political hay out of the SCOTUS decision, but one day they will be thankful for it.
The prospect of a Democratic President undertaking criminal behavior with impunity scares me just as much as with Trump. Whether Republican or Democrat, we should all be concerned over where this could lead.
SCOTUS really had a no-win situation. They voted to allow presidents to get away with murder if they could argue it was part of their official duties; the alternative is to allow successive administrations to prosecute the previous one over anything they didn't like.
While this might be attractive if you want to send Biden to jail for fraud for trying to pay off student loans without an act of Congress (or Obama droning American citizens without a trial), one can see the problem here.
The remedy for the first case is impeachment. The remedy for the second case is Mutually Assured Destruction.
You're right, but the have the foresight of a mole.
Great one, Erick. It's easy to see how people can easily believe the election was stolen, when you see Democrats with their media vanguards, squashing all attempts to give them push back on anything they do, think and say. Trump's supporters are fascists, the border is secure, Biden is a savant genius and a cross-fit guru, their gaslighting adds up to make them unbelievable on anything. I'm all for looking forward, but I think if the truth can ever be known, maybe a decade from now, we will learn that democrats cooked the books...because the said they didn't.
It's like when MSNBC starts stating that joe Biden is whip smart and peppering everyone with questions in meetings...I immediately go the other way. Besides him ever being whip smart is quite the reach in his prime and less so in his adding days.