Trump’s lawyer told the justices that the founders had “in a sense” written immunity into the Constitution because it’s a logical outgrowth of a broadly worded clause about presidential power. But that’s the sort of argument conservative justices have often scoffed at — most notably in the context of abortion rights.
Tuesday Cartoons: Fetch…
Posted: April 30, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: Latino 8 CommentsGood morning. I’m dealing with a migraine again, so just a quick post today.
Cartoons via Cagle:
Both me and my dad feel this way…and we are Latino.
This is an open thread.
Mostly Monday Reads: More of the Same (Sigh)
Posted: April 29, 2024 Filed under: "presidential immunity" | Tags: 2024 Correspondent's Dinner, @repeat1968, Dark Brandon, John Buss, Kind Joe Biden, Trump Brand Destruction, Trump Dementia 8 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
What a rainy Monday this has become! At least April is consistent, and we’re getting plenty of spring flowers here! I hear the frogs and green anoles chirp. Frogs are wonderful! They can also whistle, croak, ribbit, peep, cluck, bark, and grunt. He has today off, but we will undoubtedly hear more weird sounds from Donald as he is once more confined to a cold courtroom with its hard chairs and people ruining his branding once again!
This is from Public Notice. The analysis is provided by Lisa Needham. “Trump’s criminal trial is off to a bad start for him. He’s low energy both inside and outside the courtroom.” The Correspondent’s Dinner didn’t help his mood any either. We’ll get to that. I promise.
Thanks to New York’s relatively strict laws regarding media access to courtrooms, Trump’s trial has what is, for Trump, the precisely wrong level of exposure. New York doesn’t allow cameras or live audio, and it’s only because of the extraordinary nature of the proceedings that the court administration decided to make daily transcripts of the trial available for free on the court’s official website. Transcripts can run to thousands of dollars for a single day and are not usually turned around within 24 hours.
So, with the proceedings not entirely behind closed doors, Trump can’t outright lie about what transpired. But the lack of cameras and real-time coverage also means Trump can’t turn things into a circus by engaging in ridiculous behavior to distract media attention from the trial’s substance. When you combine this with the fact that the judge, not Trump, is wholly in control of the order of proceedings each day, this has to be one of the most maddening and humiliating experiences imaginable for him.
Trump can slake his thirst for attention and deploy his clumsy attempts to derail the narrative only a few times per day, when he is swarmed by media entering or exiting the courtroom. On those occasions, he goes on brief, highly repetitive rants that generate nothing but negative headlines for him.
Perhaps worst of all for Trump, even his most die-hard supporters don’t seem all that interested in trekking to Lower Manhattan. Trump is self-soothing over this, spinning an easily disprovable yarn that the courthouse is an “armed camp to keep people away” and that officials are turning around thousands of his supporters. Instead, CNN journalists attending the trial have said there have been days where the teeming number of MAGA faithful can be measured in single digits.
Needham says, “Trump is itching to get back on the campaign trail.” I’m not sure he has enough energy for the golf course, even with his little cart. Maybe all that anger and outrage will get him off the sofa. Chauncey Devega, writing for Salon, has this take on this day of peace and silence for everyone not on Truth Social. “The gag “trap” of Manhattan’s hush-money trial: “Trump will take the bait.” Will Donald Trump take the stand in his own defense? Experts weigh in on his first criminal trial”
In all, after only two weeks Donald Trump has, in short order, basically been reduced to being a mere mortal while in Judge Merchan’s courtroom. This reality is the opposite of the titan or God king messiah he presents himself as to his MAGA followers and the public more generally.
In an attempt to make better sense of the second week of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, its implications for the 2024 Election and the larger democracy crisis, and what may happen next, I recently spoke with a range of experts.
I want to highlight this one. There are more at the link.
Dr. John Gartner is a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”
Trump’s trial in Manhattan is providing more evidence of his apparent cognitive decline. Trump fell asleep 4 out of 6 days of his own trial. Falling asleep is not in and of itself particularly specific to dementia. I fall asleep at dinner parties, because I’m old and work too hard. Bill Clinton was famous for it. But can you remember a criminal defendant repeatedly unable to stay awake at his own trial? I can’t. It’s obviously very rare. Most people are pumped full of adrenaline when they’re in the dock. Some have argued Trump’s just tired, or perhaps deprived of his stimulants. But lots of defendants are tired, and either on drugs, or missing their drugs, while in court, but they don’t repeatedly pass out at their own trials.
However, dementia patients frequently pass out during the day. And come to think of it, this may be the first criminal trial I’ve been aware of where the defendant appears, in my opinion, to have dementia. Is it a coincidence that it’s also the only one I’ve ever known where the defendant can’t remain awake most days? Trump appears to be losing control of his basic biological functions. One is sleep-wake. The other may be excretion. Twitter blew up when both Ben Meiselas and George Conway reported they had heard from multiple credible sources in the courtroom that Trump was loudly passing gas, and the smell was overpowering. This was judged by Snopes to be unconfirmed. But, personally, I happen to trust the people who reported it. I don’t believe they would make that up. There have been unconfirmed reports of Trump using adult diapers.
Normally, this would be a personal matter, but America really needs to know if Trump is incontinent. His apparent disease is progressing rapidly before our eyes and yet we’re being gaslit that this is “Trump being Trump.” That’s true, but it is also Trump appears to be dementing, and the mainstream media doesn’t seem to want to report on that story.
The trial is really a form of psychological torture for a malignant narcissist who needs to appear powerful. Instead, he appears small, confused, and helpless. Jenifer Rubin wrote in her Washington Post column: “Trump day by day has become smaller, more decrepit, and frankly, somewhat pathetic.” Thankfully, the Biden campaign is amplifying this winning message. Biden-Harris HQ, who describe themselves as “the official rapid response of the Biden-Harris campaign” on X/Twitter, wrote: “A feeble and tired Donald Trump once again falls asleep in court.” To fight back Trump must act out. He is defying Merchan’s gag order repeatedly, flagrantly and at a manic pace with no thought of the consequences—in lobby of the courthouse on a lunch break, on Newsmax in the evening, and then dozens of times at 3 AM on Truth Social.
Judge Juan Merchan will be unable to escape a show-down with Trump who will compulsively push him to the limit, and beyond, forcing an inevitable confrontation. Only one will emerge as dominant, and my money is on the judge, but that’s not a foregone conclusion. If Donald Trump is jailed, he’ll wear his incarceration like a martyr, like he’s Nelson Mandela or Alexei Navalny. While Fox News and his base will stoke right-wing outrage, I think sane people still like presidents who don’t get jailed.
There’s still much tea-reading on Donald’s case before the Supreme Court. This is from Business Insider. “A 15-year-old law review by Brett Kavanaugh offers a clue at how the Supreme Court Justice could rule in Trump’s immunity case.” The analysis by Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert.
But one clue, hidden in a 2009 legal review written by Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, could indicate how the conservative judge may decide in this case. And as Kavanaugh is relatively moderate compared to the court’s other right-leaning justices, his 15-year-old analysis may offer insight into how the other Republican-appointed justices are looking at the matter before them.
In his article, published in the Minnesota Law Review in 2009, when he was working as a US Circuit Judge,Kavanaugh argues that the public grossly underestimates the difficulty of the President’s job and that anyone elected to hold the office should “be able to focus on his never-ending tasks with as few distractions as possible.”
That includes criminal prosecution — at least while in office.
“The point is not to put the President above the law or to eliminate checks on the President, but simply to defer litigation and investigations until the President is out of office,” Kavanaugh wrote, arguing in favor of deferring criminal and civil prosecutions against sitting presidents accused of wrongdoing to ensure they can efficiently carry out the responsibilities of office.
One might contend that the country needs a check against a bad-behaving or law-breaking president, Kavanaugh acknowledges, but “the Constitution already provides that check.”
“If the President does something dastardly, the impeachment process is available. No single prosecutor, judge, or jury should be able to accomplish what the Constitution assigns to the Congress,” Kavanaugh wrote.”Moreover, an impeached and removed President is still subject to criminal prosecution afterwards.”
We hear this from retired Judge Lusttig speaking on MSNBC. “Judge Luttig blasts SCOTUS for avoiding ‘key question’ at the heart of Trump immunity case.” This interview is with Ali Velshi. You may watch the interview at the link.
Former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig joins Ali Velshi to discuss his takeaways from this week’s Supreme Court oral arguments on former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim, which many believe will lead to more delays in Trump’s federal criminal cases, and potentially impact the future of the presidency itself. “That this absurd argument is even being made before the Supreme Court is an embarrassment to the Constitution and to our country,” Judge Luttig says. Judge Luttig also criticizes the Supreme Court for avoiding the “straightforward, key question” about the case itself, and explains what decision he believes the justices are most likely to make.
We need to ensure discussions on the Supreme Court’s arguments for this case and the abortion case in Idaho do not go into the darkness with time. This group likes to drag their feet along with their knuckles.
The Correspondent’s Dinner really got to the Donald, who was likely flinging ketchup and farting poo while watching. This, however, was Biden’s night. This is from The Hill, as reported by Cate Martel. “12:30 Report — Glitzy Correspondent’s Dinner highlights. Nerd prom weekend!”
“Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”) comedian Colin Jost hosted the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner over the weekend.
Jost’s reviews: On one hand, Variety wrote that “Colin Jost Wins Over Tough White House Correspondents Dinner Crowd With Praise for ‘Decent’ Biden.” But on the other hand, The New York Times wrote that “On This Saturday Night, Colin Jost’s Jokes Fell Flat.”
Watch the full dinner, via CSPAN
Meanwhile, here are a few clips out there on the X site. There were several moments of protest also. Protestors unfurled a Palestinian flag out of the window of the Washington Hilton. That was the location of the event.
Joe Biden had some great jokes and delivery. Example: ““My wife Jill was worried how I’d do. I told her, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike.’ She said, ‘that’s what I’m worried about.’” Talk about the ability to laugh at yourself.
My favorite joke by Josh was this one. “”Can we just acknowledge how refreshing it is to see a President of the United States at an event that doesn’t begin with a bailiff saying, ‘All rise?'”
Please have a great week!!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Sunday Cartoons and Memes: Is the whole world crazy?
Posted: April 28, 2024 Filed under: Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, GLBT Rights, LGBTQIA+, morning reads, open thread, Political and Editorial Cartoons, SCOTUS, Transgender Rights, Trump 2 CommentsGood morning.
Since the last few days have been a disaster, I speak of the SCOTUS arguments that Boston Boomer wrote about yesterday…I’m going to just post cartoons and memes today.
Cartoons via Cagle:
That series of cartoons by Matt Wuekker.
I had to turn off the comments on my post because of all the horrible shit people were posting.
It is so depressing.
That’s all folks, I just have one thing left:
The Blue Note…with all the disaster photos on the walls.
Yes, I am severely depressed…but I also need to laugh. I think we all could use a laugh.
Be safe and have a good day, this is an open thread.
Funereal Friday Reads: Life as a Dank Meme
Posted: April 26, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: "presidential immunity", @repeat1968, Emergency Pregnancy Health Care, John Buss, SCOTUS, The Caravan of Fools, The Evil Twins: Donald and Alito 9 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
I got the cutest picture of the granddaughters today. The girls were smiling and looking at each other with adoration. Both were pretty in pink. All I can think of is what kind of country they may inherit.
I watched and listened to trials and hearings that were so surreal that I was pretty sure we’d entered the Evil Spock Timeline. I remember when the Supreme Court protected everyone’s rights. Now, rights are confined to those who brought the men there and paid for their holidays. It was like watching a Skeleton Dance. Not one TV Lawyer could find anything constitutional about the show they put on yesterday. We all laughed at him when he said,‘ I Could … Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters’ Evidently, he can do worse than that, and the Supreme Court would make up something to cover his farty, diapered ass.
This is a must-read from Slate: “The Last Thing This Supreme Court Could Do to Shock Us There will be no more self-soothing after this.” This is written by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern.
For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. There were promising signs: They had, after all, refused to wade into the Trumpian efforts to set aside the election results in 2020. They had, after all, hewed to a kind of sanity in batting away Trumpist claims about presidential records (with the lone exception of Clarence Thomas, too long marinated in the Ginni-scented Kool-Aid to be capable of surprising us, but he was just one vote). We promised ourselves that there would be cool heads and grand bargains and that even though the court might sometimes help Trump in small ways, it would privilege the country in the end. We kept thinking that at least for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts, the voice of reasoned never-Trumpers might still penetrate the Fox News fog. We told ourselves that at least six justices, and maybe even seven, of the most MAGA-friendly court in history would still want to ensure that this November’s elections would not be the last in history. Political hacks they may be, but they were not lawless ones.
For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. There were promising signs: They had, after all, refused to wade into the Trumpian efforts to set aside the election results in 2020. They had, after all, hewed to a kind of sanity in batting away Trumpist claims about presidential records (with the lone exception of Clarence Thomas, too long marinated in the Ginni-scented Kool-Aid to be capable of surprising us, but he was just one vote). We promised ourselves that there would be cool heads and grand bargains and that even though the court might sometimes help Trump in small ways, it would privilege the country in the end. We kept thinking that at least for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts, the voice of reasoned never-Trumpers might still penetrate the Fox News fog. We told ourselves that at least six justices, and maybe even seven, of the most MAGA-friendly court in history would still want to ensure that this November’s elections would not be the last in history. Political hacks they may be, but they were not lawless ones.
On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States, the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act. These justices fear that it is Trump’s prosecution for election subversion that will “destabilize” democracy, requiring them to read a brand-new principle of presidential immunity into a Constitution that guarantees nothing of the sort. They evinced virtually no concern for our ability to continue holding free and fair elections that culminate in a peaceful transfer of power. They instead offered endless solicitude for the former president who fought that transfer of power.
However the court disposes of Trump v. U.S., the result will almost certainly be precisely what the former president craves: more delays, more hearings, more appeals—more of everything but justice. This was not a legitimate claim from the start, but a wild attempt by Trump’s attorneys to use his former role as chief executive of the United States to shield himself from the consequences of trying to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. After so much speculation that these reasonable, rational jurists would surely dispose of this ridiculous case quickly and easily, Thursday delivered a morass of bad-faith hand-wringing on the right about the apparently unbearable possibility that a president might no longer be allowed to wield his powers of office in pursuit of illegal ends. Just as bad, we heard a constant minimization of Jan. 6, for the second week in a row, as if the insurrection were ancient history, and history that has since been dramatically overblown, presumably for Democrats’ partisan aims.
All this with the husband of an insurrectionist sitting on the bench. I heard Nicole Wallace give the best explanation of anything I’ve heard on why these men act out their grievances in court decisions last night. Two of the guys that sit on the bench are sex pests and were publicly shown to be so. Alito is just perpetually mad at everything but mostly at being branded a bigot because he has issues with women and gay people. His hateful take on religion basically focuses on controlling the objects of his hatred. Protecting his religious practice means he should get away with whatever. Nicole Wallace argued that they love Trump because they are all angry and aggrieved. They identify with Trump because they feel they’re in a similar situation. Civil rights are all about not letting white boys be white boys. They all want absolute immunity. We have to rely on Amy and John to be reasonable. Amy’s line of questions actually gave me a bit of hope.
It’s a weird timeline for me to quote Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger. This is from the Bulwark. “ Trump Melts Institutions, SCOTUS Edition. The Supreme Court’s no-win situation and the healthy liberalism we need.”
… reading the tea leaves of oral arguments is always an exercise in guesswork. Hopefully SCOTUS won’t be long in unveiling their opinion on the matter.
But one other thing is worth saying: It’s completely understandable that so many people’s first instinct was to roll their eyes at the Court’s apparent interest in using this case to trace out the complex contours of any newly explicit presidential right to official-act immunity—given the remarkable hubris of Trump’s bringing those arguments in the first place.
After all, here’s a guy who, during his second impeachment, explicitly arguedthat prosecuting an ex-president was the role of the criminal courts: “a president who left office is not in any way above the law,” his lawyers argued, “as the Constitution states he or she is like any other citizen and can be tried in a court of law.”
Now Trump articulates just the opposite position: No act that is “official” in form—which, his lawyers have had to admit during arguments, would include such acts as ordering the military to carry out a coup—can be criminally prosecuted after he leaves office unless he was first convicted in an impeachment trial for that conduct. How any president enjoying such expansive power could ever be impeached by a Congress he could apparently order murdered without consequence remains unclear.
It’s a ridiculous exercise, a transparent stalling tactic. For Team Trump, just getting the argument in front of SCOTUS was a victory in and of itself, further diminishing the odds of a jury getting to rule on Trump’s stolen-election charges before the November election. “Literally popping champagne right now,” one lawyer close to Trump told Rolling Stonewhen the court announced it would consider the immunity claim in February. This week, RS quoted another Trump source that it hardly matters what the court does now: “We already pulled off the heist.”
At the same time, no matter how transparent Trump’s run-out-the-clock motivations in bringing the petition to the Court, it’s true that the claims of presidential immunity at hand have never been litigated. The justices are highly unlikely to endorse Trump’s theory that every presidential act that is official “in form” is exempt from prosecution—but are some presidential acts immune? What is the line between a president acting in his capacity as president and acting in his capacity as a candidate or private citizen? And could it be true—as Trump’s lawyers have argued—that opening up too broad a swath of presidential actions to post-presidency prosecution could hamper a president’s ability to run the country effectively?
Evidently, Kavanaugh’s love of beer causes him to be delusional and totally out of it.
One last SCOTUS send-up and I’m changing the topic. This is from Adam Sewer, who is writing for The New Republic. ” The Trumpification of the Supreme Court. The conservative justices have shown they are ready to sacrifice any law or principle to save the former president.”
The notion that Donald Trump’s supporters believe that he should be able to overthrow the government and get away with it sounds like hyperbole, an absurd and uncharitable caricature of conservative thought. Except that is exactly what Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer argued before the Supreme Court yesterday, taking the position that former presidents have “absolute immunity” for so-called official acts they take in office.
“How about if a president orders the military to stage a coup?” Justice Elena Kagan asked Sauer. “I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act,” Sauer said after a brief exchange. “If it were an official act … he would have to be impeached and convicted.”
“That sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” Kagan replied later.
The Democratic appointees on the bench sought to illustrate the inherent absurdity of this argument with other scenarios as well—Kagan got Sauer to admit that the president could share nuclear secrets, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor presented a scenario in which a president orders the military to assassinate a political rival. Sauer said that might qualify as an official act too. It was the only way to maintain the logic of his argument, which is that Trump is above the law
This Mike Luchovich cartoon is brutal and true. I am shifting to the other SCOTUS shit show this week. CNN has “Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s oral arguments over emergency abortions.” Again, thank goodness my youngest daughter is in Denver. Who knows what her outcome may have been? Dr. Daughter is getting more colleagues in Washington State because of Idaho. Pregnant women are gestational containers there. This analysis was provided by Tierney Sneed and John Fritze.
In a Supreme Court hearing on the Biden administration’s challenge to aspects of Idaho’s strict abortion ban, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar sought to appeal to conservative justices who just two years ago ruled that states should have the ability to prohibit the procedure.
The dispute, stemming from the Justice Department’s marquee response to the high court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, turns on whether federal mandates for hospital emergency room care override abortion bans that do not exempt situations where a woman’s health is in danger but her life is not yet threatened.
To prevail, the Biden administration will need the votes of two members of the court’s conservative bloc, and with Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaling sympathies toward Idaho, the case will likely come down to the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett. The two justices had tough questions for both sides of the case.
The court’s far-right wing, perhaps in an attempt to keep those two justices on their side, framed the case as a federal overreach into state power. The court’s liberals, meanwhile, focused on the grisly details of medical emergencies faced by pregnant woman that were not covered by the limited life-of-the-woman exemption in Idaho’s ban.
So, back to Pecker and the man who has to pay for sex coming and going. There’s been a whole of objecting accompanied by “sustained.”
More will be coming once the print journalists get their stories in. I wish I could be Pollyanna and play the glad game, but I can only come up with the bad news. We get to see this continually, which is also the thing I’m glad about. I m feel like a total masochist every time I turn the TV on or read a magazine article, but just think how awful it would be if we didn’t know about this. I’m not sure what will become of Donald, but I’m certain that we still have time to make certain he doesn’t get back into the White House. We have time to stop the MAGAdons that want to clone that agenda into every state and the U.S. Congress. We’ll see and read nothing else but propaganda if we don’t stop them now.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Guess who John Prine wrote this about?
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