under the opinion in trump v. united states there was no need for john yoo to come up with an elaborate justification for torture. george w. bush could have ordered an interrogator to crush the testicles of a child, no questions asked.
What minimal legal guardrails seem left to restrain a lawless president I can’t really imagine holding for very long at all given how rapidly they’ve been falling already.
I try to maintain calm & perspective looking at this stuff & IANAL, but the practical effects of that ruling in the hands of a man like Trump seem to me on par with the German Enabling Act in ‘33. It’s not that explicit, but it does more or less the same thing
Started writing my replies before you’d finished your thread, I see you’ve addressed some of my questions about how the pardon power might play out here…
I dunno, this seems incredibly scary to me!
worth noting to the degree that there are ambiguities or limitations, they will be resolved by the same court that issued the ruling. do you trust them to say "no, not an official act" if Trump orders the military to shoot protestors?
Nope, not at all. If they try to restrain Trump next time he’ll either 1. Ignore it knowing as long as there’s 33 GOP senators he’s not going anywhere and/or 2. More or less openly sic his thugs on them until they get the picture. They’ll long for the days of libs chalking their sidewalks or w/e
