Ed Dean

@eddied.bsky.social

210

Posts

Just a he/him Pittsburgher following the news and hoping to continue living in relative democracy. Erstwhile data scientist and logician.

Posts Replies Media

Reposted by

Ed Dean

I will bang this drum forever: in THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-45 Milton Mayer interviewed 10 ordinary Germans after WW2 to learn how fascism took hold. There was never a moment when everyone woke up:

if you’re waiting for everyone around you to wake up, you’ll wait forever. this is how the people grinding our bones to make their bread WANT you to be. paralyzed, alienated & purposeless

Reposted by

Ed Dean

A hill I will die on: all white-collar crimes are violent crimes. It's just that the violence is removed from the perpetrator because the perpetrator is wealthy.

Holy. Shit. They're literally saying Trump's felonies aren't that bad compared to the "real felonies". Bear in mind, they're ignoring J6 and "gimme 12000 votes" call and the stolen docs. We joke, but this is literally Newsmax copy.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

"Executive Time" fell out of the coverage of Donald Trump in the most incredible way. Nobody writing about his quest to become president again ever mentions the fact that he hated the job when he had it and he couldn't and wouldn't really do it!

The discourse around biden needing more sleep is fully insane. Does no one remember "Executive Time," the thing Trump spent the majority(!) of his schedule on where he would just watch TV and tweet? Dude was categorically unable to fulfill any of the demands of the office and the press barely cared

Reposted by

Ed Dean

NEWS --> Mark Robinson, the MAGA extremist GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, appeared to endorse political violence against unnamed foes in a recent speech. "Some folks need killing!" he shouted. "It's a matter of necessity!" Video and story here: newrepublic.com/article/1834...

MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hateful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!”newrepublic.com Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, has a long history of incendiary comments. But he may have topped himself this time.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

I have no idea the best path re Biden but I do know a solid week straight of “Biden Old” and “Rich Dems Worried” above-the-fold stories are *obscene* in the face of SCOTUS using the Constitution to wipe their asses purely in the service of reinstating a felon rapist as president. Crazy-making shit.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Reply to

The New York Times

Did you hear: ex-President Trump told a gathering of GOP that he needed to rape less and commit fewer felonies, but said he would continue to break different federal laws.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

On this July 4, please pause to remember that one of the colonists’ complaints in the Declaration was that the Crown was paying its judges.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

it says a great deal that roberts has time in his majority opinion to mock the dissents for their "tone of chilling doom" but can't actually manage to rebut this hypo. because he can't

also, the order to have the rival killed is itself an official act (directing the military, commander in chief power) so you can't introduce evidence of that even if you could somehow find a way to prosecute the assassination

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Honestly still in shock that the most crooked American President in history said "I need immunity" and the GOP Supreme Court said "well, it's nowhere in the constitution, but sure, why not? Whats the worst that could happen?"

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Constitution: People involved in insurrections should not be President. Roberts court:...hmm, no, I don't see it. Constitution:.... Roberts court: but the president should have immunity for crimes

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Presidential candidate who the far-right members of the Supreme Court just placed above the law tells voters how he will exercise his new powers.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

"Don't worry, if the president imprisons his political enemies, you can still get a writ of habeas corpus." "But to prove that's why you've been imprisoned requires proof of..." "Presidential motive!" "And under Trump v US, presidential motive is..." "Inadmissible!"

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Keeping Trump out of the White House isn’t the only thing that needs doing and it isn’t enough to solve all problems facing the country & world but if it isn’t done then all those problems get exponentially worse in ways I don’t even know how to express and it scares me when people pretend otherwise

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Official act. Immune.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Right-wing legal talking heads are focusing on arguing that it is RIDICULOUS to say that a second-term Trump will be empowered by immunity to do horrific things, while carefully preparing to argue in seven months that it is RIGHT that Trump do horrific things which aren’t actually horrific anyway.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

along similar lines, has anyone actually explained *why* the seal team six hypo is ruled out by the majority opinion? all I've seen is right-leaning law profs mocking everyone who raises the issue. but nobody has explained why a president wouldn't be immune for assassinating a rival

Checking on prominent originalists on the other site, I can't find one who has criticized yesterday's anti-textualist immunity opinion. All have tweeted on other topics. Here are the reactions: Mocks dissent: Barnett Silence: Baude, Green, McGinnis, Rappaport, Sachs, Whittington

Reposted by

Ed Dean

After the Court’s decision yesterday, I think there’s an argument from necessity for Biden seizing Trump and trying him by military tribunal, given the sudden unavailability of Article III courts. Plus, itʼs just the sort of thing they’ve authorized an active and energetic chief executive to do.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

In their confirmation hearings… John Roberts said: “I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.”

Reposted by

Ed Dean

nobody likes sounding hysterical in public, but everyone who urged calm about a then-impending first Trump term because they were predicting it wouldn’t be That bad, on every possible metric of actions, policy, conduct, and death tolls, they were thunderously, catastrophically wrong…

my fav (least fav?) thing about Ken’s thread here is he’s a former federal prosecutor so he knows how lawyers and federal officials can wield and interpret a Supreme Court ruling like this to their maximal advantage whether law professors think those actions are prudent or not :/

Reposted by

Ed Dean

I keep coming back to "all this for literally Donald Trump," but it fits. There's not some more competent aspiring autocrat who'd somehow "earn" or "win" this. This is how it has always gone: feckless/evil elites attaching themselves to the sociopath they believe will get them where they want to go.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all to say the decision threatens the Republic. I might not have said so in 2015, before I saw how triumphantly lawless and autocratic the President could be, and how so many people would applaud it or at least shrug.

My friend and colleague Ken White has written a great thread describing some (but far from all) of the enormous problems with today's decision by Chief Justice Roberts granting Donald Trump criminal immunity on grounds never before accepted by any court. Today's decision threatens the Republic.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

Reply to

Popehat

/8 At any rate, congratulations to the Federalist Society for an achievement beyond the reach of the British, outside the grasp of bloody civil war, impossible to Nazis and Soviets and terrorists: defeating the American idea.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

One upshot of today's immunity ruling is that it would not be a crime for President Biden to steal the upcoming election if he confines himself to doing so solely by abusing his office.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

reflecting on the immunity decision a bit, what the Court seems to be saying is that every element of the executive branch is at the President’s disposal, no matter what he wants to use it for. his motives don’t matter. the office is a weapon to be wielded however he sees fit.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

The 14th Amendment says if you were involved in an insurrection you can't be president. SCOTUS said they won't allow anyone to enforce that because of reasons they made up. The Constitution doesn't say the president is immune from criminal law. SCOTUS decided he is because of reasons they made up.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

It's just hilariously disingenuous. Imagine looking at, say, ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY and concluding that the biggest threat to liberty isn't abuse of power, but powerful people refraining from sufficiently wielding their authority out of fear that they might one day be held accountable.

It's not the worst of it, but what I may be actually angriest about (right now) is Roberts' smarmy smugness and dismissiveness in the final two paragraphs of section IV and the whole of section V. "Fear mongering," "extreme hypotheticals," "our perspective must be more farsighted," and this.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

There is no constitutional text that says presidents are immune from all criminal law. Nor was it the intent of the authors of the Constitution or any amendments. It is inconsistent with American precedent and tradition. They just made it up.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

The Supreme Court’s ruling putting presidents above the law must be understood not simply as a grant of immunity for past crimes, but an enthusiastic endorsement of those he will commit if given the chance. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

The Supreme Court Gives Its Blessing to Trump’s Criminalitywww.theatlantic.com And gives him permission for a despotic second term.

Reposted by

Ed Dean

I'm reading the opinion and it says he enjoys absolute immunity regarding threats to fire the attorney general if they don't do what he wants. So, he could easily just say "investigate or prosecute my friends and you're fired" and he's 100% immune, right?