idk it just seems to me that laws, like tech, should be created with the question "what would the worst person i know be able to do with this power" in mind and it's truly incredible how much this opinion fails at that basic task
John Roberts must be the most neurotypical person in existence because the immunity ruling reads like someone who has never had a single “but what if…???” anxiety spiral in his life
They don't even need to imagine!
The individual literally named in the case is one of the worst people on the planet. He's got a track record of doing or attempting some of the worst shit imaginable. This isn't some distant hypothetical!
Trump has been repeating this so often and so long people believe
a) it's true
b) it justifies any illegal shit Trump does
It really is important to dig out the lies in Trumpland, even though it's a Herculean task..
Donald Trump is out there this very week indulging in extreme hypotheticals about what should happen to his enemies, and Roberts thinks they should become practical realities asap.
imagining a hypothetical scenario where a president clearly didn't have immunity and had an incentive to cling to power by force, unlike in the case in front of me
Setting aside that the entire principle of American government rests on the idea that an official will abuse whatever powers you grant them unless restrained by a credible threat of accountability. A system that depends on the good will of the executive to work is already something else.
And yet they purposely wouldn't consider the facts, the man, and the ACTUAL case before them. Instead, they are engaged in hypotheticals about future Presidents and hypothetical sham prosecutions and hypothetical timid Presidents who may hypothetically hold back bold & decisive action when needed.
After being charged with involvement in the insurrection by a state supreme court, making them say no, congress needs to make that law in order to enforce it, but also he's immune from it anyways.
They’re fine with it because they think they’re actually in charge. For supposed fans of history they don’t seem to be familiar with the precedents here.
Their own hypotheticals were all "but what if a future president needs to do these terrible things" -- they see Trump as normative, a usable wall against those horrible Democrats who want to empower the poor and unwashed.
they don't think a Democrat will be President again
or, the federal judiciary will be there to stop him
or in the worst case scenario, the SCOTUS will remain dominated by conservatives.
Yup. The GOP SCOTUS knows what an evil person would do with the power, and they carefully wrote the opinion to:
1) Excuse Republicans who will gleefully break the law, such as Trump.
2) Retain the looming threat of punishment against Democrats.
Win-win.
To me it's if anything more simple. As Stafford Beer said: "A system is not defined by rules, but by how they are enforced." The GOP has been demonstrating my entire life that they don't care what law says, only how it can be used for their advantage. Dems have consistently ignored that dynamic.
The ruling makes it possible for a President to be a mad king (they can take bribes, run death squads, can do any horrific act personally) but doesn't make it possible for them to be a technocratic dictator (can't tell a factory how much to pollute, except by using death squads to punish its boss).
If Dems finish with a trifecta, they are still going to be faced with "does the President have the power to call bullshit on SCOTUS?" We are fast approaching an "Andrew Jackson But Good" moment, even if we avoid a "we couldn't keep a Republic" moment.
Can it be a coincidence that I had a dream in which I sang along with La Marseillaise, Casablanca-style? Admittedly, it was during my daughter's wedding in Westminster Abbey, but that just shows I had monarchy on my mind.
To the barricades, comrades! All power to the Commune!
They might be the last group of old establishment/elite conservatives to realize that the old establishment isn't in charge of jack shit. They should ask Mitt or Jeb or Liz Cheney if they are actually in charge.
My time as a ship's navigator and Captain were filled with "What's the 4th level back-up plan?"
I once struck and jammed my rudder with a log and was Not Under Command doing donuts in front of a ferry carrying hazardous goods.
We had a plan, lol
Ok, so it was a tight passage
1) Had Special Sea Dutywatch closed up
2) My Nav0 driving
3) Had Tiller flats staffed (Pix below) where rudders enter water
4) Had the anchor ready to let go.
I dropped anchor and stayed motionless as I could until they passed, lol
But what if that worst person is a prominent member of a group you fundamentally believe is entitled to only be protected by the law and never constrained by it? Much to consider.
🤬 This is the man the MAGAs want as our President - THIS GUY??? (this is from just released Jeffrey Epstein court documents)
Full documents: t.co/YB9cl4Y7JD#VoteBlue#BidenHarris2024
It tells who these judges are that they looked at Donald J. Trump, maybe the worst human being ever to hold high office in the US (not the one who has done the most harm or evil, just the worst human) and said, this is the leader who must act without consequence, and this is good.
I really don’t see how anyone can think they will regret the decision when Heritage went out of its way to make threats after the decision.
They’re all on the same team! Paid by the same people!
The Supreme Court majority in the immunity decision took an originalist position, since as Madison wrote in Federalist 51, “Since angels govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government are necessary.”
