Befuddled and bemused

Befuddled and bemused

@jwcrook.bsky.social

434

Posts

Public policy consultant. Sane centrist/raging moderate. Feels like we're living in the Weimar Republic. Art & music lover, sports also but less as I get older. Addicted to ellipses...Opinions here are my own.

Posts Replies Media

if their situations were reversed, can anyone imagine Trump saying, never mind actually believing, such things?

President Biden, speaking from the Oval Office: "A former president was shot, an American citizen killed while simply exercising his freedom to support the candidate of his choosing. We cannot, we must not go down this road in America."

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

An unfairly maligned formulation of the true meaning of the separation of powers, according to today’s Supreme Court majority.

Our nation was an empire with a democratic government; now we're just an empire with an (for now) elected emperor...

Can't be impeached because presidential impeachment has been a dead letter since parties came into existence. Can't be disqualified from office. And can't be prosecuted for crimes committed under color of office.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

4/4 . . . same way that the Soviets used political troops to execute tens of thousands of soldiers who refused orders during World War II. According to Chief Justice Roberts and his cabal, there is not a thing that anyone could ever do to bring that President to justice. For shame.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

3/ . . . order to murder their fellow Americans, they will be pardoned and (b) if the refuse to carry out the illegal order, they will be subjected to the same violence that they refuse to carry out on others. A President could set up "political troops" to force soldiers into battle, in the . .

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

2/ . . . carried out such illegal orders would be subject to criminal prosecution, even if the President was not. BUT (HUGE BUT) the President has an absolute and unreviewable power to pardon anyone for federal crimes. So, he could promise all soldiers that (a) if they carry out the illegal . . .

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

1/ Let me explain one way that today's Trump immunity decision threatens the survival of the Republic. Under today's ruling, a President would be immune for any way in which he used the military (a "core function"), even to kill American citizens in America. Theoretically, the soldiers who . . .

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

The effects on behavior of people other than Trump could be pretty dangerous too bsky.app/profile/nste...

So there’s the decision as a legal document, and the legal consequences that come from it. Then there’s the message that MAGA supporters take from it. I bet some of them already see the message as “the law is ours now.” What will they do now? Will they allow black people in swing states to vote?

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

“Plans are already in motion to use this new, historic court decision as a legal shield to help a potential second Trump administration implement his extreme policy agenda with less concern for rules and laws, sources with knowledge of the matter say.”

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

‘It’s Like Christmas’: Team Trump Stunned by Massive Supreme Court Immunity Winwww.rollingstone.com Conservatives are planning to use the Supreme Court’s immunity decision to help them implement Trump’s extreme policy agenda, sources say.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

flatline42.bsky.social

I'll point out that Napoleon staged the military outside of the General Assembly at one point and prevented political opponents from entering in order to pass legislation. Under the SCOTUS ruling, it seems like a president could do the same and be immune due to being the C-in-C.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

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

Befuddled and bemused

With less of a check on presidential criminality than many of us had been counting on, it becomes all the more important not to elect a brazen criminal to the presidency.

And it's absurd for the court to put more onus on servicemen and women to disobey an illegal order than it puts on the Commander in Chief not to issue one in the first place...

And with all respect to my friends in the military and who have served in the military but “The military won’t obey an illegal order” is not comforting because I have met a number of members of our military who absolutely fucking will.

so many factors combining to bring down a 200+year old democracy...few look good in this

“What makes you so confident you should be president?” is an actual question a reporter shouted at the incumbent who just warned about a reckless court decision that imperils democracy

so *now* is when they finally decide Originalism isn't for them...I mean all courts have occasionally cooked stuff up before, but not like this

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

Befuddled and bemused

If you’re keeping track of the United States, today is the day the boat cracks in half and half of it points up towards the sky.

Serious question--does he have you confused with your character on Succession @radiofreetom.bsky.social ? That's the only way that would fit...

Because at the Big Pundit Scum meeting last year at The Meadows, Trump made a great pitch to us and we all got on board. Biden just told a few jokes and left. What did you expect we'd do.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

For historians, the retrospective legitimation of essentially every criminal act Nixon committed while in office is quite mind-boggling. Ford’s pardon was utterly unnecessary.

RICHARD NIXON: Listen, you all laughed when I said that if the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, BUT WHO’S LAUGHING NOW

and it comes from alleged textualists and originalists...if only they were truly those, they wouldn't have authored this travesty

I’m almost in awe of the Calvinball here. They get to say that he’s immune for official acts but not unofficial ones but not offer any defined test for what will be considered unofficial, so even when the case is revised they can just say “no those were official” and boot the case again.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

Relatedly, we're going all the way back to 1776 on this one. The conflict is literally whether we're going to be ruled by a king now.

Related: the conflicts we are engaged with right now have been at the heart of American life for our entire history, and the push-and-pull has been constant. We will not be permanently defeated *unless we surrender.*

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

One way to describe what's happened is turning enforceable laws into optional norms. Or in other words, turning "must" into "are supposed to."

there is no ignorance as powerful as willful ignorance...

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

This is the ball game folks, the authoritarian green light laid out in advance. Congress will not impeach Trump. And SCOTUS now blesses him with extraordinary latitude to do whatever he wants in power. A second administration will not be constrained by Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy or law.

Trump, who tried to overthrow an election, campaigned persistently for his fellow party members to grant him absolute immunity for his misdeeds in office. And they did. If you can't distinguish between "energy in the executive" and a constitutional crime spree, you've given up on US democracy.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

Glad he got another chance. Just needs to kill one more kid to get a Claremont fellowship.

Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice, is now working for a police department in West Virginia

Officer who shot, killed Tamir Rice hired at West Virginia police departmentwww.news5cleveland.com The police officer who killed Tamir Rice is now working for a police department in West Virginia.

truly amazing that we were better off 50 years ago--the court during the Nixon era would never have contemplated this kind of blank check for him, or anything like it...

It's hard to even imagine the limits of the power that SCOTUS has just handed the president. If you can keep 34 senators and the military on your side, you can do anything.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

The really bitter irony here is that SCOTUS is making the president a king while a Democrat is president. They aren't worried about it because they know Democrats won't accept Biden actually acting the way they are saying he can.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused

The GOP SCOTUS ruling on Presidential immunity, summed up.

Reposted by

Befuddled and bemused