Read the dissents. It’s madness. Neal Katyal, who would know, said he has never seen a Justice sign an opinion, “In fear for our democracy, I dissent.” Never.
This is huge. It is horrible.
Stupidity, degeneracy, criminality… it’s all seemingly incentivized in this country. I’m glad I don’t have children.
Take it away, Noel:
There are bad times just around the corner,
We can all look forward to despair,
It’s as clear as crystal
From Brooklyn Bridge to Bristol
That we can’t save Democracy
And we don’t much care.
I imagine what Trump is going to say is that everything was an official act. Calling the Georgia SoS? Official Act. Inciting the Jan 6 rioters? Official act. Fraud? Official act. Sexually assaulting women? Official act. Shitting his pants on stage? Official act. Et cetera. Everything, from the moment he was born to well after he dies will be classified as an official act.
Wonder how much of a living hell Sotomayor, Jackson and Kagan must going through right now. Imagine them resigning from their positions in disgust, not wanting anything more to do with such a corrupt body, with Biden replacing them with justices who’ll do the same thing, down the road.
Wait, just to make sure I understand everything correctly, what was the criminal charge a president who did this would have been liable for?
It established the required mens rea for the indictments (among other things), I believe. “We get that you didn’t find any irregularities. Just say you did and we’ll take it from there.”
I suspect if that’s the only ratfuckery the Trumpers committed post-election, and the DOJ refused as they did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and Jack Smith would be prosecuting Ernst Blofeld at The Hague.
Remember–he can’t do it “because it’s an election year.” (Wink, wink).
Having their heads up their asses. There’s no real legal doctrine that defines what they did. They were looking for a way to get Trump protection and delay the criminal cases.
Basically, they’re fishing for gratuities, which they also said is now legal.
Separation of Powers isn’t the reason. The courts have as their Constitutional power to oversee and rule on the law. Note that by ruling on the Constitutionality of Presidential immunity, they are limiting Presidential power. They are performing checks and balances. That’s their power, so separation of powers has nothing to say.
Talking to the DOJ is immune. He tells the DOJ to arrest his political rivals on kiddie porn charges without any evidence just to tarnish their reputation. Immune. His motives can’t be used against him, so he can blatantly state the motive I listed. Still immune.
Tell the President of Ukraine to arrest the son of his political rival or face getting funding cut off. Immune.
Remember when we were worried Pres Trump might Pardon himself? Now he doesn’t even have to.
We need to stack the damn court. Forget slippery slopes. They’re throwing the country off a cliff.
Same here. I work in GIS. We get asked to recommend a surveyor quite often. Nope, no can do. We can’t be preferential. Same with the building department. They can’t recommend contractors.
And frankly, it would be dangerous to do so.
If I took an out and out bribe, I’d be out the door so quick my feet wouldn’t even touch the floor.
It’s going to take years and years to turn this mess around… If we can.
My husband was a mail carrier - also a federal employee. They are not allowed to take more than $25 in gifts or tips per customer per year. The reason there is a dollar amount is because many people tip their carriers at Christmas. They are allowed to accept those as long as the amount is below the limit.
If it’s good enough for mail carriers, it should be good enough for Supreme Court Justices. After all, they make a lot more money than mailmen. If Harlan Crowe wants to give Clarence Thomas a $25 gift certificate to Olive Garden, I could live with that. But there’s no way to justify claiming Thomas can accept four million dollars in gifts and be impartial, but your mailman must be limited to a nominal amount or he’d steal your mail or something.
I have a confession to make:
I serve on a town planning board which hears special use permits. (We grant most of them, but not all.) Some years ago, after we had made a decision, an applicant who had been granted their permit brought us a plateful of cookies.
We ate the cookies.
Considering that I’ve been on that board for some 30 years now, and that that was the only time I remember this happening, I’m sure that we weren’t expecting it to happen. I also find it very unlikely that anyone on the board would have changed their decision for the sake of literally being given a cookie.
Hang your head in shame.
I know they just changed the rules so that they can accept bribes, but what about the people offering the bribes? Are they breaking any laws?
I can’t believe we’re allowing all of this to happen. It shouldn’t be legal for some freak from the Heritage Foundation to threaten violence if we don’t lay down and take what they have planned for us.
It seems to me that the Heritage Foundation has become a terrorist organization, if it uses threats of violence to advance its agenda.
When I worked in the space industry, I worked for a contractor*. We had annual ethics training on interactions with both our government , (NASA employee) and our own suppliers. Our guidelines were that we couldn’t give gifts over a nominal value. We couldn’t buy them a meal. Snacks and beverages were allowed if they were provided free to everyone present, or if there was a fee arrangement pool such as for coffee and they were allowed to pay the same rate.
Going away parties or birthday lunches were up to contractor coworkers and federal coworkers to each pay within their own pool. So when one of my customers left, her partner/replacement paid for her lunch and we paid our own. When I left, my lunch was paid for by my boss, but my customers were present and paid their own way.
So a Christmas card was acceptable but slip a $20 in it and you’re in trouble.
Same thing for our interactions with suppliers. We had to be fair, and had to maintain the appearance of being fair. We could suggest a supplier, but the contact office had to make the bids and award the contracts. If we needed a specific supplier, we had to justify why them. More than just “they’re the only local supplier”, but a specific justification, such as they had a proprietary process we needed.
Tipping a customer is essentially a bribe, especially because we had an ongoing relationship between our company and the government.
Tipping a person/agency for awarding them that contact is seen as trying to influence future contracts. While a plate of cookies is not likely an incentive for future awards, it could also fall under the “nominal value” and snack guidelines.
- Technically, I worked for a few different companies in my career.
ISTM it is still a problem if you are seen to be actually offering/soliciting the bribe. But now it has to be directly explicit.
Eh… that one would probably go with the “blowhard who blows hard but will soil his pants and run if a real fight breaks out” defense a.k.a. “that was just trash talk you delicate snowflakes”.