Today the Republican controlled house called the head of the Secret Service onto the carpet to be harangued for failing to stop the shooter who attempted to kill mr. trump. We are making an assumption that that was the shooter's intention, not an unreasonable one. It has occurred to me that had the young man climbed onto the roof of that building with a rifle and used the scope to watch the proceedings, and been killed by a sniper, he would not have been guilty of a crime more severe than violating some state regulation regarding his age and having the gun in public. Until he fired a shot, the state had no right to take his life, which may be one reason why the counter snipers waited as long as they did. One talking head said that the boy should have been shot as soon as he appeared on the roof.
The Secret Service has had a clean record for 43 years, protecting political charges. But , mr. jordan seemed to feel that that counted for nothing. Is there any agency that can boast that kind of record. The truth is that it is impossible to prevent, every time, a determined assassin who is willing to die to kill a person. In this particular case there was a sequence vortex in which all the tiny parts almost lined up perfectly, ( the shooter missed.) like the monkey typing for ever, eventually reproducing a Shakespearean play, like the 9/11 disaster. After years of investigating that incident you could look back and draw a line connecting all the points at which someone might have ,or did notice something odd, which subsequently got missed or lost, all of which led up to the disaster. The result of that long investigation led to a massive reorganization of large parts of the government, and probably an increase in federal spending.
In this case the house committee wants answers immediately, which is plainly stupid and unreasonable. When something bad happens, we Americans seem to first blame somebody, anybody. "It is not my fault!" Notice that the head of the Secret Service did not shirk her responsibility by blaming someone else. She simply said more time was needed to determine where the planning failed.
The rnc could have encouraged trump to have his rallies in enclosed venues, but he runs the rnc. I think mr jordan and his maga compatriots wanted political talking points while the subject remains fresh in the minds of voters rather than a comprehensive assessment of how and why events played out. That isn't to say that the Democrats don't do the same thing when they have the opportunity.
As a minor aside, the maga members of the committee were using main stream media releases as evidence of wrong doing on the part of the service, which seems a reversal of their long standing position that the main stream media is the enemy of the people, until it bolsters their point of view.
Perhaps if trump gets reelected, he can fire the whole Secret Service and hire the proud boys to protect him and his family.
I spent the past week reading the decisions handed down by our supreme court, and I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the institution of the supreme court is a political branch of government. It's members are appointed by the president and approved or rejected by whichever political party controls the senate at the time. This was most obvious during the end of the Obama and the beginning of the trump presidencies when the senate made up the lame excuse not to even consider an appointment so close to an election, only to reverse that position in order to squeeze one more "conservative" person onto the court at the end of the trump presidency. Winning is everything. To reframe the world in one's image is, for some, the greatest achievement of life. Mitch McConnell can die a happy man if he does so soon. There are always unintended consequences. No dictator, king, government, or court has any legitimacy without willing supporters. How many are necessary is a function of the size of the general population, the technology available to monitor that population and the degree of brutality to which the supporters are willing to go in support of the regime. ( The British were apparently the first empire to use the concentration camp as a means of pacification, made possible during the Boer wars by the perfection of the machine gun and barbed wire, which allowed a small armed group to watch over a large group of disarmed civilians.) When the majority of Americans no longer feel that the supreme court "interprets" our constitution in a way that we each perceive benefits us, then we will ignore it's edicts.
In one of the opinions, the legal principal of "stare decisis" was expounded upon. (The idea that the long standing decisions of previous courts would be upheld by succeeding courts. I think it was Gorsuch who stated that although the court did give weight to previous long standing( now "long" must be more than 50 years.) decisions, this court refuses to be hamstrung by bad decisions. This is why the court overturned the Chevron decision, ( The notion that in cases of ambiguity in the law, the court would differ to the judgment of the agency experts in the field governing the law) which, in it's opinion , was wrong from the beginning.Since, as thomas pointed out in his opinion, the APA grants the judiciary sole authority in deciding matters of law, i.e. what a set of words actually means and whether it reflect what the congress intended when making those words law. The APA was enacted in 1946 and the Chevron decision was issued in 1989, so how could the two courts look at the same laws ( a set of words) and come to opposite conclusions? Those 18 people have probably come through prestigious schools, no Abe Lincolns, all having access to the exact same documents and historical materials, and yet they are on opposite sides of an issue. How can one better demonstrate that the court is nothing more than the personal opinions of 9 individuals who use history as they will, or not, to justify their pronouncements, gathered loosley around that document we call the Constitution".
thomas is right about one thing. The mechanism of the bump stock does not match exactly the mechanism of a machine gun described in the statute, and cannot therefore be restricted, even though the effect of using a bump stock can result in the rapid fire that true machine guns demonstrate. It is the sole fault of the congress for not passing a law banning the device. On that score, I can find nothing in the second amendment that says that crazy people or even felons can be denied the right to own a gun. It just isn't there, so why are these textualists and originalists allowing the government to restrict any gun ownership? It does not matter that society might be safer if these people were restricted, the wording of the law does not allow for any restriction.
If the FBF gets reelected, the world is going to change in ways that no one can predict. I will make a few predictions though. The FBF will throw Ukraine to Putin, then Moldova and Estonia, etc. Then pressure will be put on Poland. The FBF will pardon himself and all those enablers that have been convicted of crimes. He will fire all federal employees that do not sign a loyalty oath to him specifically. He will unfund or disband all federal watchdog agencies.He will use the federal government to ascertain who his detractors are and they will be harassed from their positions in universities and other institutions that have a public profile. He will close down news outlets that oppose him. Many of those who have been found guilty of crimes against the government will be appointed to positions of authority, and that is when the rape of the country will begin, like during the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the oligarchs divided up the country's wealth. The food you eat, the air you breath, the medicine you take, the things you buy will all be buyer be ware. Capitalism will reign supreme.
Hunter Biden was just convicted on three counts relating to the purchase of a handgun. The response to this judgment by the right demonstrates why mr. Alito's recent sotto voce comments about two philosophies not being compatible is sadly a fact. I tuned into fox to listen to what they might have to say about the verdict, and they were naturally delighted with how our criminal system worked, but assured me that this case was nothing like the sham trial of the FBF. When the verdict came out in that other case the left leaning pundits might have danced a jig out of sight of the cameras, but in front, they were somber, so much so that the right made fun of them for it. No one claimed that when someone of note came to that other trial, it was to intimidate the jury, or when that gang showed up out front dressed in trump costumes to harangue the news media, no one said they were there for anything but to kiss the hand.
jeanine pirro was on fox news and applauded the just verdict, and then proceeded to explain that the Biden family members that showed up for the trial did not show up to support Mr. Biden in his time of trial, but were there for the sole purpose of intimidating the jury, which she was pleased they were unable to do. This female is as fanatical as any member of ISIS. A staunch catholic (with quite a few skeletons in her own closet, according to Wikipedia) who is unable to see the least bit of humanity in anyone with whom she disagrees. Her vitriol is so unchristian, it is truly hard to comprehend.
Back to mr. Alito's comments; it seems to me that the left( not the far left, they are as uncompromising as the far right.) is always trying to form some sort of consensus, to compromise, sort of like what Europe did with Hitler before that war. They kept backing up, giving ground, until they were up against the wall. I see the left doing that. The right screams louder and louder, like rabid dogs. Well, the left is very close to the wall now, and I think a fight for the sole of this country is near. In a pluralistic society like ours, religion is antithetical to democracy in that the rule of law supersedes religious law. That is something that religious fanatics cannot abide. Alito wants a caliphate, governed by himself and other like minded members of the supreme tribunal. The founders of this country may or may not have been religious men, but they did insert a clause in the constitution preventing the government from creating a state religion, which is what the right seems to be after. If you spend a bit of time on research you will find that after the founding of this country, most Americans were farmers, and they did not have guns. which were expensive. They did not say the pledge of allegiance or say prayers in public schools. These all came later, like civil war memorials, at various times, as reactions to immigration or other imagined threats.
Every god ever worshiped by humans sprang directly from the mind of a human. Any entity capable of creating the universe in which we find ourselves is utterly beyond the comprehension of our species.
If you can't read, you must rely on someone else to tell you what is in the book, which makes you a slave.
On the war in Gaza:
The number of civilians killed in this war is horrific, but to blame it all on the government of Israel is to to see only half of the conflict. Every civilian killed bolsters the position of Hamas. Hamas has intentionally embedded itself into the population, knowing that civilians will be killed. For every civilian killed by an Israeli soldier, a Hamas fighter has pulled the trigger remotely. If Hamas can win, then the dead will have served their purpose. After the Vietnam war a North Vietnamese general was asked if the one million deaths suffered by the north was worth it. His response was;"We won." That is all that matters.
I have watched some of the students protesting the American position on this war. It reminded me of my college days in the 60"s. The anti war riots destroyed a lot of property and disrupted college campuses. This issue was a bit different because we were protesting being drafted to go fight against a people we did not hate over an issue manufactured by a few powerful men. But the direct result of those riots was that Ronald Reagan got elected as governor of California, and he made it his mission in life to create the university system that we have today. You can thank him for the tuition that only the wealthy can afford. My student loan for five years of college was $500.
You students should make your voices heard at the ballot box. You should have taken all the money you spent at REI on tents and shade structures and camp stoves and given it to a NGO to provide for the civilians that don't have any of that stuff.
Listening today to the arguments at the supreme court about whether the president has total immunity for acts committed while in office, I found the whole thing ludicrous. The president is bound by duty and law to follow the constitution and the laws that congress passes, which must also be constrained by the same constitution. The idea that a sitting president has the constitutional authority to have a political opponent killed is simply absurd. No where does it say that that is within the scope of presidential duties. A person campaigning for the job or an incumbent running for reelection is not carrying out the duties of the office. That person is acting as an individual applying for a job. Incumbents that fly around the country on government planes to make campaign speeches should have to reimburse us for the cost of that travel, because it is not related to the duties of the presidency. One of the questions pondered was whether it would be a presidential act if a president was bribed to appoint someone as an ambassador, they are given out as political favors all the time. The act of appointing someone would be one of the duties of the president, but the bribe is a crime, so you charge the president with the crime of bribery, and the person remains ambassador. Simple. A second term president does not go around campaigning as part of his/her official duties which clearly demonstrates that the practice is not job related. I really can't believe that this court believes there is anything to argue about. They continue to talk about precedents or the writings of people long dead as justification for their decisions but then completely ignore the same principals for another decision. It is all just so much absurdity. Just look at the WORDS. If it does not say the president is above the law, then he isn't.
the FBF won most of the Republic primaries this past Tuesday. Why is it that when he wins, the elections are fair, but when he looses, they are rigged. "If god could come down and tally the 2020 votes in California, I would have won big." Do you really think this comes from a rational mind? When the FBF won the 2016 election, people were surprised to say the least. I read the Muller report and in it he concluded that there had been attempts by foreign governments to affect the outcome of the election, but there was no way to determine how effective those efforts were. Muller also said that the Trump organization did in fact solicit what was presumed to be dirt on Hilary Clinton provided by foreign agents. The FBF said publicly that he would look at any information on political opponents provided by any source, domestic or foreign. This was and is illegal. That does not bother you?
During the 2020 election, the states where voting results were challenged were primarily run by Republics. If there truly was massive voter fraud, then the Democrats are a vastly more powerful entity than the lowly Republics, because the Democrats managed to either fool or subvert whole Republic political machines. What I find most enlightening is the fact that maga people have no understanding of human nature and actually believe that is possible. Human nature being what it is, there would be people within this conspiracy willing to sell out for money or fame. People who had photographs or secret recordings or signed documents revealing a conspiracy of such magnitude, none of which exist. Giuliani himself said that they had ideas on how fraud might have been committed, but they had no evidence. Is it rational to accept that as proof of fraud? At least one of the four dead voters in Georgia voted Republic. Do you really think all the voter fraud could be perpetrated by Democrats? Are your neighbors that sinister?
If Hilary Clinton was eating babies under a pizza shop, there is no way that someone would not have photographed it. When the Nazis began their extermination of Jews, people escaped and reported it. What prevented action sooner was the fact that people just could not believe that humans, in the modern age, could perform such atrocities. Before the World Trade Centers were attacked, there was evidence of the plot, but no one had the imagination to believe it might be true, but there was clear evidence of the plot.
I have come to the conclusion that maga republics are people who live in a completely different reality. That reality is not going to change until their dictator gets into office. Once elected, I guarantee you that he will fight to stay in power for a third term. He will fill the government with people who will rape and pillage the state coffers. He will destroy trade unions and collective bargaining. He will destroy the FDA, the CDC, the NTSB and all those agencies that have been built up over the years as a counter to the rapacious nature of the capitalist. Unfettered capitalism is more dangerous than government. All those West Virginia coal miners that fought for the right to unionize and to have a safe work environment will turn over in their graves. You are spitting on the graves of all those who have died supposedly to protect our rights as a free people.
The supreme court has just ruled that the FBF can run for president. The FBF's lawyers have made the argument that section 3 of the 14th amendment ("No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.") does not apply to their client because he never took an oath which contains the words "to support" the constitution and that the "president" is not specifically listed as one of those having taken an oath. So we are looking at the exact wording, not taking into account the fact that in our language one word can be substituted for another. Any one who has a thesaurus knows this.
But OK lets go with that. There has been much discussion around this issue as it pertained to the American Civil War, and that the specific intent of this amendment was to prevent individuals on the loosing side from getting into congress, BUT, there is not one single reference to that war in the amendment. Using the logic of the FBF's lawyers, you cannot say that this amendment was meant specifically to disqualify members of the Confederacy because it does not name the Confederacy in the amendment. The amendment applies to anyone, forever.
The second amendment:"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." If we take the FBF lawyers position and apply it to this amendment, it is plain to see that no person can be denied the right to bear arms. This does not even restrict this to citizens of the United States. We have non citizens in our military. Any person regardless of their age, sex, nationality, criminal history, or mental acuity has the constitutional right to bear arms without restriction. Any weapon you can carry the 2nd amendment gives you the right to carry anywhere any time, if you read the words literally. When the supreme court says that a state can deny a convicted killer who has served their sentence the right to carry a gun, they are ignoring their textualist argument, often applied to the decisions of the conservative members of the court.
The fascist regime of the FBF is on the rise. Watch your back. Be careful what you say and to whom you say it, for the brown shirts may come in the night and fog to make you disappear.
On the border situation:
The president of the United States is an executive, duh, and his/her actions are dictated by the constitution and the laws that congress passes. Despite the FBF's contention, the president does not have absolute authority to do anything. When the FBF was president, he inherited a rising economy that had been doing so for the previous seven years under Obama. His massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans added $6,000,000,000,000 to the national debt and the pandemic allowed him to do extraordinary things at our border under current law. The title 42 action of closing the border and having people remain in Mexico was based on a law created by congress and signed into law by a president granting the president through the CDC the power to close the borders in the case of a disease transmission issue. When that condition no longer existed, the president could no longer close the border and had to follow the laws as they existed, which is why the current president has stated that he would close the border tomorrow if congress passed a law granting him that power. He simply does not have the legal authority to do that at this time. The FBF was sued many times for his executive orders that were illegal.
In 1930 under the fascist leader Mussolini, during the Italian campaign to conquer Libya in North Africa, a 190 mile long fence was built along the border with Egypt, constructed of two walls of barbed wire with machine gun towers at appropriate distances and patrolled by armored vehicles. If you came through the first wire, you were shot getting through the second wire. Greg Abbot of Texas seems bent on building the same kind of wall. The only thing still missing is the machine guns.
If the people living in this country truly want to stop migration, which is global in scope, then they have to be willing to make it clear that coming here is more dangerous than staying home. If you can't stomach that, then you have to cause to be built enough concentration camps to house the immigrants while they are having their claims of asylum determined. If you don't want to spend the money, what alternative is there but to take down the pertinent information and releasing them. We are supposed to have all this great technology, fingerprinting, facial recognition, etc. Why can't we track these people? The Chinese Communists seem to have this whole thing down really well.
As to the fentanyl, if the demand was not there then the supply would dry up. It is that simple. Stop buying the damn stuff.
If you are worried about terrorists getting into the country, good luck, because they are of a different sort. They are soldiers, and they will endure much hardship to travel by any route to get here to harm us. We have over 88,000 miles of coastline and over 7,000 miles of land borders. It seems like money well spent to help stabilize other parts of the world, so those people will not want to leave their homes for so uncertain a future.
I just finished reading the deposition that Hunter Biden gave to the House Republics. Boy, you should pray that you never have to remember what you did a few years ago or even yesterday. There is no way in the world that I could have withstood that kind of onslaught. I would have become a gibbering idiot. I do understand that, regardless of which party is in control of the inquisition, there will be individuals that exaggerate or embellish or add personal quips to any testimony. Some of the Democrats did similar stuff during the Jan. 6th investigation, but nothing quite as blatant as the republics did.
Gaetz held up a piece of paper with writing on it claiming that it was a $200,000 bribe paid to President Biden through his brother. The brother testified that it had been repayment for a family loan, but Gaetz neglected to mention the fact that the banking records do show specifically that Biden had lent his brother the money and that it had been repaid. the republics often took information out of context or information that could not be authenticated as fact. Really crappy forensic work.
I have watched enough American Greed on the television to understand that the purpose of incorporating or forming LLCs is to avoid personal liability, to put the risk onto other people. There must be millions of LLCs around the Washington area , with wheeler dealers coming out of the wood work working the system. There are hundreds or thousands of government employees or elected officials whose family members or friends get hired by other government agencies or elected officials. It is a perk of the job, like an actor's child getting a job in the movie business just because the parent is in the business. So when Hunter Biden gets hired to be on the board of an international company for a position that his business experience qualifies him to hold, it may also be a perk that he has name recognition because his father is in government. If someone hired you at $65,000 a month for a job for which you had the expertise, and that job could conceivably create the appearance of conflict with someone you knew, would you seriously turn it down? I would take the job and make sure there was no conflict. The FBF himself has often said that he shook someone's had but did not know them. Because he is so special lots of people want to get near him. He was rubbing elbows with Jeffry Epstein, the sex trafficker, but that did not necessarily make him one too. Some of Hunter Biden's business associates met Hunter's dad during social gatherings. So?
I read once that Cardinal Richelieu, the first prime minister of France, was purported to have said that given just five (5) statements made by any person, he could convict them of any crime. The republics have given it their best shot and missed completely. There is no evidence of any kind that President Biden used his office for personal gain or influenced policy to benefit his son. It just isn't there. And if by some evil twist of fate, the fat bloviating fart (FBF) gets reelected, then the dissolution of these United States is upon your heads and you deserve what you get.
I saw a few items in the news yesterday that got my blood going. An older white woman was asked about whether she liked trump, and her response was that trump was a servant of her god. It is hard to talk rationally with someone like that. Trump is actually, if we are going to go biblical, really a servant of the devil, and you can tell because he flaunts it. He wears his tail in front like a tie. The devil used to use subterfuge and guile to convert, but now he is just right out there in your face, and you fall down and lick his shoes. The way he talked about Tim Scott in South Carolina was embarrassing. Mr Scott might as well have had a dog collar on. It is going to be an interesting future for your children in the coming wasteland. Perhaps there is some hope that independents realize how utterly destructive this fat bloviating toad has and will forever be.
There was this middle aged African American gentleman who said that he was voting for trump because his business had never been better than during the trump presidency. I can grasp that logic except for the fact that there is most likely no connection whatever between the two. That is like someone dying during an eclipse, and there after the family sacrifices a goat or daughter to prevent such an occurrence from happening again. A coincidence is defined as two situations which appear to be connected but are not, and this is undoubtedly one of them, unless the guy was selling face masks or the like.
Technology is really dumbing down the species. The FBI has for my entire life been a bastion of conservative law enforcement, from tracking down Vietnam protesters to tapping Martin Luther's phone. J.Edgar made his recruits take an oath as Christians. Trump had four years after the Obama presidency to reshape the FBI and justice department into his personal vendetta army, so how is it possible that Biden could, in the space of three years, get rid of all those conservative judges, FBI agents, and administrative bureaucrats, and transform them into liberal "woke" weenies, slave to the Biden administration? Get real people, it simply is not possible.
donald trump is in large part responsible for the current wars in Ukraine and Israel. By not supplying the Ukrainians with arms earlier and dithering about trying to make up dirt on Biden, he emboldened putin to attack. When his inept son in law went to the Middle East and brokered the "peace" deal with some Arabic dictatorships and Israel, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and calling it the capital of Israel, he removed one more glimmer of hope that the Palestinians might someday have their own country, and I am certain that that played into the horrific acts of Hamas, which in turn has lead to more than 20,000 dead civilians.
Wake up people. This man is everything bad about the male of our species. He has not an ounce of compassion in his fat body and craves the roar of the crowd more than anything else. He was and is a failure at business, and marriage. Any man who breaks his vow to his wife will break any vow to anyone. His presidency added over $6,000,000,000 ( $6 trillion) to the national debt. Between ronald reagan , george bush and trump the national debt has increased by more than ten trillion dollars. When Clinton left office the U.S. had a surplus revenue and the rate of increase of the federal budget was lower than the rate of increase of revenue, So if things had been left as they were we would actually be paying down our national debt instead of foisting it onto the shoulders of our grand children, and conservatives want to get rid of the safety net entirely and let em starve, but only after we make them have as many babies as we can because capitalism requires an ever increasing base of consumers Do you suppose that the state of Texas will ever make it a felony for boys to masturbate? We have got to make more wholesome American families, and every sperm counts.
It would appear that our supreme court has determined that because the events of Jan. 6 did not succeed, it did not constitute an insurrection. Had they succeeded, the supreme court might just have been disbanded. Dictators do not listen to judges unless they first kiss the ring.
The only reason trump told people to go home was because he saw that his plot had failed. In fact it seems that there is no scenario involving a popular political figure and violence against the state that the supreme court would consider to an insurrection. I wonder what they would have thought if the mob attacked the court building and hanged a few judges. I mean judges all over the country had already determined that there was no effectual fraud and that the election results were in fact accurate. It really is too bad that none of the members of congress chose, at that moment, to stand up and be counted. If police are killed it is just in the job description, but kill a politician and the wagons get circled right quickly.
So, breaking in doors and windows, beating public servants and shitting on desks is now part of politics as usual, then I say: strap on and stand by. Gear up for Jan. 6, 2025. Be at the capital. It is going to be wild. If you don't fight, and fight like hell, you are not going to have a country left. See you there!
Well, that was interesting. I just spent the morning listening to the supreme court arguments on whether Colorado could exclude trump from the ballot. I predict that the court will reverse the Colorado decision, will take away that particular right of states to determine their electors in national elections,and will not address whether trump engaged in insurrection.
Justice Scalia said that the constitution has provisions within it that allow for changing the text of the document, which is true. We can create amendments if 34 states can agree. I have come to believe that our constitution contains within itself the seeds of its' own destruction, because sociologists will tell you that like tends to like, which is why we have "red" states and "blue" states. Never the twain shall meet. We can't even agree that women should have equal rights to men in this country. There will never be another constitutional amendment.
The fact that we even differentiate members of the court using political adjectives is de facto evidence that the court is a political body, but I think that what differentiates a liberal justice from a conservative justice is that the liberal tends to look at how the constitution applies to life today and takes the wording more like the pirate code , "as sort of guide lines.", and the conservatives say the words, as in biblical texts , are fixed and immutable, and they, the textualists, are the sole arbiters of what those words mean, or what they think the writers meant when they wrote them. the I have arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Scalia was right. I have become a textualist, but I ignore anything but the words themselves. I cannot put myself into the mind of a dead person. As much as I hate to admit it the United States is destined, like the Soviet Union, to dissolve. We are oil and water and will never mix until we are faced with an outside threat sufficient to wipe us out as a people.
Of the three people arguing before the court, the solicitor general for Colorado was the most concise and forceful. From her presentation I understand that the constitution gives each state the right to determine how they select their electors for federal offices, and how they set up their voting procedures. Those procedures are, however, subject to some federal laws which prohibit excluding certain classifications of Americans from the right to vote. There are regular news reports that cover what one state or other us doing to make voting "safer", i.e. prevent fraud, or make it more difficult for certain groups of citizens to vote. These voting regulations come before courts all the time. The regulations in Colorado allow for an individual to petition the state to remove a candidate based on a federal law, only after a trial, which was held . She pointed out that trump was afforded all the legal remedies open to any defendant and he willfully chose not to avail himself of those remedies. He was found guilty of insurrection. The fact that no federal case has been brought against trump on the charge is more a testament to politics rather than a refutation of the evidence. A person charged with a crime and who offers no defense is not absolved of the results of the trial. The Solicitor General for Colorado pointed out that each state has procedures for judging whether its' own state government follows its' own rules in determining the status of a candidate, accepting that all fifty states have differing statutes. If a state can formulate rules that allow it to use vendetta against opponents, then lets have at it and enjoy the chaos. Are we really that crazy? Some think a dictator is just what we need right now, not just any dictator but trump. Ask the Germans or Italians or Cambodians or Ugandans how that worked out.
The conservative side of the court is worried about what the consequences will be of finding for Colorado. Taking trump off the ballot in Colorado will allow Alabama to take Biden off the ballot in revenge, resulting in a mishmash of federal ballots. Ah! the chaos, what a lack of national conformity! Well, they had no compunctions in overturning 50 years of abortion rights conformity, resulting in a huge chaotic mess affecting the lives of millions of Americans. The fact that they are even looking at consequences shows the hypocrisy of their textural approach. Nothing matters but the words. That is the only basis for any decision. So now the argument is whether the 14th amendment includes the president. Is the president of the United States an officer of the state. Duh! The idea that the framers of the amendment did not specifically name him as subject to exclusion means that they had some reservations. These people are making pure speculation as to what was in the minds of the writers. Is the president the COE of the United States? yes! did he attempt to prevent the peaceful transition of power? Yes! ( Whether or not the vote count was legitimate is a whole separate issue.)He had and used the full weight of the judicial system to address that issue and it failed. In Bush V. Gore in 2000, the decision of the court was accepted, with reluctance, by the opposition.
All of our human efforts to send people or robots to the moon and outer planets is a total waste of both intellectual and physical resources. Living in space is a pipe dream, or a capitalist's sales pitch, and you can forget about reaching some distant inhabitable world. We are never getting of this rock. All the energy of the space race should be redirected to cleaning up the mess we created advancing our technology to this point.
A truth: The only thing more dangerous than government is unfettered private enterprise. The effort to destroy the "administrative state" will result in unleashing that private enterprise to the destruction of our society. Nothing you buy or use, from planes to baby formula, will be safe. It will be buyer be ware.
A truth: The grand mullah of Iran is the final word on law in Iran. In the United States, the supreme court fills the same roll. The fact we talk of liberal or conservative justices, or that one court will reverse a previous court ruling or add a new interpretation of the constitution shows that the court is nothing more than a third political party whose members exercise their personal beliefs and search esoteric texts to justify their decisions. Whichever political party controls the senate gets to pick the members of the third party.
