Dreading a Decision

With the Supreme Court winding down for the summer, there are still a number of key legal decisions they have to issue. The big one being the decision on donald trump's claims of Absolute Immunity from facing criminal prosecution for acts he committed while President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice).

The Far Right on the Court have already done trump a solid favor by taking up this matter, forcing delays on two of the federal cases trump is facing: One for his mishandling/theft of classified documents at Mar-A-Lago; the other related to his actions - and inactions - during the January 6th Insurrection. Even if the Court comes out with a ruling that says trump still has to stand trial on those charges, the likelihood is that both won't finish - or even start - before the general election this November. While the 34 guilty verdicts trump received in New York court already paints trump as a felon, these federal cases directly focused on trump's unfitness as President, and could have convinced a larger majority of American voters to deny him a second - more corrupt - term.

For all of how this affects the electoral matters, there is still a serious danger regarding the Supreme Court's pending decision on this.

One of the worst possible outcomes would be if a simple majority - five of the Republican-appointed conservatives - approved trump's stance of having Absolute Immunity. It would immediately destroy any check and balance within the Constitution: the Executive branch will become untouchable to the Judicial and Legislative branch. It would give Presidents full power to be tyrants. And it would be insane even for Justices like Alito and Thomas - who've openly supported such Unitary Executive arguments for years - to approve that.

The only thing stopping such a ruling is that it would immediately grant the current President - Democratic Joe Biden - the same immunity, which he could then abuse to his own devices. Considering real-world issues - such as Russian interference supporting a corrupt felon like trump this election cycle, Far Right obstructionism in Congress, and a Supreme Court dominated by unethical Republican-nominated Justices (hello again, Clarence Thomas) - Biden could well argue the need for his administration to cross legal boundaries to perform his duties, and arrest every single one of them without regard to legal niceties. Granted, it would trigger secession from the Red states and open civil war, but an Absolutely Immune President like Biden could ignore things like Posse Comitatus and send a mostly-loyal federal military to overwhelm them all. I doubt the Far Right judges will risk that.

Which could lead to an even worse possibility: The conservative Justices decide to carve out Absolute Immunity but in such a way it covers trump and no one else. Trying to make sure Biden or any future President - unless it's trump again (shudder) - won't use such powers to disrupt or upend any Far Right hold on American politics, those Justices could twist the entire legal system into knots granting an individual certain powers they would deny to others in the same position. Such a ruling would make a mockery of centuries of legal history; ignoring the practice of following and creating precedence, or the idea that persons are equal before the law.

That result would undermine the already crumbling reputation of a partisan Supreme Court. Legal experts who aren't already pandering to trump would cry foul. There would be the likelihood that Biden's Attorney General would argue that ruling "unenforceable" and ignore it, creating a massive crisis dragging in a divided Congress that would have House Republicans impeaching AG Garland and President Biden while the Senate Democrats refuse to vote on the matter. It could still lead to Biden claiming such powers of immunity anyway, since any constitutional norms are clearly out the window.

A more likely scenario is that the Far Right Justices would carve out Selective - not Absolute - immunity, granting that trump while in office was able to perform certain criminal acts "if it fell within the scope of his duties." They would try to align such "criminal acts" to the ones trump is facing charges - a tidy little coincidence - so that Biden and future Presidents can't unleash themselves. But it staggers the mind that the Justices would grant immunity over such high-priority matters as refusing to send in help to subdue a violent riot incited by a President - like in January 6th - or trying to take all those classified documents - like in the Mar-A-Lago matter - that are clear violations of that President's duties.

The best possible decision would be for a majority of the Justices - the Democratic-appointed ones alongside at least two Republican ones - to agree a President doesn't have Absolute Immunity. They could stick to the precedence set by US v Nixon that "no one is above the law" and that Presidents should consider their criminal liability for acts they commit even while in office. It would mean trump is exposed to whatever fate he faces with the federal criminal trials... depending on if the South Florida judge Aileen Cannon will stop her own screw-ups in the Mar-A-Lago case.

In this timeline, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith could arguably speed up the DC trial regarding trump's involvement in January 6th and get that trial going as soon as possible (maybe late July). The classified documents one will clearly not be ready this year, and the Fulton County matter has been delayed until October, so the DC case would be in the clear. Thing is, most legal experts argue that the amount of evidence and witness testimony could take months, making it unlikely the trial would end before November.

That all said, the Far Right Supreme Court could make a ruling not to decide. They could delay the whole argument by sending the matter back down and demanding "clarification" from the lower courts which Presidential acts could be protected by immunity and which shouldn't. That would definitely freeze up the DC trial for now, and put everything on hold until the Court reopens for business in October.

Waiting for justice from this broken Supreme Court has turned into a joke.

It's been clear for some time that the legal system is not going to save us from a corrupt trump or a sadistic self-serving Republican Party. We're going to have to do it at the ballot box.

In spite of all the threats from the Republicans that they're going to suppress the votes, they can't stop or deny us all. If we can get the 81 million who voted for Biden in 2020 - and if we can get the Independent voters and Rational Republicans who refuse to vote for a convicted felon like trump - we can overcome the GOP's plan to steal this election.

Get the vote out, America. Only WE can stop trump from committing more crimes.

Burning Poe's Books Without Really Reading Them

Update 6/24/24: I would like to thank Steve in Manhattan for including this article at the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-up... except that, uh, um... he made the link there to a Clippy YouTube video instead. Sigh. It's been that kind of a Monday already.

Irony in America lost its humor a long time ago. That is what makes this current round of book banning across the nation both pathetic and horrifying. Even at the point that the literacy haters in Florida are going after the books about book bans (via Erum Salam at the Guardian (US)):

Ban This Book, a children’s book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month.

Gratz’s book, which came out in 2017, follows fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book. Ollinger is told by the librarian she cannot, because it was banned after a classmate’s parent thought it was inappropriate. She then creates a secret banned-books library, entering into “an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read”, according to the book’s description on Gratz’s website...

So of course a parent objected.

Pippin’s opposition is what prompted the school board to vote 3-2 in favor of removing it from shelves. The vote happened despite the district’s book-review committee vetting the work and deciding to keep it in schools.

Indian River county school board members disagreed with how Gratz’s book referred to other works that had been taken out of school, and accused it of “teaching rebellion of school-board authority”, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Pippin is also the chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, a far-right organization that has been behind many of the book bans that have swept across the US in recent years. According to a 2023 PEN America report, 81% of school districts that banned books between July 2022 and June 2023 were within or adjoined a county with a local chapter of a group such as Moms for Liberty...

There is nothing liberating about what this Far Right organization is doing. It's restricting. It's limiting. It's taking away from other families their rights to choose what their kids can read. It's taking away from those children the ability to recognize when free thought and free speech - some of the most essential human rights - are denied.

In a statement to the Tallahassee Democrat, Gratz noted the irony of his book being banned.

“They banned the book because it talks about the books that they have banned and because it talks about book banning,” he said. “It feels like they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re somewhat ashamed of what they’re doing and they don’t want a book on the shelves that calls them out.”

Reading as a skill gives us comprehension. Reading from diverse points of view, reading about different cultures, reading about the thrills and dangers of the real world. We read about what's fiction and we read about what's nonfiction and we read about what's human. 

These are things that the book banners would take away, to narrow and limit our skill to comprehend. They want to take away the skill to think, to interpret, to question, to decide in favor of worldviews that the book banners fear and hate.

We've already got problems in the United States when it comes to adult comprehension and decision-making skills, things that a strong literary education could have solved. And now we're dealing with factions in our nation happily denying literacy to our children, to guarantee that freedom of thought and freedom of speech can be easily taken away.

If you don't want your kid to read a book, tell your kid not to read it, and find something else that the kid could enjoy reading without denying that right to thousands of other families.

Defend your libraries, America.

I read Ray Bradbury growing up. I remember his short stories, masterpieces of horror, and recall a story from the Martian Chronicles titled "Usher II" (it was a separate magazine short story from 1950 but reworked to be part of the novel):

“Garrett?” called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced himself. “Garrett,” said Stendahl, “do you know why I’ve done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe’s books without really reading them. You took other people’s advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you’d have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.”

And if you've read Edgar Allan Poe in school (or if the book banners would let you), you'd know what Stendahl was doing to Garrett.

Yes, for the love of God!

The Bullets Count the Cost

Don't you shoot him down/
He's about to leave here/
Don't you shoot him down/
He's got to stay here/
He ain't going nowhere/
He's been shot down to the ground/
Oh where he can't survive no no...
-- "Machine Gun," Jimi Hendrix

The latest ruling out of this extremist, archconservative Supreme Court pretty much guarantees an increase in the national body count when it comes to gun violence. Via Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog:

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a rule that banned bump stocks, issued by the Trump administration after a 2017 mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas. By a vote of 6-3, the justices rejected the federal government’s argument that rifles equipped with bump stocks are machine guns, which are generally prohibited under federal law. In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s conservative justices emphasized that Congress could have enacted a law that banned all weapons capable of high rates of fire, but it did not – and so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was wrong to interpret the federal ban on machine guns to extend to bump stocks.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion joined by the court’s other more liberal justices, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She warned that the majority’s decision “will have deadly consequences.”

The bump stock is an attachment that transforms a semiautomatic rifle into a weapon that can discharge at a rate of hundreds of rounds per minute. The Trump administration issued the rule at the center of the case in 2018. It followed a mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas in which the gunman used semi-automatic rifles equipped with a bump-stock device to kill 60 people and injure over 500 more. The rule, which concluded that bump stocks are machine guns, was an about-face from the ATF’s previous position, which until 2018 had indicated that only some kinds of bump stocks are machine guns. Under the 2018 rule, anyone who owned a bump stock was required to destroy it or drop it at a nearby ATF office to avoid criminal penalties...

Rather than leave it up to the federal agency to determine that bump stocks turned semi-auto guns into full-auto, Thomas and the other Republican Justices decided "fuck public safety, let the gun nuts have their firepower."

Because that's what was at stake here. Not a Second Amendment matter, but a public safety matter. And the goddamn Far Right don't give a rat's ass as long as they're not the targets (you will notice that a lot of the Far Right public gatherings are "Gun Free Zones").

If you want an idea of what a bump stock can do for an assault rifle, there's a YouTube clip going around that demonstrates (try to get to the 4:42 mark):

With a bump stock, you're shooting enough bullets to wipe out an entire room of people within seconds, not minutes. The Las Vegas concert mass shooting that convinced the ATF (and even a gun-happy trump administration) to ban bump stocks? The gunman was able to get off 1,000 rounds, killing 60 and wounding over 400 people (more people were also injured during the panicked fleeing).

Goddamn this. A solid majority of Americans want assault rifles banned, and yet our legal system - and far too many politicians bought out by the goddamned NRA - refuses to consider that need.

Gun violence is already a serious epidemic in our nation. Mass shootings are now so common that we don't even notice them unless the body count goes into double digits. By giving these gunmen the ability to do that, we are guaranteeing that the blood in our streets will not stop flowing. Not until every gun-loving politicians (mostly Republicans) are voted out of office, not until every gun-loving judges are forced to retire, not until we can do something about the twisted side of the American debate on guns that turned the Second Amendment from granting states the power to well-regulate their militias into a mindless license for gun nuts to shoot anybody they want.

The violence is going to get worse. Especially when the Far Right gun nuts get convinced the upcoming election isn't going their way...

One Sentence Summary on the Significance of Hunter Biden's Guilty Verdict As It Relates to the 2024 Presidential Election

Hunter Biden is not on the national ballot for the Presidency of the United States, unlike donald trump; to where the entire Republican Party still has to justify why they are supporting a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender for the highest office in the land. 

Old Hero Greeting The Next Hero at Normandy Anniversary

I wrote last year a comparison between the importance of D-Day as a key turning point in World War II and the importance of Ukraine standing up against Russian invasion: 

Those landings were 79 years ago, but they remain fresh in our memories. The realization of the horrors of war, the sacrifices made, the honors gained and lives lost. 

They remain fresh because those struggles are repeating in Europe today, as Ukraine is now the battlefront against a Russian horde seeking to rebuild an empire under Putin at the expense of European stability...

This won't be an easy fight for Ukraine. Wars never are.

But Eisenhower said it best in 1944 when he extorted Allied troops to victory:

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world...

Just switch out Germans for Russians, and the gist is the same.

I'm not the only one who thinks that. One of the few surviving veterans of World War II that appeared this week in Normandy France to honor the 80th anniversary of D-Day had a moment meeting Ukrainian President Zelensky (via Guardian News YouTube):

The veteran kissed Zelensky's hand - or tried to, Zelensky was too humble to take it - and told him "You're the savior of the people." 

"You saved Europe," Zelenksy replied.

Game recognizes game. Hero recognizes hero.

That veteran understands that Ukraine is fighting to save Europe now. The rest of Europe needs to do more to aid Ukraine against Russia and help them stop Putin's warmongering fantasies.

D-Day Anniversary: The Few Remaining

The Normandy landings happened 80 years ago this day, and so this D-Day remembrance in France has been honoring the few aging veterans who are still alive: 

We are always moving forward in time, to where the persons who lived through these historic events are passing away. In a few more years, there will be no one left alive who can tell us what it was like storming the beaches and parachuting out of the night sky to fight these battles to end the fascist rule of Nazis who had taken over much of Europe and threatened the rest of the world.

Tiananmen Square 35 Years Later

I continue to say this: China should be free.

 To the Tank Man, if you're still out there: I owe you a tea lunch.

The Tick Tock of a Justice Clock

So with donald trump now convicted on 34 felonies, what happens next?

The simplest answer is that the legal system in New York moves forward on the punishment phase (via Michael R. Sisak, Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price, and Alanna Durkin Richer at AP News):

The big question now is whether Trump could go to prison. The answer is uncertain. Judge Juan M. Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before Republicans are formally set to nominate Trump for president.

The charge of falsifying business records is a Class E felony in New York, the lowest tier of felony charges in the state. It is punishable by up to four years in prison, though the punishment would ultimately be up to the judge, and there’s no guarantee he would give Trump time behind bars. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to say whether prosecutors would seek prison time.

It’s unclear to what extent the judge may factor in the political and logistical complexities of jailing a former president who is running to reclaim the White House. Other punishments could include a fine or probation. And it’s possible the judge would allow Trump to avoid serving any punishment until after he exhausts his appeals...

If there's any factor that should determine if trump faces time in jail is his own behavior before, during, and after the trial. The level of contempt trump displayed throughout led to Judge Merchan leveling fines and threatening him with sitting in a jail cell. Considering how trump continues to attack the entire proceeding as a rigged witch hunt, letting trump off with simple fines or probation would be a joke. While maxxing out the jail time to four years (48 months) would seem excessive for - believe it or not - a first-time felon like trump, settling on a set of months to make it hurt for him - say, 34 months one for each Guilty count - would be IMHO a fair punishment.

trump - and his MAGA voting base - of course would freak out. But we kinda knew that going in.

The ramifications of the guilty verdict are still roiling the political arena:

The conviction doesn’t bar Trump from continuing his campaign or becoming president. And he can still vote for himself in his home state of Florida as long as he stays out of prison in New York state.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a Fox News Channel interview on Thursday that Trump would do virtual rallies and campaign events if he’s convicted and sentenced to home confinement.

In a deeply divided America, it’s unclear whether Trump’s once-unimaginable criminal conviction will have any impact at all on the election...

In the short term, at least, there were immediate signs that the guilty verdict was helping to unify the Republican Party’s disparate factions as GOP officials across the political spectrum rallied behind their embattled presumptive presidential nominee and his campaign reported a flood of fundraising dollars within hours of the verdict.

There has been some polling conducted on the prospect of a guilty verdict, although such hypothetical scenarios are notoriously difficult to predict. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that only 4% of Trump’s supporters said they would withdraw their backing if he’s convicted of a felony, though another 16% said they would reconsider it...

What would help, if pollsters interviewed Democratic-leaning voters to see how many will vote for Biden to ensure a convicted felon never gets (back) into the White House. /headdesk

We are entering uncharted waters in our nation's history. While we've had convicted felons run for the presidency - Eugene Debs the most well-known - we've never had one at the head of a major party with a guaranteed voter turnout in the millions. When the Founders created the Constitution, they never dreamed that the political elites of that era would allow such a person to run: Their own virtues of personal honor and good faith towards the system blinded them to the possibility a demagogue like trump would ever rise up to break all social norms and civility.

When the political parties formed (and reformed) in the years following, those parties were expected to use a vetting system of nominating only the best - or least corrupt - among them. But trump has subverted all that, bullying and dominating the Republican ranks to where he literally owns the national organization overseeing the party. Whatever is left of the GOP leadership is stuck with kissing trump's ring orange ass to stay in his good graces, turning a blind eye to trump's criminality and going along with trump's twisted accusations of a "rigged" trial.

Whatever issues are still up for debate - protecting abortion rights, stopping the bloodshed in Gaza, supporting Ukraine against Russia, defending our educational system, resolving the immigration crisis - this is a serious matter to consider: We now have a convicted felon as the presidential nominee for the Republican Party, with no sign trump will step aside or get pushed aside for a more honorable candidate. There is no "both sides are bad" argument here. For all of the Republican Party's efforts to paint President Biden as a corrupt figure, they've never found any evidence of that: The best they've done is bring charges to his son Hunter, but never found any financial ties between them.

This is now down to two Presidential candidates. trump is a convicted felon with an established history of criminal behavior - trump's company criminally guilty, trump found liable for sexual assault, trump found liable for tax evasion and fraud to the tune of $364 million, trump's non-profit forced to shut down for fraud - proven in court. Biden is not a felon.

This ought to be an easy choice, America. Don't fucking vote for the felon.