SCOTAL Itch

[LarsMac]

They seem to have worked out the division between doing what is actually a part of the work of the office of POTUS vs. personal actions carried out by the individual outside the bailiwick of POTUS.

That gives hope. The acts of the person must be separated from Acts of the Office.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

They seem to have worked out the division between doing what is actually a part of the work of the office of POTUS vs. personal actions carried out by the individual outside the bailiwick of POTUS.

That gives hope. The acts of the person must be separated from Acts of the Office.

No, fuck this. This is supposed to be a nation of laws, and the President is not above the law. The President is, by Constitution and law, already allowed to do things that a non-office holder would be prosecuted for.

If the President wants to officially act in a manner that might violate the law, then they should have the laws changed, or be willing to face prosecution.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

No, fuck this. This is supposed to be a nation of laws, and the President is not above the law. The President is, by Constitution and law, already allowed to do things that a non-office holder would be prosecuted for.

If the President wants to officially act in a manner that might violate the law, then they should have the laws changed, or be willing to face prosecution.

Absolutely agree. But we have to base this thing on the constitution.

The office of the President is immune from prosecution. A person holding that office cannot be tried for any crimes.
BUT,... the Senate can impeach the person holding that office, and, upon finding that he has committed a violation of the office, can remove him/her from office. Once removed from office, that person is subject to prosecution.

Now, since Mr T has already vacated the office, his claim of immunity should be ignored. However, now that this is before the Supreme Court, that court has to decide whether his claims of immunity are valid or not.

The fact that they have been exploring the difference between his official actions as POTUS and his actions outside the duties of POTUS is a good sign.


I believe that the only conclusion they can reach is that his actions were, indeed, outside his bailiwick as POTUS and he was acting purely to look out for his own pursuits, and he is not covered under the presumption of immunity of the office.
Once that is established, he can be prosecuted for his actions on Jan 6.

Meaning that we can, indeed, take him out and hang him - Figuratively speaking, of course.

[Sock Puppet]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

I believe that the only honest conclusion they can reach is that his actions were, indeed, outside his bailiwick as POTUS and he was acting purely to look out for his own pursuits, and he is not covered under the presumption of immunity of the office.

But this fucking court, this fucking court ... I'm afraid that Matlock will be right (as usual, but sadly in this case) that we're going to see 5 separate opinions giving the fucker what he wants, each more contorted and full of bafflingly obvious bullshit than the last. ETA: One glimmer of hope is that they'll give him immunity for Jan 6, but not for his private sector malfeasance. But even that is probably grasping at straws.

Meaning that we can, indeed, take him out and hang him - Figuratively speaking, of course.

I would accept any of the current Federal methods of execution for treason. But I agree, it's just not to be.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

One glimmer of hope is that they'll give him immunity for Jan 6, but not for his private sector malfeasance. But even that is probably grasping at straws.

I'd be surprised to see him get immunity for everything in that 1/6 indictment, but equally surprised if he doesn't get some of those counts dismissed. PAB's already got what he wanted in any event. By failing to allow the prosecution to leapfrog the court of appeals, SCOTUS already assured the case won't be tried before November, which gives PAB the issue to run on without the potential consequences.

[LarsMac]

Well I plan to keep a firm grip on that last straw for as long as I can, and hope that reason finally prevails.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

Absolutely agree. But we have to base this thing on the constitution.

The office of the President is immune from prosecution. A person holding that office cannot be tried for any crimes.
BUT,... the Senate can impeach the person holding that office, and, upon finding that he has committed a violation of the office, can remove him/her from office. Once removed from office, that person is subject to prosecution.

Now, since Mr T has already vacated the office, his claim of immunity should be ignored. However, now that this is before the Supreme Court, that court has to decide whether his claims of immunity are valid or not.

The fact that they have been exploring the difference between his official actions as POTUS and his actions outside the duties of POTUS is a good sign.


I believe that the only conclusion they can reach is that his actions were, indeed, outside his bailiwick as POTUS and he was acting purely to look out for his own pursuits, and he is not covered under the presumption of immunity of the office.
Once that is established, he can be prosecuted for his actions on Jan 6.

Meaning that we can, indeed, take him out and hang him - Figuratively speaking, of course.

I do not believe that the sitting President is immune from prosecution, and I dare you to find anything like that in Article 2.

I just stumbled upon this from Elie Mystal. It says what I meant better than I wrote it:

That’s not how it’s meant to be. The president of the United States has a lot of power that you and I don’t have, but that does not extend (and never has extended) to the power to commit crimes without being subject to the law. I think people get confused by this because the president can lawfully order his military to, say, murder thousands of people in a far-flung country. But there are rules, laws, statutes, and both national and international standards governing the president’s ability to go on a killing spree. The very ability to start a war is technically (and only technically in the modern setting) an act of Congress, not the president. It is simply not the case that the president can unlawfully murder people, just like it’s not the case that the cops can unlawfully murder people based on the color of their skin. That the cops do sometimes unlawfully murder people doesn’t mean that they can’t or shouldn’t be held accountable later, and the same must be true of presidents. The president has the power to murder, but not illegally, and that’s pretty much the difference between living in a nation of laws and living under the whims of a despot.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

I do not believe that the sitting President is immune from prosecution, and I dare you to find anything like that in Article 2.

I just stumbled upon this from Elie Mystal. It says what I meant better than I wrote it:

I don't think that I said the president is immune from prosecution. The Office of POTUS is independent of the person holding the position. The person can be prosecuted for a crime, while holding the office, though there are difficulties in doing so.
read: https://constitution.congress.gov/br...ALDE_00013392/ Note: This, by the way, is the likely source of Trumps claims of immunity.

The constitution says that he can be removed from office:
Art II, Sec 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The immunity thing has grown from that, rather than being explicitly stated.
The founders never imagined that anyone would achieve the office without a sense of duty and proper national loyalty.

The Office must be held separate from such prosecutions, as they hamper his abilities to carry out the duties of the office.
And, all of that is irrelevant, since the man is no longer in the office.

The Court's discussion was a lot about whether POTUS can be prosecuted for actions while carrying out the duties of the office, to which none of his action of January 6, or the days leading up to it, belonged.

It seems obvious, I believe, that the man was acting on his own interests, rather that the interests of the Office on that day, and he has no immunity from Prosecution for those actions, especially since he no longer holds the office in question.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

The Office must be held separate from such prosecutions, as they hamper his abilities to carry out the duties of the office.
And, all of that is irrelevant, since the man is no longer in the office.

I'll read the article in a bit, but I fundamentally disagree with this. A President should operate within the law, and should face prosecution if they choose to not operate within the law. Presidents have a massive amount of power to legally act in ways that non-office holders do not.

I'll admit certain legal traditions that have arisen, but honestly, I'm all in on hampering the vast powers of the modern American President.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

I'll read the article in a bit, but I fundamentally disagree with this. A President should operate within the law, and should face prosecution if they choose to not operate within the law. Presidents have a massive amount of power to legally act in ways that non-office holders do not.

I'll admit certain legal traditions that have arisen, but honestly, I'm all in on hampering the vast powers of the modern American President.

I can't disagree with that.

Were it within my Bailiwick, He would have been taken to jail shortly after the inauguration Ceremony concluded.

[Ari]

There's always the third option, the president isn't immune but the more severe the charges the longer he has to prepare with charges of selling secrets not to be conducted for some 50 to 60 years after the fact due to just how secret the information the president sold was.

[specious_reasons]

This thread, or "Republicans Suck":

The NYT reported that Justice Alito has a "Stop the Steal" symbol displayed in his home around the time of the inauguration:

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Joe Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in Alexandria, Virginia, according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed.

Like the courageous human he is, he threw Mrs. Alito under the bus:

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Alito said in an emailed statement to the Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

[Stephen Maturin]

Bitches be crazy amirite

I see some Faux News clown is questioning the report's timing in an attempt to suggest to their smooth-brained viewers that the Times story might affect ol' Sam's vote in the immunity case.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Bitches be crazy amirite

I see some Faux News clown is questioning the report's timing in an attempt to suggest to their smooth-brained viewers that the Times story might affect ol' Sam's vote in the immunity case.

I like their implication that something might affect his vote

[specious_reasons]

In recent sessions, SCOTUS gives up one or two good rulings to offset some other really shitty ones. I can't help but thinking the hammer is going to come down after this was released:

Live updates: Supreme Court preserves access to abortion pill mifepristone | AP News

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Trying to predict the outcome of cases based on questions asked during oral argument is something of a fool's errand, but hey, "[d]uring just over 90 minutes of oral argument on Tuesday, a majority of the justices seemed wary of the consequences of allowing a ruling by a federal appeals court that struck down the law to stand." The fact that the clown claiming a narrowly-tailored federal statute violates his Second Amendment rights is a dangerous, sociopathic piece of shit doesn't exactly hurt the cause of sanity here.

United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. ____ (2024). The Court pumped the brakes just a bit on our hot-rails-to-hell sojourn to the Hobbesian State of Nature. The vote was 8-1. Roberts wrote the opinion, joined by all in the majority, but five justices wrote concurring opinions. Clarence "Who put this pubic hair on my Coke?" Thomas was all by himself in dissent.

The Court held that a federal criminal statute prohibiting firearm possession by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order did not violate the above-referenced shitbag's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Of course, D.C. v. Heller and the even more awful New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen remain the law. For a detailed description of how dumb is all is, check out Justice Jackson's concurrence, starting on p. 65 of the above-linked pdf. Therein, she beats the Bruen majority opinion (authored by Pubes, of course) vigorously about the crotch with a canoe paddle.

[Stephen Maturin]

The shitstorm has yet to begin in earnest, but the drip-feed continued today. All in all, not bad.

Snyder v. United States, 6-3, majority opinion by Boof. The Court held that 18 U.S.C. § 666 only criminalizes bribes, and does not apply to after-the-fact "gratuities." Jackson wrote a dissent in which she again breaks out the canoe paddle and beats the majority vigorously about the crotch, this time with the textualism to which so many in the majority profess fealty.

Murthy v. Missouri, 6-3. Cornholio-Bababooey writing for the majority. The majority held that two states and five individual snowflake social media users did not allege the sort of "concrete and particularized injury" that would confer federal court standing to sue a bunch of Executive Branch agencies and officials for allegedly pressuring social media platforms to remove anti-vax and horse-paste related misinformation. Insurrection Sam wrote a dissent that Pubes and Gorsuch joined.

Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States:

These cases aren't officially decided yet, but according to Bloomberg News, the Court accidentally posted the opinions to its website this morning before quickly taking them down. By way of SCOTUSblog:

Bloomberg’s Kimberly Robinson, Greg Stohr, and Lydia Wheeler suggest that the court is dismissing the case without ruling on the merits, leaving in place a lower court order that bars the state from enforcing its abortion ban to the extent that it conflicts with a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a 1986 law that requires emergency rooms in hospitals that receive Medicare to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” to patients who arrive with an “emergency medical condition.”

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Mmmmmm. Post hoc bribery.

[Stephen Maturin]

Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States:

Here we go.

PER CURIAM .
The writs of certiorari before judgment are dismissed as improvidently granted, and the stays entered by the Court on January 5, 2024, are vacated.

Idaho passed a law banning all abortions except those necessary to prevent the mother's death. The feds sued before the law could take effect, arguing that the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act preempts the Idaho law as to cases in which the Idaho law would bar a hospital from performing an abortion on an emergency basis to prevent serious harm to the mother.

A federal district court ruled the feds would likely succeed on the merits and issued a preliminary injunction against enforcing the Idaho law. The state appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which refused to stay the injunction while the appeal was pending. SCOTUS did in this case what it refused to do in the PAB immunity case appeal - it let the appealing party leapfrog the court of appeals and have its case decided by the Supreme Court straight away. Th Court also stayed the injunction, allowing the state to enforce the ban while the appeal was pending.

The above one-sentence order means (1) the cases go back to the court of appeals for a ruling on the merits and (2) the preliminary injunction the trial judge issued is back in effect for now.

Kagan, Sotomayor, Roberts, Boof, and Barrett signed on to opinions concurring in dismissal of the Supreme Court appeals and lifting the Supreme Court stay. Jackson was cool with lifting the stay but dissented as to dismissing the appeals. She wanted the Court to decide the case by ruling that the feds' preemption argument is correct.

In a complete tire fire of an opinion, Alito (joined in part by Gorsuch and Pubes) argued that the Court should leave the stay in place and rule in favor of Idaho. Insurrection Sam doesn't even bother to attempt hiding his rage over the Biden administration's efforts to find ways around Dobbs, wways that include the EMTALA argument advanced here. This fuckin' guy, man.

Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, LP, 5-4, Gorsuch with the majority opinion.

The Sacklers are Purdue Pharma's sole owners, and got busy moving a fuckton of company money to their own pockets after it became clear that their Oxy-related fuckery had the potential for generating massive tort liability. After Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection, the Sacklers generously offered to pay something like $4.3 billion of "their own" money toward a fund to compensate Oxy victims. In exchange, Purdue's written Chapter 11 plan would release all tort liability against company and the Sacklers individually, even though the individuals were not petitioners in the bankruptcy case.

The Court held that a bankruptcy court cannot, as part of a Chapter 11 reorganization plan, extinguish tort claims against persons or entities other than the debtor without the consent of all affected claimants. That means the shitbird sociopaths of the Sackler family cannot get released from tort liability as part of Purdue's reorg plan.

Strange alignment here. Gorsuch, Pubes, Alito, Cornholio-Bababooey, and Jackson are your majority. Boof wrote the dissent, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor and Kagan. Their argument is that (1) non-debtor releases have always been a part of bankruptcies involving mass torts, (2) all 50 state attorneys general and the vast majority of voting claimants support the plan here, and (3) without a release that includes the Sacklers individually, a new plan will be hard to come by and it will be a long-ass time before the states and individual claimants see any money.

SEC v. Jarksey, 6-3, majority opinion by Roberts.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, passed in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, authorized the Securities and Exchange Administration to commence in-house administrative proceedings to impose civil penalties for violations of ant-fraud provisions of federal securities law. Here, the SEC brought such an in-house proceeding against a shitbag investment broker. In another decision that makes life harder for administrative agencies, the Court held that the in-house adjudication process violated the broker's Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in a civil proceeding. From now on, the SEC will need to file these actions in federal court, giving the defendants the option of requesting a jury trial.

Sotomayor's dissent does an excellent job of describing how big a jaw-dropper this one is.

This one's jacked on multiple levels, not the least of which is the notion that the shitbag broker at issue actually wanted a jury trial is about as credible as "Dr." Ronny Jackson's assessment of PAB's mental acuity.


Ohio v. EPA, 5-4, majority opinion by Gorsuch.

No one was surprised to hear that the Court voted to enjoin enforcement of an EPA-issued federal implementation plan for a rule issued to reduce pollution from power plants and other industrial plants. The rule was based on the EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act, and requires “upwind” states to reduce emissions that affect air quality in “downwind” states. The Court TECHNICALLY hasn't decided the merits of the appeal yet, though the vote to stay means a majority of the justices believe the contesting states are "likely to succeed on the merits." The war against the "administrative state" continues apace. Chevron, the Supreme Court case involving judicial deference to administrative agency interpretation of certain statutory provisions, likely dies tomorrow.

The vote was 5-4 because Barrett jumped ship and wrote a dissenting opinion for herself, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson.

This one's a family affair. Neil Gorsuch's mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, ran the EPA under Reagan for 22 months. It was predictably glorious:

Gorsuch based her administration of the EPA on the New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states. She believed that the EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22%, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides. She cut the total number of agency employees, and hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating. Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the agency. (Footnotes omitted.)

Anne made the world a slightly better place by dropping dead in 2004, but we'll be dealing with Sonny Boy for decades to come.

More decisions will drop tomorrow. I don't expect anything on POTUS immunity until early next week after the liberal () MSM has had plenty of time to fawn over how "presidential" PAB looked during the debate.

[ChuckF]

Welp, there goes Chevron, apparently replaced by the dumbest fucking thing you can imagine. What use is there for experts when the Northern District of Texas has an opinion, after all.

[Stephen Maturin]

On the plus side, cities remain free to fuck with the homeless and the Court extended a helping hand to a true downtrodden group, 1/6 insurrectionists, in what may well be the most bugfuck statutory construction case we will ever see.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

On the plus side, cities remain free to fuck with the homeless and the Court extended a helping hand to a true downtrodden group, 1/6 insurrectionists, in what may well be the most bugfuck statutory construction case we will ever see.

Considering that some 1/6 insurrectionists did in fact abscond with official documents (and Pelosi's laptop), I wonder how much of a balm this will be to some of the worst offenders.

[specious_reasons]

Supreme Court rules on Trump presidential immunity: Live updates | AP News

I had said before that anything less than 9-0 against Presidential immunity would be a tragedy, and so now we have a fucking tragedy.

For such a historically important decision, this decision comes down to, "We're in the bag for our shitty guy" is going to wreck the last shreds of credibility of the Roberts Supreme Court.

[Pyrrho]

"Now he, too, will indulge only his own ambition, and trample on all the rights of man. --Ludwig van Beethoven

[Pyrrho]

If it were Obama or Clinton, no doubt the decision would have been different.

Even "official acts" can be illegal. It should be obvious that otherwise there is no recourse.