SCOTUS Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Thank djt for the Constitution lessons

official acts

I want to thank djt for teaching the American people Constitution lessons. Even before the election of 2016, people were wondering whether, if he had read the document, did he understand it.

As The Nation noted earlier this year, he’s brazenly violated parts of the Constitution, “including the emoluments clause of Article 1, Section 6, and the appropriations clause of Article 1, Section 9. The foreign emolument section states that, without congressional assent, neither the president nor other office holders can ‘accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.’ Yet, as the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee documented, ‘Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments and government-backed entities from 20 countries.'”

Americans now have a better sense of how impeachment works. There had been only one impeachment (Bill Clinton) in over a century and a half. With djt, we had two in less than 14 months. People now know that impeachment means indictment and not conviction. He was impeached in 2019 over extortion of the Ukrainian president.

20210106

Then, in early 2021, he was impeached over his actions on January 6. Of course, the Senate chose not to convict him in both cases. In the latter situation, they decided it wasn’t necessary because he was no longer going to be President. After the effects of January 6, wasn’t it clear after being rebuked by members of Congress that he would never be running for public office again?

There was a conversation about whether Vice President Mike Pence and members of the US cabinet might invoke Amendment 25 to have the then-president removed from office because his actions were not in keeping with what a president ought to do both before and especially after Jan 6.

Speaking of January 6: I mentioned to someone that, in 2025, Kamala Harris would be titularly in charge of certifying the November 5, 2024, Presidential vote. They asked if it had happened before with a Presidential candidate in that role. Of course, most recently, Al Gore when he lost to Dubya in 2000.

Still, I am an old political science major. I had all but forgotten the certification of the election the previous November because it was pro forma before 2021, when someone fomented a riot.

“Even conservative lawyers J. Michael Luttig, Peter Keisler, Larry Thompson, Stuart Gerson, and Donald Ayer have argued in their amicus brief in the case that ‘Trump incited the threat and use of violent force as his last opportunity to stop the peaceful transfer of executive power.’ They state unequivocally that he ‘had the intent that the armed mob, at the very least, threaten physical force on January 6, 2021, in response to his speech on the Ellipse.'”

Constitutional when it suits him

Less than two years ago, djt suggested on “Truth” Social “for the termination of the Constitution” by overturning the 2020 election and reinstating him to power.

On Feb. 8, 2024, the Supreme Court [heard] arguments in “a potentially historic case that could affect former President Donald Trump’s efforts to run for election this year. The case, Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson [turned] on an interpretation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, known as the Disqualification Clause, and its language barring certain former elected and appointed officials from holding office if they took part in an insurrection. SCOTUS determined he could not be banned from the Colorado primary ballot. The nine justices ruled that only Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment’s provisions against federal officials and candidates.

His SCOTUS friends also ruled that he has ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts and offered a broad description of what that means. Although Jack Smith has re-introduced a tighter set of indictments, it’s really difficult to convict a president for his actions while he’s in office.

A couple of people I know IRL think schools should do a better job teaching civics. Well, maybe, but djt is doing a pretty good job on his own.

Let us eat cake

Happy Birthday, Constitution – Family Day, September 17, 2006. A1, Washington, D.C.

Per the National Archives: “Twenty years ago, Congress passed a law recognizing September 17 as Constitution Day. On that date in 1787, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia put their signatures on the Constitution of the United States. Local celebrations of Constitution Day started over 100 years ago, but it didn’t become federal law until 2004.”

Happy Constitution Day.

July rambling: Dr. SCOTUS

Gleichschaltung

Dr. SCOTUS Will Now See Your Next Patient – Ron Harman King fears our healthcare lies with those in black robes, not white coats.

Cory Doctorow: Unpersoned about romance writer K Renee and others locked out of their Google docs

CrowdStrike blames test software for taking down 8.5 million Windows machines.

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools

Disputing Errors on Your Tenant Background Check Report

Succeeding in the Post-Wayfair Landscape: Top 3 Trends in Sales Tax Six Years On (yes, this is interesting to a geeky business librarian)

The Nation’s Data at Risk: Meeting America’s Information Needs for the 21st Century

Why Paper Checks Refuse To Die

A neurological disorder stole her voice. Jennifer Wexton takes it back on the House floor.

Quieting Your Inner Critic – Self-Compassion and Other Methods

Navy exonerates Black sailors unjustly punished in 1944 after a deadly California port explosion.

Bob Newhart Was an Everyman With a Comic Voice Like No Other. The 25 best TV series finales ever. Newhart is #22 and should be much higher. I watched him on Ed Sullivan and his three CBS shows

Whitney Rybeck, ‘Friday the 13th’ Actor and Crash Test Dummy in Seat Belt Ads, Dies at 79

The Worm Charmers: A Florida family coaxes earthworms from the forest floor

Homicide: Life on the Street Finally Gets Streaming Home at Peacock. This was one of my favorite programs.

Oscars: What To Do When You Lose

Now I Know: The Dirty Lyric Snuck Onto The Radio and The Pencil That Told Kids To Do Something They Shouldn’t and A Mountainous Problem With Instant Noodles

Kelly and Sunday Stealing

SSA

“Soon, you will no longer be able to sign in to your online Social Security account using your Social Security username and password. To access Social Security online services, including my Social Security, you will need to create a Login.gov or ID.me account.”

This is a real thing, reported on AARP and CBS Mornings.

“The change affects about 46 million of the roughly 86 million people who have My Social Security accounts, according to an SSA spokesperson.”

POLLYTICKS

How Joe Biden launched his career by beating two unbeatable Republicans

Thank You, President Biden

Weekly Sift: Resolutions and The Two Kinds of Unity, in which I was introduced to the word Gleichschaltung. “It’s an old German engineering term for when you wire a bunch of electrical circuits together under a common master switch. It got applied to German politics in 1933, for reasons that you may recall from history books.” Also, the Kamala surge and Couches, Cat Ladies, and J. D. Vance.

djt Returns to Bad Form — and Gives the Democrats Hope

Immigration, Crime, Politics, and lies and Fact-checking djt’s lies during his RNC acceptance speech

RNC & “Migrant Crime”: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Demagoguery repeats itself

djt Sells Sneakers, Coins, and Trading Cards Imprinted with his Bloody Face

How Kamala’s name is pronounced; even a child can do it

From way back on July 15: ‘Terrified’ – Americans in NZ react to Trump shooting, Biden uncertainty

Borowitz Reports repeats: New Conspiracy Theory Links Wide Availability of Guns to People Getting Shot

MUSIC

Anything Goes – Peter Sprague featuring Rebecca Jade

Look At Me, I’m MTG!– A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

John Mayall, British Blues-Rock Legend and 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Dies at 90. Room To Move

Flivver Ten Million by Frederick Converse, performance is by the Buffalo Philharmonic,

Coverville 1495: Cover Stories for Marc Cohn and Simple Minds and 1496: The Trevor Horn Cover Story II

The Great Curve – Talking Heads

K-Chuck Radio: Gaze into the crystal ball …

Coast -Kim Deal

You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away– Peter Sprague, featuring Allison Adams Tucker.

Patterns – Laura Marling

Several versions of Sit Down, You’re Rocking The Boat here and here and here and here (1992 Tonys – Nicely-Nicely (Walter Bobbie) plus Nathan Lane and J.K. Simmons) and here and here (current London revival) and probably more here

Knee Deep Blues – Caleb Caudle:

Breath Out – Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn –

This LOST 1986 Song Went Viral…But for Years-NOBODY Knew WHO Sang it—UNTIL Today!–Professor of Rock

Media Matters on Project 2025

I thought Americans didn’t want a king

A LOT of folks I know IRL have said, online and occasionally in person, that we all need to know more about Project 2025. I agree. My first mention was in a link in August 2023, but it bears repeating.

Check out the Media Matters website.

“The initiative is backed by a coalition of over 100 organizations and individuals, at least two-thirds of which receive funding from the Koch network or conservative philanthropist Leonard Leo. The project is also heavily promoted by MAGA-connected media figures such as Steve Bannon, who has called it the ‘blueprint’ for Trump’s second term on his War Room podcast.”

The presumptive Republican nominee claims, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Or, less politely, he lies.

This is – let me think of a kind way to put this – disingenuous. Just before he went to prison for a few months, Bannon told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that he had regularly been in touch with djt. “John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of Trump’s most trusted aides, is a senior adviser for the project. McEntee said in April that the Trump campaign and Project 2025 plan to ‘integrate a lot of our work’ this summer, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters.”

Peter Navarro, Ken Cuccinelli, Stephen Moore, Christopher Miller, Roger Severino, and others who worked in his administration are all involved in Project 2025. In other words, he has implausible deniability.

A fundraising email from the Heritage Foundation also lays it on thick. “The Biden campaign has declared an all-out war on The Heritage Foundation and our Project 2025 initiative.

“The social media feeds for the campaign, and all their surrogates are filled with lies about our work. Their website even has a page dedicated to attacking Project 2025.

“They are terrified of Project 2025 because they know it will save our country from the radical Left’s destructive agenda.”

Here’s a video dispassionately explaining Project 2025, noting five criticisms of the program. It’s the type of resource that tries to be nonpartisan.

Immunity

Project 2025 is made more threatening by SCOTUS’ decision regarding immunity.

Once again, the Heritage Foundation says that Biden lied. “‘For all… practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do,’ Biden claimed.” He also suggested “that ‘the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.’ This accusation is objectively false.”

The prevarication belongs to the Heritage Foundation. The generally apolitical The Legal Eagle notes WE’RE F*CKED. In the description: “This is one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever.” Trump Is Immune. He argues that djt’s “limited immunity,” in practical terms, is anything but limited.

New Civil Rights Movement: “Two hundred and three days after Special Counsel Jack Smith’s first request, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines… ruled an American President has ‘absolute‘ immunity from criminal prosecution if his actions are ‘official acts’ of Office.

Frank S. Robinson wrote in The Supreme Court, Presidential Immunity, and the Implacable Tide: “The court unnecessarily pronounced [an overly broad] doctrine of presidential immunity. Practically deeming the president above the law, saying one can’t be prosecuted for any ‘official acts’ — only for stuff done in their ‘private capacity.’ Quite a limited carve-out. Worse yet, the Court’s majority, having promulgated a standard, failed to take the next step and apply it to the facts at hand.”

The Weekly Sift guy: “Roberts and the conservative majority have embedded a time bomb in the Constitution. That bomb could sit peacefully for decades until it is disarmed by some future Court, or it could go off as soon as next January.”

Am I scared? Yes, I am. Will I vote for whoever has the best chance of beating djt in November, even if he’s 81 and arthritic? I absolutely will.

Making the case against creating term limits

lobbyist domination

As a political science major and political junkie, I’ve long been interested in the issue of creating term limits for politicians. I read a piece recently in the Boston Globe restating that.

Jeff Jacoby’s January 12 opinion piece, “The case for term limits is as strong as ever,” says, “The case for term limits is straightforward: Men and women cannot be trusted for too long with too much power.

“That is why presidents may be elected to a maximum of two terms, why the governors of 36 states are term-limited, why 15 states impose term limits on legislators, and why nine of the ten largest cities, including New York and Los Angeles, apply term limits to their mayors and (in most cases) city councilors. Power not only tends to corrupt; it tends to do so fairly quickly. Term limits are a check on that corruption.”

I cannot disagree with this, although it’s been my observation that most politicians who are term-limited end up either running for a different office or are appointed to another post. Indeed, 47 current US Senators had previous House service.

On the other hand…

Still, I was interested in the pushback to the column, most of which I also agree with. One writes, “readers of the recent Neal Gabler book ‘Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976-2009’ would probably disagree.

“If Jacoby had his way, term limits would have deprived the people of the Commonwealth of the decades of excellent public service that we enjoyed thanks to the labors of long-term officeholders such as Senator Kennedy, Senator John Kerry, and House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill.” And, might I add, Nancy Pelosi, whose experience allowed her to be an effective Speaker of the House.

“Experience matters in mastering the intricacies of most fields, including government. Cookie-cutter solutions such as term limits may seem superficially appealing, but they fail to address the problem of persuading good people to go to and stay in Congress.” Yes, it usually takes a while to figure out what the job is. Institutional memory has value.

Another says, “Jacoby looks to term limits to resolve his concerns over the advantages of incumbency rather than to campaign financing laws and to the end of gerrymandering.” Those, the reader suggests, are the real villains, not incumbency per se.

I came across this report by the Congressional Research Service. “The average length of service for Representatives at the beginning of the 117th Congress was 8.9 years (4.5 House terms); for Senators, 11.0 years (1.8 Senate terms). ” Yes, there are indeed people who have stayed too long – Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), for one.

Beware the lobbyists

This comment most resonated with me: “Imposing term limits is also a recipe for lobbyist domination. Since lobbyists don’t have term limits, and they gain expertise at their jobs, they’d be even better at outmaneuvering legislators than they are now.” Also, the lobbyist pool sometimes comes from previously elected officials.

“It’s been said that we already have term limits; they’re called elections. What we need is better, fairer elections: ranked-choice voting, public campaign financing, a repeal of the Citizens United decision so that we can limit money in elections, and so on.

“There are plenty of ways to improve our democracy. Kicking out the folks who know how to make it work isn’t one of them.”

However, I’m willing to be convinced that creating term limits will be the panacea that will create a more robust democracy. And, if there were something less than lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, I could get behind that.

Has “The American Experiment” failed?

SECESSION

Uthaclena is asking:

Do you think that “The American Experiment” has failed? How likely do you think it is that the United States is headed for a breakup?

I am increasingly concerned about this. The single item that most triggered this worry is the 2022 Texas GOP Platform. It runs about 40 pages, with 275 paragraphs of positions. It also includes two resolutions, one against the gun bill brokered in part by their own Republican senator John Cornyn. I thought the bill was weak tea, though better than nothing. But they have discerned that gun control is a violation of their “God-given rights.”

The other resolution indicates that Joe Biden isn’t actually president. If we can’t agree on the manner in which we operate and oversee our elections, the whole process falls apart. I mean, I DESPISED Biden’s predecessor, but I never believed he wasn’t president, no matter I wanted it to be otherwise. And this isn’t some blowhard commentator saying this, it’s a major political party in our second-most-populous state.

Among the other positions taken by the TX GOP:

The repealing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which had already been gutted by the Supreme Court back in 2012.
Leaving the U.N.; check out paragraph 273
Banning income tax (repealing the 16th amendment) and ending the direct election of US Senators (repealing the 17th Amendment, return to the appointment of Senators by the state legislatures).
Disallowing same-sex marriage
Banning sex education – search the document for the word sex
SECESSION (paragraph 33)

BTW, Kelly covers some of this same territory.

SCOTUS

I’m of the generation where the Supreme Court EXPANDED the rights of those who were minorities and/or less powerful, less fortunate. This court has decided that the state’s right to control guns within its own borders (10th Amendment) is superseded by the right to have guns (2nd Amendment).

Some commentators suggested that we ought not to worry that other rights might be abrogated, as Clarence Thomas suggested in his concurring opinion striking down Roe. The votes in SCOTUS aren’t there, presently. But several others pointed out, including the SCOTUS guy for ABC News, Terry Moran, an opposing view that makes more sense to me. Thomas’ opinion questioning same-gender marriage and contraception, et al. is actually more consistent with Alito’s flawed argument that there is no Constitutional right to abortion.

I came across this Neil Gaiman tweet of an NPR piece, Throughline’ Traces Evangelicals’ History On The Abortion Issue by By Rund Abdelfatah. You should read the whole thing; it’s not long. It totally surprised me.

“The Southern Baptist Convention… actually passed resolutions in 1971, 1974, and 1976 – after Roe v. Wade – affirming the idea that women should have access to abortion for a variety of reasons and that the government should play a limited role in that matter… The experts we talked to said white evangelicals at that time saw abortion as largely a Catholic issue.” It was desegregation that started the sea change.

What a country!

Look at maternal mortality rates by country (per 100,000 live births). The US stands at 17.3, worse, FAR worse than any industrialized country. Or child poverty, where the US is well above average. Rare among industrialized nations: no paid maternity leave.

The notion that the US is saving lives by overturning Roe is laughable. Quoting the late George Carlin: “No neonatal care, no daycare, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re preborn you’re fine; if you’re preschool you’re f###ed… And then they turn around and say, ‘we’re pro-life.'”

How does each of the states’ anti-abortion laws apply, anyway? As I heard or read from multiple sources, ambiguity is a design, not a flaw. How do interstate companies respond?

Vanity Fair states the decision was “a result that was born not of careful decision-making and analytic rigor, but of power.” Despite the majority of Americans feeling otherwise.

My buddy Greg Burgas thinks the Republicans have overplayed their hand; that’d be nice, but I remain unconvinced.

Thus

We have Americans who believe the President who was elected in 2020 wasn’t elected. Many others now find the Supreme Court to be an illegitimate entity. And of course, everyone hates the do-nothing… OK, do very little… Congress. It’s not as though these issues will be resolved if we just vote in November.

Alan Singer, who I have met, incidentally, writes about fascism in Russia, the US, and elsewhere. “The United States now has a significant bitter Ethno-nationalist white Christian movement that considers itself aggrieved by Jews, Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants who they claim to want to replace them as the dominant group. It has a political party and cult-like figures who manipulate this group to hold onto power and block any attempts to address major social and economic issues…

“Corporate interests support the cult figures and their efforts to stir up mass support because it is in the interests of these wealthy capitalists to cut taxes and eliminate government regulations… It includes armed groups that threaten military action in the name of 2nd Amendment rights.”

Book bans in K-12 schools have escalated recently. Many “of the books on the list were written by Black or LGBTQ authors.”

So a breakup isn’t inevitable. But I think it’s way more likely now than I did in 2019. Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, who I’ve known for years, has had his journey into “the far-right world of January 6 insurrectionists, QAnon-ers, and Trump cultists—who they are, what they’re saying, what they believe, and what their still-growing movement might portend (including the specter of civil war in America). Such a prospect, says Sharlet, is ‘scarier than it’s ever been.'”

Add inflation, crime, and global warming influenced extreme weather, and who knows? Of course, it would be an ugly, difficult breakup. The 1947 partition of India and Pakistan along religious lines was extremely costly, monetarily and in terms of about two million lives lost. Since we’re the USA, it’d be even worse.