The Tremendous Trump Thread - Etterspill (Les førstepost)

[frohmage]

Dragavon skrev (32 minutter siden):

Trump er 100% klar heile tida ja

"I'm a great speaker", så han gjør dette selvfølgelig med vilje..

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-when-he-mixes-up-names-it-is-purpose-2024-02-15/#:~:text="When I purposely interposed names,great speaker%2C" Trump said.

[JK22]

Dragavon skrev (38 minutter siden):

Trump er 100% klar heile tida ja
 

 

Det kommer til å ende i alle tidenes skandale hvis Biden og Trump i november skulle vise synlig tegn på dement atferd - det er en ganske god grunn for at årsgrensen på 80 år er så kritisk viktig. Jo eldre man bli, jo mer utslitt vil hjernen bli om den utsettes for høy stress over lang tid. 

Det ser ut at det bare bli verre og verre for hver uke som går. 

[Dragavon]

Naturlegvis seier Trump det er med vilje, han er jo fullstendig ute av stand til å innrømme sjølv den minste feil.

[Medlem]

 

[JK22]

‘We don’t have a king here’: Raskin slams SCOTUS decision to take up Trump immunity - POLITICO

Sinnet mot den føderale høyesteretten og spesielt John Roberts er blitt sterk; 

“We don’t have a king here, we had a revolution against a king and the Constitution is written so that [the] president’s main job is to take care [that] the laws are faithfully executed, not faithfully violated in his own interest,”

Ifølge James Raskin som kongressmedlem var det en meget stor tabbe av Roberts å akseptere saken istedenfor å godkjenne kjennelsen fra D.C. Circuit Courts-retten om at en president ikke har immunitet utover det som er fastslått, ettersom embetet garantere bare immunitet mot konsekvenser av offisielle handlinger innenfor lovverkets rammer - ikke absolutt immunitet som betyr at man er løftet over loven, som den norske kongen ifølge 1814-grunnloven. De norske kongelige kan i teorien fritt forbryte seg mot det norske lovverket, men ettersom kongen også er garantisten for det norske kongerikets lover betyr det at han ikke kan svekke egne myndighet. Ingen lov i Norge er gyldig uten kongens velsignelse. Ingen president i et demokratisk land har absolutt immunitet. 

Tilliten mot høyesteretten er fallende. 

“This is a court driven by the both Trump nominees and Bush nominees, and neither of those guys was elected with the popular vote, so we’ve got a Supreme Court that is representing the choices of minority presidents and they have been driving very hard to overturn a whole series of precedents that America has come to take for granted, like Roe v. Wade,” 

'Really unusual' Supreme Court notice raises questions about Trump case (msn.com)

Supreme Court could rule on Trump ballot eligibility as soon as Monday (yahoo.com)

I mandag vil høyesteretten forhøre seg om diskvalifisering av Trump fra å delta i valget - og ta en avgjørelse. Dette kommer alle dommerne, rettseksperter og lekfolk som konstitusjonseksperter til å følge med med stor nøysomhet. Fordi når avgjørelsen faller, vil alle se om Roberts er en edbryter eller ikke. Denne nyheten kom veldig overraskende på alle fordi en endelig avgjørelse var ikke ventet med det første. Fordi høyesteretten må begrunne denne, og da er det veldig kritisk viktig av hensyn til de konstitusjonelle rammene. 

"SCOTUS just updated its website to flag that it 'may announce opinions' Monday at 10 ET. It's *really* unusual for the Court to give such little notice—or, outside of when things were closed for COVID, to not take the bench." "Colorado ruling is very likely coming tomorrow," 

Dette liker ikke eksperter. De LIKER DET IKKE. Fordi hvis det kommer en kjennelse dagen før "Supertirsdagen" når primærvalget i Colorado skal finne sted, selv om høyestedommerne kan ha gjort det i god tro for å avgjøre saken, vil dette være en partisk handling som høyesteretten må avslå fra. 

"If it turns out to be true that the court is issuing the 14A opinion tomorrow—& [Vladeck] is a guru here—it's completely inappropriate."

"Why pick the day before Super Tuesday to give Trump a likely big judicial win?" he asked. "It's like an in-kind campaign contribution!"

Hvis Roberts skulle klare å få de andre høyestedommerne til å bestemme at konstitusjonelle bestemmelser ikke kan benyttes av delstatlige rettsinstanser vil det skape en alvorlig splittelse fordi det er snakk om forskjellbehandling - som ikke aksepteres. Dette er så kontroversielt og så oppflammende som det kunne bli, og det kan være hvorfor "opinionen" skal leses opp i rettsakrommet i høyesterettsdommernes fravær. 

En kommentar; 

“all my life I had the solid belief that the Supreme Court was fair.  Now having a Supreme Court Justice (Clarence Thomas) openly taking bribes from a billionaire, his wife being part of an actual insurrection after a fair election, another Justice having an obvious wink wink relationship with that same corrupt trump.  two Justices having something in common—both getting nominated when they shouldn’t have- by denying unethical scandals.  And Aileen Cannon obviously blocking justice being done, not even letting it get to trial before the election. For the first time in my life, we are all thinking… wow, there is corruption in the judiciary, it all is happening around a bad apple in our party. How did this happen and what do we do about it?”

I alle land med ansvarlig maktfordeling satt i system finnes det virkemidler som i Norge, hvor dommerne i forskjellige avdelinger kontrollere hverandre under en konsensusordning - dette finnes ikke omkring den føderale høyesteretten basert på 1700-tallets tradisjoner. 

De amerikanske grunnlovsfedrene var mer opptatt av borgerplikt, borgerideal og oligarkikonsensus enn annet, slik at de ikke bygd inn et virkemiddel mot korrupte eller partiske rettsinstanser - og dessverre er korrupte dommere en evig gjentager i den amerikanske historien. De delstatlige og den føderale høyesterett skulle allikevel være ytterst lite berørt av potensielle korrupte tilstander. Det var en stor feil. Hadde man tatt for seg partipolitikk i 1789-konstitusjonen er det mulig at dagens situasjonen ikke ville ha hendt. 

[Medlem]

Starter på 24.45....

[JK22]

JK22 skrev (18 timer siden):

Hvis Roberts skulle klare å få de andre høyestedommerne til å bestemme at konstitusjonelle bestemmelser ikke kan benyttes av delstatlige rettsinstanser vil det skape en alvorlig splittelse fordi det er snakk om forskjellbehandling - som ikke aksepteres.

Det hendt. Det virker som at Roberts har klarte å innbille alle høyesterettsdommerne om at man burde frata de delstatlige rettsinstansene retten til å benytte konstitusjonelle bestemmelser ved å umuliggjøre diskvalifisering av føderale embeter som er unntatt fra statlig rettsrespons fordi bare kongressen skal ha retten til å håndheve loven om diskvalifisering overfor dem som har eller søke føderal verv. Delstatsdomstolene vil dermed bare ha mandat til å håndheve loven overfor disse som har eller søke delstatlig verv. Dette er forskjellbehandling. 

Det virker som en feig handling, for det var kommet som en usignert opinion slik at ingen høyesterettsdommer er ansvarlig i det som er en “per curiam,”, på vegne av retten. På den måten blir det en enstemmig avgjørelse som betyr at alle saker mot Trump frafalles; og det som er illevarslende, er at høyesteretten hoppet bukk over innholdet i saken man fattet en avgjørelse over; skyldspørsmålet omkring 6. januar og immunitetskonflikten. Roberts har tydelig klarte å få alle dommerne til å eniges om at det er viktigere å hindre kaos enn å følge lovens forskrifter ved å få dem til å tro at man kan diskvalifisere valgkandidater fra delstat til delstat, i noe som tyder på både skremsel og svekket tiltro på de lavere rettsinstanser. De annullere hele saken i en meget uvanlig gest. 

States can’t kick Trump off ballot, Supreme Court says - POLITICO

Og det utgjøre hele innholdet i opinionen; 

Monday’s 13-page opinion echoed that concern. Allowing states to make that judgment could result in an inconsistent and dangerous patchwork of conflicting rulings, with a candidate appearing on some states’ ballots but not on others, the court wrote. “An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the country, in different ways and at different times,” the court’s principal opinion said. No individual justice was listed as the author of that opinion; instead, the opinion was labeled as “per curiam,” a legal phrase meaning on behalf of the court. “Nothing in the Constitution,” the opinion continued, “requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.”

The three liberal justices wrote a separate opinion, saying that they agreed with the result but that they would have issued a narrower ruling that left open the possibility of federal courts disqualifying Trump or another candidate alleged to have engaged in insurrection.

“Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announced novel rules for how that enforcement must operate,” Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their joint concurrence, referring to the section of the 14th Amendment that contains the insurrection clause. The court’s main opinion, those three justices wrote, “reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.”

Dette er svak. 

“State-by-state resolution of the question whether Section 3 bars a particular candidate for President from serving would be quite unlikely to yield a uniform answer consistent with the basic principle that ‘the President … represent all the voters in the Nation,’”

Deretter fra dommer Amy Coney Barrett; 

“The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up,”

“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home,”

Hun avslører at man ikke vil følge loven og dermed foreta et unntakelsesinngrep for å "koble fri" den føderale høyesteretten fra politikk, selv om "alle" vet at dette er ganske hult. 

The justices did not observe their usual custom of taking the bench as they delivered the politically pivotal ruling Monday morning. Instead, the opinion was released online and to the press and public on paper at the court.

Det er fordi de vet at deres opinion som har forkaste alle diskvalifiseringssaker mot Trump komme ikke til å bli tatt nådig av de legale eksperter som utvilsomt hadde kommet til for å overvære hendelsen til steds eller gjennom egne kanaler, og dermed bevist at de vil ikke stå fram for deres beslutning. 

En feil beslutning. 

Mens republikanerne feiret, er det meget illevarslende stille hos demokratene og mange liberale miljø, med få unntak; “The text of our Constitution may be inconvenient and unpleasant to execute, but the text is clear despite any loophole the republican supreme court carves out,” Og det er presist hva som er kjernen; høyesterettsdommerne har helt brutt med sin ideologisk basis for mange av sine kjennelser i de siste tjue år; originalismen. Alt skulle tolkes på original tekst - det er ingenting om en forskjellbehandling eller om bare kongressen kan håndhevere føderale saker. Absolutt ingenting. 

Dessuten varsler denne opinionen at høyesteretten kan finne på å gi Trump absolutt immunitet fordi de har adoptert hans tese om at bare kongressen kan diskvalifisere disse med føderale verv i tråd med Seksjon 3 - og dette er grunnbasisen i hans krav om absolutt immunitet, slik at en president kan fritt forbryte seg mot amerikansk lov.

The high court ruled in a unanimous, unsigned opinion that only Congress, not the states, can disqualify a presidential candidate under the Constitution’s “insurrection clause.”

Så er det nå meget klart hva Roberts strategi er; enten gi ham absolutt immunitet ved å gjøre enhver president bare ansvarlig for kongressen som ikke er en rettsinstans, men utsette og utsette til valget er overstått - og da kan Trump fritt regjere uten å ta hensyn til retten ettersom bare kongressen kan stoppe ham - og det er ikke mulig da dette krever majoritetsflertall. 

Det er nå bevist; John Roberts er en edbryter og han har gjort alle høyesterettsdommerne til medskyldige.

Endret 4. mars av JK22

[Dragavon]

JK22 skrev (26 minutter siden):

HVORFOR ER GJENNOMSTREKING IKKE MULIG Å FJERNE! 

Kopier teksten til notepad, så kopierer du frå notepad til forumet.

[JK22]

Dragavon skrev (25 minutter siden):

Kopier teksten til notepad, så kopierer du frå notepad til forumet.

Takk for rådet.

[JK22]

De legale ekspertene er i full gang med å dissekere opinionen, og etter hvert merker man at de mer og mer begynner å bli alvorlig bekymret. 

For det første; høyesteretten reserverte seg retten til å betvile enhver kongressvedtak i tråd med Seksjon 3, dermed skaffet seg makt på kongressens bekostning. Så når kongressen må håndheve loven om diskvalifisering overfor dem som har eller søke føderal verv, er dette en fullmakt man egentlig ikke har ifølge grunnlovtillegget på høyesterettens diktater; 

“This gives the Supreme Court major power to second guess any congressional decision over enforcement of Section 3,” 

Det kan utvides til andre lovhåndtering fordi amerikansk lovpraksis tillatt ikke separatbehandling. 

For det andre; det har blitt latt merke til setningen "ruling out enforcement under general federal statutes requiring the government comply with the law.", som i praksis betyr at kongressens handlingsfrihet der den er i full rett, begrenses - det var vedtatt en lov, the Electoral Count Reform Act, i 2022 som er ment for å avverge en ny 6. januar der man kan fornekte irregulære valgmannsstemmer som kan kjennes ugyldig, og på sikte kan åpne for bruk av seksjon 3. om kandidaten ikke kvalifiseres for å ha føderal verv. Denne loven uthules som et resultat, noe som de liberale medlemmer satt seg mot, mens Roberts med majoriteten gikk inn for dette. 

Høyesteretten gir kongressen fullmakt til å diskvalifisere disse som har eller søke føderal verv - men de legale ekspertene mener å ha oppdaget at denne er en felle; de vil forhindre kongressen fra å diskvalifisere på basis av seksjon 3 under valggodkjenningen - som loven fra 2022 er ment å beskytte, inkludert fullmaktene som har eksistert i meget mange år, spesielt omkring irregulære valgmannsstemmer. Dette i praksis er en gave til Donald Trump. 

Og de har bare begynte. 

Hvis dette blir verre, kan det lede til dissens på et nasjonalt nivå mot den føderale høyesteretten, spesielt hvis Roberts skulle gir Trump medhold omkring immunitet senere i året ved å gjenta argumentet fra opinionen i dag om kongressen må håndheve fremtidige presidenters lovbrudd uten legale virkemidler eller lovpraksis, som i praksis betyr absolutt immunitet i møte med alle rettsinstanser. Og om høyesteretten også skulle skaffe seg makt på bekostning av kongressen på dette området også, kan dette være et konstitusjonsbrudd. 

[JK22]

Det er tegn på begynnende valgmanipulering til fordel for Trump. Det har blitt oppdaget at mange stemmegivere risikere å miste deres rettigheter under systematiske angrep av aktivister som tar i bruk lovsystemet for å uthule og manipulere. 

Trump’s Allies Ramp Up Campaign Targeting Voter Rolls (yahoo.com)

Dette er etter internasjonal rett valgjuks gjennom intimidasjon og påvirkning av stemmegiverens rett, selv om det finnes stemmerettslov, hadde det dessverre aldri vært en konstitusjonell bestemmelse omkring stemmerettighet - den utebli helt i 1789-konstitusjonen fordi lukkede valg kun for de privilegerte i valgkretser som arrangeres på ulike måter fra sted til sted som fra delstat til delstat var normen den gang. Ian Bremmer har rett i det med at USA er det eneste industrilandet i verden - selv Kina og Russland er overlegent der - som ikke har et gjennomtenkt og rettferdig valgsystem. Når selv et totalitært regime som Kina respektere stemmegiverrettigheter i de lukkede politiske prosesser i kommunistpartiet, blir det ganske påfallende at stemmegiveren i USA i sammenligning har ikke fullstendige rettigheter. Trump hadde dessuten i 2016-2024 gjort det til en regel for at et valgresultat ikke nødvendig skal respekteres.  Etter norsk lov er stemmegiverens rett absolutt, hvor myndighetene er forpliktet til å sørge for det, i USA må velgeren selv ordne dette seg hvis han eller hun kan få stemme. Fordi det finnes ikke en amerikansk plikt nedfestet i konstitusjonen.

Det er forresten litt rart; grunnlovsfedrenes antidemokratiske holdninger skyldes deres antipati mot den athenske pøbeldemokratismen - som var best kjennepreget av ostrakismen der man kunne forvise politiske aktive og upopulære frie menn - det vil si disse med stemmerett - gjennom anonyme utstemning ved bruk av potteskår man skåret ned navnet på, ostrakon. Dette vil de ikke vite av, ennå er vi kommet i en slik situasjon hvor pøbeldemokratiske virkemidler man i utgangspunktet vil hindre den gang i 1787, har blitt tatt i bruk på større skala. 

'Five-alarm fire': Trump's latest public schools threat causes experts to panic (msn.com)

"It's almost like Trump and his advisors want Americans to be sickened from disease..."

Trump har tatt til ordet for å stenge av statsstøtte til skoler som krever vaksine for skolebarn, noe som kom som et stort sjokk på leger og helseeksperter. Det er sett retur av utryddede sykdommer og forverrede helsetilstander mange steder i USA i de siste årene, stadig flere og flere barn går uvaksinert på skoler, hvor man er nødt til å beskytte dem og andre mot smittsomme sykdommer som vil ha senvirkning eller dødelig utfall. Pandemien i 2020-21 har fulgt til at hundretusener omkommet i rent trass mot vaksinering mens leger og sykepleiere i sjokk bare så på. 1,1 mill. døde - og mørketallene kan være like stor.

Midt under alt denne elendigheten som skyldes en utdatert og idealistisk konstitusjon er det voksende tegn på en meget dyp splittelse mellom "Never Trump" som foretrekker det vante republikanerpartiet og  "Trump or Bust" som vil kuppe til seg partiet - mellom 30 og 40 % vil ikke stemme i det hele tatt på Trump, de yngre i collegene uansett parti er sjeldent enig om at Trump er uaktuelt - det er latt merke til at selvstendige yngre som ikke fullbyrde deres utdanning i større grad slutte seg til Trump. Men på demokratisk hold er det sett at mange er lei av Bidens håndtering av Gaza, det har han vist seg å være maktløst og treg i møte med Netanyahu som ødela alt; for det første var strategien å tvinge fram en masseflukt ut av Gaza, for det andre nektet man å etablere sivilkontroll som nylig sett omkring blodbadet omkring en nødhjelpskolonne, slik at folk flest lever i akutt lovløshet og oppløste samfunntilstander, de er kastet ut i total anarki. 

[JK22]

White Rural Trump Supporters Are a Threat to Democracy (thedailybeast.com)

Denne artikkelen skrives av Michael A. Cohen som en anmeldelse av en nylig bok; "White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy" som er meget skremmende - ikke på grunn av tittelen eller hva den omtaler - men fordi den er faktabasert og verifisert med anerkjente vitenskapelige metoder. 

“Rural voters—especially the White rural voters on whom Donald Trump heaps praise and upon which he built his Make America Great Movement—pose a growing threat to the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”

In a book filled with reams of data to back up their arguments, Schaller and Waldman show that rural whites “are the demographic group least likely to accept notions of pluralism and inclusion” and are far less likely to believe that diversity makes America stronger.

In rural America, support for Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban ran 15 points higher than in urban areas. Rural whites are 13 points more likely to view LGBTQ+ Americans in a negative light, and express fear and anger toward immigrants—both legal and undocumented—at much higher rates than other Americans. Less than half, 46 percent, say diversity in their communities is something they value.

They are the largest segment of the population that incorrectly believes Trump won the 2020 election, at 47 percent. By contrast, only 30 percent of suburban residents and 22 percent of urban dwellers feel the same.

Rural whites are more skeptical of the vaccines to prevent COVID-19, and are more likely to think Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In a survey done in 2009 in North Carolina and Virginia, rural Republicans were 20 percentage points more likely to believe in birtherism than non-rural GOP members. Rural residents are also 1.5 times more inclined to embrace the QAnon conspiracy theory than those who live in urban areas.

But the problems in rural America run deeper than hostility toward minorities and facts. Rural residents disproportionately express hostility toward basic democratic principles. They are more likely to favor restrictions on the press, oppose checks on presidential power, endorse white Christian nationalist views, and support efforts to restrict voting access.

Finally, rural Americans are more likely to believe that “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.” Indeed, more than one out of four rural residents agree that Trump should be returned to office by force if necessary. As Schaller and Waldman argue, not all citizens with anti-government views live in rural America, but “rural Americans are overrepresented among those with insurrectionist tendencies.”

Dette er i virkeligheten bare 15 % av den amerikanske befolkningen, men fordi USA er en føderasjon der delstatene har like samme delegater uansett folkestørrelse - 

In partisan terms, Senate Democrats, who currently hold 51 seats in the Senate, represent approximately 193 million people Senate Republicans hold only two fewer seats, yet they represent 140 million people. 

En skulle tro at de rurale vil ha størst fordel ved å ha adgang til større godser og flere privilegier ved å være overrepresentert, men dette er så langt fra virkeligheten som mulig. Akkurat som i distrikt-Norge er det en urbaniseringsprosess i gang hvor tynne befolkede og bebygde distrikter/regioner tømmes for menneskelige ressurser  med tiden.

Rural America is in deep economic and social decay, “defined by declining wages, rising unemployment, persistent poverty, and increased government dependency.”

Rural populations are aging as younger generations flee areas with few economic opportunities and increasingly blinkered worldviews. Those who remain in rural areas live shorter lives, have limited access to health care, and on any host of health metrics—from maternal mortality to deaths caused by drug overdoses—have a rate higher than any other geographic group.

De får svært lite for sin støtte til republikanerne.

In short, rural America has made one of the worst deals in American politics—they slavishly support a Republican Party that not only does little to stop their inexorable decline but actually makes it worse.

Statlige tjenester er mer enn bare nødvendig, det er på mange steder selve eksistensberettigelse for sårbare lokalsamfunn i ringe omgivelser. Kulturkrigen og motstand mot offentlige tjenester gjør det nemlig verre og verre for de rurale, som kan risikere å miste utdanning for sine barn, legekontor og fødested for sine mødre og døtre, få færre fornyelser ute på landsbygda hvor internettdekning kan bli helt fraværende og antivaksineringsholdninger er i ferd med å svekke folkehelsa "der ute", hvor det helt uventet har oppstått en opioidepidemi - det er flere rusdødsfall på landsbygda enn i byene i dag - helt absurd for oss i Norge. 

Paradoxically, the worse things get, the more it increases despondency, disillusionment, and resentment—the three attributes Republican politicians most effectively mine to maintain their support in rural America.

Rather than offering an agenda for rural development, Republican politicians simply ladle out more steaming hot bowls of resentment and targets for rural anger, be they urban-dwelling liberals, undocumented immigrants, trans kids, beer companies, or the “fake news” media.

And rural MAGA laps it up.

Det definitivt minner om talibaniseringen av det rurale Afghanistan. Dumhet er visstnok smittsomt. Og den neste artikkelen bekrefter det. 

MAGA smelter sammen mens Michael Cohen skriver spalte - men sikter raseri mot feil Cohen (msn.com)

MAGA klarte ikke å lese og fordømmer "en av deres" som en forræder - den tidlige Trump-allierte Michael D. Cohen. 

[Medlem]

Trump wins the North Dakota Republican caucuses
The former president has defeated Nikki Haley in the last GOP presidential nominating contest before Super Tuesday, NBC News projects
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/north-dakota-primary-republican-trump-wins-rcna140424

[uname -i]

Sør-Afrikaneren Elon Musk har nettopp besøkt Donald Trump i Florida for andre gang på kort tid og resultatene ser man umiddelbart. Hva slags deal de har gjort, kan man spekulere i, men det man kan regne med er at det er en deal som gavner Musk og Trump og ikke så mye alle andre. 

Elon Musk mener her at Biden er en forræder og at han drar USA mot noe som er verre enn 9/11. Og antyder at om man ikke får et republikansk styre etter valget så kan det bli global atomkrig. Tipper det er et fint lite signal til mange ustabile kokoer rundt omkring.

PS! Elon Musk vet ikke engang hvordan Jeopardy fungerer.

 

 

 

Endret 5. mars av uname -i

[0laf]

 

[Medlem]

 

[Red Frostraven]

Jeg håper ingen er skadet nok til å høre på Trump, og tro at hva han sier er fornuftig.

Hvis noen gjør, fortell gjerne hva dere mener er første gang han sier noe fornuftig i videoen over, og hva det er.

[JK22]

JK22 skrev (På 29.2.2024 den 1:55 AM):

Det har kommet meget voldsomme reaksjoner.

Denne CNN-artikkelen er interessant. 

Opinion: How the Supreme Court got things so wrong on Trump ruling | CNN

As our country confronts another crisis of American republicanism unleashed by former President Donald Trump and his followers’ reluctance to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, we are rediscovering the importance of the Reconstruction-era 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Though ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment laid the foundation of our modern rights in the 20th century and contains provisions to prevent an attempt to overthrow American democracy or compromise democratic governance. The framers of the 14th Amendment meant for it to be binding — if they didn’t, they would not have made it a part of the fundamental law of the country. A constitutional mandate is, most importantly, self-enforcing. It does not require a law or a trial to enforce it.

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that Trump is not disqualified from the presidential ballot. The Supreme Court was united on the idea that Trump will remain on the ballot in Colorado and that the state cannot remove him off its ballot. But the justices were divided about how broadly the decision should be construed. A conservative 5-4 majority, usually very respectful of states’ rights, said that no state could remove a federal candidate off any ballot — with four justices, including the court’s three liberal justices, asserting that the court should have limited its opinion.

Although the 14th Amendment was ratified during Reconstruction, the period immediately after the Civil War, its provisions weren’t just for that historical moment in time, but a safeguard for the future. In ruling that Trump should stay on the presidential ballot of 2024, the Supreme Court has delivered a mortal blow to Section 3 that basically eviscerates its power altogether. In doing so, the court is living up to its sorry 19th-century history of emasculating Reconstruction federal civil rights laws and constitutional amendments.

The Colorado Supreme Court, in Trump v. Anderson, had upheld Trump’s disqualification per Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, but the high court baldly rejected that: “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.” But Section 3 does not call for Congress to enforce disqualification for participating or aiding in an insurrection. It only gives Congress the power to remove that disqualification by a two-thirds majority of each house.

While correctly pointing out that the 14th Amendment restricted state autonomy, the high court again erred in claiming that the “Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made.” To argue that the “States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency” is tantamount to claiming that the states have no power to uphold the Constitution.

It bears repeating that qualifications to run for president and the constitutional disqualification of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment are self-executing. The Colorado Supreme Court did not enforce that disqualification; it simply upheld Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. In their concurring opinion, the three liberal justices, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued against “a chaotic state-by-state patchwork” that the Colorado decision would allegedly unleash, while chiding the majority for its lack of “judicial restraint” in ruling not just in this case, but for all future cases on the need for congressional legislation to enforce Section 3.

While the court’s liberal justices rightly grasped that the majority decision would emasculate the constitutional disqualification for waging and abetting an insurrection against the US government, they wrongly surmised that upholding the Colorado decision would allow each state to go their own way. Just as this decision allows Trump to be on the presidential ballots of all states, upholding the 14th Amendment disqualification would have meant his removal from the presidential ballots of all states. As during Reconstruction, when even Republican-appointed judges went along with undoing federal laws and constitutional amendments, the justices have also left us defenseless against future insurrection attempts. As they conclude, “the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President.”

The Supreme Court heard this case on appeal from the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which in Trump v. Anderson, a case brought by Colorado voters, ruled that Trump is disqualified from the presidential ballot under Section 3. The secretaries of state of Maine and of Illinois had also evoked this amendment clause in their attempt to remove Trump from the states’ ballots.

While many of the insurrectionists have been tried for their actions during January 6th, Trump is still on trial for this act of supreme betrayal to his oath of office and other alleged criminal misdoings. Trump, of course, vehemently denies this charge and claims executive immunity from all wrongdoing. He is also fast becoming the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency. In their decision, the Supreme Court made no attempt to decide whether Trump and his followers did engage in an insurrection or not.

The language of Section 3 is clear and unmistakable: Any person who has sworn an oath of office to uphold the Constitution and then participated in or given aid and comfort to a violent insurrection against the government of the United States is barred from holding office unless pardoned by two-thirds of both houses of Congress. The president, like any other federal official who takes such an oath of office on the United States Constitution, is covered by this provision. Trump’s lawyers’ attempts to hold the president of United States above the rule of law and endow him with absolute immunity, even in cases of personal wrongdoing, make a mockery of our republican form of government, a constitutional guarantee and would convert our republic into a monarchy where the king can do no wrong.

The Republican Party of the mid-19th century, the party of former President Abraham Lincoln and big government, sought to safeguard the American republic from all future insurrections after the slaveholders’ rebellion that had precipitated a crisis of the Union and Civil War. Historians and legal scholars, who submitted amicus briefs to SCOTUS in Trump v. Anderson, overwhelmingly agreed on Trump’s disqualification, citing copious amounts of evidence from the framers of the amendment and congressional debates. In the interest of full disclosure, I signed one of the briefs and my book was cited in the other.

For the conservative majority in the Supreme Court to ignore this historical testimony is tantamount to betraying their own principles of constitutional interpretation, originalism that looks to the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. For them, it’s strict construction for thee but not for me. Not to mention that one of them, Justice Clarence Thomas, is highly compromised, given his wife’s involvement in the events that preceded the January insurrection, and should have recused himself from this case.

But even some of the liberal judges, including Kagan and Jackson, put forth a line of questioning that betrayed an outdated adherence to ideas of states’ rights, which should have died on the battlefields of the Civil War, and that has historically allowed the court to ignore the plain meaning of the Reconstruction amendments. If Colorado and Maine can remove Trump from the ballot, why would red states not do the same to President Joe Biden, they mused. But if the Section 3 disqualification had been upheld by the Supreme Court, it would have had a national effect and would not have been confined only to Colorado. Unlike Trump, President Biden faces no such automatic, self-executing constitutional disqualification nationally.

Of course, the Supreme Court has a sorry history of political meddling even as it has sought to wrap around itself the robes of impartial jurisprudence. From the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which sought to outlaw the platform of the newly formed antislavery Republican Party and declare African Americans non-citizens, to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which facilitated racial apartheid in the South, the Supreme Court has played an especially abysmal role in undermining democratic governance and equal justice for Black Americans in the 19th century.

The interracial democracy of Reconstruction was overthrown not just by domestic terror in the postwar South perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan and similar racist groups, but also by a series of reactionary judicial decisions rendered by the Supreme Court in cases such as United States v. Cruikshank (1876) that let the perpetrators of one of the worst racial massacres in the South go scot-free, the Civil Rights Cases (1883) that allowed the rise of racial segregation, and Williams v. Mississippi (1898) that allowed southern states to disfranchise Black men using legal subterfuge in violation of the 15th Amendment.

Using states’ rights reasoning of “state action” and the state’s “police powers,” the Supreme Court left Black Americans to the tender mercies of ex-Confederates, who inaugurated a regime of disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, convict lease labor, debt peonage (which it finally outlawed in 1905) and racial terror. The court also never implemented the provision of the 14th Amendment that would make southern states suffer a loss of representation in Congress for disfranchising Black voters. This is another sleeping giant in the 14th Amendment that can be activated against states with voter suppression laws today.

Only relatively recently has the Supreme Court upheld the equal protections of the 14thAmendment to dismantle Jim Crow and establish gay marriage and reproductive rights for women. But the right-wing majority in the Supreme Court has been steadily walking back those decisions and acting true to historical form in emasculating voting and reproductive rights. The Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade (1973), the right to privacy derived from the 14th Amendment, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) and kneecapped the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforcing the 14th and 15th amendments in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).

It seems the court develops political qualms in enforcing the Constitution only when the fate of American democracy is at stake. With its approval ratings at a historic low, SCOTUS, instead of correcting course, has adhered to the mostly dismal historical record of the Reconstruction-era Supreme Court.

There is not substantial case law regarding Section 3, precisely because the country has not been subject to violent domestic insurrections since the slaveholders’ rebellion. Just as the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause for freed people was misused by the courts during the Gilded Age to protect corporations from government regulation, the only time Sec3 was implemented was when it was misused against Socialist Party representative Victor Berger, who opposed the First World War.

Berger’s lawyer wrongly argued that Sec 3 had been repealed by the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 that pardoned all ex-Confederates, as if it were formulated only for them. While Berger was ultimately vindicated and got to serve in the House of Representatives, everyone acknowledges that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is a binding, enforceable part of the Constitution.

But just as it has gutted the protections and provisions of the 14th Amendment in the past, the Supreme Court has now rendered ineffectual its one provision that could prevent the overthrow of the American republic.

Artikkelforfatteren er en av de første som nå har kommet i dybden, og kommet med en konklusjon om at den føderale høyesterettens avgjørelse var galt; dertil på galt grunnlag.

Det er åpenbart at de liberale dommernes tilslutning er basert på en logisk kortslutning som selv et barn kan se; for å diskvalifisere Biden må han ha gjort seg skyldig i brudd på Seksjon 3, og det finnes ikke autoritet for å fremme en slik sak uten legal dekning - og ikke minst; dette er føderal lov, ikke delstatlig lov. Hvis en delstatlig rettsinstans diskvalifisere en presidentkandidat, er det med dekning i en lov som dekker alle delstater i føderasjonen. Her valgt de liberale dommerne å gjøre en alvorlig feilhandling, utvilsomt for å unngå et konservativ flertall og splittelse i høyesteretten. 

Everybody Hates the Supreme Court’s Disqualification Ruling | The New Republic

Her er en andre artikkel; 

Everybody Hates the Supreme Court’s Disqualification Ruling

Trump and his diehards aside, many of those who wanted the court to leave the former president on the ballot still think the justices managed to screw it up.

The Supreme Court released its 13-page decision in Trump v. Anderson on Monday. In their ruling, which is 9–0 for some parts and 5–4 for others, the justices effectively nullified the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for insurrectionists as a meaningful factor in American politics. Congress could theoretically revive the clause by passing a law to enforce it, the majority noted. They know full well that Congress is more likely to declare me the archduke of Nevada.

I already wrote on Monday about the ruling’s manifold flaws: It disregarded the text of the clause itself, it willfully misunderstood how the Fourteenth Amendment works and how American elections are run, and it went further than necessary to decide matters that weren’t before the court. The ruling is also now receiving criticism from a broad cross section of legal scholars and commentators, including some who actually agree with the ultimate result.

Michael C. Dorf, a Cornell University law professor, criticized the court for its mishandling of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court effectively held on Monday that the disqualification clause, which is located in Section 3, is not self-executing. States cannot execute it on their own for federalism reasons, the court concluded, and Congress must pass specific legislation for anyone else to enforce it.

“The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how [disqualification] determinations should be made,” the court wrote. “The relevant provision is Section 5, which enables Congress, subject of course to judicial review, to pass ‘appropriate legislation’ to ‘enforce’ the Fourteenth Amendment.”

While that may sound reasonable at first glance, it actually makes no sense if one knows anything about the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 1 of the amendment, Dorf noted, is very famously self-executing. “No legislation by Congress is required to entitle persons otherwise properly in state or federal court to object that the application of state law or policy to them violates ‘due process’ or ‘equal protection,’” he pointed out. The court’s argument makes even less sense when applied to the disqualification clause, in particular.

“As [the liberal justices] point out, by authorizing Congress to lift the bar on insurrectionists by a 2/3rds vote, Section 3 implies that the default is automatic disqualification,” Dorf explained. “In a passage I read about a dozen times before giving up and assuming that the per curiam author is simply trolling readers, the Court actually says that the assignment to Congress of an ‘amnesty power’ via a 2/3rds vote somehow ‘reinforces’ its (erroneous) conclusion that Section 3 is not self-executing.”

The court’s explanation for this reversal is that the Fourteenth Amendment is ultimately about asserting federal power over the states, and that interpreting the disqualification clause to expand state power over federal officials would “invert” that premise. Dorf noted, however, that the underlying goal of the amendment was to prevent ex-Confederates from seizing power in the South and “for the deeper purpose of preventing the defeated rebels or others who would follow in their footsteps from repeating sins of the past.”

“Seen in that broader perspective, there is nothing at all anomalous about state enforcement of Section 3 against federal office holders or candidates,” he continued. “Where those people are insurrectionists, one might better conclude that failure to enforce Section 3 betrays the 14th Amendment’s core purposes.”

Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, was also critical of the ruling’s reasoning. Part of the court’s logic was that allowing state-level disqualification challenges to succeed would undermine the uniformity of federal elections. But Somin noted that the states routinely play a role in “enforcing and adjudicating other constitutional qualifications for candidates for federal office,” including age requirements and the natural-born citizen clause for president.

“In 2016, there was litigation in multiple states over claims brought by Trump supporters to the effect that Texas Senator Ted Cruz, his chief rival for the GOP presidential nomination, was not a ‘natural born’ citizen,” Somin observed. “State courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey ruled that Cruz was eligible. But no one doubted that they had the authority to adjudicate the issue.”

He also discounted the court’s fears that upholding the Colorado ruling would lead to “chaos” in state election processes. The justices warned that such chaos more or less compelled their result. “An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and states across the country, in different ways and at different times,” the court claimed. “The disruption would be all the more acute—and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result—if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos—arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.”

It is hard to take this seriously in a conversation about whether a guy who tried to overturn the last election by force should be allowed to run. But even if one agrees with that assessment, it should not inform how one reads the constitutional text. What the court describes as chaos can also be seen as a by-product of the structural features of American democracy.

“Concerns about a potential ‘patchwork’ of conflicting state rulings are ultimately policy objections to the Constitution’s decentralized state-by-state scheme of election administration,” Somin explained. “As the conservative justices (rightly) love to remind us in other contexts, courts are not permitted to second-guess policy determinations that are under the authority of other branches of government or—as in this case—the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution.”

Dan McLaughlin, a lawyer and National Review senior writer, opposed disqualifying Trump outright. “Not one justice thought that Colorado had the power to do what it did in a decision full of elastic reasoning,” he argued on Monday. “Only the most deluded figures of the legal ‘Resistance’ ever believed this gambit would work.” To that end, he thought that the court should overturn the Colorado ruling by holding that Trump’s actions on and around January 6 did not amount to “insurrection” as it is used in the clause.

But while he agreed with the final outcome, he also found plenty of fault with how the court got there. The justices dismissed, for example, the idea that the election clauses in Article 1 and 2, which allow states to hold elections for federal offices, also allow them to apply disqualifications under the Fourteenth Amendment. “Granting the states that authority would invert the Fourteenth Amendment’s rebalancing of federal and state power,” the court wrote.

McLaughlin was unpersuaded. “This is what happens when the court writes too quickly,” he noted. “State courts are bound by the Supremacy Clause, and they are presumptively empowered to enforce the rest of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments (with the arguable exception of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment). Nobody would argue that state courts can’t enforce, say, the equal-protection clause.”

On the policy concerns raised by the court, McLaughlin is also dismissive. “The Court frets that different states could reach different results, possibly due to different state procedures,” he wrote. “But this ignores the role of the Court itself in resolving conflicting state decisions. It is also partly an accidental feature of there being no definitive guidance from the Court on the meaning of Section 3’s operative terms—guidance the Court today yet again declined to provide.” He suggested that the court could have said that Congress could force the states to adopt certain procedural requirements as a backstop, which it can technically still do after Monday’s ruling.

McLaughlin has plenty of criticism for the court’s liberals as well. In their concurrence, he sees a desire by them to ensure that “the charge of ‘insurrection’ can be left a suppurating wound to be reopened at the pleasure of Resistance judges—perhaps waving around the vote of House Democrats.” They, however, were not his ultimate problem with the ruling. “But at the end of the day, in the haste of all the justices to put this pre-election dispute to bed, and in the determination of the liberals to leave open an avenue for post-election guerilla lawfare against a potential second Trump administration, the Court failed in its duty,” he wrote.

The Supreme Court’s failures in Trump v. Anderson are even more striking when you step back and consider the context in which it made them. The American legal system is defined by its use of precedent. In theory, judges make decisions by looking at how their predecessors decided similar cases and applying those principles to the facts before them. Precedent is binding on lower courts and persuasive authority for other courts. It is the glue that binds the whole thing together.

Here the justices had what is now a rare opportunity: They could interpret a provision in the Constitution for the first time. The Supreme Court did not decide any disqualification clause cases during the Reconstruction era, and it has not had a reason to do so since then. The closest thing to precedent that the justices had was a circuit court ruling by then–Chief Justice Samuel Chase acting alone, which is not binding precedent on the full court. For one of the few times in the justices’ careers, they had a blank sheet of paper upon which they could write.

They blew it. The court’s framing of how American elections work and whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s provisions are self-executing are not persuasive even for those inclined to agree with the result. And as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer noted, the self-described originalist justices did not even use originalist principles to reach their decision. If the justices aren’t going to use their preferred method of constitutional interpretation to interpret a provision for the very first time, with no precedent to constrain them, why should they do it for more well-established ones?

The natural reaction might be to blame the ruling’s faults on the justices’ haste. Some of these problems may have been correctible if the court had had more time to think them through. But that excuse can only take them so far. After all, the justices made it unusually clear at oral arguments last month that they had already made up their minds on the matter. From that premature decision flowed every other mistake they made.

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The Supreme Court Butchered the Disqualification Clause | The New Republic

The Supreme Court Butchered the Disqualification Clause

The justices unanimously ignored the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot—but some of them ignored their oaths as well.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson is a disaster for the American constitutional order. It paves the way for insurrectionists to run for and hold federal office despite the Constitution’s categorical language that disqualifies them. It decides questions that weren’t before the justices in this case in the first place, and the answers they gave will only immunize these and future insurrectionists from potential consequences. It blatantly twists text and history to reach a preferred outcome. In a case about the importance of oaths of office, the justices seem to have forgotten theirs.

In their central holding on Monday, the justices unanimously overturned a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that former President Donald Trump was barred from the ballot by the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause. That clause bars former officeholders who participated in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding future public office. To overturn that ruling, the justices held that the states can’t enforce the clause against federal officeholders.

Then the court’s five male conservative justices went even further to insulate Trump from the clause’s language. They held that federal candidates and officeholders can only be disqualified if Congress passes a law to affirmatively enforce the clause. That would appear to forestall disqualification by other means—if, for example, a Democratic-led Congress refuses to count Trump’s electoral votes next January because he is disqualified.

The other four justices parted ways with their colleagues on this part. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing only for herself, pointedly argued that the case “does not require us to address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced.” The court’s three liberal justices went even further to directly castigate the five justices in the majority for their overreach.

“Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate,” Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their joint concurring opinion. “It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.”

To understand why Monday’s ruling is so calamitous, one must start with the text of the disqualification clause itself. That clause, which is found in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, reads as follows:

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.

This clause’s language is thunderous and unequivocal. It is, I admit, somewhat awkwardly written: The drafters made it hard to casually parse by explicitly naming so many offices to which it applies. But the thrust of the amendment is clear. In general terms, no person who previously swore an oath to the United States and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it can ever again hold another public office at the state or federal level. Only the overwhelming judgment of Congress can remove that disqualification once it attaches.

While the clause excluded numerous ex-Confederates after the Civil War, Congress ultimately waived it for most of them in 1873. The disqualification clause then lapsed into irrelevance for the next century and a half—not because it was no longer operative but because the U.S. did not experience another insurrection or rebellion during that time. Only after January 6 did it become relevant once more. William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two prominent conservative legal scholars, argued last year in an influential law review article that the disqualification clause still carried legal weight. Their originalist analysis led them to conclude that the clause was still active, that it was self-executing, and that it applied to Trump and his co-conspirators.

Buoyed by that argument and others, a group of voters sued Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold last year to challenge Trump’s inclusion on the 2024 primary ballot. They argued that he was automatically disqualified from future office for his role in orchestrating the events of January 6 while serving as president. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with that argument last December and ordered Trump removed from the ballot. (They stayed their ruling pending appeal, so Trump’s name is still technically on the state ballot when Colorado voters take part in Super Tuesday this week.)

It was clear at oral argument last month that the justices, for whatever reason, did not want to enforce the disqualification clause against Trump. What they struggled to articulate during that session was a reason why it shouldn’t be enforced against him. The disqualification clause’s language—the very constitutional text that they are charged with interpreting—is categorical. The justices could not get around it so easily.

Some had suggested, for example, that the disqualification clause did not apply to the presidency. This may have been the simplest escape hatch for the court to choose, but it would have inflicted collateral damage elsewhere. Trump argued that the president did not count as one of the “officers, civil or military, of the United States” because the president is charged with appointing them. Adopting that argument, however, could have excluded the president from the Constitution’s ban on serving in multiple branches of government or its prohibition of religious tests for public office.

Other requirements would have flouted the text itself. The disqualification clause does not require, for example, that those who fall under it first be tried and convicted of insurrection or rebellion-related crimes. The ex-Confederates who originally fell under its auspices, from Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee all the way down, faced no such trials or civil processes after the war. They were simply disqualified until Congress said otherwise.

So, to avoid disqualification for Trump, the Supreme Court effectively rewrote the clause and ignored how the rest of the Constitution works. Here’s how it normally works:

* The Constitution gives states the power to hold elections for House and Senate seats.

* State legislatures are also empowered to hold elections to decide their state’s slate of presidential and vice presidential electors in the Electoral College. In some early presidential elections, state lawmakers simply chose electors without public input.

As part of that process, the states are also empowered to disqualify candidates who can’t hold the offices that they seek. States can and have excluded would-be presidential candidates who don’t meet various age requirements and who aren’t natural-born citizens, for example. The Colorado Supreme Court logically concluded that participating in an insurrection or rebellion was another one of these requirements and acted accordingly.

But the Supreme Court disagreed. “There is little reason to think that these [election] Clauses implicitly authorize the states to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates,” the court wrote. “Granting the states that authority would invert the Fourteenth Amendment’s rebalancing of federal and state power.” There is actually no reason to think otherwise. The Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters operated from the assumption that states had the power to decide a federal candidate’s qualifications. If they wanted to say differently, they would have done so.

Aha, the five-justice majority said, but we have an answer to that! They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters did just that by including an enforcement clause at the end of the amendment. The Supreme Court rested its argument on Section 5, which contains the usual final clause in many of the post–Civil War constitutional amendments: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

“Any state enforcement of Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, though, would not derive from Section 5, which confers power only on ‘[t]he Congress,’” the court wrote. “As a result, such state enforcement might be argued to sweep more broadly than congressional enforcement could under our precedents. But the notion that the Constitution grants the States freer rein than Congress to decide how Section 3 should be enforced with respect to federal offices is simply implausible.”

This interpretation is nonsensical on its face. While the enactment clause allows Congress to enforce other provisions in the amendment, it makes literally no sense if applied to the disqualification clause. That clause already provided a very explicit role for Congress to play in the process: Lawmakers can, by two-thirds votes in each chamber, lift disqualifications that are automatically imposed. To graft the enforcement clause on top of it as well would lead to clearly absurd results, as the court’s three liberals pointed out in their concurring opinion.

“It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation,” the court’s three liberals wrote. That is an understatement on their part. The Fourteenth Amendment’s framers could not have envisioned such an absurd result, but apparently Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh are willing to impose it to achieve a desired end.

How could the court butcher the ruling so badly? The simplest answer appears to be fear. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, wrote a concurring opinion where she opined that the other five conservative justices should not have gone as far as they did by ruling that only Congress can enforce the clause. But she also chastised the court’s liberals for expressing their disagreement with the ruling in more animated language.

“In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency,” Barrett wrote. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

The majority’s sense of discomfit is even more explicit. “An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and states across the country, in different ways and at different times,” the court warned in its ruling. “The disruption would be all the more acute—and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result—if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos—arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the inauguration.”

There are three problems with the court’s approach and reasoning here.

* First, the Supreme Court is essentially caving to threats. A coalition of Republican-led states claimed in friend of the court briefs that some states might exclude other presidential candidates from the ballot if Trump were disqualified. The justices are rewarding those threats of disruption and chaos by using them to give the Republican-led states what they want, no matter how baseless the threats may be. By referring to the “national temperature” and the “volatile season of a presidential election,” the justices appear to be bowing to fear of Trump and his supporters if they rule against him. I do not begrudge the justices their fear of his supporters’ potential for violence—I’m sure that they too noticed the insurrection that was attempted on January 6, 2021, across the street from where they work. But fear does not release them from their own obligations to the Constitution and the rule of law.

* Second, this line of reasoning ignores how American elections actually work. Not every presidential candidate is on the ballot in every state, especially when it comes to third-party candidates. As I noted earlier, states are free to not hold a presidential election at all. The Colorado legislature could theoretically vote tomorrow to award all of the state’s electoral votes to Joe Biden, thereby disqualifying Trump by other means. And even the Electoral College breaks down from time to time: The House chose the president in a contingent election in 1824, and Congress effectively decided the winner in the disputed election of 1876. Two of the court’s members worked for George W. Bush’s legal team in Bush v. Gore; one of them helped decide it. To argue that the Constitution created an electoral process inherently free from “chaos” is to be ignorant of it.

* Finally, the court’s reference to “nullify[ing] the votes of millions and chang[ing] the election result” by disqualifying presidential candidates is utterly contemptible. If Arnold Schwartzenegger ran for president this year despite being born in Austria, nobody would claim that any of his supporters’ votes were nullified or the election results would be changed when states rightly kept him off the ballot. He was never eligible to participate in the first place. The same reasoning applies to Trump: By inciting an insurrection against the constitutional order, he has forfeited his right to hold office under it. The Supreme Court dishonors itself by falsely equating a constitutional mechanism to exclude insurrectionists from office to what the insurrection sought to do in the first place.

Beyond all of this legal language and reasoning, Trump v. Anderson is a case about oaths. The disqualification clause only applies to those who previously swore oaths to serve in public office. Trump swore an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution on January 20, 2017. He violated that oath on January 6, 2021, by orchestrating a violent attack on the Capitol to overturn an election he lost.

By misreading the Constitution to prevent anyone from stopping him and other insurrectionists from running for and holding public office, the justices have diminished themselves, their oaths, and the institution they serve.

Det er dekning i min påstand om at Roberts har gjort seg skyldig i edbrudd og trukket hele høyesteretten inn i en meget alvorlig situasjon som kan lede til omfattende dissens, som kan i verste fall lede til at høyesterettens immunitet kan kollapse - eller at man vil risikere samme skjebne som høyesteretten hadde i 1857-1865; den idiotiske avgjørelsen "Dred Scott v. Sandford" i 1857 var et forsøk på å bilegge konflikten om slaveriet, ved å gjøre slaver til eiendommer over hele USA og ugyldiggjøre hele stridsspørsmålet om slaven og slaveriet.  Høyesterettsjustitiarius Roger B. Taney endt opp med å bli uglesett, isolert og generelt forhatt fram til hans død i 1864, og høyesteretten var helt maktløst da ingen ville lytte eller respektere rettsinstansen. 

Det skjer forresten mer vanlig enn hva man ante, det var sett gjentatte ganger at hvis høyesteretten kom med uønskelige avgjørelser hendt det ofte at denne utsettes for dissens, som ledet til et brudd som kunne varer i lang tid som da Taney levd fram til hans død. Dagens høyesteretten har mistet meget mye folkelig støtte, så dette kan bli et nytt lavmål som kan lede til isolasjon fram til det konservative FedSoc-flertallet er fjernet. 

[qualbeen]

Red Frostraven skrev (23 timer siden):

Jeg håper ingen er skadet nok til å høre på Trump, og tro at hva han sier er fornuftig.

Hvis noen gjør, fortell gjerne hva dere mener er første gang han sier noe fornuftig i videoen over, og hva det er.

Forut for sin første periode var det mange nok som lyttet til ham, til at han ble president.

Jeg var sjokkert den gang. Hvordan kunne så mange stemme frem bavianen? 

Nå er jeg ikke lenger sjokkert. Jeg tror (dessverre) Trump kommer til å vinne. Det er mye splid og misnøye i USA. Og ekstremt lav tiltro til medier. Dette gir grobunn for alternativ nyheter; les løgnfabrikker som kun presenterer far-right / far-left synspunkter.

Amerikanske velgere må velge mellom pest eller kolera. (Jeg hadde valgt Kolera, da det finnes både vaksine og medisin mot denne sykdommen. Men det vet ikke amerikanere, så ca halve befolkningen kommer til å velge pest!)

Dersom Trump ikke vinner, blir jeg overrasket. Og glad! Kanskje kan tilliten min til amerikanske velgere på sikt gjennoppbygges? Men, næh, neppe. Han vinner lett. 

Det eneste Trump trenger å gjøre, er vel å påpeke at Biden er for gammel og rotet til å beholde vervet? (Hvilket han jo beviselig er!) En skandale at nasjonen ikke har noen bedre president-kandidater, enn de to eldgamle karene!

[Red Frostraven]

qualbeen skrev (47 minutter siden):

Amerikanske velgere må velge mellom pest eller kolera. (Jeg hadde valgt Kolera, da det finnes både vaksine og medisin mot denne sykdommen. Men det vet ikke amerikanere, så ca halve befolkningen kommer til å velge pest!)

De må velge mellom overkokt brokkoli, og pest.