LIVE: Supreme Court Hears Trump 14th Amendment Case. We Got Any Gamblers In The House?
LIVE: Supreme Court Hears Trump 14th Amendment Case. We Got Any Gamblers In The House?
The suspense is killing us. Or maybe it's the existential dread.
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments today in Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to throw him off the primary ballot for Doing Bad Insurrection, in violation of the 14th Amendment’s section 3, which says that if you take an oath to support the Constitution and then do an Insurrection against the USA, you can never hold any office again.
Should be fun, especially since the text of the amendment is pretty damn clear on that. There’ll be three sets of statements, followed by questions from the justices. First comes Trump’s attorney, then the lawyers for the Colorado citizens suing to dump Trump from the ballot, and then Colorado’s Solicitor General, Shannon Stevenson, representing Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who does ballot stuff. Finally, Trump’s incompetent attorney will have a few minutes to rebut.
Dok interrupts his own post to add the Washington Post’s livestream, which is gooder than the AP because it identifies who’s speaking. Don’t play both at the same time; it might open a hellmouth or scare the dog.
Also, purely by coincidence, Reuters reports that federal police in Brazil are preparing to seize former President Jair Bolsonaro’s passport and arrest a bunch of his former aides, as part of an investigation into Bolsonaro supporters’ attempt to do their own January 6 after Bolsonaro lost his election on 2022. Bolsonaro has already been banned from running again until at least 2030. Hmmmmm!
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Just popped in to add the Washington Post’s livestream, which is gooder than the AP's because it identifies who’s speaking.
Don’t play both at the same time; it might open a hellmouth or scare the dog.
I personally feel the Wingnut 6 will parse the issue of “insurrection” and dodge the real issue of whether a person guilty of insurrection should be barred from running. They will rule that Trump wasn’t convicted of “insurrection,” or any other crime against the U.S. government related to 1/6. They will say it’s “debatable” and contested by Trump that he took part in the actions of the J6ers to a criminally culpable degree. He fired up the crowd at the Ellipse, and used barely disguised rhetoric like “fight like hell.” He did encourage them to march to the Capitol and even offered to join them. No doubt he wanted a mob of supporters to create a scene, at minimum, and more likely a disturbance that would require Congress to adjourn. But the SCOTUS is beholden to Trump, each of the 6 to varying degrees, perhaps. No doubt they have their safety in the back of their minds. If they issue a ruling that effectively ends Trump’s campaign, ALL the liquid hot MAGA will be directed at them. They will rule Trump hasn’t been legally adjudicated guilty of insurrection, so states using that as a basis to bar him are skipping a step. So they will decline to reach the real issue. I find it incredibly sad that someone guilty of the things Trump has done, the damage he’s inflicted on our country, lies he’s told, could be permitted to somehow run again. It’s an indictment on our entire system and a large portion of our society.