Kook Aid

“(The Supreme Court) don’t want to deal with this,” Ms. Lalich said. “It’s going to have to go nuclear, using the Insurrection Act and bringing out the military.”

One of Mr. Trump’s former national security advisers, Michael T. Flynn, whom Mr. Trump pardoned in November, told Trump supporters near the Supreme Court building not to “get bent out of shape” by the latest setback, assuring them that there were still ways to fight back.

“We decide the election,” he said, greeted by cheers. “We’re waging a battle across America.”

Is Evo Morales behind this?

“I keep comparing it somewhat to Jonestown,” said former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, referring to the cult that ended in a tragic mass suicide. “They’ve all drunk the Kool Aid. It just hasn’t killed them yet.” (...)

On Saturday, Mr. Trump lost yet another court case, as a federal judge in Wisconsin, Judge Brett H. Ludwig, who was appointed to the court by Mr. Trump this year, said his claims “fail as a matter of law and fact.” The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning Mr. Trump is barred from bringing cases on similar grounds in that district. (...)

Republican state legislators across the country are already contemplating new laws to make voting harder, as they continue to falsely portray the expansion and ease of mail-in voting during the pandemic as nefarious. Many of them view this year’s expanded voting ranks as bad for their party, despite Republican successes further down the ballot. Their consideration of new voting restrictions amounts to an ongoing attack on the integrity of the voting system, involving still more false and debunked claims.

“There is an anti-democratic virus that has spread in mainstream Republicanism, among mainstream Republican elected officials,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. “And that loss of faith in the machinery of democracy is a much bigger problem than any individual lawsuit.” (...)

A website of unknown provenance that caught the attention of law enforcement appeared to promote a hit list of mostly Republican officials who had resisted Mr. Trump’s demands to overturn an election he lost, listing their personal information and imposing red cross hairs over their pictures.

Mr. Trump made it clear that the Supreme Court decision would not slow a post-campaign campaign, the futility of which has dampened neither its ferocity nor its pertinacity. On Twitter, Mr. Trump on Saturday called it a “disgraceful miscarriage of justice” and wrote “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” (...)

Even after Mr. Trump’s loss, catering to the wishes of Republican voters has meant aping the president’s own paranoid style of politics by clinging to supposed examples of fraud even after they have been debunked in court. (...)

In a hearing about the 2020 election in Wisconsin led by statehouse Republicans on Friday, witnesses suggested the state faced election interference from the dead dictators Hugo Chavez and Joseph Stalin, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Kanye West. (...)

Tom Rath, a former Republican attorney general of New Hampshire, who endorsed Mr. Biden and opposed his party’s effort at the Supreme Court, lamented what seemed to be political incentives within his party to shake that trust. “It’s very unfortunate,’’ he said, “that some people tried to live off that chaos, perpetuate it and make it even more difficult for the average citizen to trust what government’s doing.”

Mr. Rath, who advised the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, added, “We’re in a very bad place as a party.’’

 Lazy8 wrote: 
This is my take on the function and purpose of the SCOTUS.  Could not have stated it better.

 RedTopFireBelow wrote:
 
Yup, I have often asked the same question myself and a few (not a lot) of Canadians have also wondered out loud, why 45 has not been shot dead yet.   A few, in my experience, have suggested that he should be shot.

From my perspective, it is a recurring nightmare, because Trump in life has already done so much damage to the USA; in death I fear he becomes a super popular martyr and his movement continues to hurt US interests for years, if not decades to come.  In this nightmare scenario, the USA does its best to drag down and hurt other rich western democracies, similar to what Trump has been doing for the past 4 years.

Jim Jordan.   Did not know who he was until the impeachment proceedings.  After a few minutes of watching JJ in action, I almost felt like taking a shower.....  On the bright side, I no longer feel so icky about some of our more sleazy conservative politicians.  Sleaze.  It is all relative.  

steeler wrote:

Interpreting the law is  the court's job. That includes interpreting the constitution. That's why we have judges. That, competently done, is not what I'm talking about.

In what sense was Korematsu v. United States an interpretation of the constitution, as opposed to simply disregarding it? How about Kelo v. New London, or Wickard v. Filburn?

These should not have been tough calls. The constitution isn't ambiguous about limiting the power of government in those areas, but the court rewrote the constitution in these cases to such an extent that it gave governments at various levels blank checks. That should frighten everybody; if  our recent experience in the executive branch doesn't drive that point home nothing will.

 Lazy8 wrote:
 

It is not unusual for there to be ambiguity in the text of a statute (for a variety of reasons that I am not delving into at the moment, but I might amplify later).  When ambiguity exists, a judge will look for any legislative history that may shed light as to the intent of the legislature. There are a number of canons of construction that instruct the process. Ultimately, the judge must interpret the text to resolve the case before the court. This, then, would not be an instance of the judge substituting his or her desired outcome for that of the legislature. Nor would it constitute the judge usurping the authority of the legislature. The case comes to the court with the opposing parties arguing for the adoption of competing interpretations of the text in question. The judge does decide the issue, but that is what the judge is required to do. 

haresfur wrote:

Funny thing about the Supreme Court: it's not about what I need. It's not about what anybody needs. It's about what the law says.

The (proper) remedy when what the law says and what you need is to change the law, which is done by re-writing the law. In the legislature. Where they make laws.

The court's job is to interpret the law and ensure that it conforms to constitutional restrictions on what laws are allowed to do and what legislatures are allowed to legislate. When the court re-writes the law it is stepping beyond its role. And that matters, because then we have lost the rule of law: that the law be knowable by the people who are required to follow it, and that it applies to everybody equally. Those people would be us, by the way.

If the text of the law isn't sufficient then no dispute is ever settled, nothing is ever legal or illegal until the black robes speak—kings like Solomon, pronouncing on each case based on their own whims or what god whispers in their ears for only them to hear.

So with every case they hear the rule of law is on the table. The consequences of a particular case may be good or bad for the plaintiff or the defendant, but the process has consequences for all of us.

 haresfur wrote:
 

Yeah, I can see Gorsuch. Kavanaugh is a hack at best. Barrett is an obvious favor - she doesn't have the experience, or the serious legal background to be where she is. One of them should not be there regardless.  I'm curious to see what course the democrats take to minimize the impact of mcconnell's actions from the last 5 years. The institution has been damaged regardless. I do wonder if the impacts can be reversed, and if not, how long it will take the rot to damn the foundations. 

 Lazy8 wrote:
 
Guess you aren't going to need an abortion

steeler wrote:

Indeed. They (and Trump himself) may have been useful idiots in preserving the rule of law—something they subscribe to in name but not in fact.

 Lazy8 wrote:
 
Ah, I was reacting to your sentence about judicial appointments being the longest-lasting legacy of a President.

I would reserve judgment on the 3 Trump appointees to the Supreme Court. A little early.

What is additionally concerning in this sorry episode is that most Trump supporters seem to believe that the Justices should have ruled for Trump. These are many of the same people who  — at least in my view — blather on about the Constitution, the rule of law, textualist judges, and originalism. Their support for this  case — and, frankly, virtually all of the election challenges — underscores to me how little they understand about the Constitution and jurisprudence.

steeler wrote:

Perish the thought! He has zero credibility himself, but his judicial nominations (at least to the Supreme Court) have been exemplary.

Which makes it clear he had next to nothing to do with picking them.

 Lazy8 wrote:
 
It truly would have been a sign of the apocalypse for our democracy if any Justice had not slapped down this preposterous case. 

It would be ironic if some were to construe Trump’s legacy as being his respect for the rule of law.

steeler wrote:

Any president's longest-lasting legacy is judicial appointments. I am very grateful these judges are loyal to the law and the constitution rather than to the man or party that put them there.

I am not optimistic about our chances going forward.

I guess Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney now are not “great” Justices. Apparently, they were “MiA” and lacking “courage.” 

 haresfur wrote:
 
They could be down to a dozen each, but they'd never surrender the Senate seats.

 islander wrote:
 
With the deaths in N and S Dakota, maybe it is time for them to be combined.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
 
I haven't listened yet, but ifbthis were to happen, how many states does  CA split into?

I think I've shared it before but there's a thing where Texas could decide to break itself into 4 states if they want. And by "want," I mean if the state legislature goes ahead and does it. Gerrymander it so that Austin is one state, you're left with 3 pretty reliable GOP states. Actually, it could probably be gerrymandered so that there are 4 GOP states. 

So no need to actually secede, Texas. 

 Red_Dragon wrote:
 
He's very sane.