Simanaitis Says
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REPUBLICAN MADNESS CONTINUES
WHEN FUTURE HISTORIANS write The Decline and Fall of the United States, Republican names like Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, John G. Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett will loom large.
A Supermajority SCOTUS. As I recently noted here at SimanaitisSays, “I wonder what would have happened but for the hypocritical Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s timing objection to President Obama’s March 16, 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. McConnell later managed to forget this lofty principle when Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett in September 29, 2020, less than 35 days before the election.”
Presidential Immunity. Today, July 1, 2024, only three days before our national holiday celebrating liberation from kingly tyrannny, as reported by Reuters, “U.S. Supreme Court Finds Trump Has Broad Immunity from Prosecution.”
Reuters quotes Chief Justice Roberts: “We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office.”
“Some” immunity? Sorta like “some” violence?
Reuters continues, “Immunity for former presidents is ‘absolute’ with respect to their ‘core constitutional powers,’ Roberts wrote, and a former president has ‘at least a presumptive immunity’ for ‘acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility,’ meaning prosecutors face a high legal bar to overcome that presumption.”
Image from The Boston Globe.
The word “absolute” sounds particularly inappropriate in light of our Declaration of Independence and its view of “absolute tyranny” To wit: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States.”
Then follows 28 examples of King George III’s absolute “core” powers.
The word “absolute” is an absurd one for Roberts to choose, especially coming from an Originalist who, one would think, would recognize the word’s historical resonance.
A Pause from my Rant. I am thankful the day’s dismay was interspersed with occasional humor. The Borowitz Report confirms today “Americans Ask Supreme Court for Immunity from Trump.” In particular, Borowitz writes, “The Constitution was designed to shield people from domestic tyranny and foreign threats,” the filing reads. “Trump represents both.”
The New Yorker has a wonderful 4th of July card from the Alitos. It’s by Blitt, my favorite political cartoonist.
Image by Blitt from The New Yorker.
Which, alas, brings me back into ranting mode: “Justices Thomas and Alito Ignored Calls for Recusal in Jan. 6 Case,” The New York Times, June 28, 2024. This, despite Ginny Thomas’s text messages hoping to shape overturning the 2020 election. And, of course, Martha-Ann’s flag abuse.
Justice Sotomayor’s Dissent. Charles Savage writes in New York Times, July 1, 2024: “The three Democratic appointees railed against the ruling that former President Donald J. Trump has some immunity for his official actions, declaring that their colleagues had made the president into ‘a king above the law.’ ”
Savage observes, “Writing that the majority was ‘deeply wrong,’ Justice Sonia Sotomayor added that beyond its consequences for the bid to prosecute Mr. Trump for his attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, it would have ‘stark’ long-term consequences for the future of American democracy.”
“ ‘The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding,’ Sotomayer wrote, in an opinion joined by the other two Democratic appointees, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson,” Savage reports.
He continues, “Insulating the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the country and possibly the world, she noted—from criminal prosecution when he uses his official powers will allow him to freely use his official power to violate the law, exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, or other ‘evil ends.’ ”
Savage quotes Sotomayor examples of official powers: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” she wrote, adding: ‘Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably.’ ”
Savage observes, “Sometimes justices conclude their dissents with a softening and polite qualifier, writing ‘Respectfully, I dissent.’ Justice Sotomayor instead concluded this one harshly: ‘With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ ”
Trump, the loser in 2020 (and elsewhere in life), has already attempted ways of holding onto office. It remains for the courts—including SCOTUS—to decide the legal cases against Trump. God help us.
And, more important, it remains for the people of the United States to vote in this 2024 Presidential Election and reject these Republican shenanigans endangering our democracy. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
Ha! Another appropriate Borowitz: “Biden Uses Sweeping Immunity to Replace Republican Justices with Jill, Hunter, and the Obamas.”
Monsignor Simanaitis, there is absolutely no reason for you to soft pedal your genuine alarm above as “rant.” Being concerned seeing before our eyes on a daily basis the dissolution of our democracy immediately before July 4th is a once unimaginable horror to any American able to divine the distinction between our cornerstone equal justice under the law and Germany 1933 2.0.
Thank you, sir.
Joe Biden will recover from his over-coached debate performance, but Bratman’s torrent of lies over those 90 minutes were so proven by every stringent fact-checking organization; not a single exception. It is much easier to appear vital when every utterance a fabrication, a dodge, a repeated line, an inept recant of previously documented and witnessed statement.
The President has always stammered. Any speech pathologist will tell you stammering, and stuttering, more prevalent in intelligent folk. Add to this that President Biden had to recite copious facts and figures involving a score of disparate federal government agencies, and several global theaters, while suffering a cold. So his delivery was off. His facts were not.
The media feeding frenzy is just that, and playing up Biden’s stumble boosts ratings, which increases ad revenue. Everyone has bad days. Biden can rebound, but Bratman is stuck with a debate performance in which he ducked direct questions, and not a single, not one, of his statements passed the post-debate, stringent fact-checks of the networks.
So we help Biden save our democracy, and work to remove the Electoral College, a holdover from slave days and the sole reason Alfred E. Newman/Shrub W. Junior and Bratman/Orange Julius wound up in the Oval Office.
Thanks again, sir.
That card somehow promptedme to look up “The World Turned Upside Down” (Wikipedia). Allegedly played at Yorktown to accompany Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at the end of the American Revolution though Wikipedia notes that this is “According to American legend…”
Anyway, excellent rant, and thank you!
Vote Country, Not Party!
I guess some men ARE above the law… The Decline and Fall off the United States indeed.
thank