Unlike most recent red-letter Supreme Court cases, Thursday’s arguments over the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot for his actions on Jan. 6 did not showcase a stark ideological split between the liberal and conservative blocs.
I am fine with this; as I have said before, beat him soundly in the general election, like a Nixon '72 landslide in reverse.
ETA: No cat, but bird, in this case rare Sabine’s Gull, photo’ed off UK coast in October.
In end it is a legitimately dangerous tool that can easily cut another way. The non-Righty Supremes are not wrong to question.
Well doubt it’s a landslide but so long as it’s solid enough in enough key Swing States…
So if not the state courts, who does get to decide whether an insurrectionist can still run for office? Why bother having that clause in the 14th Amendment in the first place if people like Trump are permanently eligible?
She wondered skeptically whether “the framers would have put such a high and significant and important office [and] smuggled it in through that catchall phrase.”
OFFS. Do you think that somehow the architects of the 14th thought, gee, a former insurrectionist can’t be trusted to be a postmaster, or a Presidential elector from a state, but can be trusted to actually be POTUS?
Use your fucking brain.
I believe @txlawyer predicted a 9 - 0 vote.
That astonished me. It hardly requires some novelty interpretation to think that a “catchall phrase” catches all. Like it’s meant to do. If they’d meant to exempt the president, they’d have said so, no?
" Supreme Court Liberals Did Not Swoop In To Save Effort To Disqualify Trump"
Good. It was a stupid effort done in the manner it’s been done. The inherent danger of turning the gerrymandering of state legislatures to produce minority rule in red states becoming a vehicle for essentially gerrymandering the POTUS election ballots across the country was fucking insane.
“The question you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be President of the United States,” Justice Elena Kagan said to the attorney for the Colorado petitioners.
What troubles me here is that nobody seems concerned when some “fringe party” candidate can’t qualify to be on the ballot in all 50 states for whatever reason. Seems to me to be the same issue of “a single state” disqualifying a candidate.
Edited to add: Every state has qualifications to appear on the primary ballot, be it registration, signatures or whatever. Eligibility to serve as determined by that state is just one more qualification. The parties, at their national conventions, can name their candidate and then qualify them for the final state ballots. If they nominate an ineligible person, they are thumbing their noses at our Republic. Eff Them!
As to the office of President not being named in the Amendment, I don’t think the Congress at the time thought the President “above” or exempt from the possibility of disqualification. While certainly one would hope no person running for President had participated in an insurrection, isn’t it far more likely that since “no man is above the law” neither is any particular federal office considered above the law??? This is a stupid argument to me.
I think if they fall on he isn’t disqualified CURRENTLY, that’s the right answer. Not PERMANENTLY eligible.
My hope is that they include the President in the clause, leave it so that the disqualification is self-executing, and provide a clear definition for the term insurrection in the context of the amendment.
I think any future case could start in the states but it would be easier for the DOJ to argue that certain individuals that that meet the criteria of insurrectionist are ineligible based on the Supreme Court’s own definition. That would then apply nationally and prevent a single state from deciding that Joe Biden is an insurrectionist but it would still be able to be disputed by a candidate or taken up by 2/3rds of Congress.
Flip that logic around and it is equally valid. The text specifically mentions Senators, Representatives, and Prez/VP Electors. If Congress wanted it to include the President, why didn’t they specifically mention the President?
I’m not saying it’s the right interpretation, just that it is an equally valid one based on the text, itself.
Generally “fringe” candidates that don’t appear on ballots aren’t there because they didn’t meet some criteria or deadline. The issue here is constitutional disqualification in the same way that age is. We don’t have scenarios where Michigan views me as 40 but Texas views me as 30 because I’m a commie libtard and therefore I get disqualified.
My hope is that they include the President in the clause, leave it so that the disqualification is self-executing, and provide a clear definition for the term insurrection in the context of the amendment.
That outcome really isn’t possible. If the Court holds its self-executing then then there’d be no need for a a clearer definition. It’d have to hold that it’s not self-executing.
If it were to hold that it’s not self-executing then yes, a definition could be provided, but the Court wouldn’t be the one to provide it. The definition would have to come from Congress, and the Court couldn’t order Congress to pass legislation defining the term because that’d violate the separation of powers. So, absent voluntary Congressional action, the case would effectively be dead. I don’t think a Republican Congress would pick up the baton and define what “insurrection” means when its candidate was the one accused of inciting the insurrection.
“If there’s an ambiguity, why would we construe it — as Justice Kavanaugh pointed out — against democracy?” Jackson asked.
Er, because after taking the oath of office the dude led an insurrection against constitutional democracy, and the constitution bars such people from holding office thereafter?
I don’t say the disqualification issue is simple, but that’s a falsely simplified construction.
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
But it then says “or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.” It is the “office” of president. How could it not be included?
I’d argue that criteria are criteria whether state or federal.
In my layman’s “understanding” it would seem to me that if the state can’t have criteria not listed in the US constitution that completely throws out pretty much anything the state would have in place like signature requirements, no?
Temper Tantrum # who knows:
Donald Trump makes ominous warning as Supreme Court hears case to kick him off the ballot (msn.com)
The Supreme Court appears to be ready to fulfill Donnie’s hope: that they’ll “have the courage to do the right thing.”
