@volkris @Hyolobrika @AltonDooley Courts can and should absolutely throw out a malicious prosecution upon first contact. Usually there is an immediate motion by the defense to dismiss, have it thrown out because the prosecution lacks basis. All of us have the right to make such a motion, and any judge has a right to rule in favor of the defense and the case is over. That’s ordinary in criminal law. No immunity required.
@volkris It does not! What do you think “absolute immunity” means?
@volkris @Hyolobrika @AltonDooley again, you are just wrong on the facts. if a person is being prosecuted for something not illegal, the remedy is acquittal, not immunity. 1/
@volkris @Hyolobrika @AltonDooley there is nothing about this decision we can democratically change. the Supreme Court has declared absolute immunity for exercise of the President’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers part of the Constitution itself (defying history and literacy to do so). they have not conditioned this immunity on the exercise being otherwise legal. only the Supreme Court itself or a Constitutional amendment can undo this. 2/
@volkris @Hyolobrika @AltonDooley There is absolutely an automatic “get out of jail card” here. Not for all of the current Trump prosecutions, because some of what he’s being prosecuted for are arguably not “official acts”, and not “conclusive and preclusive” official acts. Trump’s prosecutions are now extraordinarily unlikely to succeed, but they can continue. But future Presidents have a clear map of how to act illegally without consequence. 3/
@volkris @Hyolobrika @AltonDooley this decision is not at all what a Supreme Court would have done if its concern was reigning in politically motivated prosecution while retaining an accountable executive. in its own words, it places as ensuring “energetic”, “unhesitating” executive above any concerns about accountability. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/07/05/if-the-issue-was-the-lawfare/index.html /fin
Just a reminder that, since July 1, 2024, if you live in the United States you no longer live in a liberal democracy. You live in a tyranny.
For the moment you live under a tyrant who happens not to be much of a brute. Don’t worry, though. As John Roberts enthused, sooner or later you’ll have a President who is “energetic”, “unhesitating”.
From a brilliant essay by @radleybalko on John Roberts' coup. Read the whole thing. https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-supreme-court-folds ht @ryanlcooper
Text: The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States is its worst decision of my lifetime. John Roberts’s sloppy, arrogant, contradictory majority opinion provides license for any future president to lie, cheat, steal, suppress dissent, and — if they have the stomach for it — assassinate. It obliterates a guardrail for executive power that’s fundamental to a functioning democracy. So fundamental, in fact, that until the country elected an aspiring autocrat brazen enough to engage in open-air corruption, it was a guardrail few thought necessary to actually define. Of course the president can be prosecuted for actual crimes. When Trump initially made his claim of “absolute immunity” for presidents from criminal charges, it was widely derided among constitutional scholars as a hopeless Hail Mary. Then John Roberts answered Trump’s prayers. This opinion isn’t a stain on Roberts’s legacy. It is his legacy. He will be remembered as the “institutionalist” who destroyed the legitimacy of the institution entrusted to his care. And if that’s the worst of the damage, we’ll all be lucky.
@marick This was largely intended for you, I thought replying to the thread would catch you, but it seems it may not have? Sorry! https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/112742768514714841
@norootcause at a moral or philosophical level, you can blame the electorate if you want. at a practical level, it is a dumb, useless. critics and pundits who do it are at best to be ignored and usually disingenuously mischievous or running interference for someone evading accountability. the broad electorate is not a point of accountability or reform. the electorate is the raw wood, the marble, those of us who intervene in politics or commentary or institution design have to work with. 1/
@norootcause however “true” by someone’s framing it may be that a bad electorate is the problem, there is no value whatsoever in the framing. unless collective punishment or reeducation or such is the reform you’d advocate, in which case the fault lies with those who failed to institute those reforms, not the electorate. so still no value in blaming the electorate. /fin
@volkris @Hyolobrika @AltonDooley that is simply not true. absolute immunity is not distinguished by lawful or unlawful actions. there’d be no reason for that. no one needs immunity for lawful actions. prosecutors are explicitly enjoined from even *inquiring* into whether “official acts” are motivated in order to break the law. for “conclusive and preclusive” official acts, including commanding the military + providing pardons, immunity is absolute and automatic.
you misunderstood the decision.
@Geoffberner @LouisIngenthron unfortunately there is an explanation that reconciles competence and clinging, if they are selfish. 30% chance of everything is better than a 100% chance of nothing, from a pure personal influence perspective.
mostly i think highly of the Bidenistas, so i am skeptical of this rather terrible view. but the better they play diehard—even if it’s a negotiating tactic and ultimately wise—the harder it becomes, from the outside, to keep the faith.
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner yes. my view exactly. but that makes it all very nerve wracking from the outside, it’s impossible to distinguish potential fatal pigheadedness from potentially wise mastery of the process.
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner I certainly agree that, right now, it’d be best if there could be a smooth transition to a stronger candidate with a lot of policy and personnel continuity. I think that’s unusually possible right now, because the Democratic coalition is unusually unified, both against Trump, and broadly in support of Biden’s policy direction. (I don’t think that’s always the case.) 1/
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner I don’t think the issue is that the Biden team doesn’t “get that”. Unfortunately, I think we have almost no visibility into what’s going on in the inner circles. Are they stubborn because I’m wrong, and they just do have an indefensibly high expectation of their odds? Are they held back by personal ambition, the circle around Biden loses opportunity and influence if Biden cedes, while they have ~30% change of keeping it if he doesn’t? 2/
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner Or are they claiming to be diehards as a negotiating position, so they can negotiate succession on their own terms? That’s my hope, but I don’t know, I don’t think outsiders can. /fin
@barrkel yeah, it was more a prescriptive than descriptive claim.
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner i agree, but we can’t sustain cohesive parties in a two party system. the electorate has more to express than only two parties can sustainably stick to. in the moment, i agree with you it’d be better if we had a strong party that could change inadequate management to advance a virtuous underlying agenda. but we don’t, and can’t in a two party system, unless we really insulate the parties from the fractious public very bad for different reasons).
@Geoffberner @LouisIngenthron a good electoral system is not based on a consumer-choice style evaluate-service-then-fire-the-bastards. what the state does is what we collectively do, not what someone else does whom we just fire. our electoral system does encourage that metaphor, so yes, a better world gets constantly destroyed because it’s susceptible to ugly oppo or is not adequately sold.
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner i don’t think that’s right. there’s a huge time consistency problem in the (at best very incomplete) understanding of electoral democracy as “the public evaluates and throws the bums out if they don’t like how things are going”. lots of policy interventions take longer than an electoral cycle to meaningfully reveal results. 1/
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner if you make “selling the strategy” or “maintaining enthusiasm” as an essential dimension of quality, then, sure, tautologically, a successful administration would have nothing to fear. 2/
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner but i think good policy can often involve a long lead time, through which it may be challenging to sustain enthusiasm, while challengers can sell hopes without any plausible policy behind them. 3/
@LouisIngenthron @Geoffberner so i think it quite possible that an administration can be succeeding on policy grounds but remain electorally fragile. /fin
@Geoffberner no, i don't think so at all. i think what makes this so painful is, regardless of the state of the President himself, the group of people who surround him think (with some justice!) they are doing a great job, and understand the band would be broken up, and they personally would be unlikely to have roles nearly so influential, if there were a switch of marionettes. they, i think, are all in unless/until loss becomes nearly certain.
In the US, we don't elect political parties (now famously "hollow"). And we don't elect the man, or the woman. Even in Congress, but especially as President, the job is far above the capability or judgment of one person, however old or young.
What we elect when we elect a person is that person's friends, who will become staff, advisors, appointees.
Whatever you think of the person, what matters is the people they will place around them. We choose not so much the puppet as the puppeteers.
from @RebeccaSolnit https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/06/biden-trump-race-rebecca-solnit
Text: Speaking of coups, we’ve had a couple of late, which perhaps merit attention as we consider who is unfit to hold office. This time around, Trump is not just a celebrity with a lot of sexual assault allegations, bankruptcies, and loopily malicious statements, as he was in 2016. He’s a convicted criminal who orchestrated a coup attempt to steal an election both through backroom corruption and public lies and through a violent attack on Congress. The extremist US supreme court justices he selected during his last presidential term have themselves staged a coup this very Monday, overthrowing the US constitution itself and the principle that no one is above the law to make presidents into kings, just after legalizing bribery of officials, and dismantling the regulatory state by throwing out the Chevron deference.
@franktaber@mas.to so your view is simply the Democratic primary should be determinative? (counterarguments might include that new information or new debility undermines the legitimacy of that primary, or that it deserves little deference because “the field was cleared” for the incumbent. not endorsing any of these in particular. i find the current situation miserably difficult.)
@franktaber@mas.to in what sense?