IHeartBadCode

They absolutely will. And then several months in it’ll be, “he isn’t hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

The whole lot of them failing to learn anything from mistakes.

You know I heard a saying once. The wheels of Justice are slow but grind exceedingly fine. Yeah, it takes a hot minute to get through everything, but when the arguments run out and the verdicts are handed out, boy are they crushing.

NOTE: This is to add some context to the whole Special Counsel argument.

28 CFR 600 is what covers all the ins and outs of a Special Counsel appointment. Note the CFR there? That stands for Code of Federal Regulations. Regulations are created by the various Executive offices, but you might ask yourself, how can the Executive create something without Congress being involved, and this gets into the fine details of how the US Government works.

As you know LAW requires that Congress pass a bill in both chambers and then send it to the President for a signature or a veto. And if vetoed then Congress can override it with a ⅔ vote. LAWs usually don’t get into a lot of detail, they’ll usually do something along the lines of:

The United States Department of Defense shall build unto Congress an army worthy of Mordor and it shall not exceed the cost of $14 bazillion. Additionally, the following units are required to be purchased (insert a lengthy list of things Lockheed-Martin sent to Congress)

And that’s about it. Now the exact method for “who’s going to the local fighter jet store to pick up a few F-15s, who’s building the antitank missles, where is this all being delivered to, etc” All of that falls into whoever was named, in this case it’s the DoD. So now the DoD will begin issuing RULES and REGULATIONS on how to get that LAW done. How that happens is way longer than I want to talk for, but it’s complex.

Okay. So we’ve covered CFR. There is also USC which stands for United States Code. This is those LAWs “codified”. A law comes out of Congress as Public Law (or private law, but we’re not going to cover that). This is usually listed as Pub. L (Congress number)-(Number of law that has successfully been enacted). We are currently on the 118th Congress, thus the first law passed by this Congress would be called Pub. L 118-1 (note this does not apply to public law prior to 1901) All public, private, and everything else that comes from Congress gets put into a giant collection of books called the United States Statutes at Large (Stat), this is everything that has ever come from Congress. It is in the format of (volume) Stat. (numbered item), so the 5th thing in volume 23 is 23 Stat. 5 All of this eventually get codified so if one Pub. L cancels another prior Pub. L or amends it or whatever, the sum of all of those changes are in a final form in USC. Which that format is (title) USC (subsection). A title is a BROAD (and boy do I mean that word) subject matter. So like Title 16 is “CONSERVATION” and that is like National Park, endangered species, and just a smattering of all kinds of other things that remotely relate to that subject. Title 26 is all about taxes!! Subsection is a great way to drill down to a single thing in USC, but there’s also Chapters, Subsections, and so forth. And each title uses it’s own little scheme of subdivision, so boy oh boy is it fun to go through.

So quick recap, Congress passes various kinds of bills, the public law bills that get enacted are Pub. L, those are filed into Stat., and then any that cancel/update/amend/change previous ones are coalesced into USC. So you’d find all the historic tax brackets in Stat., you’d find the current tax brackets in USC. And all of those were established by Pub. L.

Okay, so I think that’s everything background you need. Sorry if you already knew it.

So 28 CFR 600, since its a regulation, has to state whence it gets its authority. That’s a requirement of all regulations. 28 CFR 600 cites the following:

• 5 USC 301
• 28 USC 509
• 28 USC 510
• 28 USC 515-519

5 USC 301 is a broad grant that basically says each department head may create regulations that they are granted power by law to do. It also bars, by default, the withholding of information from the public (but that’s not material here).

28 USC 509 and 510 are things about what the Attorney General (AG) can do and says that the AG is officially cleared to cite Title 5 powers (see that whole 5 USC 301 thing).

28 USC 515 is the first time we hear about Special Counsel. 516 to 519 indicate who can summon up one and who a Special Counsel can talk to etc. So specifically, all the various paragraphs in 28 CFR 600 fall into 28 USC 515(a) for Trump.

The Attorney General …, or any attorney specially appointed by the Attorney General under law, may, when specifically directed by the Attorney General, conduct any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings before committing magistrate judges, which United States attorneys are authorized by law to conduct…

Which Trump’s legal team says the President cannot be one of those brought under this law. Because separation of powers.

So since 28 CFR 600 cites power from 28 USC 515, which cannot possibly have a President in there, 28 CFR 600 fails because 28 USC 515 fails. Or at least that’s the theory.

This gets complicated because the media does indeed summarize it as just simple “Presidential immunity” but Trump’s lawyers are approaching this legal theory from various angles all which have different underlying basis.

There are two cases to note here. A civil trail related to the January 6th attempted coup and a criminal case related to the same event. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied cause for dismissal in that case based on the legal theory that Trump was immune from CIVIL prosecution on that mater for having been once the President. Trump was granted the ability to carry the three judge ruling to SCOTUS to which Trump’s legal passed on moving on that appeal by allowing the time period to elapse.

The criminal case is being handled by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, that is in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and is being handled by Judge Tanya Chutkan. Trump’s legal team has recently filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit a request for dismissal based on the legal theory that Trump is immune from CRIMINAL prosecution on that matter for having been once the President. That is pending schedule upon the docket.

Okay with that background. This case is being heard in the United States District Court Southern District of Florida, this is related to criminal charges that Trump mishandled classified documents in violation of the Presidential Records Act. This story circles around Trump’s legal team filing a request with the aforementioned court, a request for dismissal based on the legal theory that Trump is immune from questioning about the classification of records for having been once the President.

Interestingly, part of the cause for dismissal that was also filed in this filing were the following (and no, I shit you not):

• The law is vague and cannot be ruled upon, therefore the law should be ruled unconstitutional. (Basically vague laws = unconstitutional).
• The law targets Presidents to which, a law cannot regulate Presidents and thus should be ruled unconstitutional. (Presidents cannot be restricted by laws passed by Congress)
• Special Counsel appointments are not well founded in law and are therefore unconstitutional. (* I’ll have a second comment on this if you really, really want to know the basis for this one.)
• The Presidential Records Act in it’s entirety is unconstitutional. (Kitchen sink attempt.)

There were additional motions filed with the court but those were done via email and have not been released by the Court at this time.

Yeah, it’s easy to be confused because there’s a lot of this going around. But so far, SCOTUS hasn’t actually ruled on the matter to put the nail into the proverbial coffin. But we don’t hear about the Trump legal team basically starting every court case thus far with a motion to have the Judge recuse themselves because it is impossible for them to be fair. Why is it impossible for them to be fair? Changes from Judge to Judge, but the most recent one was because of an opinion the Judge had shared in her personal capacity that Trump’s legal team felt was too Democrat-ish to render fair rulings. It was summarily dismissed.

So Trump’s legal team uses a lot of various arguments with slight changes a lot in various venues. So that might be why you keep hearing them in the news.

Tax payer money is never “wasted”, it’s always kickbacks.

I assure everyone here, some of Abbott’s friends are making bank off this.

Man it’s going to blow your mind to know that petro companies are using oil money to buy up lithium and silicon mines as fast as they can.

The largest oil companies in the world are on track to becoming the largest suppliers of raw materials for solar panels and batteries. Oil companies have figured out that they can play both games at the same time. Sell as much oil and solar panel/lithium material and make hand over fist in cash.

I’m not going to read any responses.

This is likely the wisest part of any comment that’s going to be on this thread. 🤞hopefully I’m wrong.

1. Van Buren

That’s a lot higher than I’d put the guy who so “skillfully” handled the panic of 1837.

Franklin Pierce at 42

Pierce and Buchanan are always bottom tier. One laid groundwork for the Civil War and the other lit the match ensuring Lincoln would, if elected President, increase hostilities.

Pierce at 42 should in my mind be 44 if not 43. Trump coming in at 45 seems about right, maybe 44 if I’m being generous.

But Trump literally tried overthrowing the US government. There’s just no way history is going to be kind to him. There’s nothing that can be done, no one can go back and undo the past.

Dude’s lasting legacy is going to be defined by pretty much, “Oh yeah, he attempted to overthrow the US government. And he was so powerful and charismatic, he got nominated to run for President again to get a second swipe at overthrowing the Government.”

deleted by creator

One, the kids are also barred for a period of time.

Two, the big kicker is:

He also continued “the appointment of an Independent Monitor” and ordered “the installation of an Independent Director of Compliance” for the company

There is going to be eyes and ears on everything Trump attempts to do to weasel money around, especially given how often Trump shifts funds illegally to maintain his grift. That monitor is absolutely going to be dragging Trump back into court sooner or later. The man knows no restraint, he’s absolutely going to FAFO.

The penguins are crossing the Drake Passage and taking our jerbs!

"Congress has taken decisive action to defend our constitutional order and hold accountable a public official who has violated his oath of office,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee

But you decided to tank the bipartisan border reform bill. Clearly sound logic here. SMH

But yeah, even Republicans in the Senate are indicating that it’s likely the Senate will dismiss the trail as, shockingly, everyone has way better things to do.

However, this is Republicans attempting to normalize impeachment. So this way, when someone mentions Trump being impeached twice they can say, “well so-and-so was impeached sixty-three times!! Impeachment doesn’t mean anything!” Which impeachment does mean something, just in this case it shows how petty the House Republicans have become.

Impeaching someone ALWAYS means something, just that if you’re sitting there impeaching someone over border issues when yourself have tabled solving those border issues at the behest of the leading candidate for a political party, it clearly doesn’t say the thing these Republicans are hoping it says. You cannot reasonably believe people OF SOUND MIND can look at the justification of this impeachment and the recent tanking of solutions by this exact body in the House and think that the conclusions were arrived at in an apolitical manner.

Literally Trump said, “Don’t give Biden the win on the border.” I mean c’mon, okay you might have an issue with how the guy was running things, you’re Congress, you can literally pass legislation forcing the guy to do your bidding. That’s actually an option. But Republicans of the House cannot actually get it passed, not just because of their dysfunctional nature, but because Trump told them to not. So this is the result, rather than actually pass legislation to set the guy on the “right” path (I mean I’m going to give GOP House a benefit of doubt here, that they actually want to fix something) and boy oh boy, it was bipartisan it COULD HAVE been a slam dunk here. But rather than do that, they did this.

Republicans are going to think that this is some sort of win, that’s cool, whatever helps them to sleep. But nobody is going to forget that Trump literally asked Republicans to tank any kind of solution. That’s what this impeachment says. And literally, that’s the echo over at r/conservative, it basically boils down to a “take that Biden!” Rather than people actually going, “shouldn’t have Congress given clarity if they had issues?”

But of course you ask that question to some of them and it’ll instantly devolve into “did Democrats give Trump … ?” And that’s the tell that it’s tit-for-tat for those people.

In approving the charges, the House also appointed 11 Republicans to serve as impeachment managers, including Mr. Green and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the right-wing lawmaker who has led the charge against Mr. Mayorkas.

LOL!!! In a perverse sense though, I would love to see MTG attempt to form solid arguments in an impeachment trail. Lady routinely trips on logic and her fallback is just screeching, which given a Democrat would be presiding over the trial, I would love to see Sen. Patty Murray figuratively chuck a gavel at MTG’s head and tell her to “shut the fuck up!” Ah man, I almost miss the chance to see MTG as an impeachment manager. Impeachments are usually highly politically charged (hence the reason the background upon which it is set is pretty important) and that’s like Rep. Greene’s trigger to ignite. Lady doesn’t know how to pump the breaks on her partisanship or emotions (which there’s a time and place for that in Congress for sure, not when you’re in the Senate with the opposite party presiding). Now Rep. Mark Green now that’s an obvious choice, he’s absolutely got a flare for dotting the i’s in an argument. Perfect choice for a manager into this and has a great deal of understanding this domain. But him opposite of MTG, that’s just hilarious. I would love to see Rep. Mark Green give Rep. Greene side eyes to reel it in on an almost consistent basis during the hearing.

That’s just entertainment you cannot make up.

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

— 18 USC § 2383

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

— 18 USC § 2384

The US Constitution gives state legislatures power to choose Electors – full stop.

Well that was talked about. Kagan and Alito both touched on plenary power and the degrees that applies to Colorado’s assertion. But in all that was debated Colorado couldn’t find de facto application. Kagan even asked if there was any method that didn’t rely de novo. The argument keep getting into “well this is so unique”. And that’s when it headed into how State’s executed elections post 1860 but pre 1880.

The thing is, even if there was an application to the novel assertion of federalization here… I mean you heard it right there towards the end, “this is a feature not a flaw”. The Court’s couldn’t be remedy to enforce uniformity. I mean just look at Colorado here for a second. You have three cases in the State plus SCOTUS, that’s four hearings. Multiply that by fifty and by three or four major parties that have codified ballot access in the various States. The court’s couldn’t handle that and elections would become “who has enough money for litigation?” Which is kind of the opposite of “having less money in elections”.

And then there comes from that a desire of “Well then Congress could come up with some limit as to what can be litigated before the courts for elections” and then boom, as indicated “how’s that different than where we’re at?” If the idea is that eventually some de facto appears by Congress, why allow novel approach now with the expectation that we’ll get law later when we can equally say why not wait for law today and allow novel to come later based on that?

And Colorado couldn’t find a specific reason why the order should or shouldn’t be reversed outside of “well State’s rights!” And that’s what prompted the question of “well how plenary is plenary to join Article II to 14A S3?”

And another thing that you said in a different comment is:

but that a state could decide to repeal its popular vote in the legitimate way

No. Or at least I don’t think so because doing so would be really hard to justify. Article IV, Section 4. Now the degree can vary because as it was before that only land owners could vote. But then the Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed the frontier folk the ability to vote. The thing is a vote is always required BUT the definition of who it applies to is up to the State, except that 15A, 19A, and 26A further limit the restrictions that States can apply.

But given Art. II S.1 one could literally read:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…

But in all States the manner is defined by the State’s Constitution meaning that the Citizens would have to vote to amend their process to give up their right to vote and even then, it’s possible such is a violation of Art. IV S.4. It would absolutely be a Court case. But it’s highly unlikely that SCOTUS would permit a State in the Union to operate on a system that denied voting to everyone outside of the political process as that’s kind of the whole premises of the Revolutionary War and that specific part of the Constitution. They would need to include at least ONE person not a sworn officer of the State and given the restrictions of 15A, 19A, and 26A I don’t see how they uphold 14A S1 and keep on the correct side of those other amendments. It would be difficult to say, this one person over the age of 18 is cool to vote AND still uphold 14A S1 equal protection and deny OTHER 18 year olds. It would definitely be an exercise.

States have rights, but SCOTUS is the first place to tell someone, “No right is absolute”. And multiple justices brought that up plenty of times with the perceived plenary that Colorado attempted. I would love Colorado’s reading, but SCOTUS has a point, Colorado needs to define a line in the sand and not just be like “Well that’s what SCOTUS is here to do, draw lines”. I mean given the track record recently, I don’t think we should let SCOTUS draw lines. And yeah, funny time for them to suddenly adopt that mantra. But that’s the thinking I agree with, which is why WV v EPA was such bullshit in my opinion. But I cannot think both WV v EPA was bullshit and Colorado is correct here. That just doesn’t jive. I get inconsistent SCOTUS is frustrating, but at least questioning where that line is from Colorado is the correct move, not leaving it up to SCOTUS to dictate.

And just to make clear. This doesn’t mean, “Oh no the Constitution has a defect and thus we’re helpless Trump is going to surely win now!” It means that when we come across unclear parts of the Constitution, we don’t obtain clarity easily or within a very short period of time. We have always known this. This is the part that should have you all upset about those Senators that didn’t disqualify Trump during his second impeachment.

We all knew, that the Senate kicking the can, kicked it into a darker alley with less illumination on what exactly we’re all supposed to do. We knew when they punted on that, it was going to get murky on how to hold Trump accountable for what he did. That should have been the most upsetting part.

And so here we are. We’re having to do the murky part. It’s not going to be easy, there are no slam dunks, you will hear “de novo” a lot because all of this is new ground, Congress was supposed to handle this and didn’t. So now we’re going to have to go the very frustratingly long path. No court wants to hand a nuke to the Republicans but every bad call that the court’s could make can potentially just wreck things. That’s how big a deal all of this is. One bad call and we are bad footing.

So yes, I get it, SCOTUS hasn’t inspired the greatest of confidence. You’ll hear no argument about that from me. But yesterday’s en banc hearing, that was not on display. I’m giving credit where credit is due, this is something that was being talked about very carefully yesterday by the Justices. I know everyone wanted a slam dunk, but this shit ain’t it. There’s going to be no slam dunks with this issue. So anyone convinced of such, really needs to get a firm grasp of reality of what’s in front of us. Trump’s bullshitty lawyers likely think this is all a joke, but the rest of the system is not laughing. This is serious stuff. There’s not going to be any easy answers.

Okay I’m going to say it. This is a really bad opinion piece on what actually happened yesterday. The biggest thing that stood out was this.

The court wanted to disagree and was desperate to find a way to restore Trump to the Colorado ballot without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump committed an insurrection or not

SCOTUS is not a fact finding court in this case. I don’t think I can say this enough and geez has this been some very basic facet that lots of people have missed: “Did Trump commit impeachment or not? The Supreme Court DOES NOT RULE ON THAT.”

The best way to think of what came before SCOTUS yesterday was this question: “Does Colorado have authority to execute section 3 of the 14th Amendment?” That’s the question. Not, “did Trump commit treason?” I don’t know why this continues to be a missive for commentators on this case. What’s being argued is how much power is indeed vested into States for their election. This is why when the question was actually asked “did Trump commit insurrection?” Justice Jackson spoke and then that was the last anyone heard about it. Because it’s a moot point for what is before the court.

I get we want to toss this treasonous slime ball into jail. But every case that exists with him isn’t boiling down to this aspect. There are times when we have to have separate cases to establish different things that eventually build up to that. We’ve not really had something like this before and so new things need good foundations. So a treasonous President is going to spawn lots of SCOTUS cases that ask questions about the foundations of different arguments.

Left to their own devices, the justices went fishing, looking for an argument that could plausibly allow them to exit the case, since Mitchell did not provide them one

If you listened to the Justices yesterday, you could tell in their voice that none of them felt comfortable with the entire case in general. Because this has massive ramifications. For all the justice that people want, a bad call with poor foundations makes it insanely easy for future people to rampantly abuse this. Multiple times various justices hinted at how Florida is just chomping at the bit to charge Biden with treason and how even if they know they’ll lose, they’ll use every method of litigation to drain his election funds. And SCOTUS gave every hint that Congress does not have the Judicial setup to handle that and likely because of the political ramification, Congress would just kick the can until we’re literally fighting each other.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish

— Article III Section 1 US Constitution

Congress gets to mold the Court system as they see fit and SCOTUS was indicating, the Courts cannot do this “feature of federalization” that Colorado was attempting to indicate. That States should be allowed to apply limitations as they see fit and have the Courts figure out the collateral damage. And it’s highly likely that Congress wouldn’t act to fix it so that the Court could. And so bad faith actors would absolutely wreck the election process. And what they were looking for was a reason why they should believe otherwise. That Congress would enact something to punish bad faith actors, or setup the Courts to handle this, or create procedures that could be litigated at the State level, or literally anything outside of the one thing in Title 18 that’s for criminal treason.

I get that nobody likes that answer. It shitty to see that most Justices easily see that Trump did indeed commit treason and that the various Courts are just left with “oopsie Congress forgot to give anyone any power to do anything about it.”

And yeah, let’s talk about Bush v Gore, because that sounds outright like the same thing.

Here, Bush indicated that different counties in Florida were using different methods for the recount because of the hanging chad issue. Here it was the 14th Amendment Section 1, Equal Protection Clause. SCOTUS had ruled that the various counties couldn’t come up with various standards for a recount, that there needed to be a common standard, to which Florida and Gore couldn’t come to single standard for the recount. It wasn’t a question of “who won Florida” it was a question of “how do we have a unified standard for which a recount of this nature can be done?” And the answer was (and this is the part that was controversial) we couldn’t and still make the “safe harbor” date. The “safe harbor” date and ensuring we made it was the biggest debate point. To which for those still sour about that, you have The Electoral Count Act of 1887 to thank for putting SCOTUS into that position.

All the anger that gets directed to SCOTUS, and some of it is rightly so, Elections have a lot of Congress induced defects. Keep that in mind.

I don’t think you’ve read the relevant text. 8 U.S.C. 1221 is amended as such, with reguards to Section 240

The asylum officer or immigration officer may refer or place an alien into removal proceedings under section 240 by issuing a notice to appear for the purpose of initiating such proceedings if either such officer determines that

(i) such proceedings are required in order to permit the alien to seek an immigration benefit for which the alien is legally entitled to apply

The bypassing puts them on a default to expel path if expedited determination fails. That is their petition is by default invalid until proven valid, which is the opposite of the courts’ standing. This is borderline a violation of due process really.

You’re right in that they can bypass the courts with this, but it’s hardly “give everyone asylum”. It is in fact quite the opposite, deny everyone asylum without due process in the courts to make a case.

Disinflation is different than deflation. Prices aren’t changing, that’s good. Prices changed to be bad and aren’t changing, that’s bad.

Now, while I don’t think we want deflation amok, because that’s insanely bad for everyone, what I think we can all agree with is wages need to go up or there needs to be some price control the likes this country hasn’t seen before.

That’s the problem with the economy. This new normal isn’t comfortable. While we’re finally solidifying what this new normally is and volatility is going down, what we’re settling on isn’t good. And pretending that eventually wages will come to match, that’s not realistic. Playing the waiting game is going to wreck a lot of jobs.

See that’s actually all wrong. We’re going to need fewer people working with increasing automation. We’re just going to have an “unfortunate” situation where people who cannot work ALSO cannot afford to stay alive.

We’ll have 80 year olds that just die and gosh if there was only something we could of done to save them. Tots and pears.