The pilot episode of Columbo ends with this quote as he gets the murderer.
No conscience, limits your imagination, you can’t conceive of anybody being any different than what you are.
I see so much of truth in that every day.
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It’s at least two courts right? The original CO court that had a finding of fact that he participated in an insurrection, and the CO supreme court that upheld that fact.
If in the immunity case, the Supreme Court finds that a president has absolute immunity, doesn’t that mean this case wouldn’t matter. The president would be immune to applications of the 14th amendment.
Since the immunity case is already in process, I’m guessing we’ll get that ruling first. Part of me assumes that it’s just to hard to twist it in a way where they find the president is immune to anything while in office. If no laws apply to the president, are they even the president? Since it’s laws that say they are president and have presidential responsibilities.
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So do the people who believe we’ve already lost, which is precisely what you’re doing. 
Mainly, because it’s a prediction that this is already over, rather than still have happened… I’m fairly certain that I’ve pointed out at other times that the people he appointed have not automatically been yes men for him. They’ve sided against him at least once over the election, with only Thomas (and maybe Alito) siding with him. So ,no it’s not a foregone conclusion and acting like it is does not help any of us to resist what’s happening to our country. It’s a think to be concerned with, but it’s also a think to actively push against and speak out against. That shit actually matters. As much as SCOTUS (espeically the conservative wing) likes to pretend they’re above the political fray, they are much more attuned to public opinion than they like to let on - but Roberts is especially concerned with his legacy and being viewed in a favorable light. Public opinion CAN have an impact here, and if we all just assume the fascists have won and we won’t stand in their way, then the court will be MORE likely to rule in his favor. But it has NOT HAPPENED YET. And I’m a little sick of people acting like they’ve already won. FUCK THAT.
It has not happened yet, and we need to push for it not to happen.
Jinx all…
Does it, though? Saying that we’ve already lost? Sounds very defeatist to me.
I’m confused? Did I say other wise? But I think the OP was referencing the 2nd impeachment case, not any of these legal cases?
There are so many case now it’s hard to keep up!
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I was agreeing. Along with emphasizing that it’s multiple, and asking if it may be even more than just 2 judges.
On the impeachment, what’s the historical perspective between the house voting to impeach vs the senate removing from office? I’m wondering what type of weight that may carry all on it’s own, even without the senate removing. It’s not like we say the impeachment didn’t happen just because it didn’t pass the senate.
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In which case Biden can do whatever he wants, since he has absolute immunity, which would no longer apply to T****’s current actions, no longer being president.
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So far, there have been a total of 4 impeachments of the president and no removals (it would have been 5 had Nixon stuck around, but who knows if he’d been removed from office). I’d say it’s certainly a black mark against a president, though Clinton weathered his rather well (his approvals were in the 60s after it, and that was also during the bombing of Serbia), compared to Johnson who was pretty much a lame duck after his impeachment and he just sort of hung around waiting for his term to end… I’d say that Trump and Johnson are considered two of our worst presidents, and Clinton is probably in the middle of the pack, and I think most view his impeachment as a political hit job more than a proceeding to remove a truly corrupt president.
@danimagoo might have some insight too, into that aspect of impeachment and it’s impact on legacy.
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Hard disagree. That does not a failed state make. You live in a blue area. I don’t. I don’t live in a failed State either. I live in a compromised democracy. They truly are not the same things. And it definitely is going to be up to the courts to save us whether we like it or not at this point. If nothing else it remains to be seen what comes of the recent coup.
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It’s not beyond saving… people forget that there was a time when our democracy was even more compromised, that there was a time when rich white men held people in slavery, and white women had few rights… and people fought for something better. And more recently, our still compromised democracy was changed to be far more democratic. And yes, we’ve lost some ground, but it’s on us to make sure that we gain it back and then some. Civil Rights activists didn’t just throw up their hands when faced with incredibly violent oppression.
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Well that’s it, the fox is going to eat the chickens so there’s no sense fixing the coop!
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This is something that gets me about the it’s over attitude, like there is a certain point where the bad guys win and that’s it. If Trump got in and declared himself Führer, that would suck because everyone’s fight would be so much more difficult and more damaging.
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Exactly! Even when fascists came to power in Europe (Italy, then Germany, and Spain), those all eventually ended… And people resisted the entire time these fuckers were in power. We try to avoid the worst case scenario and not make it inevitable… if it comes to that kind of fight, okay… but it’s not there yet, and we don’t need to pretend like it is at that point.
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Such as…?
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No, there’s no quorum requirement. There are usually a number of candidates for smaller parties (or who run for themselves) who get themselves on the ballot in a single state or in a few states, not enough to win the electoral college even if they swept all the states in which they submitted the paperwork to be on the ballot. I think in most or all states if you’re a natural-born citizen and 35 or older, all you have to do to get on the ballot is get some number of signatures on a petition and pay a fee.
For example, in the 2020 election 10 parties had candidates on at least one ballot. Only thee of those parties had candidates on the ballot in all 50 states and DC: Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian.
Since you need 270 electoral votes to win the Green party candidate was also mathematically capable of winning as they were on ballots in states with a total of 381 of the 538 electoral college votes. But it doesn’t look like they were on the ballot in 12 states. Some of the other six parties’ candidates couldn’t win (without a massive amount of write-in support in states where they weren’t on the ballot and/or a ton of faithless electors) but got thousands or even tens of thousands of votes. But these were usually in states where millions of votes were cast.
I believe (through some very quick Wikipedia scanning) that the last candidate not from the Democratic or Republican parties to get a substantial (say > 5%) percentage of the vote was H. Ross Perot back in 1996 with 8.4% of the popular vote. He was on the ballot in all 50 states plus DC and got more than 10% of the popular vote in a number of states. But he didn’t win any electoral college votes.
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Fuckin’ A: it seems so damn cowardly to me, not to mention hopeless.
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He never had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the GQP nomination, IMO.
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I’m neither a lawyer nor a historian, but I’ve read elsewhere on the 'net that the point of the 14th amendment was to block Confederates from being elected into office, even if they weren’t found guilty of insurrection in a court, and that it was used to achieve just that.
So going by that, I think not being found guilty in a court of law is not necessary for someone to be barred by the amendment from holding office.
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the problematic part – historically speaking – being that johnson gave amnesty to everyone, which pretty much doomed any hope of representation or justice for the formerly enslaved.
A Southerner himself, Johnson had been born in North Carolina and lived in Tennessee where he served as Governor and US Senator before becoming Abraham Lincoln’s vice-president in the 1864 election. When Lincoln was killed and Johnson assumed the presidency in 1865, the Civil War was now over and Johnson was eager to get the South back into normal operation, allowing the former Confederate States to hold elections and re-form their governments.
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*exasperated sigh
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I believe that I distinctly used the words, “IN MY OPINION.”
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Last I checked, VR was not White; that does tend to make a huge difference to the folks who care about such factors.
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Ramaswamy is a conman. I have no doubt that unless Trump ends up winning and putting Ramaswamy in his cabinet, he’s going to eventually be charged with some kind of fraud, a la Elizabeth Holmes and Martin Shkreli. That being said…to date, he has not even been implicated in any crime, much less insurrection or rebellion. There is no basis, legal or otherwise, for keeping his name off the ballot.
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In order from least to worst for corruption would be:
Andrew Johnson (I’m assuming that’s the one in question?)
Clinton (slimy, yes, but corrupt? no more such than any other modern politician)
Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon
And by a full track length, Trump, who should have been impeached and removed for violating the Emoluments Clause on Day 1.
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