“I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw and behold, an orange horse and he who sat on it was shirtless, homophobic, and Russian.”
4 Likes
Strangely enough, the pattern is starting to take on the outline of a single, unbroken, 10,000 mile long steamy turd.
3 Likes
The face of someone who would try to pardon himself if it came to that:
2 Likes
Lawyers know more about this conflict of interest than me-- so
Kasowitz is also, of course, Joe Lieberman’s boss, a conflict of interest which would terrify the average observer aware that the firm lacks the size required to keep proper ethical walls around a conflict like this. But alas cooler heads have prevailed with reports that Lieberman will no longer pursue the FBI position, saving Orville Redenbacher from having to conjure up enough popcorn to prepare audiences for the acrobatics some senators would have come up with to justify that. Apparently having NY commercial litigator Kasowitz defend the President in a high stakes D.C. quasi-criminal investigation was more important than installing an unqualified political lackey in the FBI job. Mull on that.
1 Like
Yea, verily!!
1 Like
Thanks for the link, I’ve wondered a lot about this. I could easily construct in argument in favour of its legality (as the article says, the constitution just doesn’t say you can’t), but I’m far better at reading law literally than I am an understanding how courts consider things that seem to be literally legal but that at the same time seem to be such obvious bullshit.
To be honest, the whole, “You can’t pardon yourself because of the nature of the word pardon” doesn’t work for me. I’m sketchy on “You can’t be the judge in your own case”. Going back to the discussions at the constitutional convention to see what was meant or intended by the words seems like bullshit to me, but I guess it has standing in American law regardless of whether it appeals to me or not. I find the idea that a self-pardon might itself be criminal really interesting. All in all if I were on SCOTUS I’d currently be inclined to rule that a self-pardon was valid (though I’d have huge briefs to read, not an article without citations, so the arguments might be made more clearly and forcefully), but there’s a very good reason you wouldn’t put me on SCOTUS.
Ultimately I think most judges are the sort of people who get really offended when people do things that are obvious affronts to the rule of law as opposed to the sort of people who are inclined to gleefully mock the flaws in the law. Because of that, a self-pardon is probably pretty ill-fated.
I agree with what you say about judges and how they could likely rule on something like this. I have a feeling though that Trump is just the one to test the courts if it came to the ‘notion’ of self-pardoning. Senile(?)/Sociopaths have no rules.
Oh yeah, that the most spot-on analysis from the whole article, where he acknowledges that self-pardoning seemed like a silly hypothetical because obviously would never do it, but clearly Trump may do things that obviously no one would ever do.
I’d like to think that “the president can’t pardon themselves” was so transparently, blindingly self-obvious that the guys who wrote the Constitution didn’t even think to include it, and they had just finished fighting a war against a government full of people who were irreparably stupid, corrupt, and/or actually insane.
Rules lawyering really is the absolute worst.
TrumpGOP can and will do whatever the USSC lets them get away with. Established law has minimal influence.
They prioritised Gorsuch for a reason.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
