4668

Yeah, I’m assuming they’ll protect their master as much as possible on this. Got to make sure more GOP toadees join them on the Court when RBG is gone.

4669

The precedent they set here will be insane.

4670

Right now we’re in a race to cancel democracy. Only the Right seems to know we’re in it.

4671

I’m trying to remember: how many justices have to want to take a case to get it accepted?

4672

I believe it is 4.

4673

Only as long as, you know, they don’t actually have it because their mean-spirited elites withhold it from them because “OBUMMER amirite?” and “The worst law ever passed!!1!” (because apparently they never heard of the Alien and Sedition Acts or the Fugitive Slave Act). Once they do, it’s popular AF as the kids say.

Look how many people would literally starve without SNAP and SS disability, used more in the “donee” states. Pretty sure that’s a popular program among the people who aren’t starving.

4674

Also, it’s not a done deal that the USSC reviewing this issue means they will rule for Trump. It’s a serious risk but it also requires both Gorsuch and Roberts to not just be “as maximally conservative as possible but still (barely) within the rule of law” like Mueller but it requires them to go full blown “fuck the rule of law, fuck precedent, fuck consequences, and most of all fuck liberals”. Our SC is so screwed, we do sadly have at least 3 votes for “damn the law, hail the GOP uber alles!” but I’m not sure we have 5.

Keep in mind, even Scalia, a terrible Justice IMO who wrote and voted for many many bad decisions, nonetheless upheld the core principal of habeas corpus in the terrorism cases. For Gorsuch and Roberts to uphold the extreme, poorly reasoned, unprecedented, precedentially dangerous, historically unsupported and downright idiotic legal reasoning of the Trump team on these cases would be a bridge very far. Hopefully, too far.

After Roberts’ affirmation of the Dark Side in the Rucho case, I believe it’s possible Roberts and Gorsuch will go this far, but I’m not sure it’s likely. I put the odds of complete fuckery at 40/60 which means we have a 60% of getting a not-insane ruling. Yay! (OTOH, that also means a 40% chance of complete asshattery. Oh well.)

4675

How long from now until an actual decision would be reached? Might be possible that they’re simply stalling the final result as long as they can.

4676

Oral arguments are set for March 2020 so mostly likely a result near the end of the term in approximately June or July of 2020.

4677

I don’t see Gorsuch supporting Trump’s side of things. Roberts also seems really iffy on that.

In theory even Thomas should be opposed, but Thomas and ideals are only acquaintances at best most of the time. Seeing the insane shit his wife poops out on social media gives me the gist of where he really stands. Alito would vote in favor of the Final Solution if the government vaguely cited some case from 1783.

It’s entirely possible the conservative members come down on the side of privacy or something, but we’re talking about the government and Congress’s power of investigation into the Executive, so I would think they’d lean the other way.

4678

Generally I agree, that’s why I asked the question about how many justices. If there are 4 who want to review it, then it’s 3 plus either Gorsuch or Roberts. Or it’s a courtesy as has been suggested elsewhere too.

4679

Out of that 60%, though (if your guess is reasonable), I have to assume a significant portion of the rulings are some narrowly-framed victory for Trump that remains agnostic on whether he can prosecuted for “real crimes” like murder.

4680

I actually consider the discovery issue, revealing the tax returns, to be the big issue here. The claim of “absolute immunity” is more a media creation/extension of Trump’s arguments than a real legal doctrine.

There is a potent legal issue that I would love a ruling on: the patent absurdity of the DOJ’s “cannot indict a sitting a President” rule, but that issue is not before the Court in this case (or in any of the cases currently pending; the biggest single reason that terrible DOJ rule is still in place is that due to the structure of our system, there’s no way to actually get that question into federal court unless a state prosecutor tried to indict the President.)

Instead, the Trump team have argued that based on that policy that the DOJ shall refrain from indicting the sitting President, that somehow is equivalent to immunity (it is functionally equivalent to a degree, but not at all legally equivalent), and then on top of that, the Trump team argues this immunity is so vast it precludes any investigation of the President at all. That claim is likely to be litigated in the current case and that is where the action is.

It’s kind of funny, given how right wing judicial theorists have screamed about the Court in the 60s extending the right to privacy in the Griswold case and others using a “Penumbra” theory (there is no right to privacy expressly by name in the Constitution but the Griswold court inferred that right from other text and principles of the Constitution). The right wing has screamed for decades that the Griswold court basically “made up a right”, etc. What’s funny is, this legal theory of Trump’s is way more of a reach than Griswold. This whole absolute immunity crap is some kind of insanely inflated “penumbra” theory derived not from the text of the Constitution and two centuries of American legal history like Griswold, but from DOJ memos prepared by the DOJs of two Presidents who had been investigated or impeached (Nixon and Clinton). It’s an extremely bad theory, legally worthless, lacking in any kind of foundation of precedent, strongly contrasted by numerous other cases that the President is not an absolute sovereign, and also contradicted by the centuries of history and legal precedent on the rule of law, the co-equal branches of government, checks and balances, etc.

It will take a serious reach past any kind of “good faith but legally conservative” view of the law to hold in Trump’s favor. On top of that, there is a serious issue of “dangerous precedent” in that if the USSC immunizes the Presidency like Trump wants, that’s a dog whose bite may be felt on the skin of more than just Trump’s enemies in future decades.

So I want to believe the USSC will not rule for absolute Presidential immunity (the lesser DOJ “immunity” is a separate issue not before the court). However, since we can’t have nice things I only give this a 60% chance. But hey that’s better than 0.

4681

So you’re saying there is no plausible ruling where they prevent this investigation without also affirming the broad immunity. I don’t see how, if they affirmed the immunity, Trump or his preferred candidate would ever lose reelection.

4682

In a practical, functional, sense, that’s more or less true. The consequences of disallowing Congress from investigating the President are severe and even if the USSC tries to “limit the ruling” by doing something weird, obscure and narrow (like some sort of procedural wankery) the practical application of the result in the real world is close to immunity for the President. Even if they don’t formally endorse the legally absurd “absolute immunity” theory, if they shut down all investigations (or close to all) then that’s essentially the same result.

This would be similar to the terrible ruling in Rucha where the result effectively meant “Although we’re not saying partisan gerrymandering is allowed, we are ruling that the courts can’t do anything about partisan gerrymandering” which means in plain language “we may as well be saying partisan gerrymandering is allowed, but we’re not saying that b/c that would be obviously biased, anti-democratic and ass-hatted, so we’re not saying that, but still the result is, we’re saying the federal courts can’t do anything about it.”

4683

I was initially pissed off that the Supreme court took the case, but upon further thought. I think this is a good thing. My opinion is that there is even less chance that SCOTUS will rule for Trump.

I think it is important for the Supreme Court to go on record to say that Trump obstruction is unacceptable, and I think it will be a 6-3 decision. But most importantly the timing should work out perfectly. Assuming the ruling would come at the end of June like most big SCOTUS cases. The Democratic nominee will have been selected, Trump will still be crowing about how the Senate vindicated him. Then boom SCOTUS nails, him and we can look foward to a summer of exciting news showing how corrupt, poor, and tax cheat Trump is. It may help sway the independents.

If I’m wrong and the SCOTUS rules for Trump, I’m not sure it will have that negative of an impact, since it will be yet another incentive for us all to get out the vote.

4684

Would those be the same independents that were swayed by his admitting on tape that he sexually assaults women?

Trump is the messiah. Hannity said so. God can choose an imperfect vessel, as long as he’s white.

No one who could possibly vote for Trump is going to have their mind changed by factual evidence that he lied, or is poor, or cheated on his taxes. Hell, he admitted during the debates in 2016 that he doesn’t pay taxes!

4685

That’s a myth that @triggercut and FiveThirtyEight have provided data to dispel in past. The folks who we see at the rally’s are roughly 1% of the people who voted for the guy. There are plenty of folks who vote for Obaman 2008 and 2012 and voted for Trump in 2016, or even the Republican suburban women who held their nose and vote for Trump in 2016, who won’t vote for him again. If the Democrats provide a better nominee and they can continue to be reminded how bad the guy is they can be persuaded. Remember large numbers of voters, don’t pay attention to politics, they have no idea who Zelansky is much less Col Vindman, Marie Yovanovitch, Adam Schiff, or Jim Jordan . The only time they pay attention to politics is for a few months in the summer and fall every 4th year.

4687

In other words, people of the land…

4688

…you know…