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Posted
3 hours ago, Js1 said:

Conned implies they are being deceived. They’re doing this because they want to

I have a brother-in-law who has been noticeably not-smart since he was a child. The MAGA message appeals to his simplistic, white and black way of thinking, and allows him to be taken in by any lie that requires him to see nuance or another side of the story. He is simply incapable of doing that.

Since we know that demographics say that the less education you have, the more likely you are to be a Trump supporter, he fits that demographic perfectly.    He does not want to think, he wants other people to tell him what to think. It’s just a hell of a lot easier for him.

Posted
On 8/25/2024 at 11:34 PM, tx 3 putt said:

this suuuuuuuuure looks staged 

 

Two people died right?  That’s the only reason I can’t go down the “it was staged” route. But I’m willing to listen. 

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Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

You can resist this urge Twice, I believe in you.

You can read opinions and briefs for yourself, dispense with your desire for a certain outcome, and acknowledge that there can be a dispute here.

 

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted
19 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

You can read opinions and briefs for yourself, dispense with your desire for a certain outcome, and acknowledge that there can be a dispute here.

 

Does it depend on what the definition of "is" is?

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Posted
24 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

You can read opinions and briefs for yourself, dispense with your desire for a certain outcome, and acknowledge that there can be a dispute here.

 

I'm just saying that you don't in fact need to continually play devil's advocate and pretend as if the real problem is that a legislature wasn't clear enough with its language. Legislation not being sufficiently clear is a thing, sure, but that's more just a function of how language works than it even is about legislative sloppiness. Saying that a piece of legislation could be a little more clear is like saying the sky is blue or water is wet.

You know as well as any of us that even when a law is crystal fucking clear a Republican judge can and will still ignore the clear meaning if they want to do so.  

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Posted
27 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

You can read opinions and briefs for yourself, dispense with your desire for a certain outcome, and acknowledge that there can be a dispute here.

Treating the fascists as if they're acting in good faith is a good way to let the fascists get what they want. Canon is actively blocking and tackling for trumpco and further worsening the damage from trump's garage sale of our national secrets.

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Posted (edited)
22 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I'm just saying that you don't in fact need to continually play devil's advocate and pretend as if the real problem is that a legislature wasn't clear enough with its language. Legislation not being sufficiently clear is a thing, sure, but that's more just a function of how language works than it even is about legislative sloppiness. Saying that a piece of legislation could be a little more clear is like saying the sky is blue or water is wet.

You know as well as any of us that even when a law is crystal fucking clear a Republican judge can and will still ignore the clear meaning if they want to do so.  

That's a fair point.  But as a lawyer that deals with relatively modern statutes on the reg, TItles 15, 17, and 35, they are much better drafted than older things.  One of mulitple flaws of Congress, both todays and those of yesteryear, is that they seem to refuse to a) draft with clarity and b) fix clarity issues when the courts find them.

So weirdly worded statutes grind my gears.  And these are pretty oddly worded.  

And, when you have that, regardless of the political orientation of the interpreting court, you can get bad results.

And, it's not devil's advocacy.  It's acknowledgement that there can be an actual dispute here, even before you get to what you think the court will do with that dispute.

The best thing in the government's favor here is the opinion in US v. Nixon.  It is clearly not dicta, however it apparently was agreed by the parties that the AG had the authority to appoint Jaworski and there's zero interpretation of the statutes in question.

The "history" of accepted special counsels doesn't help me much.  That's how we got Breuen.

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted

Even a statute that it as clear as it can possibly be when written will become unclear over time, because language evolves. It's not math, no matter how much you wish it were. Even if you got rid of all the sausage making and could just hand the pen to one brilliant lawyer, there is not and will never be a way for that lawyer to craft a statute so perfectly that it wouldn't be susceptible to bad faith arguments about how it actually means the opposite of what it says if a judge is sympathetic to those arguments. 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Even a statute that it as clear as it can possibly be when written will become unclear over time, because language evolves. It's not math, no matter how much you wish it were. Even if you got rid of all the sausage making and could just hand the pen to one brilliant lawyer, there is not and will never be a way for that lawyer to craft a statute so perfectly that it wouldn't be susceptible to bad faith arguments about how it actually means the opposite of what it says if a judge is sympathetic to thosie arguments. 

See, I don't think it requires great brilliance to draft with clarity.  I write and screw around with patent claims on a daily basis.  Verbal descriptions of physical objects and processes that require some degree of clarity.  I'm not some genius drafter, and even if I am, a plethora of chuckleheads write patent claims that get the job done every day.

Posted
1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

You can read opinions and briefs for yourself, dispense with your desire for a certain outcome, and acknowledge that there can be a dispute here.

 

Sounds a lot like water isn’t wet. 

Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

You can read opinions and briefs for yourself, dispense with your desire for a certain outcome, and acknowledge that there can be a dispute here.

 

But these are really not disputes about what the law says or allows, but rather, tests of how far bad faith actors are allowed to deviate from what the law is widely understood to say and allow. 
 

 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Posted

From ABC:

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged former President Donald Trump in a superseding indictment in his federal election interference case.

"Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, ECF No. 226, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment," a Justice Department spokesperson said Tuesday.

"The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions," the spokesperson said.

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Posted
5 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

Aye, there’s the rub.  Because she is in fact, stupid and incompetent, and was found to be stupid and incompetent in other matters unrelated to Trump, there was an initial benefit of the doubt given her.

Which over time she fully removed. 

She’s a magna cum laude graduate from a top ranked law school. She’s not dumb. She’s completely and wholly compromised.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Satchel said:

She’s not dumb. She’s completely and wholly compromised.

 Perhaps dumb is the wrong word. But her short time on the bench in non-Trump matters shows that she’s over her head and not particularly competent.

None of that disputes that she has her thumb on the scales in a particularly heinous and partisan manner.

 

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Posted
36 minutes ago, Js1 said:

From ABC:

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged former President Donald Trump in a superseding indictment in his federal election interference case.

"Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, ECF No. 226, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment," a Justice Department spokesperson said Tuesday.

"The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions," the spokesperson said.

Homer Drool GIF

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

 My experience instructs me not to assume the latter on the basis of the former.

Beat me to it

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Posted
8 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Minor point of order, the case was appealed a little over a month ago, in July.  This is the government/appellant's brief.  Trump's is due in 30 days.

This is an expedited appeal and I would expect oral argument within 30 days or so of Trump's brief and a decision a couple of weeks thereafter, so probably October.

giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952xwx3jdoaqn9eyey23h

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Posted
2 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

 Perhaps dumb is the wrong word. But her short time on the bench in non-Trump matters shows that she’s over her head and not particularly competent.

None of that disputes that she has her thumb on the scales in a particularly heinous and partisan manner.

 

To the extent that high-standing in a law school class indicates "smarts," sometimes, if not often, it is of something of a savant variety.

And, as you note, her lack of trial experience and sort of egghead bent tends to mean she "makes a federal case" out of, well, federal cases.

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Js1 said:

From ABC:

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged former President Donald Trump in a superseding indictment in his federal election interference case.

"Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, ECF No. 226, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment," a Justice Department spokesperson said Tuesday.

"The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions," the spokesperson said.

The indictment is 9 pages shorter than the original, so it probably reduces mention of anything that could be considered an official act or core constitutional responsibility.  The ABC article does a pretty good summary. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-charged-superseding-indictment-federal-election-subversion/story?id=113193224

Notably:

While the original indictment mentions the Justice Department on over 30 occasions, the new indictment makes no mention of the DOJ.

More importantly, I think, behind the scenes, the evidence presented to the grand jury to secure the indictment avoided anything (well not anything but more things) that could be considered official acts or core constitutional responsibilities.  And, I'm sure this is a different grand jury, so there's no "taint" (or grundle or gooch) of the prior possibly inadmissible evidence.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted

 

 

 

Quote

In a filing accompanying the new indictment, prosecutors noted that the revised charges had been “presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case.” That move was undertaken to keep Mr. Trump’s lawyers from claiming that the grand jury had been tainted by hearing testimony barred by the Supreme Court’s immunity decision

 

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Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

 

Very sharp.  These guys know what's up.

Still, I'm worried about the validity of special counsel appointments.  I'd be less so without this SCOTUS, but still worried.

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted
11 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Still, I'm worried about the validity of special counsel appointments.  I'd be less so without this SCOTUS, but still worried.

So you're not worried about the validity at all. You're worried about what a certain group of Calvinball shitheads will rule.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Huckleberry said:

So you're not worried about the validity at all. You're worried about what a certain group of Calvinball shitheads will rule.

That's not what I said.  The AG authorizing statutes are something of a mess, amended multiple times, recodified, etc..  upon which judicial minds may differ.  If this issue had been raised by Hunter Biden, I'd still be worried a bit.

A note, I have heard others mention that other courts have rejected attacks on the validity of the special counsel appointment.  The US's brief doesn't mention any of those as supporting authority.  Maybe because district court opinions that have little value, or other courts of appeal, which might also have little value in the 11th.  Or maybe because they just agreed that US v. Nixon disposed of the issue.  It comes damn close.

Also, I'm not sure this specific attack was raised anywhere else.  The others tried to argue that a special counsel was not an inferior officer and therefore had to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

 

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted
So you're not worried about the validity at all. You're worried about what a certain group of Calvinball shitheads will rule.

Those “Calvinball shitheads,” for better or worse, are the whole game now. We really don’t have to like it.

But that’s the way it is.
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Posted
1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Very sharp.  These guys know what's up.

Still, I'm worried about the validity of special counsel appointments.  I'd be less so without this SCOTUS, but still worried.

Clarence Thomas Justice GIF by The Daily Signal

Posted
45 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:


Those “Calvinball shitheads,” for better or worse, are the whole game now. We really don’t have to like it.

But that’s the way it is.

And I'll submit that it's always been Calvinball.  Typically a much more restrained form of the game, but Calvinball nonetheless.

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Posted
10 hours ago, Chad Fuck said:


Those “Calvinball shitheads,” for better or worse, are the whole game now. We really don’t have to like it.

But that’s the way it is.

Nobody is arguing that (at least not yet). But words have meaning and the true validity is not determined by 9 people playing politics. They determine enforceable validity within our current system. 

Posted
9 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

 

Seth Meyers Please GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers

That's a weird prediction.  The new indictment doesn't bring any new charges, it's just tailored to avoid problems with the immunity ruling.

If it's not a weird prediction, it's at least one that could have been made when the original indictment was filed.

Posted
10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's a weird prediction.  The new indictment doesn't bring any new charges, it's just tailored to avoid problems with the immunity ruling.

If it's not a weird prediction, it's at least one that could have been made when the original indictment was filed.

It's not weird at all, every guy like's to stick 69 into as many conversations as possible.  

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