How big

[WrestlingRasta]

Is the Colorado Supreme Court decision on the 14th?  This is not me ‘giggling’ here, serious question/discussion. It’s putting the ball in SCOTUS’ court to say Colorado you were wrong. Either way they decide is huge. If they decide Colorado wasn’t wrong, then that’s game over as far as his election run is concerned. If they go against Colorado, it doesn’t make it game over the other way but it will certainly add to his charge. 
 

So the Supreme Court is set to decide A) if he is immune from charges and B) is fit to hold office again. 

[Plasmodium]

I am not a fan of this lawsuit, but the law is the law and the courts are the place to settle it.

Apparently, his entire campaign is riding on a SCOTUS decision.  

[Offthemat]

To save democracy you must destroy democracy?

[Wrestleknownothing]

I was surprised to read that Trump is O-fer in front of the Supreme Court that he shaped.

All of his arguments to overturn the election were rejected by the Supreme Court (not sure how many there were) and in the three years since he has left office, the court has rejected him four times in document-related battles with prosecutors and lawmakers.

Document cases:

1. In 2021 the court cleared the way for Trumps' papers to be turned over the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
2. In February 2022, the court allowed a Manhattan prosecutor access to Trump's financial records as part of a criminal investigation of him and his company.
3. In October 2022, the court turned down Trump in his fight over records the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
4. In November 2022, the court rejected Trump's bid to block the IRS from turning over six years of Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.

 

[Paul158]

13 hours ago, Offthemat said:

To save democracy you must destroy democracy?

 Three of the judges (3) that voted yes were from Yale and Harvard. Who would have guessed. 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Paul158
missed a word

[Paul158]

28 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

I was surprised to read that Trump is O-fer in front of the Supreme Court that he shaped.

All of his arguments to overturn the election were rejected by the Supreme Court (not sure how many there were) and in the three years since he has left office, the court has rejected him four times in document-related battles with prosecutors and lawmakers.

Document cases:

1. In 2021 the court cleared the way for Trumps' papers to be turned over the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
2. In February 2022, the court allowed a Manhattan prosecutor access to Trump's financial records as part of a criminal investigation of him and his company.
3. In October 2022, the court turned down Trump in his fight over records the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
4. In November 2022, the court rejected Trump's bid to block the IRS from turning over six years of Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.

 

Wouldn't Trump need to be convicted before they could pull the 14th card? Did they forget that key element ?

[Paul158]

13 hours ago, Offthemat said:

To save democracy you must destroy democracy?

The Dems could care less about our democracy. All they want is a victory in 2024 by ANY MEANS POSSIBLE!!!!! Very sad but true. TDS is very real!!!!

Edited December 20, 2023 by Paul158
missed a word

[Wrestleknownothing]

11 minutes ago, Paul158 said:

Wouldn't Trump need to be convicted before they could pull the 14th card? Did they forget that key element ?

I do not know the answer to this. The Supreme Court may or may not weigh in on that question or they may go with a deeply technical argument (like the appeals court in CO did).

[Wrestleknownothing]

10 minutes ago, Paul158 said:

The Dems could care less about our democracy. All they want is a victory in 2024 by ANY MEANS POSSIBLE!!!!! Very sad but true. TDS is very real!!!!

Isn't that exactly the charge against Trump? And not just in 2024, but 2020 as well.

I find the whole TDS thing to be lazy and tiresome. It is a way to avoid actually discussing the issues.

[PortaJohn]

37 minutes ago, Paul158 said:

Wouldn't Trump need to be convicted before they could pull the 14th card? Did they forget that key element ?

 

24 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

I do not know the answer to this. The Supreme Court may or may not weigh in on that question or they may go with a deeply technical argument (like the appeals court in CO did).

My best attempt to answer this question is no conviction is not required.  It was never specified in the 14th.  During that era Congress was preventing Southerners  involved with the Confederacy during the Civil War from ever holding office.  @VakAttack this sound somewhat correct?

Edited December 20, 2023 by PortaJohn

[ThreePointTakedown]

14 hours ago, Offthemat said:

To save democracy you must destroy democracy?

Ragnarok?

[Plasmodium]

"The tree of democracy must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of candidates"

Thomas Washington

[VakAttack]

24 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

 

My best attempt to answer this question is no conviction is not required.  It was never specified in the 14th.  During that era Congress was preventing Southerners  involved with the Confederacy during the Civil War from ever holding office.  @VakAttack this sound somewhat correct?

No conviction required under the strict text of the 14th Amendment, which is typically how Rs want the Constitution interpreted vs. the more "living document" approach that Ds favor.  The decision is legally sound, but politically a loser for the Ds, IMO.

[PortaJohn]

3 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

No conviction required under the strict text of the 14th Amendment, which is typically how Rs want the Constitution interpreted vs. the more "living document" approach that Ds favor.  The decision is legally sound, but politically a loser for the Ds, IMO.

Agree.  I'm no fan of Trump but this decision for whatever reason doesn't feel right.  Optics look terrible 

Edited December 20, 2023 by PortaJohn

[Offthemat]

22 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

 

My best attempt to answer this question is no conviction is not required.  It was never specified in the 14th.  During that era Congress was preventing Southerners  involved with the Confederacy during the Civil War from ever holding office.  @VakAttack this sound somewhat correct?

Read on down to section 5 and you see:  The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Which they did by writing statute that covers prosecutions and convictions of insurrection.  
 

Dimocrats don’t allow democracy within their party, there’ll be no dimocrat primary election for president.  Will they be stopped before they destroy the country, because they certainly will be afterwards.  Maybe by China.  Maybe by Persia. 

[ThreePointTakedown]

1 hour ago, Paul158 said:

The Dems could care less about our democracy. All they want is a victory in 2024 by ANY MEANS POSSIBLE!!!!! Very sad but true. TDS is very real!!!!

Hard to see how that is true at all. A few voters brought the case and won. A Judge agreed. The supreme court of that state agreed. He can't participate in that state. He would still win. Unless other states move to do the same. This IS Democracy. If he wasn't worried about losing power and getting prosecuted like he is now. He probably wouldn't have done a lot of things a trapped person would do to get him in this mess. 

As much as you don't want to look critically at the people responsible. McCarthy said he did it. McConnell said he did it. His own AG said he did it. 

Coming from a side that thinks actual demons exist and are controlling the hearts and minds of their opponents, this is a stretch. 

[ThreePointTakedown]

13 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

No conviction required under the strict text of the 14th Amendment, which is typically how Rs want the Constitution interpreted vs. the more "living document" approach that Ds favor.  The decision is legally sound, but politically a loser for the Ds, IMO.

 

10 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

Agree.  I'm no fan of Trump but this decision for whatever reason doesn't feel right.  Optics look terrible 

Probably. But if you're going to be the party of the high road and democracy, you have to take the hit in the short term. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. 

Because now the one judge in nowhere Texas is going to get a similar case filed with him saying that Biden did the same thing because of blah, blah blah. 

[bnwtwg]

45 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

 

My best attempt to answer this question is no conviction is not required.  It was never specified in the 14th.  During that era Congress was preventing Southerners  involved with the Confederacy during the Civil War from ever holding office.  @VakAttack this sound somewhat correct?

 

14 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

Agree.  I'm no fan of Trump but this decision for whatever reason doesn't feel right.  Optics look terrible 

Speaking of optics and Confederate traitors to the United States of America

[mspart]

11 minutes ago, ThreePointTakedown said:

Hard to see how that is true at all. A few voters brought the case and won. A Judge agreed. The supreme court of that state agreed. He can't participate in that state. He would still win. Unless other states move to do the same. This IS Democracy. If he wasn't worried about losing power and getting prosecuted like he is now. He probably wouldn't have done a lot of things a trapped person would do to get him in this mess. 

As much as you don't want to look critically at the people responsible. McCarthy said he did it. McConnell said he did it. His own AG said he did it. 

Coming from a side that thinks actual demons exist and are controlling the hearts and minds of their opponents, this is a stretch. 

As you noted, it is a few people that did this.   That is not democracy, that is judicial rule.   Democracy is people voting.  Did the people of CO vote to keep Trump off the ballot?   The answer to that is NO.   But that would be democracy. 

mspart

[mspart]

6 minutes ago, bnwtwg said:

 

Speaking of optics and Confederate traitors to the United States of America

That's an insurrectionist!!!   Look at the weapon he is wielding.   And look at the other hoodlums with guns galore.   Yep, this was an insurrection. 

msaprt

[VakAttack]

12 minutes ago, Offthemat said:

Read on down to section 5 and you see:  The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Which they did by writing statute that covers prosecutions and convictions of insurrection.  
 

This may be how SCOTUS seeks to go around this, but that is not a textualist reading of the 14th.  A conviction is not required under the textualist reading.

12 minutes ago, Offthemat said:

Dimocrats don’t allow democracy within their party, there’ll be no dimocrat primary election for president.  Will they be stopped before they destroy the country, because they certainly will be afterwards.  Maybe by China.  Maybe by Persia. 

What the Ds are doing this cycle is basically almost a mirror image of what the Rs did in 2020 (and what most political incumbent parties do).  No primary debates for any incumbent president since 1976, I believe.  And then you have what's happening in the Rs this year where they're just not requiring that Trump even participate.

[ThreePointTakedown]

13 minutes ago, Offthemat said:

Read on down to section 5 and you see:  The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Which they did by writing statute that covers prosecutions and convictions of insurrection.  
 

Dimocrats don’t allow democracy within their party, there’ll be no dimocrat primary election for president.  Will they be stopped before they destroy the country, because they certainly will be afterwards.  Maybe by China.  Maybe by Persia. 

States are given the responsibility to run their own elections. But this doesn't cover elections. It just covers the primary. 

[VakAttack]

6 minutes ago, mspart said:

As you noted, it is a few people that did this.   That is not democracy, that is judicial rule.   Democracy is people voting.  Did the people of CO vote to keep Trump off the ballot?   The answer to that is NO.   But that would be democracy. 

mspart

It's definitionally how our system works.  That's why we have the three branches of government to act as checks and balances on one another.  These citizens felt a law was violated, so they went to court to seek to have the law enforced.

Edited December 20, 2023 by VakAttack

[mspart]

Trump has not be charged with insurrection other than the rushed impeachment in 2021.   The Senate acquitted him of that.   In no other place has he been anything other than charged or opined to have been a part of an insurrection.   The High court in CO decided that he was part of an insurrection and therefore disqualified.  

I think SCOTUS gets this and asks this very question and and votes to disallow the CO courts ruling.  The optics of this look bad because it is a brazen attempt to keep someone off the ballot and using any explanation for it.   The ruling should hold no water at SCOTUS.   The reasoning is suspect and not legal.   If SCOTUS allows this then it will be a real problem. 

mspart

[VakAttack]

10 minutes ago, mspart said:

Trump has not be charged with insurrection other than the rushed impeachment in 2021.   The Senate acquitted him of that.   In no other place has he been anything other than charged or opined to have been a part of an insurrection.   The High court in CO decided that he was part of an insurrection and therefore disqualified.  

I think SCOTUS gets this and asks this very question and and votes to disallow the CO courts ruling.  The optics of this look bad because it is a brazen attempt to keep someone off the ballot and using any explanation for it.   The ruling should hold no water at SCOTUS.   The reasoning is suspect and not legal.   If SCOTUS allows this then it will be a real problem. 

mspart

The reasoning is not suspect, you just don't agree that he engaged in an insurrection; if the court feels he did (which apparently they did) it's a perfectly sound legal reasoning.  And now SCOTUS will decide if a conviction is required, which it is not under the strict textual reading of the 14th, but arguably can be if you interpret language more broadly and from other parts of the document and how we interpret things in the modern legal world.  I'm fine with that interpretation, but it flies in the face of how Rs typically demand the document be read (usually in the context of the 2nd Amendment, but generally all throughout).

Edited December 20, 2023 by VakAttack