recogitare.com

seems like news, doesn´t it? Thought this article was interesting:

Booting Trump off the ballot isn't just legally correct — it's the smart move for the Supreme Court

https://www.yahoo.com/news/booting-trum ... 01712.html

``I'd guess that will help Trump, unless other states follow.
Biden's popularity has been plunging to record lows. I can't see it rising.
I think Desantis could beat him eventually. If Trump's base can't vote for him, wouldn't they settle? Pick the next worst shyster?
Meanwhile, RFK Jr, comin up. He's got it. Pity about the perception of his vax position. He's not about to take our vaccines any more than Obama was going to take our guns. Kennedy is more like Eugene McCarthy. Enviornmentalist, anti war and pro human. Hardly matters. He'd get popped if he was close to winning. Runs in the family.

President Bush wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 5:28 pm seems like news, doesn´t it? Thought this article was interesting:

Booting Trump off the ballot isn't just legally correct — it's the smart move for the Supreme Court

https://www.yahoo.com/news/booting-trum ... 01712.html

From the article:

"Banning Trump from the ballot — in all states, not just Colorado — is clearly what is called for by the Constitution. It takes a herculean effort of feigned stupidity to pretend otherwise."

A sure sign of a weak argument is that the argument is not presented at all. The author just declares himself to be correct, and doubles down with extreme adjectives describing anyone who disagrees.

So, apparently, four judges of the Colorado Supreme Court are engaging in a "herculean effort of feigned stupidity". It seems unlikely to me. I think they might just have a different opinion than the author.



So, you might or might not wonder if I, writing the words above, also have a different opinion. To be honest, I'm undecide, but I'm leaning toward belief that the Supreme Court of Colorado came to the wrong conclusion. I think Donald Trump's actions post-election, in denying the election results in all the different ways he did it, are despicable. Even if people like his policies or general approach to government, I think no one should vote for him. It is a colossal failure of our education system that Donald Trump is a serious candidate.

So, no one should vote for him. But, should they be allowed to vote for him? That's tougher, for me.

For the purposes of this case, that question comes down to whether Donald Trump "engaged in insurrection", which is usually claimed with regard to January 6.

I don't want to go on forever, but as despicable as his actions were, I don't think they qualify as participaing in an insurrection. I'm going to read the opinion from Colorado and, honestly, I hope they convince me I'm wrong. I want him to be disqualified from the ballot. However, when considering court reviews, I try to put all personal judgements about the effects of the ruling aside, and follow the law. Myy opinion, at this moment, is that he ought to be allowed to stay on the ballot. After I actually read the opinion, I'll see if my mind is changed.

Seems as if it may hinge somewhat on if the holder of the office of the presdent is... an officer.

Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Amdt14.S3.1 Overview of Disqualification Clause

https://constitution.congress.gov/brows ... section-3/

In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. President is an Officer of the United States as pertains to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, reversing a contrary ruling that November from a Colorado district court. Section 3 regards the disqualification from public office of those persons who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

The ruling from the Colorado district court involved distinguishing the oath referred to in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (an oath to "support" the constitution) from the Presidential Oath (to "preserve, protect, and defend" the constitution). The December 2023 Colorado Supreme Court ruling rejected this argument in a section titled "The Presidential Oath Is an Oath to Support the Constitution".

One point of contention is whether classifying the president as an officer of the United States conflicts with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution ( Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, which in part concerns appointment by the president of Officers of the United States). Citing a report by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 2010 case of Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board stating that "The people do not vote for the 'Officers of the United States'", Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and Seth Barrett Tillman, member of the Faculty of Law at Maynooth University, have argued that the president is not constitutionally an "officer of the United States". Ilya Somin, chair of Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, has disagreed, noting that the Appointments Clause refers to "Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein [in the constitution] otherwise provided for", and propounding that the president could have been considered to be appointed via vote of the electoral college, as evidenced by an essay in The Federalist Papers. Blackman and Tillman favour construing “herein” in the Appointments Clause to refer not to the Constitution as a whole, but to the enclosing Section (Article II, Section 2).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer_o ... ted_States#

Trump´s defense follows from this, that he took no oath to support the US Constitution.

Donald Trump has sought to have a lawsuit filed against him in the state of Colorado dismissed, by arguing that, as president, he was not required to “support” the US Constitution.

The bizarre legal defence, put forward by the former president’s attorneys, comes in response to a suit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which seeks to have him disqualified from the ballot in the state under the 14th Amendment.

A clause of the amendment, which passed into the Constitution in 1868, bans those who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding any civil, military, or elected office without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate.

Mr Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the phrasing of the clause – section three – does not apply to all officers of the United States, “but only those who take an oath ‘to support the US Constitution’”.

“The Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution — not to ‘support’ the Constitution," said the filing, obtained by news outlet Law and Crime.

"Because the framers chose to define the group of people subject to Section Three by an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution of the United States, and not by an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended for it to apply to the President.

“If they wanted to include in the reach of Section Three, they could have done so by expanding the language of which type of oath would bring an ‘officer’ under the strictures of Section Three.

“They did not do so, and no number of semantical arguments will change this simple fact. As such, Section Three does not apply to President Trump.”

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump ... 16709.html

President Bush wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 1:06 am Seems as if it may hinge somewhat on if the holder of the office of the presdent is... an officer.

If it were anyone but Trump, I would say no one would put forward an argument so stupid.

Trump, though, is not merely stupid. In fact, he's not stupid. He's delusional. He thinks if he says it, it makes it so. So he could come up with that nonsense, and then fire any lawyer who wouldn't go along with it.

Ok....now I'm off to read, or at least start reading, the actual ruling, to see what it really says.

On the trump side some claim that Chief Justice Roberts opined in a 2010 SCOTUS case that the president is not an officer of the United States because people don’t vote for officers of the United States.

On the other hand, Justice Gorsuch did issue an opinion when he was a federal court judge that a state gets to decide its own rules about who's qualified or not for the ballot.

Will be interesting to see what happens, we might all be surprised.

President Bush wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 4:17 am Will be interesting to see what happens, we might all be surprised.

Indeed.

I haven't read the entire opinion, but I've read the parts that I find most important, and that is the question about whether or not Donald Trump actually engaged in insurrection.

I was listening live to the radio when Trump made his speech on January 6. I remember thinking, "Oh my god. These idiots are going to storm the Capitol."

I didn't think, "Trump just told them to storm the Capitol". I thought more along the lines of "Doesn't that idiot realized how his crowd is going to take those words!?"

Based on that line of thinking, I said at the time that Donald Trump didn't engage in insurrection, because he didn't even realize what he was saying. I somewhat jokingly referred to it as "Not guilty by reason of stupidity." He, and some of his followers, didn't even realize what they were doing.

However, in my opinion, the most damning element of the case against Trump is that he knew what was happening, knew he had the power to stop it, and chose not to. The court put it like this:

"¶215 By 1:21 p.m., President Trump was inform\"ed that the Capitol was under
attack. Id. at ¶ 169. Rather than taking action to end the siege, however,
approximately one hour later, at 2:24 p.m., he tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have
the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our
Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the
fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA
demands the truth!” Id. at ¶ 170. "

So, he knew violence was happening. He knew, or should have known, that the violence was a result of his words. He knew, or should have known, that he could take action to stop the violence. He knew, or should have known, that the purpose of the violence was to block the lawful proceedings that would replace him with the president-elect, Joe Biden.

So, did the court opinion convince me that he engaged in insurrection? I'm not sure, but I'm inclined to say it did. It may very well be the case that he did not intend for the mob to storm the Capitol and prevent, by violence, the vote count. I think by "fight like hell" he meant be really loud and intimidate Pence and/or Congress to go along with his absurd legal theories which, while disgusting, were not criminal. However, once the violence was happening, he could have stopped it, and chose not to. By that choice, I think saying he "engaged in" the insurrection is not unreasonable.

I suppose I should also read the dissents. Maybe they might make a persuasive case why that is not true.

At any rate, I don't agree with the Salon author that disagreeement required "a Herculean effort of feigned stupidity". I think reasonable people could disagree.

As for any other argument other than the one about whether he "engaged in insurrection", I think all the other arguments are ridiculous, especially that whole "officer" nonsense. Of course it applies to the president. It's mind blowing that a court would say otherwise. (The district court, did, in fact, say otherwise, but this ruling overruled them. It's an embarrassment that they needed to do so.)

I skimmed the dissents.

Each of the three used different reasoning, but the core of the dissents is that the Colorado courts can'r rule on the question. In the absence of a convicition for the crime of insurrection, which is indeed a crime, Colorado can't impose a penalty. (Their phrasing is different, and probably significant. Sometimes small differences in wording make for big differences in law.)

For my part, I was unpersuaded. I didn't put all of my little grey cells onto the question, but it seems perfectly reasonable for a court that is addressing candidate eligibility for office can address all factors which might make someone ineligible.

So, will it go to the Supreme Court? Will it go there in a timely fashion? What will the result be?

My guess, and I am far from confident in this guess, is that the Supreme Court of the United States will decide that it isn't their job to stand in the way of voter choice, and they will find some justification for saying that Colorado has to put him on the ballot.

Stumbled across this...

https://www.citizensforethics.org/repor ... fications/

Excuse me for not following it all very closely, but isn't the logical outcome an appeal to SCOTUS, who will rule in the orange turd's favour?