Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

He really is that stupid.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Late Night Open Thread: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Last of Her Very Specific Kind

Late Night Open Thread: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Last of Her Very Specific Kind

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I don’t remember much feminist enthusiasm when Justice O’Connor’s appointment was announced (although it was rumored that the news had broken Phyllis Schafly’s heart). She was tossed at our heads like a shoe thrown at a misbehaving pet, and she dutifully upheld her appointment by sanding down the most splintery edges of hard-right opinions — Daddy only hits us because he gets so *frustrated* when things aren’t right.

Then came the ruling that would shift her name in history from ‘obscure trivia question’ to ‘the female version of Roger Taney’.


Late Night Open Thread: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Last of Her Very Specific Kind

Nil nisi bonum, per the Washington Post‘s Sally Jenkins — “Sandra Day O’Connor, cowgirl and intellectual, would not be fenced in”:

… O’Connor was accustomed to being severely underestimated, and she continues to be, judging by the sparse line of people who paid respects Monday morning. It’s said her legacy — written in opinions on reproductive freedom and affirmative action — has been undone by the court’s more recent decisions. This couldn’t be more wrong, and it misapprehends her real importance, which was to totally rewrite what was publicly achievable as a woman in a man’s profession. She believed in the power of the “qualitative individual” even in the face of enormous institutions, and from her appointment in 1981 until her retirement in 2006, whether on the high court or the tennis court, where she had a slugging forehand, she demonstrated that accomplishment could trump sexism. As she once told a doubles partner: “If you don’t keep score, someone else will. I learned that on the Court.”

Across 160,000 acres of stony canyons on the Arizona-New Mexico border, O’Connor learned something else, a softness of movement in unforgiving environments, how to listen closely to the winds and rustles in the grasses and distinguish “whatever it is can scratch you, bite you or puncture you,” as she wrote in a memoir she co-wrote with her brother, Alan Day, “Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.”

This deference to her surroundings and attunement of eye and ear would serve her well on the court, the alpha-manliness of which was illustrated by Byron “Whizzer” White’s crushing handshake. Deference, of course, does not mean weakness. It merely means respect, and in her it cloaked a deeply embedded strength, as one of her colleagues in the Arizona state legislature learned to his embarrassment. The story is in the excellent biography of O’Connor, “First,” by Evan Thomas. A legislator who chaired appropriations was such a notorious drunk that O’Connor confronted him. He railed at her, “If you were a man, I’d punch you in the nose.” She shot back, “If you were a man, you could.”…

The only thing she liked better than cowgirling was reading, and with a capaciousness for learning she skipped two grades in high school and galloped through Stanford’s undergraduate program and law school in just six years. At the time, only 2 percent of all law students were women, and no one would hire her. She worked for no pay at the San Mateo County district attorney’s office. And slowly, there emerged into the legal world this woman so perfectly suited to perform under the great pressure of being the first on that bench full of black robes…

Time after time what came through in O’Connor’s legal opinions, almost like secret-ink handwriting, was that hardy yet empathetic intelligence of the outdoorswoman who could do the work of a man yet hear the wing of a spar hawk. Strength dueled with delicacy in her most controversial case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), in which she upheld reproductive rights without “undue burden” of state interference. Conservatives hated the decision for its careful movement through the intellectual thicket — Justice Antonin Scalia called it “a jurisprudence of confusion.” But complexity did not mean confusion, any more than deference did weakness. “The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society,” the opinion stated. Nothing could have been clearer…

Perspicacious legal journalist Linda Greenhouse, for the NYTimes [unpaywalled gift link]:

… Although William H. Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate, served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court during that crucial period was often called the O’Connor court, and Justice O’Connor was referred to, accurately, as the most powerful woman in America.

Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. “Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,” she wrote in “The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice,” a collection of her essays published in 2003…

“Liberal” was undoubtedly not her self-image, but as the court’s rightward shift accelerated after her retirement — her successor, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was notably more conservative — she lamented publicly that some of her majority opinions were being “dismantled.”

“What would you feel?” she responded to a questioner in 2009, who asked her reaction to decisions that had undermined some of her rulings…

Despite graduating near the top of her law school class, she was offered only a secretarial position when she applied for a job at a major law firm. The notion that a woman might sit on the Supreme Court seemed distant indeed, not only then but even on the brink of her own appointment…

On the bench during an argument session, she often asked the first question, and it was usually one to strike fear into the heart of even an experienced Supreme Court advocate: Is your case properly in this court? Why shouldn’t we dismiss it as moot? What gives your client standing?

Carter Phillips, a lawyer who argued dozens of cases before Justice O’Connor, once said that he barely bothered to prepare openings for his arguments because he knew that from the start he would be batting back questions from Justice O’Connor. In his first argument after she retired, he recalled, he was met with silence from the justices and had to scramble to think of what to say during the opening minutes of his allotted time.

The route to success in arguing a case before Justice O’Connor lay not in invoking legal doctrine or bright-line rules, but in marshaling the facts to demonstrate a decision’s potential impact. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy described her with admiration as a pragmatist, which he defined as “paying attention to real-world consequences.” Her jurisprudence, Justice Kennedy wrote in a tribute published after her retirement, was “grounded in real experience.”


Late Night Open Thread: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Last of Her Very Specific Kind 1

In her defense, she wanted to retire because her beloved husband had just been diagnosed with dementia, for whatever good that will do when her soul is weighed in the balance…

Late Night Open Thread: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Last of Her Very Specific Kind 2

Never forget:

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    I mean, yeah, she mostly sucked. But you know…

    (although it was rumored that the news had broken Phyllis Schafly’s heart)

    that’s still gonna make me smile.

  2. 2.

    HumboldtBlue

    So for the past 20 years when the Eeyores were moaning about a crooked and absolutely fucked system, they were right.

    Fuck, that’s why this fucking blog exists, the Eeyores were right.

  3. 3.

    piratedan

    she was the embodiment of a more genteel ‘fuck you, I’m a Republican”, I doubt we’ll see her like again because for one, the GOP is now holding the belief that women aren’t real people, so why the fuck should they have law degrees, much less be judges, unless you gotta kink for that.

  4. 4.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    ‘The O’Connor Court”?! That the first time I’ve ever read that drivel. No it wasn’t and I never once read anyone who wrote that nor did I hear it said in the news.

    She sucked and now she’s dead. Leave it at that.

  5. 5.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Alison Rose:

    (although it was rumored that the news had broken Phyllis Schafly’s heart)

    I’m gonna have to go with “Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence” (i.e. the existence of said heart).

  6. 6.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    And as for O’Connor, after Bush v. Gore, the best I can say about her these days is that she wasn’t a Trumpist. And if that’s damning with faint praise, so be it.

  9. 9.

    Quinerly

    @Baud:

    Of course, anyone can call for anything.

    I guess I must be the only one who is sick of all the noise….the tit for fucking tat.

  11. 11.

    Roberto el oso

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I was going to say exactly the same thing. I have never heard the court referred to as such.

    Random observation: the Jenkins’ piece reads like it was written in the 1940s. The style is not necessarily inept but very quaint-sounding.

    Finally, undergraduate (4 years) + law school (3 years), which O’Connor managed in 6 years total, doesn’t exactly qualify as a “gallop”. Petty on my part but for some reason the whole tone of both quoted pieces was exceedingly fawning and irritating.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @Quinerly:

    Take a break from the news then. Because the GOP will always make up reasons to retaliate whenever we use our power for good. See also the Biden impeachment inquiry.

  14. 14.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Roberto el oso:

    Yup, it’s a polishing a turd piece. How about her siding with the majority in a case where they decided that 50 years to life for petty theft in a three strikes case was not cruel and unusual punishment. Or her siding with the majority in being fine with school vouchers for religious schools.

    There’s plenty more that I wish we could bury with her.

  15. 15.

    Martin

    @Roberto el oso: You don’t need a bachelors degree in many states to pursue a JD, so there are lots of people who have done it in 3 and maybe a bit of undergrad.

    Same is true for medical school, though you’ll usually need better part of 2 years of undergrad to meet admission requirements.

  19. 19.

    TriassicSands

    All 9 Supreme Court justices here.

    The radical six have to show respect for someone with whom they had nothing in common and whose jurisprudence they scorn and consistently repudiate. Really touching.

    O’Connor, in turn, had nothing, or at least little, in common with the majority of American women (or men). She was smarter than most and enjoyed an adult life of privilege. While she may have faced sexism in her life, he appointment to the Supreme Court was the opposite — she was chosen because she was a woman and the appointment of a woman was long overdue.

    When the notorious “butterfly ballot” appeared on the the ballot in 2000, O’Connor couldn’t believe that voters would be confused by such a mindless arrangement. Given the ability to consider it outside the voting booth, Justice O’Connor apparently was able to decipher the unbelievably poorly designed arrangement. We’ll never know if she would have been successful had she been in the voting booth and was in a hurry. The bad news for the country was that it is quite possible that enough voters were confused by the ballot that it may have made a difference in the outcome. The result? Countless unnecessary deaths, especially in Iraq.

    Justice O’Connor, to her credit, seems to have regretted her vote in Bush v. Gore, which was among the worst decisions up until then in modern Court history. Today, Bush v. Gore just looks like a typical judicial hack job resulting from a majority of justices having a clear partisan agenda.  Part of her job was to be able to understand how her SCOTUS votes affected the American people. She succeeded, to some extent, on abortion, but at other times was much less successful. She was far from the worst SCOTUS justice in history and we’d be a completely different, and better, country today if two or three of the current nutjob justices were more like her and less like Republican judicial bots.

  20. 20.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Quinerly: the fact that they’re going after her shows that they know how much of a dangerously smart young justice Ketanji Jackson is.

  21. 21.

    TriassicSands

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Agreed, but as I noted in an earlier comment here, O’Connor is far from the worst justice imaginable (we’ve already got six of those) and if two or three of the current radicals voted the way she did, Roe would still be the law of the land and a number of other cases might have had different, and much better, outcomes.

    This country might not be teetering on the brink of an authoritarian abyss if we had Republican appointed justices who were more like her and less like Alito or Thomas or Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh, or Barrett, or Roberts.² The Chief Justice may be the most like O’Connor, but he is still much worse, since his hypocrisy is gobsmacking and his agenda is the same as that of the other radicals, but on a slower time table. Roberts wants to end up in the same place, but hide his goal by doing it more gradually. That way, the frogs (Americans) in the gradually boiling water won’t notice what’s happening to them.¹ Unlike the frogs, Roberts is probably right about the effect on voters.

    We live in a relative world today. Voting for political offices often entails a choice of the “lesser evil,” something made easy by the fact of just how extraordinarily evil Republican candidates are and the corresponding reality that most Democratic candidates aren’t evil at all, but may simply not be the best candidates the Democrats could nominate.

    ¹Yes, I know that the boiling frog story is a myth.

    ²But we probably would be since the root of the problem is the electorate and whom they are willing to vote for. It’s even possible things would be somewhat worse given that Dobbs would not exist as an energizing voter turnout tool. O’Connor was only one vote and we would need at least two like-minded justices to salvage some of the disasters of the past few years.

  22. 22.

    TriassicSands

    @Baud: Thanks to Dobbs, we can now overrule anything.

    Not necessarily. It is always possible that future left-leaning justices will actually respect stare decisis and if the recent travesties stand long enough, who knows? My hope would be that all future justices, and certainly any appointed by Democratic presidents (assuming we have more of those in the future) will recognize the recklessness of this court and treat Dobbs and other grotesque decisions the way they deserve to be treated — like Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson.

  23. 23.

    brantl

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:  And when did anyone call her an intellectual? I don’t remember that, ever. She came up with shitty reasons for her decisions, so that the logic could match the answer that she wanted. Intellectual? No, shitty liar.

  25. 25.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I went to a talk at ASU which featured Sandra Day OConnor and RBG.  The past few years have been such a blur I can’t remember if it was  early during TFG’s term or  late in Obama’s(doesn’t come up on the google.)  Anyhoo,  O’Connor’s mind was definitely slipping and RBG was sharp as a tack. OConnor was partisan but the reason behind her resignation was because her husband had dementia. She eventually had to place her husband in a facility where he supposedly developed a relationship with another resident at the facility. I don’t think OConnor imagined her party becoming as crazy as it has.

  26. 26.

    sab

    @p.a.: No you aren’t. A major governmental decision that doesn’t count as precedence? Seriously? A great legal mind believed that? When push came to shove she was a hack

    ETA I do believe she was wicked smart. That doesn’t mean she was always right or God’s gift to jurisprudence.  When push came to shove she was a hack.

  28. 28.

    lowtechcyclist

    @TriassicSands: ​
     

    it is quite possible that enough voters were confused by the [butterfly] ballot that it may have made a difference in the outcome.

    Oh, it absofuckinglutely did tip the election. There’s no fucking question about it.

    Unfortunately, our system has no way of untangling a mess like that. The only thing that could have been done was a full recount of all the other ballots, which didn’t happen, thanks to the Brooks Brothers Riot and Sandra Day O’Connor.

    Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis paid the price of your being able to retire with a Republican in the White House, lady. I hope they all get to personally confront you in the afterlife.

  29. 29.

    geg6

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    My thoughts exactly. I knew she was garbage when she was appointed and she bore out the judgement of my youth.  And no one ever called it the O’Connor court.  What a fucking joke.

  30. 30.

    eversor

    Attacking SDOC is like attacking HRC.   Don’t do it.  They are women.  Also SDOC helped make the nation more Christian.  And since we aren’t going to be anti Christian she did the right damn thing.  Go her!

  31. 31.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @sab: i agree. I just don’t think OConnor imagined all that followed and biographies of her will show that. I remember Rehnquist’s death being a shock. It didn’t seem like anybody but the family knew he was ill.

  32. 32.

    sab

    @Mai Naem mobile: She was really really smart. She could have been amazing in history. Instead she will be “oops I blew the most important decision of my life, and things went downhill a lot afterwards.” Or shorter version : “When it mattered I was a hack.”

  33. 33.

    Ohio Mom

    @Mai Naem mobile: That’s the only thing I found admirable about O’Connor, that she gave her husband’s memory care romance her blessing.

    That was pragmatic and kind, two adjectives I can’t apply to her otherwise.

  34. 34.

    Princess

    The first member of an out-group who attains a position to that point only held by members of an in-group will often tend to the reactionary and the conservative— they were chosen by that in group for a reason and it wasn’t to be a trail blazer for new ways of thinking.

    Also, when she gave up her seat to tend to her husband, in his dementia he promptly fell in love with someone else. I am a mean person and I always felt it served her right for Gore.

  35. 35.

    Mousebumples

    From the last tweet in the OP-

    Everyone understands that if Trump wins next year there is a 100 percent chance both Alito and Thomas peace out and retire so he can appoint two younger (45-50 year old) Federalist Society kooks to extend the majority for another 20-25 years, right?

    I think that’s possible, but I’m sure both Alito and Thomas know that if they retire the Leonard Leo Fed Soc gravy train stops. They are both self interested enough to just keep on keeping on, figuring their thumb on the scale can keep the GOP in power.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Princess:

    She regretted retiring and advised Ginsburg not to retire:

    At the time, O’Connor was talking publicly about her regrets about the conservative turn the court began to take after her departure. O’Connor decided to leave the court when she was 75 because her husband was sick with Alzheimer’s. But soon after she left the bench, his illness progressed to the point that he could no longer recognize her. She told her biographer, Evan Thomas, that retiring was “the biggest mistake, the dumbest thing I ever did.”

  38. 38.

    p.a.

    … Alito and Thomas know that if they retire the Leonard Leo Fed Soc gravy train stops…

     

    IDK, they’ve certainly earned their keep.  The lecture circuit & Regnery gravy train await to maintain their lifestyles.

    Maybe if Dobbs continues to yield the electoral results so far 🤞 some FedSoc type will kick Scalito in his shriveled nuts.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    The truth is her whole legal legacy is wiped out- overturned, no longer exists. That’s probably punishment enough for Bush v Gore.

  40. 40.

    Chris

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I don’t think OConnor imagined her party becoming as crazy as it has.

    That really is the last hundred years of Republican politicians in a nutshell, isn’t it?

    “Sure, my administration pioneered modern vote suppression, election stealing, and the practice of using DOJ to harass voters and pursue cases of voter fraud that I and they knew were fictional.  But how was I supposed to know my successor would try to overthrow the government?”

    “Sure, I wiped my ass on every treaty, norm, and international forum known to man in order to start a war on transparently phony pretexts, and stacked my administration with unilateralists who took every opportunity to say that they thought our democratic allies weren’t shit.  But how was I supposed to know my successor would want to tear up NATO?”

    “Sure, we spent the entire cold war undermining democracies and setting up dictatorships, colluded with a friendly dictatorship to tank a peace treaty and win an election and keep a war going for another five years, colluded with a hostile dictatorship to raise money to finance our attempt to restore another dictatorship, and probably colluded with that same hostile dictatorship to win another election.  But how were we supposed to know that our successor would one day collude with the Russian dictatorship to win an election?”

    “Sure, we spent the entire late twentieth century doing everything we could to make our party welcoming for the exact same people who had ruled the South as a one-party apartheid regime for the previous century.  But how were we supposed to know those people might not always respect the constitution?”

    “Sure, we rode the Red Scare into office for all it was worth, put Richard fucking Nixon a heartbeat away from the presidency, and spent the rest of the decade coasting on reactionary backlash and cultural chauvinism.  But how were we supposed to know our successors would invite the Southern Democrats into the party?”

    “In conclusion, the important thing is that this isn’t my fault, I would never have done this if I’d known, and if I had done it it would have been for the right reasons, anyway the real problem is that the Democrats were such poopyheads that they made me do it.  I mean, what was I supposed to do?  Listen to them?  I can’t do that!”

  41. 41.

    EarthWindFire

    @Kay: Had she not chosen to join the hackatular Bush v. Gore decision, she could’ve “stood strong” during a Dem administration and gotten her wish…yeah, not crying in my beer for her.

    The Bush v. Gore “nonprecedent” decision foreshadowed Dobbs. She was part of the problem, even if she had no idea how bad it would get.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @EarthWindFire:

    Bush v Gore was radicalizing to me. I was shocked, and I felt like the demand to just immediately forget about it and move on led to a 20 year period where no one was held accountable for anything – it was all “no one could have predicted, look forward not backward”. Until Trump was indicted. Now I feel like we’re back on track as far as holding lawbreakers accountable. Another Biden success- the return of holding people responsible for their actions.

  43. 43.

    Chris

    @sab:

    @Mai Naem mobile: She was really really smart. She could have been amazing in history. Instead she will be “oops I blew the most important decision of my life, and things went downhill a lot afterwards.” Or shorter version : “When it mattered I was a hack.”

    It says so much about how far the Republican Party has fallen and how long it’s been falling that you can’t even imagine saying something like this about any major Republican elected or appointed… oh, probably since the millennium, at least.

    “Well, they fucked up royal, but they’re smart enough that they could have been great for this country, if they’d actually cared to.”  Not exactly a compliment.  And yet which of today’s Republicans could you imagine saying even that much about?  The last one I remember the media trying to fluff as some intellectual powerhouse was Paul Ryan, for howling out loud.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    I just love Colorado today. The more I think about it the more I love it.

    What a cool thing- putting the plain meaning of the constitution above expediency. Because he really should be barred from ballots, if you’re reading and appying the text. All the objections to it aren’t legal or textual, they’re “the Right will be mad and they’re scary” or “Republicans should be allowed to break rules!” or “look away and move on”.

    I know the Right wing hacks will overturn it but it’s a beautiful thing all by itself.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    sherrilynifill

    The provisions of the 14th Amendment are the only constitutional provisions that scholars, judges and commentators treat as optional. The “this will create a backlash,” takes are astonishing. Applying only those constitutional provisions that won’t make right wing extremists mad is not a thing. Especially when it sets a serial abuser of the Constitution above the law.

    It’s funny how no one in media ever worries about a liberal backlash to what conservatives do. Aftre Bush v Gore we were ordered to move on and they all pretended it didn’t happen. Just do that again!

  49. 49.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    The ultimate scam of the “liberal media” meme is that they set themselves up to be the only voice of liberalism.  Which means that, as far as mainstream discourse is concerned, they decide whether there’s a liberal backlash or not.  (There never is, naturally, because they’re not liberal).

  50. 50.

    EarthWindFire

    @NotMax: Republican reaction to yesterday’s Colorado decision is fast centering on “Judges have no business deciding on elections.”

    So we now know the reasoning the Seditious Six will use to overturn this. They’ll put it back to the legislatures. Why not? It’s worked so well with Dobbs. I still think there’s a chance of a concurring opinion that he hasn’t been found guilty in a federal court, due process, blah blah blah…though.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    “There is a strange, self-limiting, helplessness to that thinking: A wicked man does immoral and illegal things—and society’s reaction is to say that we must indulge his depredations, because if we tried to hold him accountable then he would become even worse.”

    I don’t (actually) think we have that much to lose. If Trump wins he’ll destroy the country and if he loses he’ll spend the next 4 years denying it and radicalizing his followers. I talk to Trump followers. They’re all convinced he’s going to win mainly because idiots in media have already called the race for Trump. They’re going to go nuts when Biden wins – and Biden is going to win, despite political media. It will be worse than they were in 2020.

    I think Trump himself has changed the risk analysis with holding him accountable – there’s no upside to NOT holding him accountable either.

  53. 53.

    Geminid

       “Mr. President, do you realize that Netanyahu will turn the table on you and blame you for everything,” two guests asked U.S. President Joe Biden at a recent meeting with donors and allies. “He is seeking a confrontation with you for his political ends.”

    Biden smiled and responded, “I know.”

    That’s the lead of a Dec. 19 Haaretz article titled, “Analysis: Biden knows that Netanyahu is not a partner at all for post war Gaza.” The subtitle reads:

       While Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps trying to drag the U.S. into a broader war in the Middle East, U.S. President Joe Biden is quietly pressuring him to move to a lower intensity conflict in the Gaza strip.

    In other news, Israel reportedly is offering Hamas a week long ceasefire, along with an exchange of 40 of Hamas’s hostages for a number of Israeli prisoners. Hamas insists they will only accept a permanent ceasefire. Negotiations are being led by CIA Director William Burns and Mossad chief David Barnea, with the Qatari Prime Minister serving as interlocutor with Hamas.

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay: ​
     

    What a cool thing- putting the plain meaning of the constitution above expediency. Because he really should be barred from ballots, if you’re reading and appying the text. All the objections to it aren’t legal or textual, they’re “the Right will be mad and they’re scary” or “Republicans should be allowed to break rules!” or “look away and move on”.

    Well, there’s also the argument that the 14th Amendment only says an insurrectionist can’t BE President, but it doesn’t allow states to prohibit one from being on the ballot; it’s up to Congress to enforce that provision when it certifies the electoral votes.

    But that’s absurd. The same is true about Article II (President must be a U.S. citizen of at least 35 years of age), and if a state has ever had to keep a noncitizen, or person under 35, off the ballot, nobody’s ever suggested they don’t have that authority.

    If a person is ineligible for the office of the Presidency, the appropriate action is to keep them off the ballot to begin with.

    I’d also like to see some states press the 22nd Amendment gambit, and send letters to TFG saying something like “in order to determine your eligibility to be on the ballot for the 2024 Presidential election, we need you to check one of the following boxes, and then sign below.” And there would be one box to check for “I was elected President in the 2020 election” and another for “I wasn’t elected President in the 2020 election.” And then there would be a note explaining that failure to respond by such-and-such a date would mean his name wouldn’t appear on the ballot.

    If he checked the “I was” box, a letter would be sent back to him explaining that, having been elected President in 2016 (as is well established) and having been elected President in 2020 as well (by his own testimony), he is ineligible to be on the ballot in 2024, as the 22nd Amendment says that no person may be elected to the office of President more than twice, so his name will not appear on the ballot in the state of _____.

    It almost certainly would fail a court test, but it would be worth it just for the mind game.

  55. 55.

    Timill

    @lowtechcyclist: Just ask all candidates to declare that:

    They are a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution
    They have attained to the age of thirty five years
    They have been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
    They are not a person 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.
    They have not twice been elected to the office of the President or been elected once, having held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President

  56. 56.

    Paul in KY

    She was a POS (IMO) cause she put her thumb on the scale in that infamous ruling, as she knew she was retiring soon and wanted to be replaced by a Republican.

  57. 57.

    H-Bob

    @Kay: Judge Engoron’s ruling did slam Trump’s fraud and lies very thoroughly rather than making excuses.

    @Timill: The flaw with that declaration is that Trump is a liar.

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