Today is the big day – where the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit here’s oral arguments.
All the legal eagles seem to agree that what’s in question is not a matter of they rule in favor of Trump (they will not) but of how they get to the ruling/s that go against Trump.
This Lawfare podcast is the best I have see or read on the subject.
On the menu:
-
Immunity
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Absolute Immunity
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Double Jeopardy
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Negative Inference
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Jurisdiction
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Peaceful Transfer of Power
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Other Amicus Briefs
Burnspbesq
ICYMI, yesterday the Second Circuit denied Trump’s request for rehearing en banc on the immunity issue in the Carroll case. He is 0-for-2 on this issue in civil cases: Carroll in the Second Circuit and Blassingame (sp?) in the D.C. Circuit.
WaterGirl
I don’t know whether legal proceedings typically start on time, but I would guess that they do, and that this one will.
We’ll know soon enough, I guess.
edit: It says “live in 60 seconds” on my phone, so I’m guessing yes, it will.
lowtechcyclist
I bet Trump loses on Double Jeopardy, he’d have to cheat to be able to win at the home game.
(Seriously, that legal issue is total bullshit here!)
WaterGirl
I find Trump’s attorney hard to listen to, and he is such a fast talker that it feels like he is trying to put something over on the listeners.
Another Scott
A day ending in “y” so TIFG is going to lose in court again.
Meanwhile, … RollCall.com:
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Burnspbesq
Trump’scounsel didn’t even get to start his presentation before the judges honed in on the jurisdiction issue raised by the amicus. And they’re hounding him.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
Can’t recall having ever heard someone with such a scratchy voice who wasn’t in the middle of a bad head cold.
Jackie
No cameras allowed inside at all, so TIFG will have to campaign outside, where I hear the weather is not his friend. Sideways blowing rain. Let it be so!
Burnspbesq
Don’t think Trump’s counsel is scoring any points with this panel.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: He sounded just like this in the last appeals court case we were able to listen to.
WaterGirl
@Burnspbesq: It seems to me that he is being very evasive, so I feel that it’s more trying to nail down an answer, rather than hounding him.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: Oh no, the wind and rain might muss his “hair”.
WaterGirl
@Burnspbesq:
Would you agree with that?
narya
I know we generally revile the FYNYFT, but at the top of their webpage right now is a scrolling, straightforward timeline of TIFG’s efforts to overturn the election. Seeing it in this abbreviated, one-sentence-at-a-time format is pretty striking.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Burnspbesq: And if they decide they don’t have jurisdiction, doesn’t that end things right there? They get to walk away from it without deciding any of the core questions?
Another Scott
Oh, so inciting an insurrection is an official act as opposed to private conduct now??
[ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Michael Bersin
So, if a criminal prosecution after the impeachment of a president (then failing to achieve the necessary margin for conviction) is double jeopardy, then how is a criminal prosecution after the successful impeachment of a president not? D. John Sauer’s, Trump’s attorney, argument don’t make any sense.
Missouri. Go figure.
J. Michael Luttig probably has even more regrets now.
bbleh
I would not consider it legal for Biden to order the assassination of TIFG in the interest of national security; however …
lowtechcyclist
Listening to his scratchy speechifying is gonna drive me up the wall. And c’mon, all that last paragraph of Article I, Section 3 does is make it clear that having been impeached and convicted doesn’t exempt an impeached official from criminal prosecution under the law. If being impeached and convicted, and then tried in the courts, isn’t double jeopardy, how the devil is it double jeopardy if he’s impeached and not convicted, and then tried in the courts? That makes no sense at all.
Not to mention, the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause says “nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” Impeachment doesn’t put anyone in jeopardy of losing life, liberty, or property, just one’s position in the government.
He’s just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.
Shalimar
@Burnspbesq: The part I listened to before I turned it off wasn’t even professional behavior. He was outraged that Trump was being politically prosecuted. That is an issue for the trier of facts, not anything the appeals court is deciding.
Lapassionara
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My understanding is that they have given “hypothetical” opinions in the past, and the Special Counsel has asked for one here. That is usually considered a no-no.
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
the court nicely pointed out the inherent contradiction in the argument that a president cannot be prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted. I’ve never bought that argument.
bbleh
@lowtechcyclist: @Shalimar: TIFG apparently is in the courtroom, or somewhere adjacent where he can listen live. That, plus the kinds of things Sauer is saying, suggests to me that (1) he has basically ordered Sauer to say certain things and make certain arguments, and (2) he will inundate him later with lots of Monday-morning quarterbacking. Almost makes you feel sorry for the guy …
brendancalling
@narya: I gotta admit, it’s pretty awesome.
Burnspbesq
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
if there’s no jurisdiction to hear an interlocutory appeal, the case goes back to the district court for trial, but the immunity issue could be raised in a post-conviction appeal.
WaterGirl
Paradoxical = you are full of shit.
Michael Bersin
@lowtechcyclist:
Bingo!
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: We don’t want them to totally walk away right now.
We also want them to address immunity so the case can’t be overturned due to immunity after the trial is over.
Same with double jeopardy.
Burnspbesq
@Shalimar:
That’s the “audience of one” problem.
WaterGirl
@Michael Bersin:
What do you mean by that?
WaterGirl
Did he just refer to previous presidents as OFFICERS????
Michael Bersin
@WaterGirl:
Sauer clerked with Luttig.
lowtechcyclist
@bbleh:
I don’t want to see Trump dead; I just want to see him incarcerated for the rest of his days, with no more contact with the outside world than any other Federal prisoner is allowed to have.
JPL
@lowtechcyclist: All I hear when he starts to rapidly explain is I got nothing.
WaterGirl
@Michael Bersin: Oh, ugh. thank you.
Burnspbesq
@Michael Bersin:
And the Duke admissions office let Stephen Miller in. No selection process is perfect.
WaterGirl
@Burnspbesq:
Do you think they might be doing that because they are considering just saying “sorry, we don’t have jurisdiction” and ending things right there?
Jackie
Sauer’s voice gets extremely squeaky when he goes high pitched with indignation.
I hope TIFG’s ears are suffering as much as the judges and ours are. I wonder if he’ll actually stick around for the entire ordeal.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
He can say that here because this isn’t the 14th Amendment case.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Does he think minds get wiped and don’t recall that Trump’s counsel is speaking out of both sides of its mouth?
TS
We are back to the literal wording of the founders? is this the argument for SCOTUS rather than any other legal panel – or do I misunderstand
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
it’s Civ Pro 101 that federal courts have only the jurisdiction granted by Article III. If the court determines that it doesn’t have jurisdiction, the fact that both parties would like it to exercise jurisdiction is “too bad, so sad.”
Shalimar
@Burnspbesq: Speaking of which, has Stephen Miller ever explained why a Santa Monica kid ended up applying to Duke in the first place? There isn’t a large California contingent there.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
I assume there’ll be a different lawyer representing Trump in the XIV case; there’s far too many cases for one person to represent Trump in all of them. Can’t see why that lawyer couldn’t just say, “I don’t know what the bozo in that other case was thinking of, can’t see how his slip of the tongue is applicable here.”
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: I’m proud to say that DelBene is my congressperson. She’s excellent.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Arguing that here (if he is doing so. I am not in a position to listen right now.) raises judicial estoppel issues for the 14th Amendment case.
Burnspbesq
One of the judges just described Midland Asphalt as a “strong” precedent. That’s interesting.
Burnspbesq
@Shalimar:
colleges strive for geographically diverse student bodies. Miller could rationally have concluded that he had no shot at Stanford, but Duke was a possibility.
lowtechcyclist
@Shalimar:
Speaking of Stephen Miller, when will he have to try to explain to the court at The Hague just why his child separation program and kids in cages weren’t a crime against humanity?
NotMax
Typical.
Proceedings began at 4:30 a.m. here. Rain and wind storm outside. Power went out at exactly 4:28; back on only a few minutes ago.
Burnspbesq
@lowtechcyclist:
Probably never, since the United States has never ratified the Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court.
Ohio Mom
I admit I am not following all this very closely, my general feeling is, let me know when/if somehow Trump is taken off the ballot. I don’t have the patience and attention for the finer points of legal challenges and interpretations, that isn’t how my brain works (thankful that many brains operate differently than mine because this is important stuff. The future hinges on it).
As far as I can tell, there are currrently two parallel sets of events: a set of court cases and a Republican primary season. The last I looked, Trump was still in the lead. Nothing is slowing him down. Biden is clearly running against him at this point.
Could Trump lose every case and still be elected? What does the Republican Party leadership see as their path forward? I am totally lost.
lowtechcyclist
@Burnspbesq: A pity, that.
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
Yes.
The MAGAts control the party. Trump and Trumpism is their path forward.
Harrison Wesley
@Shalimar: Maybe he thought it was David Duke University.
dmsilev
@Ohio Mom: I don’t see anything that will keep him from getting the nomination. If he’s on the ballot in most of the states, he’ll win, and there’s no way that SCOTUS will rule “You know, Colorado is right, and we decree that all states should follow suit”. Even assuming that the trial date for the Jan 6 crimes isn’t pushed back, that trial doesn’t even begin until around the time of Super Tuesday, so by the time there’s a verdict, the primaries will be effectively over.
Now, “convicted felon Trump” would be a bit of a drag in the general election, and I’m sure there’d be people in the GOP who would like to toss him off the ticket if he is convicted, but there would be literally be a mob of red-hats storming RNC headquarters if that happened, and the party knows it. So, what’s their path forward? Who knows?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@lowtechcyclist:
Plus suppression of non-Trumpist-friendly voters, through gerrymandering, polling-station chicanery, restrictions on the right to vote, and stuff like that.
JPL
OMG this is sad, but in a good way.
sab
@JPL: I agree. Also too, two of these judges have all their professional experience in the South. To them the machine gun speed of Sauer’s speech is probably perceived as irritating and just plain rude.
UncleEbeneezer
@Shalimar: My guess is that he liked the fact that their basketball team was mostly-white. This is a comedy clip but there’s a whole lot of truth to it. And I say that as someone who knew a couple hardcore Duke fans back in the day. And the notion that they were the scrappy, smart (white) team fighting against the tide of physically dominant (mostly-black) teams, was definitely a part of their love of Duke.
Baud
@JPL:
Nominated!
Almost Retired
I think Trump would be better served by an attorney who doesn’t sound like a Saturday morning cartoon character.
Dave
@Almost Retired: This is not what I should judge him but I listened to a bit of the livestream and dear god even with what people were commenting on that was not the voice I was expecting.
frosty
OT: This isn’t how I usually see it, but, you know, any combination of these letters in any order works!
catclub
@Burnspbesq: So who would have jurisdiction?
Spanky
@Ohio Mom:
If you had put quotation marks around “I am totally lost”, I think you would have answered your own question.
frosty
@Shalimar: @Burnspbesq: Miller got to be a diversity admission (geographic) by applying to the other coast. Could be one reason why he got admitted.
ETA: Dang, beaten by Burnsie!
narya
@frosty: Yeah, I never remember exactly how people type it, so I mix it up.
Soprano2
@Burnspbesq: Isn’t this the one that happened because he defamed her again after the first verdict? I have no idea how he can even argue he has immunity for something he did as a private citizen. Argle bargle I was president so I’m immune from being charged for any crime forever, I guess.
WaterGirl
Seems like Sauer is just the kind of slick fast-talking lawyer that would appeal to Trump.
Burnspbesq
@catclub:
As a general rule, appeals can only be had from final judgments of the trial court. There is a relatively narrow range of things that are subject to “interlocutory” (pre-trial) appeal.
if the court decides Midland Asphalt controls, then it will say it has no jurisdiction to hear an interlocutory appeal and send the case back for trial. Effectively that converts immunity from a jurisdictional issue to an affirmative defense. If Trump gets convicted, he could raise immunity in a post-conviction appeal.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WaterGirl: was Roy Cohn a fast talker?
NotMax
More tap dancing going on than in a Fred Astaire movie.
WaterGirl
@NotMax:
You’ve got that right!
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: The way I figure it, the Supreme Court is almost certainly going to rule that states can’t take Trump off the ballot in this way. How dismayed we should be about that depends on WHY they say he can’t be taken off the ballot: if it’s something that amounts to “Trump is above the law, because special Trump rules” or some kind of due process objection or something narrowly technical.
And it’s probably not going to change the course of the election regardless. Trump can absolutely be elected President even if he’s convicted of something and in prison. The question is just whether he will be.
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
Sauer has a pretty spiffy resume: Rhodes Scholar, clerked for Luttig and Scalia. Objectively, he’s done a decent job of presenting the losing arguments that are all he has to work with.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Our power has been out since shortly after midnight, PST due to high winds. It’s been gusting over 50 mph, knocking down trees and power lines all over the Puget Sound area.
My phone is dead, but my husband’s is fully charged and I’m using it for a hotspot for my laptop. We have a generator that mr opiejeann will be starting soon, to keep the fridge going. I think breakfast is going to be Jack in the Box
Thank God the toilets don’t rely on electricity.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
I’m old enough to remember when interlocutory appeals were seriously discouraged and rarely happened.
There’s another norm, shattered by Trump.
WaterGirl
@Burnspbesq: I didn’t say he’s not smart or quick on his feet, but to me he reads like a sleazy, quick-talking ambulance chaser.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Burnspbesq:
He’s presenting trash, which is Exhibit A on how broken our legal system is. “Zealous Representation” now appears to mean “throw shit at the public facing wall and see what sticks in the minds of the morons”.
If there’s a public policy argument to be made for a change in the law or in inequity that seems to be appearing, it should be something that is justifiable.
What Sauer is doing isn’t that.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
IANAL but it’s evident that having a judge repeatedly admonish counsel “That’s not what I asked you” does not endear one to the court.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
I think even the liberals are going to say that they don’t want anyone taken off the ballot without an actual criminal conviction. Not a lawyer and it’s just my best guess.
WaterGirl
Sauer seriously argued that if the president ordered Seal Team Six to take out a president’s political rival, and they weren’t impeached and convicted for that, then the legal system can’t take any action, even after he is no longer president.
That’s ridiculous on its face – he can’t possibly win on that ridiculous argument.
catclub
ummm…. there are lift pumps in some sewer/sewage systems. They do. Also of course the pumps that pressurize the system.
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
Would it have to be a conviction that had survived all its appeals? is the question that crosses my mind, given the calendar.
Sure Lurkalot
Betty Bowers:
“You can’t prosecute a former president unless he was impeached because of immunity!” —Trump Lawyers
“You can’t prosecute a former president if he was impeached because of double jeopardy!” —Also Trump Lawyers
geg6
@bbleh:
Nope. No, I do not and never will. He made the shitty bed he’s in and took on the scummy client. So he gets what he deserves.
Fuckem, as a very wise man once said.
catclub
I am not sure. Were all those Confederate Generals that thought they should not run for office ever convicted in court of insurrection?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Yet feckless Joe Biden still won’t do it.
smith
@Matt McIrvin: I agree that they will not make it easy to remove him from the ballot, but I don’t see how they avoid clarifying just who can make the decision, and what the criteria must be,
As Terri Kanefield has pointed out, application of the 14th disqualifiication clause is much more complicated than it might first appear. Those complications have to be worked through if that part of the Constitution is to mean anything at all. As she also points out, a lot of people seem to want to grab onto it as the one weird trick that will solve our little fascism problem, but unfortunately, it won’t work that way. We will still need to beat them head on, at the ballot box, through the courts and with every instrument of influence we have at our disposal.
Chris T.
@opiejeanne:
Well, not directly anyway. Depending on where you are and where the water sources are, there may be electrically powered pumps involved somewhere.
Also re:
There are, but they’re usually far enough downstream to ignore for a longer time (unless you happen to be the unlucky person right next to one).
Scout211
We are on a well. No power, no water. That’s what she is referring to.
@opiejeanne: I feel you. Last year at this time we had to run our generator off and on many days during the “Great Storms of 2023” here in California.
WaterGirl
@Sure Lurkalot: Not just impeached, but impeached and convicted!
narya
Much as I hate to see (and say) it, I can see a reasonable argument about why TIFG shouldn’t be removed from the ballot. The end of the Civil War was more definitive than anything we’ve seen w/r/t J6; yes, people have been prosecuted, but I’m not sure (a) any have been convicted of insurrection, and even if they were, (b) the point of the J6 case is, in many ways, to tie him to J6 as a person who made it happen. (Smith hasn’t quite set up the indictment that way, for reasons that make sense to me.)
WaterGirl
@geg6: I am with you on that! I don’t feel sorry for anyone who has willingly been in Trump’s orbit. They made their choices, and the chose the side of corruption and more.
bbleh
@Baud: I can’t help but think that it occurred briefly to even the Republican judge’s mind that TIFG would do something like that, or if not assassination then “rendition” or something similar, to a political rival AND to any judges that tried to stand in his way.
bbleh
@geg6: @WaterGirl: lol I did say “almost.”
Just hope his Big Brain extended to getting his fee upfront…
lowtechcyclist
@smith:
Pretty much. The only state I can see invoking the 14th that might be up for grabs (besides that one EV in ME-2) would be Michigan. Which would make it slightly easier to win this election, but we’d still need some other swing states.
Shalimar
@Frankensteinbeck: As we have seen, just getting to a criminal prosecution can take forever. Conviction can’t be the standard, or it basically concedes the issue for the next election.
oldgold
Trump’s lawyers primary purpose is not win the substantive legal issues presented by this appeal. As such, to evaluate their performance by weighing the quality of their substantive legal arguments on immunity and double jeopardy is largely misguided. That is not the game being played.
The game is to delay the criminal proceedings. The outcome of this delay game, unlike the substantive legal outcome of this appeal, unfortunately, remains in doubt to the Republic’s peril.
Geminid
These 14th Amendment lawsuits raise all kinds of interesting questions, but I have always believed that we will have to beat Trump straight up, at the polls on November 5. That could change, but I doubt it.
Martin
@Burnspbesq: There is a SIZEABLE pipeline of people of influence to various privates, and which private is almost exclusively a matter of which connections you have. Miller’s parents were wealthy and his dad was a conservative. There’s pretty much zero chance dad wasn’t shopping around for a preferred opportunity for Stephen to get into an elite school.
The public thinks this happens through a big gift, but it happens a lot more just through personal connections. They often embrace kids that are either ideologically aligned with the mission of the institution (or what they wish the mission to be) or find kids that have generational wealth which may not come in this moment, but will probably come later. I’ve watched this happen over and over and over, and I’ve been on the receiving end of this as well, because I was for a time the gatekeeper of those admissions offers. Every cycle I’d have hundreds of requests from faculty or other people attached to the institution for consideration for this young man or woman, ‘I think they’d really contribute a lot to the institution’ and so on and so forth. It’s unbelievably routine, and publics for the most part resist this influence (because we are legally obligated to) but privates absolutely traffic in it – I have had those conversations with their admissions gatekeepers. Most of it is not quid pro quo, but it is a shortcutting of the ‘objective’ process of admissions for the judgement of someone who is known and trusted, which ultimately admissions relies on happening anyway. I could design rubrics for how to evaluate an applicant, but that rubric still required the judgement of the person reading the file – you can’t quantify a personal statement.
geg6
@narya:
People have definitely been convicted of insurrection in regard to J6. No question about that.
bbleh
@Geminid: we will, and that won’t be the end of it, because neither he nor his cult nor the Republican politicians who use them will ever admit he actually lost. (And of course, the ever-elusive “Republican moderates” will stay quietly out of the discussion, because they’d really prefer that
the trains run on timetheir taxes be reduced, and they’re notJewishnon-White immigrants.)cmorenc
@smith:
Laws and Rights are not only meaningless without effective, just procedures to implement them, but are subject to malicious misuse without such.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was no ambiguity over whether there had been an insurrection, and the guilty parties helpfully had publicly worn grey uniforms or presented themselves as officials of the C.S.A., often willingly posing for photographs or signing documents in those capacities. True, people who invaded the Capitol building on J6 were often self-identified by their own selfies or security footage, but the culpable extent to which others (like Trump) were involved in directing their actions is something that requires evidentiary proof in some sort of procedure providing due process for contesting the charges. OF course, it’s overwhelmingly likely Jack Smith could provide such proof in a court-of-law, but still the charge of insurrection requires definite legal process rather than simple declaration, no matter how seemingly convincing. Without that buffer of due process and requiring proof, malicious actors such as Mo. Secretary of State Ashcroft or Texas AG Ken Paxton could arbitrarily label Biden an “insurrectionist” who thereby gets kicked off the ballot in those states.
smith
The tell is that they could have filed this appeal at any time after the indictment first dropped, but waited until the eleventh hour to produce maximum disruption. An early appeal, if it had been successful, would have saved TFG a ton of time and money. However, they knew it wouldn’t succeed, so saved it until now to use for delay, especially since SCOTUS would inevitably get involved, and they rarely move fast. It might be the only strategically intelligent thing his army of lawyers has done this year.
geg6
@Geminid:
Agreed. And I really think these arguments in favor of keeping him off the ballot aren’t very valid during a primary. More so during a general, but I prefer to beat his ass senseless the usual way.
In the spirit of the 14A, though, I believe he is definitely disqualified. But that’s just me and IANAL.
wombat probability cloud
@lowtechcyclist: There’s a post at Kos this morning that looks at the potential state-by-state consequences of disqualification.
JoyceH
Hey, bright side – if the SC upholds the Trump lawyers’ argument, Biden could just motorcade down to the Supreme Court and order his security detail to shoot Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh. Solves our court problem right there.
in other weird political news, I sure hope the clowns that swatted Smith and Chutkin get arrested quickly. I suspect it will be easy. Anyone too dense to realize that the only result of the maneuver would be swat teams being greeted by security details telling them, “You guys got punked” probably called from their home phone.
Kelly
@opiejeanne: Our power is still on here in Oregon’s western Cascade Foothills. Big wind here to. Scattered power failures across Oregon. Our power failures are short and rare so I’ve never bought a generator. If our power fails my backup plan is head over to my brother’s house. He lives further from the paved roads than we do. Loses power a dozen or so times every winter so has spent some money on backup power. They have a propane generator, furnace, cooktop and a giant propane tank.
randy khan
@Martin:
Apropos of this, I just read an article in New York magazine (as opposed to the NYT magazine) about the weird situation that, basically, poor people and very rich people have an easier time getting into elite schools than somewhat rich (the 90th to 95th percentiles) once they apply. (Poor people obviously get into those schools at a much lower rate than rich people because relatively few of them actually apply.) A big chunk of that is legacy admissions, and another big chunk of it is participation in sports that elite schools field that most kids simply don’t play, but connections also likely are part of the explanation.
TBone
@Michael Bersin: Quote of the Day (so far): “Listening to the appellate court hearing on Trump’s immunity claim,” wrote longtime newspaper editor Mark Jacobs. “Good lord, his lawyer is a dipshit.”
Jackie
@opiejeanne: It’s blustery and cold on the east side of the mountains, too. A great day for curling up under the afghan with the tv remote close by 💨 🥶
narya
@geg6: Yeah, after I posted I remembered the “seditious conspiracy” convictions, etc. I still think it’s non-trivial to connect TIFG to those convicted; in general he acted like a mob boss, rarely or never giving direct instructions, not writing things down, etc. That doesn’t mean there’s no evidence, of course–but I also think it’s a case that should be made rather than assumed. I suspect that Stone was the main cutout in those actions, and we know what kind of scum HE is.
TBone
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: in plain view of our entire judiciary.
teezyskeezy
@JoyceH: Yeah, but wasn’t there some qualification about being impeached and removed allowing for prosecution? I strongly doubt enough Senate Dems would go along with such a brazen move. They’d remove Biden immediately and watch Trump win in the Fall, and then Trump would do that to them.
Unless of course, Dark Brandon moves against them before they vote…
(look I know you were just being hypothetical, but it’s a funny hypothetical to fully game out).
louc
@Martin:
@Martin:
A brilliant book about this, featuring an anonymized Jared Kushner as Exhibit A, is “The Price of Admission” by Daniel Golden. Published in 2007, so way before Trump and Jared became American nightmares.
Kelly
@Jackie: Oregon Dept of Transportation’s website Tripcheck.com is describing mountain pass conditions with the phrase skiers have been waiting for “snowing hard and continuously”
Spanky
So, if a state decides that TFG is disqualified from being on the ballot, is he also disqualified from winning that state? We all know that MAGAs will just be that much more inclined to vote for him if he’s disqualified, and we can expect to see a ton of write-in votes for him. If he gets the most votes via write-in but was disqualified via the 14th Amendment, what happens to those votes? The 14th says an insurrectionist can’t hold office, but the election is held by the individual states for a national office, whose winner is not determined by any individual state who may have made such a determination.
I’m assuming (yeah, yeah, I know) that the state’s SoS is authorized to disqualify those votes and not have them count, but I also suspect that that depends on each state’s laws.
TBone
@oldgold: Jeff tiedrich nails this today.
ETtheLibrarian
Was scheduled for federal jury duty at that courthouse last week and this, and while I am super, super glad I didn’t called for the tRump shitshow in March, I am very glad I didn’t get called to go into today. I don’t know if I have any patience for whatever would have been going on down there today.
Spanky
@Jackie:
Pity the poor people who only have Chihuahuas.
Ironcity
@JoyceH: Not the home phone, the office/workplace phone or the burner phone they bought at the grocery store with their Visa card (and by using their Ralphs card they got an extra discount). They saw all the Mission Impossible movies.
smith
@ETtheLibrarian: TFG promised he’d attend today. Anybody know if he showed?
Baud
Via Reddit
cain
@lowtechcyclist: He needs to be humiliated and his supporters embarrassed and ashamed. It should be clear behind a shadow of the doubt to public especially his “freedom loving, super patriotic” supporters that he and by extension them were involved in an insurrection against their country and they should remove any idea that they are patriotic anything – they did the equivalent of burning the flag that they seem to care so deeply for.
Martin
@narya: Except that it’s nonsensible to have a 14th amendment that only carries meaning in the context of an event which precedes it. If the 14th amendment to have any meaning it needs to be able to applied to future events, and yes, defining insurrection is hard – that’s why we elevate these individual to such a high position, because someone needs to make these hard determinations.
When I was building my reports at the start of Covid, guiding my institution in how to respond, in the 2nd weekly report in mid-Feb I specifically spoke to the chancellor of the university and informed him that there was zero chance that the university would be able to avoid closing to daily in-person business. That was inevitable, and my report laid out why. Whatever hopes we might have to institute changes to allow it to operate would move slower than Covid was moving and it would overtake us. What I needed him to do in that moment was imagine himself making the decision to close the institution and to practice that act. Because a day would soon come when he would be doing that, and the only real debate would be at what cost – would we close before or after people died. Either way he’d be criticized as either overreacting or waiting too long. That too was inevitable. But the decision still needed to be made.
That said, this court will duck the question, because they are more than anything else cowards. They have the fallback of letting Congress grapple with the question when they receive the electoral college votes, which I argue is a huge disservice to conservatives because if voters knew today that Trump would be disqualified from holding the office, if they had that information, they could use that to select a different candidate, but deferring that decision to after the election denies voters agency. It’s antidemocratic to defer the resolution of this matter out of convenience.
The counterargument is simply the process unfolding right now should be sufficient to inform republican voters that Trump may not be eligible and they should choose accordingly. The 91 felony counts Trump is facing should also inform. And regardless of whether Trump is even on the primary ballot, the RNC could at their convention still make him their nominee – or they could at that point remove him as the nominee because primaries are not binding – the party rules are purely consensual. So the voters themselves have a responsibility to play here (we can all read the 14th amendment as plainly as the justices) and if they insist on advancing an ineligible candidate, then that’s on them if Congress refuses to seat that candidate on Jan 6.
I think this will become part of the electoral narrative for Congress this cycle – because it’s the next Congress that decides, and it’s a simple majority held by both the House and Senate. If the House objects and the Senate does not, the objection doesn’t hold. Both houses need to agree – and so if Congress were to reject Trump on the basis of the 14th amendment (which this case doesn’t impact) that would most certainly require that Democrats win both chambers.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: Yes we have! Spent the last 3 days skinning up at Hoodoo, but we’re obviously home today because this is definitely a blizzard and I can guess how bad Santiam pass is right now. Mr Bachelor has most lifts closed currently due to high winds. Hoodoo really needed the last few days since they got rained back to dirt twice this season.
artem1s
All the legal eagles seem to agree that what’s in question is not a matter of they rule in favor of Trump (they will not) but of
how they get to the ruling/s that go against Trump.what obscure precedent from the 17th century Scalia pulls out of his ass when he writes his dissent. And Gorsuch will concur saying ‘if Merrick Garland didn’t suck so much he would be sitting here instead of me’.TriassicSands
I’ve listened to both sides and it seems obvious to me that one side is a continuation of the criminal clown show; the other side has rational, important arguments that are fundamental to the rule of law.
Up until now, the force of history has given the sense that the president is above the law — to the detriment of the country. It is time to hold presidents accountable. I am not opposed to indicting sitting presidents and trying them. If the country can survive a president being impeached and removed from office, which is a purely political act that is far more likely to be frivolous than criminal prosecution* and doesn’t require the “niceties” of criminal prosecution, then it can survive the criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
*See efforts to impeach Biden.
Citizen Dave
I’ve come to view orange man like an old radio slogan:All bullshit All the time.
Re:His attorney’s voice: I’m surprised the legal profession hasn’t invented and allowed some voice change machine to be used by attorneys in court.
I found some extra orange “Flush the Turd on November 3rd” stickers the other day from 2020. Wondering what rhymes with “Fifth”? (Or leave the humor out this time and go with Preserve Democracy, Sanity, etc)
Baud
@artem1s:
Scalia is dead.
WaterGirl
It was the ease with which Sauer spewed his lies and bullshit that I found particularly offensive.
frosty
@Scout211: You can flush the toilet by pouring water into the bowl. That’s why I filled up the bathtubs on 12/31/1999. Just in case of Y2K.
We’re on city (borough) water here. I can see the well house from my front porch and I can see Public Works drive over and plug in a generator when we have an outage that lasts a little while.
opiejeanne
@catclub: We’re on a septic system. The only thing we have to worry about is if the water is unavailable for any reason.
Michael Bersin
@Baud:
The brilliance of their argument – Trump is the one true president, now and forever. Their argument can’t apply to Joe Biden by article of faith.
Problem solved.
Spanky
@WaterGirl: He’s a professional.
TriassicSands
Yes, but his stupidity and hypocrisy are immortal.
I assume artemis meant Alito.
artem1s
@bbleh:
So TIFG is still trying by proxy to intimidate Gorsucks and Boof into ruling for him?
smith
@Michael Bersin: That pretty much sums it up. The only problem is they haven’t yet found where in the Constitution the word “Trump” appears.
opiejeanne
@Scout211: We aren’t on a well; we have a very good water system run by the county, and the tank is uphill from us. We’re on a septic system. Hopefully they’ll get around to fixing our power today, sometime. Maybe. Soon?
27,000 just in my neck of the woods, 113,000 overall last I checked but that may have come down by now
And those storms in California were nothing to joke about. A friend in Lake Arrowhead was snowed in for about 6 weeks and I saw the damage to stores in the are, including our grocery store in Blue Jay. We sold our cabin there a few years ago, so I don’t know how it fared in all of that snow, but the first snowstorm after we bought it we got over 5 feet of snow. This was far worse.
JoyceH
@Baud: They also suspended the parody account Liam Nissan. Seems that Alex Jones’ billion-dollar defamation is forgivable, but calling Musk “Apartheid Clyde” is not.
SiubhanDuinne
As it’s an Open Thread, I’ll risk derailing the main topic by noting that the Lloyd Austin story seems to be heating up rapidly. My initial reaction is that, yes, POTUS and the National Security Director and the Deputy SecDef should have been notified immediately (like, before the ambulance arrived). In fact, I’m amazed to learn that there isn’t automatic 24/7 tracking of the whereabouts of Cabinet officers and other senior officials.
But I don’t think the media, and by extension the public, and by extension hostile governments, need to know that the Secretary of Defence is/was in the ICU, or the nature of his ailment, at least not in real time.
Anyone else have thoughts on this story? Should Biden fire his SecDef? Is it a huge scandal? Or is it a nothingburger ginned up by Republicans or a bored media? Or something in between?
artem1s
@TriassicSands: Oops. I do get them mixed up. and I also thought this was a SCOTUS hearing not the district court. too many trials going on to keep them all straight.
M31
@Baud:
“Scalia is dead.”
“I know, I just like to hear it.”
karen marie
@Baud: Because it only applies to “legitimate” – ie, Republican – presidents.
M31
@JoyceH: hmm I’ll have to go check my account, I called him “Apartheid Space Karen Bitchboy”
Martin
@randy khan: For the poor kids, it’s mostly PR. It’s hugely beneficial to them politically to be seen giving opportunities to underrepresented students (poor counts in this context) especially if there’s a full ride attached. These are at the very least performative efforts to defend their multibillion dollar endowments. They are also great PR because the media loves reporting on the kids whose parents were asylum seekers (usually the right kind of asylum seeker – eg, not Mexican/Central American) and who got straight As while living in a shelter – all of which culminates in a lot of free, positive media mentions for the institution.
But there’s no real commitment to serving broader society there. These students often emerge as Thomas did – in some ways thankful for the opportunity, but also in such a foreign state that it doesn’t lead to the same outcomes that it does for the other students. A lot of people think that Harvard opens doors – which is kind of does, but the process of connections that opened that door to Harvard for most kids keeps working after graduation opening the door to Wall Street or government or what have you. And that’s what Thomas ran into – his Yale law degree didn’t open those doors, and he expected them to, and that was very disillusioning.
It’s hard being a poor kid at Harvard, even with a free ride. We got a lot of those calls – students that got into much better universities than ours and a few weeks into their first term begged us to let them attend our school which admitted them because they were so utterly miserable because they did not fit in at all. Harvard has no interest in changing that. That is simply part of their conservative nature.
JoyceH
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know what to think about the Austin situation. Have we heard yet what the initial “elective procedure” was? One thing the pandemic taught us was that “elective” didn’t just mean nose and boob jobs, but also cancer and heart surgeries, basically anything less dire than “book an OR!” and racing the gurney to the elevator.
TriassicSands
I think it would be fascinating to have a parallel universe D.C. Circuit Court hearing in which the three judges or two of the three were appointed by the criminal himself. How different might the questioning have been?
JoyceH
@M31: Maybe Liam has more followers than you? It’s funny how many people think the poster is actually Liam Neeson and post back that “your movies suck!”
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
He is.
Old lawyers saying I was told very long ago, “When bullshit is all you’ve got, say it fast and copiously.”
Part two, “If you are a judge and opening argument is delivered fast and copiously it is bullshit and I’m hoping you don’t know that.”
Cheryl from Maryland
I hope the judges quickly rule at the very least that any actions monitoring the election are not part of a President’s official duties. First, I find it offensive and problematic that a President running for re-election has more scope than a candidate who isn’t an incumbent. Second, the only federal agency I know that has a responsibility for elections is the FEC, which is for campaign finance, not election fraud. That area is the purview of the States. States are allowed to have different rules regarding voter registration, how votes are counted and voter ID, and during the early history of the nation, how electors were selected. I’d rather the court take the broader view, but I’ll take what we can get to get the courts moving.
Old School
@SiubhanDuinne:
I haven’t seen anything indicating that existing policies were violated, so I don’t see it as a sandal, but it certainly seems policies need to be updated to make sure there is better communication for hospitalizations in the future.
smith
One of the bullshit arguments his lawyer seemed to favor was that trying TFG as a criminal would open the floodgates so that all presidents will be hounded with nonsense indictments from now on. Doesn’t he know that that horse has left the barn? Just as the GQP developed a passion for impeaching Dem presidents for whatever was handy after Nixon’s impeachment, they will add criminal indictments to their revenge repertoire. We knew this going in, but the GQP thirst for revenge doesn’t remove the imperative for impeachment or indictment when called for. They really have no concept of doing something hard on principle.
TBone
@cain: and the due process took place at the Colorado Supreme Court (so far).
Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m of the view that Biden should respond to criticism here that Republicans refused to fill hundreds of military positions including the leadership of one of the military branches for the better part of a year, and that any cries about having a cabinet member out sick for a week should serve more as an indictment of their own irresponsibility and lack of concern for national security. After all, Austin is a civilian, an advisor. He’s not a member of the Joint Chiefs. He’s not part of the machinery of the military, he doesn’t impact readiness, which is what Republicans were undermining with their stunts.
Old School
@JoyceH:
Doesn’t seem like it. Here’s the most recent summary of the Lloyd Austin story (from yesterday) that I saw.
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
I don’t think the “elective procedure” has been made public. I did see or hear that Austin was in “severe pain” so while it might not have been immediately life-threatening it probably wanted prompt attention. If he was in intense pain, he may well have been sedated, or loopy on pain meds. It happens.
Also saw or heard that he was only in the ICU because no regular beds were available. Not sure what to make of that.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: If our current President makes the sober decision that TFG is indeed an clear and present threat to the continuity of the United States and will remain so while alive, I would accede to his and his National Security Team in making such a determination and would (assuming he is immune as envisioned by TFG) consider his decision to remove TFG in a permanent manner correct and necessary.
Citizen Alan
@bbleh: If the nightmare scenario happens and Shitgibbon becomes President again, my expectation is that he will immediately have enough Dem Reps and Senators arrested on bogus treason charges to give the GOP control of the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. And then the bastards will simply pass laws to turn the country into a permanent dictatorship. And I will immediately load up my SUV with two suitcases of clothes, a laptop, a CPAP machine, and all my money in cash and drive 16 hours to the Canadian border.
Martin
@smith: I don’t see why that’s something we should fear. Let every state try and convict Obama or Biden. I don’t think that process is going to work as they say it would.
SiubhanDuinne
@Martin:
I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s a brilliant argument. Thanks.
narya
@Martin: When I was applying to colleges (in the 70s . . .) my parents told me that if I really wanted to go to an Ivy and got in, they’d do what they could to support/help, but reminded me that I’d be surrounded by rich kids going skiing in the Alps, and that that wasn’t something I could do. It’s not the only reason I picked Oberlin, but to this day I’m impressed that they had that awareness.
frosty
@SiubhanDuinne: Last night Adam said Austin will be staying as SecDef because it is impossible to get a replacement confirmed in this Senate.
Barbara
@narya: It actually tickles me a fair amount that Harvard’s mask is slipping. In fairness, Harvard is so big that it can contain multitudes — multitudes of brilliant scholars, scholarship students and the usual parade of legacy sports admissions and other rich whatnots. Yale and the other Ivies are much smaller, and have a much more difficult balancing act. But the idea that going to Harvard or any other Ivy marks you as brilliant should have always been viewed with a great deal of skepticism.
Harvard and the Ivies could improve the situation a bit if they copy Stanford and just eliminate the most obvious legacy sports boondoggles.
Paul in KY
@WaterGirl: They got rid of Richard II for that kind of stuff. In 1399.
Kristine
@narya: @Martin: A cousin ran into that situation at their small exclusive college—watching others jet off to the Caribbean for the weekend while they’re stuck in the dorm.
I was accepted to a school like that but didn’t attend for reasons. Talked about it later with my dad, who said “you’d have been the poor girl at a rich girl’s school.” Not the level of awareness I usually saw from him.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: I may have seen your tracks from Hoodoo’s cams. A lot of snow in the forecast. Even if we could operate in this blizzard we’d be breaking trail up to our hip pockets even with skis. Forecast has the possibility of mixed snow and rain at the end of the week. That’ll pack it down and then our base should be solid for the rest of the season. I don’t know how much I’ll get out. Half my days I’m taking care of Mom.
I started playing in the snow on Santiam Pass in the 1960’s. Until about 10 years ago we always had good snow cover from 3,000 feet up by Thanksgiving. Things have changed.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: The fucking Republicans who held up 300+ actually military nominations – which affected our military readiness in actual concrete terms – are getting all worked up because the CIVILIAN head of the DOD was out for surgery.
So NOW they are concerned about our military readiness and the CIVILIAN head of the DOD?
Pure performance bullshit as a way for Biden to the a hit, and to work up the rubes who are easily led.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
He’s just throwing bullshit at the wall and hoping something sticks.
FIXITFY
Geminid
@frosty: Another reason is that Lloyd Austin has been a capable Secretary of Defense, and Biden wouldn’t fire him over these events even if he could get a replacement confirmed. I expect that one or more of Austin’s staff will walk the plank though.
Tom Levenson
@Barbara: Not to be that guy, but Harvard isn’t the largest Ivy. Cornell has twice a many undergraduates; Columbia has more graduate students. Dartmouth and Princeton are the little ones. Yale is close to Harvard in UG population, though with only ~60% the graduate enrollment. Yale, Penn, Harvard and Columbia have roughly equal academic staff counts. Harvard is definitely the richest by endowment, but Yale isn’t far behind, and if you were to assign that wealth by student count, both Yale and Princeton have more endowment per capita than Harvard does. (That’s probably not the perfect measure, but it does affect the support a university can give to graduate students.)
None of this is to defend Harvard. It’s just that the differences between it and some of the other Ivies (and Ivy-like places) are smaller than many people think. Harvard takes some arrows that might as well land elsewhere.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: In Richard the Second’s reign, Impeachers ended up having their heads chopped off. Now they just retire or lose Republican primaries.
Captain C
@artem1s:
It will probably involve the Spanish Inquisition. Because nothing says U.S. constitutional law like the Spanish Inquisition
Tom Levenson
@Tom Levenson: For comparison, my institution, MIT, has a student population ahead of the three smallest Ivies, weighted towards graduate enrollment (same as half the Ivy institutions). It’s endowment is ahead of five of those universities, behind whom you’d suspect: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Here in Boston, while the Globe does keep MIT in view, Harvard takes a lot of the scrutiny that might otherwise land on an institution w. MIT’s profile.
cain
@Kelly:
My daughter’s boyfriend drove up from LA to stay with us for awhile (my daughter also flew up here to stay for almost 8 weeks – remote work ftw!) But he’s gotta drive back and I think just about everyone is nervous about it. He’s got a rear wheel drive I think.
It might be better for him to leave now because it’s going to suck after this weekend.
That said, I’m thrilled that we are going to get a lot of snow – because nobody wants wildfires and drought.
Barbara
@Tom Levenson: I definitely defer to your superior knowledge of Ivy comparison metrics! Harvard and other Ivies face the same legacy/donor issues in their professional programs (law, business and medicine at Harvard) and there, Harvard definitely has a lot more spaces to spare. Its law school is much bigger than Yale’s. I think Cornell still has the half private/half public model, and I don’t know whether your stats include both sides.
I know that Yale has the same issues and I assume they are all going to face additional pressures as they try to navigate admissions policies.
And I am still happy that the mask is slipping.
SiubhanDuinne
@frosty:
Thanks for that. I missed reading Adam’s post last night (will remedy that soonest), and wasn’t aware the Austin topic had already been discussed here.
Bill Arnold
@SiubhanDuinne:
No, not while anti-American Republicans (plural) in the Senate would block his replacement.
Also, I have not yet seen solid reporting on his level of functioning while in the ICU. I.e. was he put there as a convenience for monitoring his vital signs? Was he lucid?
Reminder: Donald J. Trump went to Walter Reed (IIRC) because his COVID-19 case sent his blood oxygen levels low enough (and on an apparent downwards trajectory) to be a major concern. Blood oxygen levels are important for full cognitive function. POTUS powers were not temporarily passed to M. Pence.
smith
@Martin: My point wasn’t that it’s something to fear, but something that we fully anticipate and will not let it deter us. It’s an empty threat coming from Sauer because we already know that that’s how the GQP operates.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Excellent point. I’m chagrined I didn’t think of it myself.
cain
No way would Trump ever allow anyone to ‘take his place’. Especially not Pence who he holds in contempt (as do the rest of us)
smith
@Bill Arnold: But then, of course, we’ve never seen full cognitive function in Trump, so it didn’t make much difference.
Geminid
@Martin: Presudent Biden is not going to make that argument because the Secretary of Defense’s role is more than advisory. He is in the chain of command between the President and the Joint Chiefs as well as the regional Commands.
Biden might point out though that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was notified of Austin’s incapacity on January 2nd.
Tom Levenson
@Barbara: I believe those numbers for Cornell do combine public and private.
When I was a Harvard undergrad (more than 40 years ago) Dartmouth had the rep as the most bro-ish and reactionary school, while Princeton was the northernmost southern university. Yale was just a rival–with Kingman Brewster as president, it didn’t have the rep being a right-wing-asshole-factory that folks like Clarence Thomas have now given it. (That’s probably unfair too; I doubt Yale is more prone to generate such folks than the others.)
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
Possibly the Saturday morning cartoon character is all he could get…
Martin
@Tom Levenson: MIT also benefits from Harvard being the liberal arts institution compared to MIT as the engineering school, and engineering programs are notoriously conservative and presumed meritocratic. It also plays into our biases as to what are utilitarian disciplines and which are vanity ones.
In my experience in the wider academic circle, Harvard is mostly emblematic of transactional education. Nobody seems to find that Harvard graduates are any better educated than any other institution. The degree indicates that perhaps they were more academically motivated, but that comes with a healthy skepticism because it throws off so many Kushners. But it’s a key that opens doors whether earned or not.
MIT fares better here because innovation is a more tangible thing. It’s hard to write a policy, or issue a ruling, or espouse an economic view that won’t be interpreted through a liberal or conservative lens but we interpret any new ‘thing’ as progress, as at least neutrally beneficial, whether society wants it or not.
Ruckus
@geg6:
This.
wjca
My guess is that, if they rule at all, it will be that states can’t take him off the ballot in the general election. But, since this is the primary, they can.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Citizen Dave: Sith rhymes with 5th. Darth Trump. Or…
Shut down the conman on the 5th, vote Biden forthwith
Save Democracy on the 5th by voting Biden forthwith
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: This is the question I keep wishing someone would ask them – if TFG had murdered someone on live TV while he was president, would he be forever immunized from being prosecuted for that? It’s the ridiculous argument they’re making taken to an extreme.
Soprano2
@catclub: She should say “Thank God I don’t live in Florida”, because most of their systems do have lift pumps. A lot of them have lift pumps in their house. It’s not ideal.
Tom Levenson
@Martin: You’re right, I think. The funny thing is that if you are academically inclined, Harvard remains a fabulous place to be a student. Widener Library (the whole library system) is amazing. The STEM research infrastructure is really good. A lot of the professors are really excellent, and much more accessible to genuinely interested students than myth has it. Annnnndddd–it’s all the other stuff as well. (Note–I’m most writing about the School of Arts and Sciences. The other schools have their own characteristics, some great, some less so.)
Re MIT and the conservatism of engineers. It’s true that engineers are generally seen as more small “c” conservative than scientists (or the social science and humanities folks who are indeed there too). It’s worth noting that the School of Engineering faculty is less conservative (I think) than those engineers who get a B.Eng and/or an M.Eng. All that’s subject to a correction for the fact that the younger cohort does skew more left than prior folks.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I purged myself from twitter when SFB II bought it. Seemed like a reasonable concept. Always nice to see I was right.
Soprano2
@Chris T.: Or if you happen to have one in your house or basement!
Soprano2
@Citizen Dave: If he wanted to fix it there are voice coaches who could help him.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I was a grad student at Harvard and it didn’t seem to me that the average undergrad was getting a better education than they could have gotten at my alma mater (William and Mary). But there was a minority of extraordinarily well-motivated undergrads who could take advantage of the fact that they were at this world-class research university. You had to be driven to seize the opportunities. I’m not sure I would have been!
MattF
@Tom Levenson: In fact, Cornell is the land-grant college of New York State, so the state-supported colleges are not an optional feature of the University.
Soprano2
@SiubhanDuinne: I think it’s a nothingburger ginned up by Republicans. What if he became unconscious and were taken to the hospital and admitted, still unconscious? I think they need to think about the system they use to notify the president about these things.
Harrison Wesley
@Soprano2: Lift pumps in Florida? I thought you meant DeSantis’ shoes.
cain
@Martin:
It’s one of the things about STEM that I can’t stand – this idea of meritocracy. It’s a goddam lie. The best doesn’t just float to the the top like that. It’s almost ways comes down to both technical acumen and soft skills.
Even if you’re the most brilliant scientist – if you can’t communicate you’re not going to rise.
Hell, I’ve met some pretty amazing technical people who I don’t have a 5% of their technical depth but they treat me like an equal.
MattF
@Tom Levenson: In fact, Cornell is the land-grant college of New York State— one of the old (if not the oldest) building on campus is Morrill Hall. And so, the public-private combination is a basic feature of the University’s structure.
Soprano2
@Martin: I heard a story about this problem. They experimented with texting the students several times over the summer about their upcoming enrollment, because what they found was these kids got admitted but then never showed up to enroll. Then there’s the problem of struggling and not knowing how to get help, or being too ashamed to ask for help and then flunking out. There are a lot of problems for kids who come from families with no experience of higher education.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: I think the “weed-out” ethos perpetuates itself not so much because it actually selects for merit, as the feeling that numbers have to be whittled down some way and doing it as an academic trial by fire becomes an initiation rite like a fraternity hazing. I had to suffer through it, so you do too.
p.a.
Animal House was based on the Dartmouth frat experience. I read, IIRC the title, The Real Animal House, by a co-writer of the movie, about his actual frat experiences, and the movie was definitely cleaned up compared to reality. He had a movie cameo as a poker player at the rush party.
The original screenplay was set in high school, but the producers basically said “we can’t show this stuff going on with high schoolers!”
billcinsd
@narya: People have been convicted of insurrection this time and been disallowed from holding elected offices under the 14th Amendment
Soprano2
@Harrison Wesley: Florida is extremely flat and close to sea level, so in a lot of places gravity sewer won’t work.
Burnspbesq
@MattF:
when my youngest sibling announced he was going to Cornell, i gave him shit about being a New York Aggie.
randy khan
@smith:
It’s easy to find, right there in the preamble:
We The People of the United States of AmeRica, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure doMestic Tranquility, Provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
jsrtheta
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
A court has no power to act in the absence of jurisdiction. None.
PAM Dirac
@Matt McIrvin:
Not only that, but despite the fact that the gauntlet is only very loosely related to merit, ability, or any real world utility, those who survive it must be treated as vastly superior to those who fail or drop out. I had to deal with far too many of these types in my work. Let’s just say that those who think pharma scientists are evil, scheming. money grubbers, while academic scientists (and their administrators) are pure, altruistic, lovers of knowledge are people who have never worked with both.
randy khan
@Martin:
I’m sure that’s part of it. I also suspect some of it is admitting kids who are athletes and some of it is that poor kids applying to elite schools are highly self-screened. One of the points in the article is that the schools know the poor kids are likely to come if they get in, improving yield rates, while the students in the not-quite-upper-tier of income tend to comparison shop based on merit scholarships and the like, so they don’t all say yes.
Anyway, one more indictment of legacy admissions.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Anyone else have thoughts on this story? Should Biden fire his SecDef? Is it a huge scandal? Or is it a nothingburger ginned up by Republicans or a bored media? Or something in between?
First, yes, this is important. Second, was there ever a demand or law that the Sec be available 24/7? Sure it’s a very good idea, all things considered, but was it required by law? And should it be? We are all still human, as much as some try to act like that’s not true. Third, my question is how would rethuglicans act if this was done with a rethuglican in office? I’d bet they would be screaming about how medical concerns are 100% personal.
cain
@Matt McIrvin: The problem is that not all of us are great at school – I sucked at school, but I’m great at life.
There are so many folks that I know that started off as failures in school but end up becoming multi-millionaires later.
AM in NC
@UncleEbeneezer: Well, Tar Heels understand the reality that Duke is the font of much evil, so Stephen Miller fits right in.
billcinsd
@JoyceH: Elective means scheduled in advance. Also, the problem is with going to the ER and getting admitted to the ICU rather than the initial procedure
cain
@PAM Dirac:
Well said! I grew up as a son of a professor (someone who pretty reached the pinnacle of how far you can go as a professor without getting a Nobel prize, I reckon) and the shenanigans that happen. Luckily, my father was not one of those.
Is your work associated with DiRAC / high performance computing?
Ruckus
@Martin:
Absolutely.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Levenson: In the 60s and 70s, Yale Law was where some of the best liberal law students wanted to be. A Rhodes Scholar from Georgetown met his future wife, a Wellesley grad, there. They later became kind of famous.
PAM Dirac
@cain:
No, I spent over 40 years working for National Cancer Institute in the area of drug discovery, supporting both academic and industry projects. Although my PhD is officially in chemistry I did quantum mechanical calculations. Paul Dirac is pretty much my main intellectual hero. I still re-read “Principles of Quantum Mechanics” every so often.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: @catclub:
Yup, trials and appeals are too slow, especially for the rich and powerful. It’s not workable.
I think those who say the courts and the SCOTUS are mostly going to punt are right. And that’s probably a good thing overall. There is no One Weird Trick (e.g. keeping him off the ballot) that will save us.
Unfortunately, this is yet another example that rules and norms and laws and conventions won’t protect us if someone is determined to break them and people don’t stand up, do their jobs, and stop them.*
TIFG would just be some crank with an obscure website selling over-priced trash if people didn’t let themselves be conned by him.
We voters need to stand up and make sure he doesn’t get elected again. That’s the way we protect our government.
And I think we will.
All that said, the courts need to nail him for the stolen documents, the business cheating, the insurrection, the defamation, and all the rest.
But figuring out how to keep him off the ballot in a way that cannot be weaponized by cranks on the other side is probably a waste of time because of * above.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Martin: Hear him!
cain
@PAM Dirac: ahhh.. ok. There is a community called DiRAC. I thought you might have been associated with them.
Steve in the ATL
@Tom Levenson: my law school class at Princeton was astonishingly small
bbleh
@SiubhanDuinne: ok well I’ll repeat a comment I posted at LGM.
ARE THEY F-ING KIDDING ME?
First, the senior civilian employee* of the DoD, who has a Deputy and several Assistants and a large bureaucracy just to support him, is incommunicado for three days during a week that big chunks of the country more or less take as a holiday, and this is somehow a National Security Emergency? What, a memo wasn’t gonna get filed promptly? Maybe a meeting or two might have been rescheduled? Is anyone seriously suggesting there aren’t protocols to ensure that the brief absence of one senior official doesn’t bring the (nonmilitary) operations of the department to a complete halt? ?!??!
And second, Republicans are complaining about THIS after they, following one of their most stupid and … ah … challenged Senators blocked the promotions of 300 SENIOR MILITARY COMMANDERS for MONTHS, impacting not just readiness but retention, as well as seriously damaging morale and materially affecting budgets? ?!??!^2
I would say its a nothingburger, except it’s made of more feculent stuff.
I hope Biden turns it on them, hard. Pound them for every day of the Tuberville fiasco. Deplore the effects on readiness and be witheringly scornful about Republicans complaining about this. Make it real stinker of a story.
* who as noted in several places is NOT in the chain of command, nuclear or otherwise.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Joe Biden has a moral center. TFG has a vast void where a moral center should be.
Chief Oshkosh
@Tom Levenson: You properly didn’t mention Brown since I’m sure you know that it is peerless.
Hail Brunonia!
Martin
@Tom Levenson: Oh, yeah, I think if you fit in, Harvard would be a great experience. But the public thinks that students emerge with more knowledge or ability, and well, that was never our experience. They run the gamut like any other institution, and in the case of Harvard specifically, their grades do not really help inform where they lie on that spectrum.
As to the faculty – it’s very nationally oriented, in my view. MIT which has a lot of foreign born engineering faculty is going to reflect that diversity of viewpoints where a more domestic collection of engineers is going to lean a lot more to the right. That’s also a self-selection bias given how hard it can be to find domestic students to pursue PhDs, so more advanced degree populations skew more international and therefore often more liberal, plus the self-selection bias of faculty who are willing to decamp to a new country – that rarely goes well if you aren’t pretty open-minded to start with. I think that cuts across all disciplines.
Another Scott
TheHill says the Pentagon says Austin had prostate surgery, then later a UTI and fluid buildup, etc. He never lost consciousness and is recovering.
2 page .PDF memo says there’s a 30-day review of notification processes underway.
It’s a trumped up scandal, especially since vast numbers of people are using up their annual leave (the leave year ends Saturday 1/13). But they need to get the notification process tied down to account for people being sick, on vacation, and all the rest.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@cain: That’s why I said ‘presumed’. I stand by my idea that law schools should be solely ranked on the number and severity of felonies that their alumnae commit. I’ve been toying with the idea and trying to figure out how to implement it.
Marcopolo
Thread most likely dead but for folks who want a good recap of the arguments made today should take a look at this: https://www.sidebarsblog.com/p/dc-circuit-skeptical-of-trumps-immunity
Writer is pretty detailed about what was said and also provides context for the arguments. I was very happy to read it since a herd of wild horses couldn’t have made me listen in real time.
wjca
Seems like a good metric. But I would also add something on how many have been disbarred. (Both weighted by number of graduates, of course.)
TBone
@billcinsd: Cuoy Griffin, Cowboy for Rump! Courtesy of C.R.E.W.
Another Scott
@Marcopolo: That’s excellent. Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Soprano2: Yeah, among R1 universities (PhD granting, very high research) we had among the highest percentages of low income/first generation students (something I remain very proud of), sometimes substantially higher than any other, and this was a constant struggle for us as well. Not having parents to provide even basic steering advice is a real challenge, and a lot of these students had NO family members who could give them guidance. That required constantly challenging what knowledge administrators assumed students had, doing a lot of detailed work on communication, and so on, and frankly I we never happy with the state of things, because it’s almost unavoidable that you have a population of people running things that didn’t have that experience. One of my biggest pet peeves was the institution not disclosing our deadlines to them – if you don’t hear about housing by this date, get on the phone because something went wrong. If you don’t hear about financial aid by this date, get on the phone, etc. That turned out to be our biggest pre-enrollment retention problem – basic failures of communication to students and they had no sense that something *should* have happened, until things got to a point where we’d blown some federal deadline for the student, or put them in the bottom of some hole that they now had to climb out of. If you ever wanted to see me go Godzilla mode through some office, that’s usually what did it.
I spent one summer tearing through the place fixing the problem of the assumption that students all arrived with credit cards. 20% of our students didn’t have a credit card in their entire household. So even seemingly trivial problems like buying books without being able to put it on an institutional tab that financial aid could pay for direct, instead assuming they’d charge it and financial aid paying them back later were huge problems if they show up with no card to charge it to. ‘Oh, go to tutoring’, to students that had never seen a tutor, went to schools that had no tutoring programs, didn’t understand even what that transaction looks like, is it free, would it look bad if I used it, and so on – you need to ease them into it way differently. We needed specialized library skills workshops for students that had never seen a formal library, let alone the largest university library in the world. Individually these aren’t deal breakers, but when you face all of them simultaneously, it’s paralyzing and overwhelming and if you weren’t sure you belonged there before, facing these really basic problems you sure as shit don’t believe you belong there after.
Institutional compassion is an incredibly difficult thing to build and maintain.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: You’re a good guy for taking care of your mom. If the snow amounts come true, it will be too deep to keep moving downhill unless you are on very steep slopes taunting the avalanche gods.
I’ve heard a lot about how much less snow there is here now.
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus:
Too bad they weren’t really liberal. I am kidding. but some folks….
Nettoyeur
@Shalimar: Nicon went to Duke Law.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
TIFG would just be some crank with an obscure website selling over-priced trash if people didn’t let themselves be conned by him.
I think that a lot of people think that people with a lot of money must have something going on to get there and SFB is one of those people with money. I’d bet that a lot of people don’t know how he came by his start with money and that he’s basically a con man from the get go. The story is that he started out taking money from his siblings from his father’s inheritance so that he had $400 million to start his otherwise worse than worthless adult life.
sab
@Nettoyeur: Do you type like me? (C is next to X)
Cluttered Mind
@Villago Delenda Est: The void there is particularly vast due to the excessive reliance on McDonalds. Lots of space to fill, they say.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: His father gifted him with about $40 million. It’s in the book “Art of the Deal”. That is besides the rest he stole/inherited.