Imbalanced commentary on U.S. Supreme Court and Trump's ballot access
Impairs an informed public
Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post wrote in “The Justices will keep Trump on the ballot. Here’s how (and why) they’ll do it, “ (January 16, 2024): “It would be extraordinary for any Supreme Court to declare the front-runner for his party’s nomination can be barred from the ballot; doing so would unleash widespread confusion, and worse, on the nation.”
Suppose the U.S. Supreme Court affirms the Colorado’s Supreme Court’s judicial finding, implementing section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, that President Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States on January 6 (including haranguing Vice President to choose him over the Constitution) and is thus disqualified from the White House. What “confusion” might be discerned? He would be as ineligible to run in any state or the District of Columbia as if he failed the age, residence, or citizenship requirement of Article II. The decision would be far less confusing than the Court’s 2nd Amendment ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
No credence is given to the unthinkability of SOCTUS keeping on the presidential ballot a person who has called for terminating the Constitution if electoral fraud is shouted from the rooftops, claimed Article 2 crowns him with the right to do anything he wants as president, made obstruction of justice and criminal violations of the Hatch Act a way of life at the White House, watched his MAGA impassioned zealots violently attack the Capitol for the explicit purpose of preventing Pence from counting state-certified electoral votes for three hours without lifting a finger, and whose likelihood of torching the Constitution if ever re-elected is a virtual certainty? What about the venerated precedent that the Constitution is not a suicide pact? Kennedy v. Mendoza Martinez, 372 U.S. 144 (1963).
The column endorses uncritically dissenting Colorado Supreme Court Justice Samour’s invoking “the potential chaos wrought by an imprudent, unconstitutional, and standardless system in which each State gets to adjudicate Section Three disqualifications on an ad hoc basis.” What is standardless about “insurrection”? It has a more definite meaning than “free speech.” What is unconstitutional about a state court adjudicating a constitutional provision? What is imprudent in keeping off the ballot a candidate highly likely to terminate the Constitution? What is problematic about each state deciding the insurrection issue with conflicts between states if any resolved by SCOTUS? It is a feature of Article 2 which expressly entrusts the selection process for presidential electors to each of 50 discrete state legislatures.
Aristotelian balance is the earmark of enlightened thinking.
What absolutely hypocritical nonsense Bruce. That you have written one essay with an incisive crystal clear analysis of Constitutional law showing that Biden's bombing of Yemen is patently unconstitutional, only to less than a week later publish a ridiculous, liberal-biased, subjective, self-deluded, wishful-thinking, fairy story, falsely claiming that Trump was supposedly involved in an 'insurrection' on 'January 6' (when an insurrection actually entails using military force in an attempt to illegally take over a government) is so absurd that it is beyond laughable.
Not one person who entered the Capitol on 'January 6' (and then walked around benignly taking selfies and souvenirs) was even carrying a weapon, let alone attempting to overturn the most powerful government and military on the face of the Earth.
Trump's empty bluster claiming excessive presidential powers which never went beyond tough talk, and his hapless and unsuccessful attempts to use various procedural maneuvers to interfere with the 2020 vote count don't *remotely* rise to the level of "insurrection" - and somewhere underneath your bleeding-heart-on-sleeve whingeing, in your inner objective mind, you know full well that is the case.
Please politically grow the hell up and stop caricaturing a former 'professional' wrestling and reality TV star who couldn't insurrect his way out of a wet paper sack (even if someone handed him all the weaponry we've sent to Ukraine to do it with) some sort of dire Hitlerian threat to a 'democracy' which never existed in the first place in the US - a nation which was, well before Trump was even elected, properly declared by scholars to have already been an oligarchy for decades - in other words, a fascist state..
That you are so pettily partisan and deluded, you don't recognize that the true threat to democracy in this moment is the Brazil-style attempt by the 'Democrats' to imprison their political opponent in the *middle* of an election year, who is the massively popular front runner in the race, is both shocking and disturbing.
You are not a Constitutional scholar, you are a Constitutional cherry picker making up arguments as they blithely suit your own ideological whimsy, rather than objectively addressing facts and democratic sensibility.