volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@deborahh It wasn't so much extreme as it was simply unrealistic.

Sotomayor was off in a different world talking about things based on facts that aren't actually true and fighting a bunch of straw men arguments that aren't on the table.

It's not really extreme, it's just that she apparently has no idea what's going on and so she's off writing these fictions.

I don't know if that's better or worse, but either way she's a joke on the Supreme Court.

@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social this prevents Trump from prosecuting Biden over legal actions that he took.

Biden would still be susceptible to prosecution over illegal actions, just as this ruling says Trump is susceptible to prosecution over his illegal actions.

But I would mainly focus on how this prevents Trump from prosecuting Biden over things like border policy since so many Republicans are chomping at the bit to haul him into court over that specifically.

@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @Hyolobrika

@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social

If you're fine with administration prosecuting anyone, well, that's just the sort of thing that I'm going to simply disagree with.

Personally I don't think we should allow presidents, including Trump, to go after their enemies with unfounded prosecutions.

But that's just me.

@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @Hyolobrika

@Methylcobalamin

It doesn't matter who it's written by, if It's not possible it's not possible.

You say it's written by 20 people Trump appointed in his first term, but as we saw, Trump appointed a whole lot of idiots. People too stupid to know how the government worked. So why in the world would we care what those idiots have to say?

They don't know how the government works, they're too stupid to know that they're writing nonsense, let's just laugh at them because their ideas don't work in the real world. They won't be able to do what they want to do because they are too stupid to know that the government was specifically set up to prevent that kind of idiocy.

If anything, we help empower it by taking it seriously. We need to be laughing it right off the board because it's really just that out of touch with reality and what's possible.

It's like, if someone says they are going to take on the airline industry by telling people to flap their arms real fast to fly from city to city, you wouldn't take that seriously. Same thing here. These morons don't know how the government works, so apparently they don't know that what they are proposing will not and cannot be implemented.

@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social

I might be repeating myself, I can't keep track, but when people talk about this being about immunity, too often they don't specify immunity from what.

This is not immunity from punishment. This is immunity from prosecution.

The accused could always go through the whole process, go through the prosecution go through trial get convicted and then appeal and go through the case involved in the appeal. That doesn't really change here.

What changes here is that the court clarified that you can't even prosecute someone, much less bring them to trial. This clarifies that a person accused without legal basis doesn't have to go through the whole rigmarole, they can immediately halt all of the proceedings at the beginning, with needing to go through the whole thing to get to appeals.

So that's why I say this nips it in the bud. And that's the major result.

This whole thing was purely procedural. And it clarified the procedure of avoiding a legally invalid prosecution, before court.

@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @Hyolobrika

@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social

Right, the true impact of this ruling is to bind the hands of the administration against prosecuting people without legal basis, and that goes both ways.

Heaven forbid Trump get elected president, this ruling prevents Trump from prosecuting Biden for his policies on immigration.

@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @Hyolobrika

@interfluidity Oh we are!

This decision reinforces the idea that invalid prosecutions need to be nipped in the bud. This is a restatement of the idea that when the administration takes a run at anybody without a valid process, that has to be kicked out of court right away without having to go through trial and appeals process.

This decision does apply to all of us, most directly to any government officials, but more generally to all of us if the administration tries to charge someone without solid legal basis.

Again, that's why despite criticism the Supreme Court was looking to a general rule and not focusing on Trump himself, because this rule applies to all of us.

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika

@deborahh you can change the candidate without booting Biden.

He would serve out his term and then hand over to the next president.

@interfluidity Yeah democracy is hard isn't it?

It's a whole lot easier if you can just make rules without worrying about the messiness of the people. But then, that's why we have democracy.

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika

@interfluidity It doesn't only crumble for the president of the United States. That's not what happened.

In fact, a whole lot of people are pissed off that that's not what happened.

The Supreme Court didn't judge Trump. That's not its role in the system. That's for lower courts. Instead, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that applies to everybody, with a general rule that really applies to officers in general.

The Supreme Court said that the the executive branch may not prosecute anybody for carrying out their legal duties as per law. No matter the mess that might exist out there, the president cannot, effectively, harass people for doing what is legal.

That's the long and short of it.

It was basically saying that no matter what mess the criminal statutes may be, the president may not harass people for doing legal things.

I remember hearing all of the criticisms of the court after oral argument when people were pulling their hair out that justices weren't laser focused on getting Trump. But they weren't because that's not their job.

So you say you don't know why it would crumble only for the president, and that's not the case, it doesn't, the Supreme Court laid out a general rule regardless of the people complaining that it was looking to lay out a general rule.

And regardless of the dissenters who often seem completely oblivious of what the Supreme Court is supposed to do in the first place.

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika

@interfluidity

Yes it is a bar so difficult that it requires the public to be on board🙂

Welcome to democracy.

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika

@interfluidity Yes and that is itself problematic, that is one thing that's being highlighted by this whole case, the mess that we have made with criminal law over the generations.

Criminal law has really wound itself up into a ball, and we're going to have to deal with that going into the future.

It was always a house of cards. We're beginning to see how it crumbles.

So we have these legal grants of authority that didn't involve motivation running up against criminal law that does involve motivation, and you see what a mess that is?

That's what the Supreme Court is dealing with here, the mess of law that has been created through statute. Aunt this is really just reflecting the mess that has been made of it all.

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world The key is not to give presidents the authority to do bad things.

It doesn't really matter WHY a president is doing something. If a president is saving the environment through bad motives, well, he's saving the environment!

The US government design was based on the idea that everybody was going to operate selfishly. That's really the core of checks and balances. That's why we pay people and we don't just trust in their angelic motivations.

We want want incentives to be set up such that selfish motives result in positive outcomes. If the law allows presidents to do bad things, then we need to fix the laws.

@AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika @interfluidity

@Methylcobalamin always keep in mind that all of this sensationalism about project 2025, well, there's no authority to actually do the things it's talking about.

So just ignore it.

Seriously, I don't know if they believe they can do this stuff or if they are just dreaming, but either way, it's not going to happen, because our entire government is set up to refuse that sort of action.

@interfluidity

There is so much focus on motive, but the thing is, the law so often doesn't really care about motive, and that's part of the point.

We have law that gives presidents authorization to act regardless of why they are acting. Maybe we should change those laws. Maybe we should change the law to consider motive, although I would say that is a really thorny direction to go, but that's what we have right now.

The Supreme Court is pointing out that our democratic process produced law that doesn't care about motive. The Supreme Court is merely respecting that outcome.

Again, we can reform that if we want. We can change the law if we want. It would be a democratic process that in some cases involves constitutional amendment, but we have that power.

In the end, until we make that change, though, this is the law. The Supreme Court is merely working with what we have today, not how you or I might want the law to be.

@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @Hyolobrika

@Yoshi he doesn't have that ability.

@rbreich

@SETSystems@defcon.social

The Supreme Court decision specifically addressed prosecution for bribery in footnote 3. Spoiler: nope, the Court did not say bribery is OK, and it even sketched out rules for prosecuting bribery.

NYTimes often gets legal stuff wrong.

@binaryphile

@samohTmaS yep, the 50 states are 50 sovereigns, with their own laws, and there's a problem here in that a Colorado judge effectively broke the state's own laws, that it passed as its own sovereign right.

There is a federal right that each of us be treated as per law, including state law.

Colorado was perfectly able to kick Trump off the ballot according to its own laws, but that didn't happen in this case.

It is in recognition and support of state sovereignty that the state laws are to be respected.

@interfluidity

Except that this case and its resolution was *itself* an exercise of accountability against an executive that was engaging in faulty prosecution.

To ignore the overstepping of the Biden administration here, THAT would have been letting the executive go without accountability.

The Supreme Court decision here made clear that former presidents are still to be held accountable for following the law, are still subject to prosecution for lawlessness.

It's just that, the current president too has to be subject to law in his decisions to bring down the hammer of prosecution on civilians.

@Hyolobrika @AltonDooley

@samohTmaS

That's the opposite of what SCOTUS said in their opinion.