volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@futurebird

He laid out how it was related:

"I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States." -Thomas

The question of immunity was about the administration inappropriately prosecuting people and he highlighted another way the prosecution might have been inappropriate.

@TCatInReality Biden has no power to un-appoint a justice.

Only Congress can remove a justice from the Court.
@DemocracyMattersALot

@SenatorMoobs Congress didn't give the Court the power to choose which cases it takes.

That choice is inherent in having the independent judicial branch.

And it's a really good power to have! The Court should not be required to rule on cases that haven't been fully explored yet, or cases where the lower court acted reasonably but not absolutely correctly.

@jimhightower except that so many of the Supreme Court decisions this term were focused on restraining power, including the Court's own.

It hasn't been a power grab. It's been the exact opposite, the pushing back against power structures, insisting that Congress be acknowledged, restraining the power to prosecute, etc.

@BohemianPeasant but SCOTUS has been emphatically pressing the government to enforce the laws Congress has made.

That's the whole point of so many of their opinions this term.
@SteveThompson

@JustOneMoreThing@mindly.social either party is welcome to provide a different option at any point.

There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that both of these candidates are awful and pressing either party to provide someone better, and if they do they'd probably win the election.

@interfluidity how do you get to that conclusion?

The decision merely points out that in support of our civil liberties the Constitutional order limits the ability for presidents to prosecute.
@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @AltonDooley @Hyolobrika

@interfluidity Yeah exactly, and that's what the court said.

Keep in mind that it is entirely within the right of Congress to impeach and Biden over things he shouldn't have done, legal or illegal, but so long as he was operating within the bounds of what the law says he could do, the next president cannot go after him.

This Supreme Court ruling is actually extremely common sense and honestly kind of boring, and yet people are sensationalizing it way out of bounds of what it actually said.

But that's just normal. That's just the state of journalism these days, they flat out say things that are contradicted by the primary record, and they get away with it.

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

@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