Every Democrat, for the past 24 hours or so:
SCOTUS: You can’t just throw your rival in prison because you don’t like him.
DEMOCRATS: So you’re saying we can drop bombs on him?
SCOTUS: You really can’t even charge your rival with a crime because his presidency made you mad.
DEMOCRATS: Got it. So we can incinerate his house with him in it?
SCOTUS: The Constitution protects officials from being terrorized with lawfare for official actions they undertook while in office.
DEMOCRATS: Ah. Makes sense. So we can officially assassinate everyone we don’t like?
SCOTUS: Prosecuting a politician because you don’t like his politics would destroy our country, and we’re not going to allow it.
DEMOCRATS: Roger that. So what you’re saying is: we are officially allowed to eliminate Trump and the Supreme Court as long as we, like, say it’s official and stuff?
While I wish I could claim it, it’s actually Sean Davis’s bit.
And it’s been all over social media this past day or so.
At first blush, the question might seem to be “why do so many Democrat chanting heads have so much trouble with the phrase ‘”‘presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts that are within the ambit of their executive authority'”?
But of course it’s not. The “elite” among the chanting heads know perfectly well that the SCOTUS just made a fairly moderate decision, remanding the case back to the lower court to sort out what behavior is public and what is private.
But that interpretation – the correct one – is too pollyannaish.
The Democrats, now that they’re committed to running the senile, doddering Biden – need to come up with some way of dragging the corpse across the line.
Panicking people by claiming this ruling gives a president absolute power, in a cycle where the Democrats only campaign hook is “ORANGE MAN LITERALLY HITLER” is the purpose.
“BUT!”, Democrats respond, “this lays the groundwork for unquestioned power!”
George Washington was offered a crown and the ground floor in a hereditary aristocracy.
Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus.
Woodrow Wilson used the “Sedition Act” to imprison political foes.
FDR trampled the Constitution in pursuit of socializing swathes of the American economy, and unilaterally imprisoned innocent Japanese-American citizens.
FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ and Nixon to various degrees all used the FBI and CIA to spy on domestic opponents.
Obama used the military to extrajudicially murder an American citizen, used Federal law enforcement to try to discredit American gun stores and owners (leading to the death of an American border patrol agent and many Mexicans), sicced the IRS on the Tea Party, and used the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign.
And, oh yeah, Biden has set a politicized DOJ on his own political opponent – part of a pattern of corruption in the institutions that those institutions aren’t even being coy about.
The “roadmap” has always been there; the President already has unlimited power, if they want to use it – especially with the logarithmic growth in executive-branch power since the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson administrations.
A president needs power to do the job to which they’ve been elected; deciding how much power, and keeping that power in check, has always been the job of a free people and its institutions.
The Supreme Court’s decision is a reasoned, logical, moderate decision which people of goodwill can apply to reach sensible conclusions. That is a mistake
Leftists are not people of goodwill. They will pervert the ruling same as they do every other ruling to inevitably find that the leftist agenda is legal.
I’m wondering if Obama’s murder of a U.S. citizen with a drone, was considered an official duty?
One of the podcasts I listen to is Advisory Opinions with Sarah Isgur and David French. My biggest complaint about it for the last year has been the Seal Team 6 straw man that “everyone” likes to bring up. David was a [expletive] US Army lawyer and he keeps wringing his hands about it. Even this week he claimed that now Trump could have Seal Team 6 assassinate his political opponents if reelected. David NEVER brings up the fact that such an order would have to go through several layers of the military, each one of which is obligated to NOT follow such an illegal order, and each one would be prosecuted for following said order.
As I told responded to AO on their own site, if such an order could make it’s way into the military and POTUS not be successfully Impeached, then the Country has bigger problems than an evil President in the Oval Office.
Yeah, Obama’s murder of a US citizen was an official act. However, the act itself is likely unconstitutional, so they might actually be able to strip the protection that way. Tough to say – I’m no lawyer.
In general, the problem is Congress’ unending delegation of its power to the Executive. Too many laws basically saw that in an emergency the Executive can override basic safeguards and they do so without setting a sunset clause on the emergency (see the War Powers Act, for example). This works politically because it gives the craven congresscritters the ability to protest actions without taking responsibility for them.
I still strongly believe that the best solution to Executive power creep is for SCOTUS to just apply the Constitution: when Congress delegates to the bureaucracy to come up with the detailed implementation of the law, Congress must approve those regulations since they are the real law. That would bring back law making into the Congress as the Founders intended, and it would make it so presidents can’t “reinterpret” the law with each new administration without getting Congressional approval. Yes, it would massively slow down law changes, but that’s the whole point of the Federal system; you’re supposed to have a real consensus on what the law should be before it goes into effect. Congress would *hate* such a thing, since it means that their necks would be on the line for very unpopular changes, but making someone do their job and take responsibility is usually improves their performance.
I had thought initially that given some egregioius acts by Obama, Clinton, and Biden, that Democrats would actually be grateful for this ruling, but then I remembered that their bulwark against prosecution is a DOJ that doesn’t seem to be very energetic about investigating crimes by the left.
I would have preferred the decision to say the president is immune from prosecution. If you don’t like his acts, impeach him.
John,
A cleaner line requiring Impeachment before prosecution would definitely have the benefit of clarity, but I never expected that to happen. Roberts’ Decision really is splitting the baby and making a lot of work for the Trial and Appellate Courts going forward.
I’m sure Roberts’ goal was to have at least 1 or 2 of the Liberal Justices join the Majority to deflect partisan attacks, preferably with Kagan writing I assume. When that didn’t happen, he should have just let Alito or Thomas write constitutionally grounded Opinion and let it stand 6-3. Instead, he got the worst of both worlds, in true Robertsian fashion. He left us with a moderate opinion that does nothing to shut down the partisan attacks and Sotomayor Opinion that is being quoted as if it was TRUTH handed down by the Almighty despite the fact that it’s as factually accurate as a Biden story that starts with “Now Joey…”
I’ve said it before, Roberts may not be as bad as Chief Justice Warren, but he’s still a s***ty Chief Justice that exacerbates problems by trying to find the middle ground, all while shouting “Stare Decisis” like it’s a magic talisman that will protect his reputation. The Leftists hate him because a fascist, Hitlerian, conservative ideologue that wants to usher in the Handmaid’s Tale, while Conservatives dislike him because he looks at Precedent first, Politics second, and the Constitution third. If it wasn’t for Thomas, Alito, and Scalia dragging him kicking and screaming back to the text of the Constitution after every case, Roberts could “Precedential Creep” himself into just about anything.
Nerdbert – you nailed it! I have argued for years that Paul Ryan blew our best opportunity to get Congress back to regular order when he was Speaker of the House. We need individual committees to pass appropriations and policy bills again and get away from continuing resolutions.