The US Supreme Court

[Tero]

With a Trumpian leader, the new president could indeed arrest his predecessor and get away with.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... l-immunity

[Svartalf]

It's pretty ironic that they also forgot about originalism and textualism and found presidential immunity in the penumbra of the executive power that no one noticed in over two centuries of jurisprudence.

Well said. It seems like the US right wing has adopted Trump's method (if it can be called that) of simply not caring whether their actions and statements have any relation to reality, consistency, or agreement with their supposed guiding principles/ideals.

For example, who actually believes that giving fat tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthy is the way to Make America Great Again? Aside from Republican politicians, corporate boards and the stinking rich that is.

Well, What do you expect ? Those are the ones Who can afford to buy juges And politicians.

[Tero]

Alito and Thomas are leafing the Bible to see what the deal is here. It will reduce the modern concept to homosexuality.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... court-case

[L'Emmerdeur]

Considering the careful choices the incoming Trump administration has made for appointees to powerful positions, I can see Aileen Cannon being nominated for the US Supreme Court and confirmed by the US Senate. She's making the right moves.

'Aileen Cannon’s Obstruction of Jack Smith’s Report Is Literally Lawless'

Over the past few years, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has issued some wildly indefensible decisions in favor of Donald Trump, the president who appointed her. She singlehandedly stymied the investigation into the president-elect’s theft of classified documents, and effectively abetted his obstruction of the Justice Department’s probe into that alleged crime. And yet these past interventions are still arguably less galling than Cannon’s latest salvo: a brief order, issued on Tuesday, blocking the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s two-volume report on his investigation into Trump. Her order is fundamentally lawless—not even in a debatable sense, but objectively just outside the law. Cannon literally has no authority to impose this injunction, and has not bothered to explain why she thinks she does. It is a fitting finale to her ignominious reign over the prosecution that she ruthlessly suppressed.

...

Trump is, understandably, eager to quash the entire report. But he won’t be president again for nearly two weeks, so he enlisted his favorite judge for one last assist. The president-elect urged Cannon to bar the report’s release to the public. His former co-defendants, who still face criminal charges, made the same request to Cannon, and to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where their case is now pending. (More on that in a moment.) But Trump and his co-defendants asked Cannon to jump ahead of the 11th Circuit and muzzle the Justice Department herself. She obliged on Tuesday, issuing a sweeping injunction that attempts to prohibit Garland, Smith, and the whole agency from publishing the final report or any drafts of it.

Here’s the problem: Cannon cannot [do] this. The startling breadth of her order is extremely dubious, but the legal flaw runs even deeper; she is purporting to exercise authority that she just does not have. That’s because Cannon no longer holds jurisdiction over this case; she has relinquished it to the 11th Circuit, which has thus far declined to issue the very relief that she granted. She therefore lacks any power to interfere with the Justice Department’s release of Smith’s report.

...

As the Supreme Court recently explained, an appeal strips a district court of jurisdiction over a case. When a party appeals, the district court loses all control “over those aspects of the case involved in the appeal.” And right now, the only aspect of the case that could plausibly give Cannon authority to block the report is on appeal to the 11th Circuit. That aspect is her ruling, back in July, that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, and could not continue prosecuting the case. Smith appealed that ruling, and his appeal stripped Cannon of jurisdiction to issue any further orders related to her decision under review. That includes the new claim, raised by Trump and his co-defendants, that Smith’s allegedly unconstitutional appointment precludes the release of his report.

...

There are several other jurisdictional defects in Cannon’s order that render it even more outrageous. As my colleague Shirin Ali pointed out, it is not at all clear that the judge can forbid Garland from releasing the report, since he is not party to the case. Nor is it evident where Cannon would even derive the power to meddle with the Justice Department’s operations on such a granular level: Even if Smith were unlawfully appointed, it does not follow that he is somehow prohibited from writing and sharing a report about his experience. It certainly makes no sense—and, indeed, raises serious constitutional concerns—to gag Garland, the duly appointed attorney general, from publishing work produced by his agency.

,,,

Moreover, Smith’s report is two volumes, and only one pertains to the classified document case; the other describes the election subversion case overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in D.C. Yet Cannon blocked the Justice Department from releasing both volumes. From where does she derive the power to suppress the volume about Chutkan’s case, over which she has no jurisdiction? She did not say.

She may be overruled in this but that hardly matters. She's been overruled before. By continuing to prominently display her complete obeisance to Trump and willingness to ignore the law she demonstrates that she'd be an excellent choice for him as a replacement for Thomas or Alito or one of the three non-Trumpist justices.

[Sean Hayden]

The Eleventh Circuit, in its decision, declined to immediately overturn Judge Cannon's temporary injunction, instead ruling that the Justice Department can file a separate appeal if they want to release the report earlier than this Sunday, when Cannon's injunction expires.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/attorne ... =117500334

If her decision was lawless why’d they let the chance to correct it slide? Is it just one bad decision after another at this point?

[Tero]

It's not unusual to have rogue judges put up injunctions. Abortion pills and all. It then has to be repealed. In the meantime the invalid injunction stands. The courts can act within days if necessary.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Appellees’ “Emergency Motion for Injunction with Relief Requested by January 10, 2025” is DENIED.

To the extent that Appellant seeks relief from the district court’s January 7, 2025, order temporarily enjoining Appellant, Appellant may file a notice of appeal from that order.

[source]

On Thursday, the 11th Circuit denied Trump’s request to suppress the report. But it left the additional three-day injunction in place for now. In the meantime, Trump’s team can ask the Supreme Court to intervene.

...

If the Supreme Court is asked to halt the report’s release while it decides whether Cannon’s original injunction was valid, Smith’s findings will remain secret while the court spends months untangling all the thorny legal questions involved.

Even if the Supreme Court ultimately decides the report can come out, Trump will have assumed office then—all but guaranteeing the investigation remains buried for at least four years.

[source]

[Sean Hayden]

It's not unusual to have rogue judges put up injunctions. Abortion pills and all. It then has to be repealed. In the meantime the invalid injunction stands. The courts can act within days if necessary.

So, they couldn’t have declared it invalid then and allowed an immediate release?

[Brian Peacock]

I wonder if it's likely to magically appear on the back seat of a journalists car?

[L'Emmerdeur]

If her decision was lawless why’d they let the chance to correct it slide? Is it just one bad decision after another at this point?

I think they're making sure that Trump can't claim (with any semblance of truth) that he was railroaded. Not in so many words of course but as you point out they're straddling the decision. Looks like CYA to me.

Regardless of the perpetration of spurious extra-legal nonsense by Cannon, in another branch of the witch-hunt he remains a convicted felon.

[Tero]

Colorado and conversion thearpy. Jesus does not want you to be gay.

Should the Court strike down Colorado’s law, it will need to wrestle with how to do so without eviscerating every state’s ability to sanction malpractice. If a state cannot prevent licensed therapists from engaging in controversial practices that are rejected by all of the relevant professional organizations, why can it sanction doctors who promote quack treatments for Covid-19? Or who spread false information about vaccines to their patients?

https://www.vox.com/scotus/403248/supre ... es-salazar

[Tero]

FCC and other issues, us congress and some agencies
https://www.vox.com/scotus/405913/supre ... v2-7nv8wqR

[Tero]

No war? Big deal. We will let Trump sendvthe illegals to foreign dungeon.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... vador.html

[Tero]

The supreme court gave criminal Trump immunity. It was the win for this lawyer. He is now pushing for Trump's right to disappear anyone here.

[Tero]

The middle of the night decision did not get Thomas' brain quite working. He is a lawyer after all. His dissent was on the side of the government and some odd words about "preventing due process." He forgot that the phrase due process refers to citizens. The citizens are entitled to it. You have to bring the poor devil in front of a judge, who may be quite the same as Thomas himself and would decide immediately that the human can be sent to "wherever" the president decides.

This foreign jail needs to be sorted out, though. The law allows deportation. But there is lots of confusion there too, since the human beings are not exactly treated by any standard treatment once they are out of the country. You could put them in a row boat and haul them out of US waters.