Sonny Tufts
Member

Right wing political correctness. The dumb SOB has obviously never read Texas v Johnson. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/491/397/#tab-opinion-1958037

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.” Robert A. Heinlein

True, but that's never happened nor is it likely. Article VI says that the convention is to be called "for proposing Amendments". No telling what kind of crazy amendments might be proposed (e.g., amending the 2d to allow for gun controls or amending the first to restrict so-called hate speech). An article from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has pointed out the unanswered questions and risks associated with such a convention. https://ronpaulinstitute.org/a-new-constitutional-convention/ Others, such as the Cato Institute, oppose the idea. https://www.cato.org/commentary/article-v-constitutional-convention-wrong-idea-wrong-time

Congress would have to propose the amendment to begin with, so there are two insurmountable problems.

Not to mention that term limits would require a constitutional amendment.

Except that the DOJ is appealing the ruling. Given that the 11th Circuit previously slapped down Cannon's order appointing a special master it'll be interesting to see what it does with her ruling regarding the appointment of the special counsel.

Got news for you, chump: Trump isn't the President, and he wasn't when he refused to return the stuff he took. How many of the other ex-Presidents had to have a subpoena served on them to return documents? How many lied about having returned everything, thereby precipitating a search warrant the execution of which uncovered a lot more documents?

Maybe they didn't want a private citizen with no authority to possess the documents to have them.

This is nothing new. Ted Cruz once described Trump as a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen” and then once Trump became President turned into a Trump sycophant. Too often power triumphs over principle.

I'm sure they have one, as does Trump. What does that have to do with the Presidential Records Act or with what Trump is (or was) charged with?

Not when you realize that the documents he took (whether classified or not) didn't belong to him but rather belonged to the National Archives and also when you realize that even after the Archives requested the return of the document he (a) stonewalled for 9 months before returning some of them; (b) after being subpoenaed to return the rest of them he returned some of the remaining ones and had his attorney falsely claim that a "diligent search" had been made and all the rest had been returned, after which the search warrant was executed and the FBI found more than 100 documents with classification markings; (c) the FBI discovered these in a matter of hours, over twice the number of documents with classification markings that Trump’s people had weeks to discover and deliver in connection with their so-called "diligent search"; and (d) he showed a document to four other people (none of whom had security clearances) and said, "Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this...See as President I could have declassified it...Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret." The President must be trusted, since having access to such info is a necessary part of his job. Ex-presidents, however, have no similar need for such info. And would you really want to trust someone who's $400+ million in debt to have such info that might be sold to some bad guys overseas?

The Court's rationale applies to all aspects of an impeachment trial. Are you seriously suggesting that an accused could appeal to SCOTUS regarding some alleged impropriety in the House proceedings? SCOTUS wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Read Nixon again -- the Framers deliberately didn't involve the Court in the impeachment process, although there were proposals to do so:

I agree.

Yeah, Willie Nelson has committed high crimes for years.

Your insurmountable problem is that SCOTUS will not review the actions of the Senate; the Nixon case makes that quite clear, and your attempt to distinguish it by the fact that the case dealt with a procedural issue is unavailing. From the Nixon decision: This is one of the safeguards the Court pointed out:

But it's not a crime.

The Court wouldn't have original jurisdiction in such a case. And you don't know the constitutional meaning of "High Crime or Misdemeanor." But we have had other impeachments that didn't involve criminal acts, and there's nothing in the Constitution differentiating between a Presidential impeachment and other types, aside from the Chief Justice's presiding in a Presidential impeachment trial.

But who gets to decide whether an "impeachable charge" exists? If you read the Court's rationale in the Nixon case, you'll find that it rested on the Constitution's giving the Senate the "sole Power to try all Impeachments." Nixon argued that the word "try" meant that the Senate itself, and not a select committee, must hear the evidence. But the Court rejected this view of the word "try". Of course, under either Nixon's or the Court's definition of "try", the Senate would have the authority to determine whether the accused's conduct constituted an impeachable offense. One of the duties of a judge is to determine the law applicable to the facts, and the Senate has this obligation -- to determine whether the conduct constitutes "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The Senate has the sole power to try an impeachment, and this applies to all aspects of an impeachment trial, including the determination of whether the accused's conduct consituted an impeachable offense. The Nixon Court noted:

I'll repeat: immunity from criminal prosecution has no effect upon impeachment.

Again, you are inserting the word "legitimate" in connection with core powers, something SCOTUS didn't do. Moreover, an impeachable/removal act is whatever the House and Senate say it is. Drunkenness isn't a crime, yet a federal judge was impeached and removed for it. In addition, SCOTUS will not review the House and Senate's actions in an impeachment proceeding; it is a nonjusticiable political question. See Nixon v. United States , 506 U. S. 224 (1993), in which the Court said:

My comments have been limited to Oklahoma and the requirement that the Commandments be posted in every classroom. I believe Prescott controls the (state) constitutionality of this requirement. Indeed, I think the case for the invalidity of the requirement is stronger than the fact pattern in Prescott. Unlike the state capitol grounds involved in Prescott a public school classroom involves a captive audience of impressionable children who would be forced to see a clearly religious message every school day, thereby benefiting and supporting the Judeo-Christian system of religion. Now if you want to distinguish Prescott from the new regulation, have at it. Interesting bit of history: following the Prescott decision and the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the capitol grounds, legislators put a measure on the 2016 ballot that would have removed Article 2, Section 5 from the Oklahoma Constitution (which was the basis for the decision in Prescott). The measure failed by almost 14 percentage points. EDIT: The Oklahoma superintendent mandated that the Bible be included the school curriculum, that there be a Bible in every classroom, and that teachers " teach from it." He did not specifically require that the Commandments be posted; that was done in Louisiana. I apologize for my error. Further regulations regarding this mandate are to be issued, and the State department of Education may supply teaching materials to be used in all classes. It remains to be seen just how secular and even-handed the use of the Bible will be. Will students learn about Jefferson's bible, a severely redacted version of the New Testament that omitted any miracles, the Resurrection, and passages portraying Jesus as divine? Will they learn how the Bible was used to justify slavery? Will other foundational documents such as the Constitution be contrasted with the Ten Commandments (e.g., the First Amendment conflicts with the first three commandments)?

I'm ignoring it because it conflicts with the Oklahoma Constitution. It has no bearing because Prescott was based on the Oklahoma Constitution, not the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause. You haven't bothered to read Prescott, have you? Yet you have the audacity to pontificate on something you know nothing about. Here, read this and learn something:

The Prescott case was in 2015. In case you never had a basic civics class, a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court on a matter of the Oklahoma Constitution takes precedence over a conflicting statute. And I'm not talking about the Bible being used in a class on religion. I'm talking about a mandate that the 10 Commandments be posted in every Oklahoma classroom.

The Court didn't refer to "legitimate actions". It said, "The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers." These powers include the pardon power, so even if a President accepts a bribe in exchange for a pardon, the language of the decision suggests he can't be prosecuted. But nowhere does the decision say he can't be impeached and removed from office for something for which he has prosecutorial immunity. Impeachment is a civil matter, not a criminal matter, and the actions forming the basis for an impeachment needn't be criminal. For example, Judge John Pickering was impeached and removed for drunkenness.

Good grief, the Missouri AG is almost as big an idiot as Ken Paxton, who sued Pennsylvania in 2020 claiming that its alleged voting irregularities harmed Texas voters. SCOTUS declined to hear the case due to a lack of standing, and it won't hear this one. Missouri has no standing to complain about criminal proceedings in another State.

Immune? As far as Oklahoma is concerned, the Prescott case (which was based on the Oklahoma Constitution) dooms the attempt to put the Ten Commandments in classrooms. I suspect the Oklahoma official knew this, but like many politicians he promulgated an unconstitutional regulation to placate certain segments of the population. When the regulation is struck down later on he can then blame the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

I doubt you've ever read the case, which involved a government-composed prayer that was required to be recited at the beginning of class each day, although individual students weren't required to recite it if they or their parents objected. It's best to keep this in mind:

True enough, but the immunity addressed in the Trump case was immunity from criminal prosecution, not impeachment immunity..

I'm not denying that slaveowners cherry picked biblical verses to justify slavery. They did, and my point was that I doubt very much that this misuse would be taught as part of the "historical" approach to teaching the Bible that the Oklahoma official would have people believe would be the norm.

The original intent of the Constitution was altered by the 14th Amendment, which limits what states can do.