Sonny Tufts
Member

Not quite. The meaning of the clause may have been to insure a State didn't become a monarchy and to protect the States against internal insurrection and foreign invasion. See https://constitution.findlaw.com/article4/annotation18.html#f321 Would you really want the federal government, instead of local officials, to decide whether a State is abiding by its own laws? Suppose the PA Supreme Court hadn't extended the date for receiving mail-in ballots -- would you seriously want SCOTUS to be able to reverse the decision and rule the same way the PA Supreme Court actually did (i.e., that the extension was warranted by the PA constitution)? In any event, SCOTUS held in 1849 that questions arising under the clause are political, not justiciable, and that that ''it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State . . . as well as its republican character.'' Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1, 42 (1849).

It's quite clear you know nothing about the law of standing. Neither Texas nor its voters were disenfranchised or otherwise harmed by some other State's conduct of its election, and your continued parroting of dicta from irrelevant cases won't change that fact. Even if you assume that the PA electoral votes weren't chosen in accordance with the rules set down by its legislature and that this amounts to a violation of the Constitution analogous to a breach of contract, neither you nor anyone else has demonstrated how Texas or its voters were harmed or suffered any damage as a result of this alleged violation, especially in light of the fact that Biden would still have won if all of the mail-in ballots received after the statutory deadline had not been counted. In essence, you and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch want SCOTUS to render an advisory opinion to govern future elections, not the one just held. But SCOTUS has refused to give advisory opinions ever since President Washington asked it to do so in 1793, and it shouldn't start now.

Texas voters weren't disenfranchised at all. Their votes were counted to determine who Texas's electors would be, which is all they were entitled to.* Just as they have no right to vote for Pennsylvania's electors, they have no right to complain about how PA's electors were chosen. None of the dicta you cited bears on the issue of Texas's standing. Moreover, the interdependence argument goes too far; it would permit one State to complain about another State's violation of any other constitutional provision, not just that dealing with presidential electors. For example, California could sue Texas alleging that some law on the latter's books violates Due Process, Equal Protection, Freedom of Speech, Press, or Free Exercise of Religion, or the Establishment Clause. Is that really what you want? * Of course, their votes may not have been properly counted, since Texas Governor Abbott unilaterally opened the absentee voting period early in violation of state law, something pot-calling-the-kettle-black AG Ken Paxton somehow failed to mention in his suit.

The Constitution doesn't prohibit laws against libel, slander, or inciting a riot, and it most certainly doesn't prohibit laws against gathering together and storming the Capitol.

If you have the power to control property you will be treated as posessing it even though you don't have actual physical possession. Example: you're sued in a civil case and are served with a subpoena requiring you to turn over copies of certain business records in your posession. You don't actually have them in your possession because you gave them to your CPA. But you have the power to have your CPA return them to you. You can't refuse to comply with the subpoena on the grounds that the records aren't in your physical possession because you're treated as if they were. Any other result would be nonsensical.

Looks like these clowns are trying to do to literature what the idiots in Oregon are doing to mathematics: https://disrupttexts.org/2018/10/25/5-disrupting-shakespeare/ So let me get this straight: Shakespeare has no more and no less literary merit than any other playwright? Sheer insanity.

Please tell me this is from The Onion.

Playing the race card is no substitute for rational debate. I do not care to engage with intellectual cowards.

How is it racist to point out the absurdity of the nullification argument? You may not be old enough to remember the reaction to the Brown decision, but it was precisely as I described it. Southern officials complained that the Supreme Court had overstepped its bounds and violated the 10th Amendment. "Impeach Earl Warren!" signs proliferated (never mind it was a unanimous decision). Demagogues like Faubus and Wallace held sway -- the former sent Arkansas National Guardsmen to block the integration of Little Rock's Central High School, while the latter attempted to prevent the integration at the University of Alabama. They, too, believed in nullification. The notion of nullification as a legal principle has been firmly rejected. In the only reported instance of a Supreme Court decision authored by all nine Justices the Court stated:

67 years ago, the same kind of argument was made about a different issue. It went like this: "The left would have us believe that outlawing racial segregation in public schools is the 'law of the land', but Brown v. Board of Education was a Supreme Court decision, and the last time I checked the Constitution, courts do not make law. Can someone show me where the Constitution allows the federal government to tell local school boards how to run their schools?" So were States entitled to nullify the Brown decision if they thought it wasn't supported by the Constitution? Many tried, notably Arkansas and Alabama. Are Orval Faubus and George Wallace heroes in LTC West's eyes? Once you grant that a State can determine for itself whether its actions violate the Constitution you can kiss the Constitution's prohibitions against the States goodbye, because they would be rendered meaningless.

"I was just following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg, and it shouldn't work for the goons who stormed the Capitol.

Which is precisely what Trump did. He started well before the election when he began claiming that the only way he could lose is if the election were rigged. At the time his approval rating was only 42%.

Leahy isn't judge, jury, and proseutor. As trhe presiding officer he has little if any power over the proceedings, since any ruling he makes can be overridden by a majority of the Senators. There's an interesting twist on whether Roberts must preside. He's not constitutionally required to do so because impeachment and trial are separate matters. Trump was President when he was impeached but the Constitution requires the Chief Justice to preside only when the President is tried, which is not the case with Trump. However, Senate Rule IV provides that when the President is impeached the Chief Justice will preside. This raises a Separation of Powers issue: how can the Senate require the Chief Justice to preside absent a constitutional requirement? It can't. However, the point may be academic, as it seems that a majority of the Senate could vote to amend Rule IV to refer to the President's being tried instead of having been impeached.

If I were served Pearl beer I'd be offended. The only time I drank it was at a favorite bar that served pitchers only with Pearl or Lone Star. Pearl was the lesser of two evils.

The issue of whether a former federal official can be impeached and tried has arisen before. In 1876 Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached after he resigned by a unanimous House vote, and in his Senate trial a majority, but less than the necessary two-thirds, voted for conviction. The only practical reason for impeaching and trying him after he left office would have been to make sure he could never again serve as a federal official.

Yet this ban is a permissible punishment under the Constitution. So your beef is really with the Founding Fathers.

The kinds of horrible acts I had in mind are those that would constitute an abuse of office but that might not be criminal or if they were arguably criminal would be very difficult to prosecute in a civilian setting. Things like pardoning political cronies who were convicted on overwhelming evidence for acts anyone would agree were crimes.

The counterargument is that Trump was impeached while he was President and that his trial shouldn't be abated simply because he's no longer in office. Otherwise, a President could commit all kinds of horrible acts just before his term expires and not risk the sanction of being forever disqualified from holding a federal office.

The legal answer is likely the same as the practical one: it's constitutional if the Senate says it is. The Supreme Court would likely never get involved in determining the issue based on the majority opinion in Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993), involving the impeachment of federal judge Walter Nixon. Six justices were of the opinion that since the Constitution gives the Senate "the sole power to try all impeachments" issues involving impeachment trials are not reviewable by the judiciary.

There aren't enough Republican Senators with the cojones to find Trump guilty.

Of course not. My point was that it had nothing to do with Schumer's outburst, which happened much later. You need to pay attention: I was responding to posts that were claiming that Schumer's speech deserved impeachment. But it didn't incite anything.

The pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court occurred in October 2018, 17 months before Schumer's speech. The bomb threat occurred last month, ten and a half months after Schumer's speech.

Apples and oranges. Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Schumer didn't incite anything except the expulsion of a lot of hot air.

One should take Maxine Waters about as seriously as one should take Marjorie Taylor Greene. Both have very large mouths located on very empty heads.

The Dems have Maxine Waters. The GOP has Greene.