11 Comments

The most disturbing news in the past few days was not the use of violence against a presidential candidate, (an act that crosses so many lines), nor the choice of JD Vance as a possible VP. It was the dismissal by Cannon of Jack Smiths case against Trump -stealing US classified documents and refusing to return them to US Government (the people). Dismissal of precedent.

“Justice John Roberts has led the Supreme Court into an era in which precedent can selectively be ignored, eviscerated, or overruled when it gets in the way of conservatives’ goals. That, in turn, has led lower court judges to feel that they have been given power to do the same — predicting, in essence, the precedents that they believe the current court would ignore.”

“Where there is no settled law, there is no law.”

The foxes are in the hen house and patrolling the grounds.

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The decision will not stand. I'm sure the DOJ will appeal.

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Yes but now SCOTUS is so unpredictable even Andrew Weissman isn’t confident Jack would win if it ended up there

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Jack Smith is appealing to

the 11rh. Let's hope Clarence

and Ginni are far away on an

all summer, expense paid

cruise to the other side of the

world, after his grueling

internecine war on the

Constitution. That way he

can't interfere with the 11th

circuit any time soon.

And if we can have a BLUE

trifecta in Nov. our senate

can see about a new

assignment for Aileen

Cannon, in a little known

district on the edge of the

Everglades, adjudicating DUIs

and parking tickets.😁

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I was married to an attorney (a litigator) for 25+ years. I had such incredible respect for our justice system and all along since 2016 said “don’t worry, the lawyers will get the right thing done.” I have no words now.

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Cannon ignores precedent … case gets appealed … perhaps all the way to SCOTUS … Roberts court ignores precedent … Thomas revisits Bali.

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Sigh. At least Chris (like so many others on substack) is still allowed to write and make these posts. Idk what's the over/under on how far into Trump's next term before that's no longer the case. Or what, if anything, the American people will do about it.

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I’m feeling the only thing left to halt the Republicans and their spread of fascism is our vote and hope like hell we can win. With this post 2017 SCOTUS nothing will stop the fascist spread, Project 2025 and the Trump 47 plan. The Trump/fascist insurgency has penetrated and corrupted our republic to its last breath.

I also believe that Canon and the entire Republican insurgency believes that they already are the victors and an election is just a formality as they have manipulated and gerrymandered voting districts to the favor of their supermajorities and the taking of a majority of states. The SCOTUS 6 have already gifted Trump his Emperorship and his armed militia are firmly in place as The SCOTUS 6 made certain that they could be armed to the teeth.

I had never ever envisioned that our nation would collapse and we would fall to fascism and an Authoritarian leader.

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An excellent point about the Supreme Court and its new “era in which precedence can selectively be ignored …”

The bitter irony, of course, is that that selective scrutiny ignorance now has the effect of precedence.

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Arrrgggghh. Thank you. I hope she is overruled on this

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She seemed to dismiss the DC circuit by distinguishing

--what all the laws do to delegate to the "existing" members of the AG's office

--from those [not] given for a "new" member.

Do you know in what order the following happened? Smith hired (he's clearly hired, he gets a salary) or Smith Appointed. If he had been hired say 3 minutes before the appointment would that make him "existing?" If "existing" employees can have all that stuff in the statutes delegated to them, then what keeps Garland from just substituting in some "existing" prosecutor and saying "well, Cannon did say that the idea of fairness didn't really matter." Or simply hiring Smith as an assistant AG and saying OK, trial can go on, problem solved.

As you point out, Thomas's was the sole purveyor of the arguments about constitutionality of special counsel. Do you think that if this gets to SCOTUS via "disagreement between circuits" that SCOTUS will go with her? Even if it means no more looking into Hunter?

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