The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States rejecting the use of obstruction of legal proceedings against January 6th defendants will potentially impact hundreds of cases. For some, it may lead to dismissals or, in the cases with multiple charges, resentencings. One of those cases that will be impacted is the pending prosecution of former president Donald Trump who is facing four charges, including two obstruction counts. However, it is not clear if Special Counsel Jack Smith will yield to the decision or possibly take the dubious path laid out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her concurrence.
Smith has long tended to push the law to the breaking point to bag defendants. That was the case when his conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell was unanimously reversed as overextending another law.
It is doubtful that he will go quietly into the night after the Fischer decision. In most cases, a prosecutor would go back and secure a superseding indictment in light of the loss of the obstruction claims. Those claims were central to the narrative of the government under the current indictment.
That is not Smith’s style. He may decide to push even harder for a trial before the election on the remaining counts. Smith has made the trial before the election an overriding priority throughout his appointment. He also has a very favorable and motivated judge in United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
He could also take a not-so-subtle hint from Jackson in her concurrence. Jackson supported the majority in finding that the obstruction provision, Section 1512(c), was enacted after the Enron case to address the destruction of documents and records.
Section 1512(c)(1) prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or other object with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. However, a second provision under subsection (c)(2) allowed for charges that would “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding. The Court held that the obstruction cases under Section 1512(c)(2) must be tied to impairing the integrity or availability of evidence.
However, in a single justice concurrence, she added a way that Smith and other prosecutors might still be able to shoehorn January 6th into a Section 1512 offense:
“That official proceeding [Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote] plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 65–67. And it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding “in ways other than those specified in (c)(1).” Ante, at 8. If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand.”
Notably, no other justice joined Jackson in the concurrence. However, Smith and Chutkan could reason that it was not expressly rejected and presumably, the three justices in dissent would support the broader reading since they were willing to sign off on the ultimate extension of the obstruction of justice statute. That includes Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
However, that still leaves less than a majority and an application that runs against the grain of the opinion. Just saying that a proceeding involves “certain records” is transparently artificial and forced. Even the submission of an alternative slate of electors is not the destruction of electors certified by the secretaries of state.
The federal law allows for challenges in Congress, which Democrats previously utilized without claims of insurrections or attacks on democracy. J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), voted to challenge the certification of the 2004 results of President George W. Bush’s reelection; committee member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to challenge Trump’s certification in 2016. Both did so under the very law that Trump’s congressional supporters used in 2020. And Pelosi and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the challenge organized by then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2004.
Those challenges under the same loose theory could have been viewed as attempting to negate or destroy certifications from the states. It would likely, in my view, result in another reversal. It is, in my view, too clever by half.
That may not concern Smith who may still want to use the obstruction counts to increase the likelihood of convictions on the other counts. In such a circumstance, the overturning of the two obstruction convictions might still leave the conviction for conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against the rights of citizens.
We will see in the coming weeks, but Smith is likely waiting for the other shoe to drop in the Trump immunity case. That could add additional complications if the case is remanded by the Court for further proceedings. There is little time for a trial before November if the district court must hold hearings on claims that statements or actions were taken by Trump as part of his office.
Chutkan sought to meet Smith’s demand for a trial before the election by converting her court into a virtual rocket docket. The cost of the fast pace was that she created little record on these issues. That might have to be done in a remand and will exhaust additional days on the rapidly shrinking calendar for Smith.
Either way, Monday will throw the final card on the table for Smith and the Court will determine if what is left in his hand. It may not deter Smith. It often seems like both bad gamblers and special counsels tend to double down on weak hands. If history is any measure, Smith is likely to bet the farm on whatever remains.
The problem is that the farm does not belong to him.
I just watched 9 different videos of Kamala the last 4 years, saying
“What cane be, unburdened by what has been”
If Kamala gets dementia, it would be an improvement
Two posts down you will find Peter Shill, one of the 11 percenters, rambling on about some voices in his head.
Let us know if you you feel
1. Pity
2. Disgust
3. Despair for mankind
4. Just a little turned on because you know he gives great head
11% of people polled thought that Biden won the debate.
Those same people also think that
The economy is great
The per tape is real
James is Estovir is Floyd
THREAD DISABLED AHEAD
Readers are going to see a flurry of perverted posts from puppets known as “turdrunner”, “brandrunner” or “Peter Shill”. Mean-spirited jokes to intimidate a live commenter. A ‘live’, as opposed to bots.
One can tell by total comments that something odd is happening. Which you will see further down. There we find irrelevant posts that continue as far as the finger can scroll.
That’s a demonstration from our friendly troll farm. They’re trying to either crash the blog or show they’re capable. We’ve seen several such demonstrations during this past week.
And Professor Johnathan Turley should be commended for standing up to this farm. Turley’s giving us all a valuable lesson on the importance of free speech. Because ‘only’ free speech exposes these farms!
The Troll Farm:
Questions Answered
Could all these puppets be the creation of a lone geek at home somewhere?
Possibly. But this geek is spending 16 hours per day or more to stay on top of this blog. A lot of work for no profit!
Could this farm be a subcontractor for some conservative non-profit?
On the surface that seemed plausible until late last year. But then it was clear the farm had no regard for the blog, or Jonathan Turley.
As Christmas 2023 approached, the trolls demonstrated they were willing to post endless profanities. That was a clue the farm was purely malicious!
And now we’re seeing these demonstrations every day. Savvy American trolls would stay beneath the radar.
But if it’s a Russian troll, at some office in Saint Petersburg, they might think perverted references make them sound tough. Because tough Russians talk like that!
It’s like that old saying, ‘Lost in translation”.
Its obvious who the bot is.
The one who writes “such and such ahead”, at the top of the comments, as though people read them backwards.
The bot doesnt know the difference
Watch this clip, and see if you recognize the character played by Peter Shill, the kid who brings us the nightly PUPPY COUNT.
https://youtu.be/KtnLmYkpsZo
The Biden campaign slogan has been changed from
Build Back Better
To
Do Not Resuscitate
Guys
If you’ve never seen Shoresy on Hulu, I highly recommend it.
Watch this clip, and see if you recognize the character played by Peter Shill, the kid who brings us the nightly PUPPY COUNT.
https://youtu.be/KtnLmYkpsZo
The Committee worked to obtain classified documents from the CIA, including emails, and fought to include evidence of these materials in our report,” said Chairman Mike Turner.
“We knew that the rushed statement from the 51 former intelligence officials was a political maneuver between the Biden campaign and the intelligence community. Now with this interim report, we reveal how officials at the highest levels of the CIA were aware of the statement and CIA employees knew that several of the so-called former officials were on active contract with the CIA. The report underscores the risks posed by a weaponized federal government,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.
So. It took years to receive the sought after documents which reveal that Biden and his gang of co-felons pulled a fast one on the voting public, leading to his winning the office of President. Looking closely at the material, they cleverly adopted what they wanted to be seen and hidden. Talk about obstruction and interderence with an election. If Trump goes to prison, he should share a cell with these bums.
The end to chevron deference merely means a transfer of power from the executive to the courts
It will change the game
To the limited extent it will have a consequential impact
It empowers our least influenced by special interests branch of government
Why do you expect the courts to be less freinfly to lefties trying to bend the law to their will than those in the executive branch
The correct decision by the courts is when legislation is not clear kick it back to the legislature
testing
It is late, late, I am tired, and I had already signed off from this site for the holiday week in my last post.
But I am restless as to the merits of my own previous tangential comments about why the Court (mostly Roberts and Jackson) did little to discuss “legislative intent” re: the expanded use of Sarbanes-Oxley provisions (1512(c)(2) (cited by both SCOTUS and the prosecution in this case). So I got back out of bed and did a little research.
Indeed, I found this like-minded published piece:
Obstruction of Justice: Unwarranted Expansion of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1)
by Sarah O’Rourke Shrup.
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Volume 102 | Issue 1 Article 2
Winter 2012
She (more articulately than I) questions the expanded use of SOX’s 1512(c) beyond its original legislative intent (in her example, addressing drug offenses).
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7417&context=jclc
She’s a rather well-credentialed arguer.
https://wwws.law.northwestern.edu/about/news/newsdisplay.cfm?ID=681
This time I mean it. Done. Finis. Nite nite and happy holiday week to all. And sorry for extending my comments.
PUPPY WATCH UPDATE
Sorry for the typos. Its not easy to type while you’re getting all this lovin’
I have spanked my puppy 4 times tonight.
Now Estovir will skull fvck me while floyd shoves his mega maga cock in my ass and I lick the shit off of his dick
Thats not me, i swear. That is some green anonymous who is obviously furious at me for posting my PUPPY WATCH.
I’m so relevant!
I’m so relevant!
Look mommy, I’m so relevant!
I am NOT Peter Shill!
C’mon dude, we know its you Peter.
No its not me.
Uh, I mean, no I’m not Peter
You are Floyd. Furious Floyd the puppetmaster. I counted so I know.
I read all your posts too, but i’m not mad. I’m just accomplishing something in my life for a change.
And by the way, which one’s Pink?
Who’s with me???
Then who is this turdrunner guy below who posted all that crop from the book of Isaiah?
Thats Floyd!!! Not you Floyd. Troll Farm Floyd.
No, not Floyd thats cornholing me right now. The other Floyd.
I counted. I know.
Peter, come on man. You’re really making me angry. So angry i just wanna copy and paste a bunch of crap above your brain dead drivel.
Here, Floyd admits to being Floyd.
See folks, I told you its a troll farm.
They all sound the same when they come to my glory hole.
Here’s how the established puppets tally today with number of posts next to names.
Margot Ballhere: 1
dgsnowden: 1
Draft Dodger Consortium: 3
DDC: 1
Elvis Bug: 3
Estovir: 9
Ex Dem: 1
Floyd: 4
Ian Michael Gumby: 2
GEB 11
JAFO: 1
James: 1
Lin: 8
Old Fish: 3
Pleasure Chest Management: 2
Sam: 2
Richard S: 3
Traveler: 6
Turdrunner: 2
Waters: 15
Upstate Farmer: 14
ZZ Doc: 1
Peter Shill aka brandrunner aka turdrunner: 200
I don’t know about you guys, but I am choking on my sweet tea thinking about this tool, sitting at his laptop in his mom’s basement, with a notepad, adding up all the posts from each commenter. And he pretends someone else is obsessed with him. SMH
1:1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
1:2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
1:3 The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
1:4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
1:5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
1:6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
1:7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
1:8 And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
1:9 Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
1:10 Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.
1:11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
1:12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? 1:13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
1:14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
1:15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 1:17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
1:19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: 1:20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
1:21 How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
1:22 Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: 1:23 Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.
1:24 Therefore saith the LORD, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies: 1:25 And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin: 1:26 And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.
1:27 Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.
1:28 And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed.
1:29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.
1:30 For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.
1:31 And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.
2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
2:3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
2:4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
2:5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
2:6 Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
2:7 Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: 2:8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: 2:9 And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
2:10 Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.
2:11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: 2:13 And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, 2:14 And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, 2:15 And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, 2:16 And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.
2:17 And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
2:18 And the idols he shall utterly abolish.
2:19 And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
2:20 In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; 2:21 To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
2:22 Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of ? 3:1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water.
3:2 The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, 3:3 The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.
3:4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
3:5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
3:6 When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand: 3:7 In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.
3:8 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
3:9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
3:10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
3:11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
3:12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
3:13 The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.
3:14 The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
3:15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
3:16 Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: 3:17 Therefore the LORD will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
3:18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, 3:19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, 3:20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, 3:21 The rings, and nose jewels, 3:22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, 3:23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
3:24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.
3:25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
3:26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.
4:1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
4:2 In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.
4:3 And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: 4:4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.
4:5 And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.
4:6 And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.
5:1 Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: 5:2 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
5:3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.
5:4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? 5:5 And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: 5:6 And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.
5:8 Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! 5:9 In mine ears said the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.
5:10 Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah.
5:11 Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! 5:12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands.
5:13 Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
5:14 Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.
5:15 And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: 5:16 But the LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.
5:17 Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.
5:18 Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope: 5:19 That say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it! 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! 5:21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! 5:22 Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: 5:23 Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him! 5:24 Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
5:25 Therefore is the anger of the LORD kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets.
For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
5:26 And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: 5:27 None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken: 5:28 Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: 5:29 Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it.
5:30 And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.
6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
6:3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
6:4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
6:6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 6:7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
6:8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
6:9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
6:10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.
6:11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 6:12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
6:13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.
7:1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.
7:2 And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.
7:3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field; 7:4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah.
7:5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, 7:6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal: 7:7 Thus saith the Lord GOD, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.
7:8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.
7:9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.
7:10 Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 7:11 Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.
7:12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.
7:13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
7:15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
7:16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
7:17 The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.
7:18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
PUPPY WATCH UPDATE
I have spanked my puppy 4 times tonight.
Now Estovir will skull fvck me while floyd shoves hi mega maga cock in my ass and I lick the shot off of his dick.
PUPPY WATCH UPDATE
Sorry for the typos. Its not easy to type while you’re getting all this lovin’
I have spanked my puppy 4 times tonight.
Now Estovir will skull fvck me while floyd shoves his mega maga cock in my ass and I lick the shit off of his dick
Just one comment down i attempt to somehow be relevant. Its a sad sad life but i do this service just for all you Floyds out there.
My mom will be home from her glory hole gig soon, so gotta go for now
Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 9:26 AM
Professor Turley wrote: Instead, the Court rendered a reasonable, balanced accommodation for public safety under the Second Amendment.
I recognize that the Court took care to narrowly focus on a TEMPORARY suspension of Second Amendment rights. But many Americans, like Thomas, have a large constitutional issue with depriving people of a right automatically because they fit into a box – no individual judicial determination required prior to suspending or removing that right.
Professor Turley, deliberately or not, uses the mantra and excuse behind every single gun law, ban, and prohibition put forward by his Democrat party (and by the three complaining concurring Democrat justices in this decision who moan Bruen will block “common-sense gun laws”): it’s always reasonable and balanced in the interests of public safety and does not violate the “shall not be infringed” sections of the Second Amendment.
Would it be fair to suspect Turley doesn’t much like guns, that he would like to see more and stricter gun laws as long as they don’t grossly violate the Second Amendment, and isn’t too much troubled by that pesky “shall not be infringed” part of the Second Amendment? He is a Democrat and he’s apparently been just fine with their virulent anti-gun agenda for decades now.
Now what if a future Congress imposed similar temporary and lifelong prohibitions of First Amendment free speech rights in the interests of public safety? Again, doing that as is done with the Second Amendment, on the base of specified groups of people. For example, anyone who used the internet to commit fraud, swatting an individual, convicted of luring a minor, child pornography – and of course dishonorable discharges and mental illness.
Would Professor Turley also say in that case “this is a reasonable, balanced accommodation for public safety under the First Amendment”?
I think not. Because I am strongly suspicious it would then be a case of whose ox is being gored by prohibitions on individuals exercise of their rights.
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Daniel says:June 25, 2024 at 7:09 AM
OAD, Josh Blackman in Volokh (part of Reason.com) agrees with me that Rahimi eliminates Bruen’s historical analogue test. He also is puzzled by Gorsuch’s concurrence.
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Jaelyn unafraid says:June 23, 2024 at 10:13 PM
Albeit I only read so far the syllabus – I don’t see how hunter is foreclosed. If that case didn’t argue the “forms” ambiguity. The syllabus is clear – once a court found – (like rhami) vs a legislative category of ills. I read the syllabus that once a court found – vs once a person self chills bc he may or may not be in a legislative category without a court pre finding before a man fills out the form. Such a holding is actually consistent with the form too – that is you can be bat shit crazy – even volunteered for the shrink wrap – but so long as no “court” has committed you – the form itself let’s you say whatever and the law let’s you buy and possess a gun. Analog you can beat your wife threaten your wife et al … but until subject to a court found restraining order ( however they are found) you get a gun. Yet on hunters case – where was the court ruling ? That he was a user or addicted to drugs – legislative category? Doesn’t matter Navy drummed him out decade before – t he ambiguity is enough and the rule of leniency goes to the citizen. Here hunter. See we have a very under inclusive law – that the form on its face does not embrace all the wife beaters nor all the drug users nor all the alleged crazy people- it now after rhami only embraces people who the “courts” have deemed such. How they don’t get their evidence by using the same stats legislatures used – idk. But maybe by a court decision 1st there is some varnish of due process. Hunter and the “ilk” targeted don’t even get that varnish. At least in rhami a judge stood between a “legislative category” and the actual person targeted. Hunter never had that. That distinguishes him in 922.
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John Say says:June 24, 2024 at 2:54 PM
The statute – 18US1001 which is constantly and improperly refred to as lying to an FBI agent, is ACTUALLY a law that prohibits lying to the government on a FORM and dates back to the late 19th century. Its interpretation has subsequently been (improperly) extended to include lying to a government agent in the course of an investigation.
Regardless, saying that you are not a illegal drug user when you are on a government form is a crime. The fact that the form is an application to purchase a gun is irrelevant.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 8:30 PM
Somewhat relevant to this, Canada also does lifetime revocation of the right to buy and possess firearms for convicted criminals.
HOWEVER, unlike here in the USA where there is an automatic lifetime revocation of Second Amendment rights for Americans simply because they fall into a class i.e. dishonorable discharge, felony convictions, in Canada such a revocation must by done on a individual basis one at a time, and not automatically by class.
The prosecutor can (but often does not) ask the judge to include a firearms/other weapons prohibition at sentencing. Such a request may be for a specified period of years or for life. That judge may or may not grant it. If granted, it may or may not be for the period requested by the prosecutor.
In other instances, rather than our terrible red flag laws, a prosecutor may bring a person before the courts to have a show cause hearing before the judge while they request a weapons prohibition for an individual. They are required to provide a body of facts that shows the person should be considered to be a threat to themselves and/or others.
Some prohibitions expire after a certain number of years; some are in place for life.
Where firearms/weapons prohibitions have been put in place by the courts, those subject to those prohibitions can go back to the courts later, asking for a review of their situation They may or may not get the prohibition lifted, depending on what they present.
What socialist Canada does NOT do is automatically ban citizens from firearms ownership and possession for their entire life automatically, as soon as they fall into a category of persons.
That’s what we do here in the USA, where we have the specifically written Second Amendment that says “shall not be infringed”. And even the majority of Republicans are fine with that, rather than demanding a judicial review and determination before a lifetime revocation of Second Amendment rights.
And we wonder why we’re losing the Second Amendment…
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Young says:June 23, 2024 at 9:07 PM
“And we wonder why we’re losing the Second Amendment…”
We are losing the country.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 9:33 AM
Yes, no disagreement with that of course. But the subject is the prohibition on individuals exercising their Second Amendment rights without judicial process – simply because they fall into a category. As I pointed out, Canada to our north only prohibits citizens from firearms possession, purchasing, etc after a government request for that prohibition has been heard by a judge. They don’t do it automatically on the basis of categories.
I doubt Professor Turley would find it reasonable if the exact same thing were done with the First Amendment, and Americans were prohibited from exercising First Amendment rights as soon as they fell into a similar series of categories. “Dishonorable discharge? No free speech for you!”
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Jae asking says:June 23, 2024 at 9:51 PM
Indeed doesn’t Canada just make other people who know the person vouch for them?
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 9:06 AM
No, not in anything that I’ve read. If the person that is subject to the prohibition chooses to contest the Crown asking for the prohibition, they have to do more than just have a friend or drunking buddy or the janitor at their job vouch for them. The Crown has to show cause i.e. do more than simply ask for the prohibition, and the subject person has to respond to what they present, not just call a friend.
The point is, in Canada where there are lots and lots and lots of guns but Lenin Liberal/Dipper socialism that hates guns just like Soviet Democrats infects half the country, they do not automatically prohibit people from owning firearms strictly on the basis of a class of conviction, a dishonorable discharge from their military, mental illness, etc.
Canada DOES require a judicial determination on a case by case individual basis, not just automatic stripping of Second Amendment rights for life based on categories.
(At the same time, they’re California lenient on the vast majority of street criminals. Like here, the unwashed masses are unhappy with that but the inertia of their justice system leveraged by ‘social justice activists’ carries the day.)
Which is what I and probably a lot of others believe is how it should be here in the USA if you are going to strip a citizen of a constitutional right – especially for life.
It would be interesting to know if Justice Thomas has a similar view? Or if he has decided that you can imprison people for life, but you cannot revoke Second Amendment rights from persons free of the judicial system and living their lives, even through an individual judicial determination to do so.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 11:22 AM
There is a reoccurring warning in this decision that many including the NRA and similar organizations continually do not see
We have held that the right to keep and bear arms is among the “fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 778 (2010). Derived from English practice and codified in the Second Amendment, the right secures for Americans a means of self-defense. Bruen, 597 U. S., at 17.
First, an aside: It is the English Bill of Rights, one of the United Kingdom’s and the Commonwealth nations constitutional documents that gave those peoples a right to bear arms. NOT “English practice”. It is every bit as codified as our Second Amendment that was derived from the EBR. So, in writing the majority opinion, did Roberts simply make a mistake in referring to it as “English practice”, rather than observing that right STILL exists in the EBR, just as the right to elections, to vote, fair trials of your peers, etc exists. Why mention the English connection at all – and then make a glaring mistake like that?
And that is the point of the warning we keep seeing regarding what Justice Roberts claims is our “secured” Second Amendment right. The English Bill of Rights STILL “secures” the right of the people to arms for their defense just as our Second Amendment does for us. In fact, in the rights listed in THEIR constitution after the Glorious Revolution, they listed the right of the people to arms for their defense above the right to vote. Because, just as the colonists did a century later, they revolted against and defeated a tyrant attempting to disarm them and impose that tyrants will.
However, while the English Bill of Rights is regularly the basis of supreme court decisions dealing with issues of constitutionality in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., EVERY SINGLE COMMONWEALTH NATION’S governments and their supreme courts have made the right of their citizens to bear arms for their defense a dead letter. Not a single one of those nations has passed legislation that explicitly revokes that right of citizens to arms to their defense. Not a single nation’s supreme court has upheld their citizens’ English Bill of Rights right to arms for their defense in the face of court challenges to government revoking access to firearms, limiting the use of firearms, and outright wholesale confiscation of firearms.
In Canada, their minority government fascist and racist prime minister Trudeau (the son that Obama never had) is attempting the wholesale confiscation of all handguns and semiautomatic long guns by what we call an Executive Order – he will not put his confiscation plan to a vote in parliament because not even all members of his party will support it. Fascism by fiat. In a decision several decades ago, R. v. Sparrow (?), Canada’s Supreme Court stated that the newly minted Canadian Constitution was a “living, breathing document.” They held that despite the Constitution Act including all previous Canadian constitutional documents such as the EBR, the Canadian parliament could extinguish an existing specific constitutional right in the EBR by bringing forward a bill that was specifically intended to do that, and passing that bill to extinguish that existing right by a majority vote of parliament.
Canada, through four successive decades of majority Liberal governments and now minority governments under Trudeau attempting to criminalize firearms ownership and confiscate firearms, has NEVER repealed the right of Canadians to bear arms for their defense as provided by the EBR. (Nor did England, Australia, or New Zealand before their infamous gun bans and confiscations during those years). Liberal governments have simply gone forward with a succession of measures to progressively eliminate Canadians’ EBR rights, and other than a few detours that Canada’s Supreme Court has thrown them, they are now at the point where their court has told Trudeau he can confiscate all these firearms simply by issuing his personal fiat in the form of this Order In Council they declared to be constitutional.
Canada and all of these countries were not this way until the last half of the 20th century. In all of these countries, the right of their citizens to own arms for their defense was unquestioned until recently. Canadians could could go hunting with handguns instead of rifles in some provinces as late as 1974 and a permit to carry concealed for self defense was about as hard as going to a police department to make an application and be of good character. You could shoot handguns anywhere it was legal to shoot rifles and shotguns, whereas now, handguns can only be used at shooting ranges licensed for handgun use.
Now, by fiat of the government in power, not by majority vote of the elected politicians, those handguns have been declared prohibited and their owners await Trudeau finding the means (courage) to go throughout the country, house to house, confiscating those handguns (and rifles and shotguns) from their owners. Firearms groups appealed that to Canada’s Supreme Court, who held that Trudeau’s personal Order In Council to first declare firearms prohibited weapons and then move to confiscate them was constitutional.
That is the warning to normal Americans who believe in and demand constitutional government: we are no different from Canada where our right to bear arms is concerned. We are only different in that we’re managing to stay ahead of the gun banning fascist tyrants who have found willing partners in their Supreme Court better than they have been.
The Soviet Democrats are diligently doing everything they can to extinguish Second Amendment rights for Americans, in the same way that was done to the right to bear arms in the UK, Canada, and other Commonwealth countries. Not constitutionally, by putting the repeal of the Second Amendment to a vote during a federal election as was done with Prohibition, but instead by going around the constitution and doing it in increments by government fiat and getting the right justices on SCOTUS to deal the death blow.
What was done in the UK and Canada, whose English Bill of Rights our Second Amendment (and some other rights) comes from, is now being attempted here in the USA. Americans can regularly win a defense of the Second Amendment – the Soviet Democrats only have to win a decision to allow them to confiscate firearms ONCE.
And if you don’t think the Soviet Democrats don’t already have justices on SCOTUS eager to do that, you obviously didn’t bother reading this decision and the “concurring” opinions of the Questioning Birthing Person Jackson and Wise Latina Woman Sotomayor. The Second Amendment will be a priority target if the Soviet Democrats succeed in packing SCOTUS as they’ve plainly said they want to do.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 12:35 PM
Weird for some nobody to be using Turley’s comments section as an op-ed platform. Pretty pathetic honestly.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 2:11 PM
Aside from ad hominem do you have a conter argument to OAD ?
Regardless his reply is on topic, not falacious and well argument – unlike your short reply whose only positive attribute is that it gets everything wrong with brevity.
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Ian Michael Gumby (Gumby) says:June 23, 2024 at 3:40 PM
@John Say…
No the position stated is not right.
Now I agree w your comment about Anon being a prick and that he should attack the comment, not the poster.
But his argument is severely flawed.
I’ll address it.
-G
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 2:54 PM
Weird for some nobody to be using Turley’s comments section as an op-ed platform. Pretty pathetic honestly.
Predictable that a cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot who is so much a feckless and cowardly nobody that they will not post under a username would make such a laughably inane and sophomoric comment as that.
Now how Biden level dishonest and corrupt do you have to be to ignore Dennis McIntyre’s daily, off-topic theft of space in the comments section following each article posted by Turley – and now suddenly claim you have a problem with my pointing out what is going in with these cases is following in the footsteps of what Canada is doing?
Ever heard of possessing a sense of self awareness before attempting that comment after we all get our daily dose of Dennis McIntyre, Bribery Biden’s version of Baghdad Bob?
Try harder…
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 1:44 PM
Airborne
Well said!!
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Ian Michael Gumby (Gumby) says:June 23, 2024 at 3:56 PM
@Old Dog…
Mate, your post doesn’t make a lot of sense.
First, post Dunblane, the UK has removed the rights of the ordinary citizen to own guns. Its highly restricted and how they can be used are also limited along w what they can own.
I remember Dunblane. When Sandy Hook happened, I was sitting in a pub in Edinburgh w two of our clients. (We were flying home the next morning.) They lived in and around Dunblane. So yeah that was a bit surreal. (One of their coworkers had lost a son.)
Now while the US is based on British law, there is a distinction.
The 2A is strongly codified. Not so in the UK. Nor in any of the other countries you mentioned.
If what you suggest were to happen, it would be civil war.
It would mean also removing the 1st, 4th Amendments as well.
-G
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 6:14 PM
Ian Michael Gumby (Gumby) posted:
Mate, your post doesn’t make a lot of sense… The 2A is strongly codified. Not so in the UK. Nor in any of the other countries you mentioned.
What DOESN’T make sense is you recognized that the 2nd amendment is “strongly codified” (while ignoring that it has been under virulent and continual attack for over a century and that 2A rights today don’t come close to what they were less than a hundred years ago – tell everybody how you get a concealed carry permit in Hawaii…).
And then weakly claim that the English Bill of Rights ISN’T similarly codified. You know – like on a legal document also ratified by the elected representatives of the people.
The English Bill of Rights is written on those original pieces of paper that do exist, just as original copies of the US Constitution exist. You should go read it sometime and consider how many times over the centuries it has been authoritative in the highest courts throughout the Commonwealth as well as the UK House of Lords: “The Bill Of Rights is one of the basic instruments of the British constitution, the result of the long 17th-century struggle between the Stuart kings and the English people and Parliament.”
It’s written on a piece of paper, it was passed by elected Parliament as the Bill of Rights was ratified by the elected representatives of the states, it’s been an authority used by the courts for almost four centuries. That is about as codified as you can ask for.
As for those other countries, Canada’s Constitution Act explicitly says that Canada’s new constitution does not remove already existing constitutional documents such as the English Bill Of Rights and the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights: “The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada.”
It would mean also removing the 1st, 4th Amendments as well.
Well, I didn’t mention that, but since you want to go there, tell everybody how well the 1st Amendment is “strongly codified” as the Biden government works with the FBI and DoJ to censor newspapers wanting to publish news of the Biden laptop, while courts censor the free speech of Trump and others to make comments regarding federal prosecutors while those federal prosecutors and their witnesses happily go out in public to make declarations about Trump prior to and during a trial.
Tell us how strongly codified the 4th Amendment is in the USA while the FBI spies on tens of thousands of Americans without any warrant and while Obama’s Attorney Generals, FBI Directors, and others repeatedly perjured themselves and uttered false documents to FISA courts without penalty. And how’s that mass NSA spying on Americans and intercepting and warehousing their communications going under the strongly codified 4th Amendment.
“Strongly codified” – but not the English Bill Of Rights, huh?
So mate, in the language from across the pond that you used, stop being a wanker claiming what I posted makes no sense – while you post nonsense lacking any evidence whatsoever that flies in the face of what has existed for nearly four centuries and been recognized for the same time period in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth as constitutional rights.
Are you hoping to disguise this threat to the Second Amendment with this ridiculous attempt that you just made?
Try doing better next time (because I’m sure there will be).
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Young says:June 23, 2024 at 6:13 PM
Old Airborne: “They held that despite the Constitution Act including all previous Canadian constitutional documents such as the EBR, the Canadian parliament could extinguish an existing specific constitutional right in the EBR by bringing forward a bill that was specifically intended to do that, and passing that bill to extinguish that existing right by a majority vote of parliament.”
+++
I haven’t read Canada’s Constitution Act but if it follows the English tradition then Parliament has the power to overturn previous constitutional guarantees. I think that is why our Constitution was drafted so amendments are difficult to enact. One last safety rail.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 6:35 PM
Commonwealth Parliaments such as Canada (I never looked at other nations) could revoke all or some of the EBR by bringing forward a law that explicitly says that is the intention of of the law and then passing that bill by majority vote. It would then require Senate approval to complete doing that. I suppose Canadians could hope that the SCC would exercise it’s power to say “no you don’t” – but given their choosing to treat the EBR right to Canadians’ right to arms for their defense as a dead letter, of course they wouldn’t.
The language in each country is different. We call it repealing an amendment as was done with the 18th Amendment – you can call what Canada is able to do through their different constitutional mechanisms “removing constitutional guarantees”. In both cases, part of the nation’s constitution is being removed for either good or bad purposes and not through the constitutional process required to legitimately do that.
The supposed third rail that Americans have is that it takes more than a simple majority vote like in Canada to repeal an amendment as was done with Prohibition. But if the government passed that threshold, at that point our Congress would be out of the loop. Want to bet SCOTUS would be outraged and say this repeal of the Second Amendment under our constitution’s process for removing/altering the 18th and now 2nd amendments could not stand because the Second Amendment is a natural right?
The more scary thing is that in all these countries, whether the USA, Canada, the UK, etc, they are not diminishing and removing constitutional rights to bear arms by way of formal actions of elected federal governments. They are ignoring what each constitution says regarding the right to bear arms, and simply passing laws and regulations that clearly violate what those constitutions say.
And in all these countries including ours, the courts increasingly allow them to do it. Rather than demand that if they’re going to remove that right, they must do it through the process laid out in the constitution, getting the approval of the citizenry by ballot.
Which what you will see in the supposedly concurring decisions posted by Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 10:14 AM
It is passed time to jail that little piece of excrement.
Joe’s entire criminal family needs time in jail … lot of time ….
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 10:22 AM
“past”, not “passed”
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Thinkitthrough says:June 23, 2024 at 10:54 AM
The school marm speaks.
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mikegre2014 says:June 23, 2024 at 9:03 AM
… “an individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”…
So a court can find that all registered Republicans are a credible threat and should be disarmed?
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UpstateFarmer says:June 23, 2024 at 9:35 AM
Oddly enough, it is Democrats who are constantly a credible threat to our Constitutional rights..
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toniwill04 says:June 23, 2024 at 10:41 AM
True story – blue cities loads of crime, VIOLENT CRIME. It’s what D branders bring to the table , oh and illegal aliens.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 10:01 AM
If anything, it found that Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiots like mikegre2014 (no doubt a recipient of a participation medal for The Year Of Mostly Peaceful Rioting, Pillaging, Arson and Murder) are parasites infecting the republic’s body public and should have their right to vote suspended until a cure is found for Marxist police state fascism as a mental illness.
And this is why CNN and the Washington Post are going broke: the Useful Idiots they depend on as their customers are over here randomly throwing shyte around while pimping for The Big Guy.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 2:23 PM
Precisely why the court is wrong. To infringe on a constitutional right, requires a substantial amount of due process – typically a criminal conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.
And ?”Temporarily” is just the effort of tyrants to justify totalitarian actions.
It is only temporary,
It is just for an emergency.
The rule of law is for always and everywhere – if it can be ignored temporarily or in an emergency then it does not exist at all.
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hullbobby says:June 23, 2024 at 11:19 PM
John, as a pretty strong 2A supporter and someone who always reads and almost always enjoys your legal comments I have to disagree with you a bit. If your neighbor is threatening you with physical harm, has shown a propensity for violence with say his dog, drink to a stupor every night and has been hit with a restraining order by his wife who left him recently you might want his guns taken away before you leave your family to go on your business trip.
I understand about due process, I understand about the weaknesses of red flag laws, but in the real world you don’t want this guy having a gun until your complaint has been adjudicated, his wife’s claim has been adjudicated and before the authorities have a chance to investigate further.
The 2A is not absolute, just as the 1st isn’t either.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 10:31 AM
If he is the subject of a domestic violence restraining order, that order didn’t require him to surrender all firearms and not be in possession of firearms while the order was in force? If you know he still has firearms, the simple remedy is to call police.
If he’s threatening you, why didn’t you make that 911 call – that’s a crime. And when you want his firearms removed, you also want police to ensure they also take any bows he has, crossbows, knives or anything else he could use to do you harm? In this area of Montana, people are just as likely to have High Powered Assault Bows as they are likely to have a Baby Killer Assault Rifle 15.
No violence restraining order for domestic violence or threatening the neighbors, but your neighbor drinks to a stupor every night so you want that to be justification for the government taking his firearms, bows, crossbows, etc and revoking his 2A rights? For how long?
I assume you want his drivers license revoked as well as his firearms seized and a prohibition because he’s more likely to drive impaired and harm you or somebody else than attack you with a firearm? After all, a driver’s license is a permission to drive, not a right. This should be done on the strength of your word, correct? Your word and opinion must be accepted by the government as more important than an individual’s Bill of Rights (or permission to drive)?
Propensity to violence towards his dog? There’s laws regarding that – you’d prefer to ask the government to suspend an individual’s Second Amendment rights rather than use your cellphone to take pictures of what you’re seeing and then call the local doggy cops who can prosecute him for animal cruelty?
Whose definition of “violence to his dog” should the government use to trigger Second Amendment rights suspension?
One set of our neighbors is appalled that we use e-collars while training our gun dogs and the gun dogs of people who send their dogs to live with us and be trained; they fervently believe that is cruelty to animals.
If they call police, should those government agents rightfully confiscate my and my wife’s firearms because the neighbor thinks they’re watching cruelty and violence being done to those dogs they watch being trained in our yard? Revoke our 2A rights at the same time?
We have some sort of a guarantee that your complaint of what is violence to a pet is reasonable and informed? I’m sure our neighbor believes their opinions on violence and cruelty to animals is also reasonable and informed.
I’m going to be the very first one to make a phone call if I see just one single instance of cruelty to a pet; it won’t take a propensity of violence towards pets to trigger a call. Nor will that call be a demand that law enforcement show up to seize firearms – it will be to deal with the cruelty to animals and seize the pet that’s in danger.
Red flag laws are almost or always a constitutional abomination, where just about every justification for them is also a reason that could be used instead to charge the individual with a crime and bring them before a judge. Many observers have pointed that out; red flag laws don’t just have weaknesses – they’re just a mechanism for driving around the Second Amendment and only the Second Amendment… all other means of doing harm to others or yourself are left untouched.
Not only do they regularly fail miserably (about the same as the “reasonable gun laws” in force in blood soaked Chicago, DC, Baltimore, etc), but when they’re used as a weapon by somebody making a false complaint against a firearms owner, that person is hidden and protected without being held accountable for the harm they deliberately caused.
And while you appear to favor Second Amendment rights being removed in the instances you you gave as examples until adjudication some months/years later, that’s rather reminiscent of the non-violent J6 defendants who were in in jail for (how long?) until the courts got around to dealing with their trespassing and wrongful parading charges.
There is no guarantee of safety accompanying the freedom of the Second Amendment right, and Gorsuch addressed that in his concurring opinion:
When the people ratified the Second Amendment, they surely understood an arms-bearing citizenry posed some risks. But just as surely they believed that the right protected by the Second Amendment was itself vital to the preservation of life and liberty.
The constitution demands that no right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights be removed until and after a judicial hearing where the subject person gets to face their accusers (in your examples, you and the government you’re asking to revoke their 2A rights) and a determination made after that judicial proceeding.
That’s how it should be, not based on “what if” scenarios.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 1:27 AM
Justice Thomas’ dissent on this particular decision is as wrong as it can possibly be.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 8:24 AM
And the pie i had last night was delicious
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 9:17 AM
Because you sayt so ?
Thomas’s disent is spot on – and this is not really a 2nd amendment case.
The core issue is whether aright – especially a constitutional right can be taken away without due process.
There is little doubt that Rahimi is a “bad dude”.
There is little doubt that most of us would support barring him from ownership or posession of guns.
That is NOT the question. A ruling in favor of Rahimi would NOT have precluded classifying him as a person not to posess.
The core question is can you take away a constitutional right in an ex parte civil hearing where the person whose right is being abdridged is not even present.
The answer SHOULD have been a resounding KNOW.
Again the core issue is NOT a 2nd amendment issue, This is more like an egregious form of Civil asset forfeiture,
Where the police get to confiscate your propertry if they suspect it is the proceeds of criminal activity and YOU have to go to court and prove that it was not to get your property back.
Convict Rahimi or anyone else of a violent crime and you can bar them from posession of firearms. That is established.
Thomas is correct and the remaining 8 justices have FAILED to grasp the core of the constitution.
Rights are NOT absolute.
But they are more than a speed bump to government abridging them.
Again convict Rahimi of a violent crime and you can restrict his right to firearms. You can take his liberty and lock him in prison.
You can restrict peoples Rights confiscate their property AFTER you have proven beyond a reasonable doubt they engaged in violent criminal conduct.
Thomas is wrong about one thing – this country DOES have a long history of abusing civil processes to deprive people of their rights.
Civil asset forfeiture is still constitutional
Forced sterilization of those with mental health issues is still constitutional.
Forced institutionalization of those who are allegedly incompetent is still constitutional.
Thomas is correct, the court is WRONG.
Abridgement of a persons constitutional rights should not be tolerated without FULL due process.
Government can confiscate your property if that property is the proceeds of criminal conduct – AFTER you have been convicted beyond a reasonable doubt of that conduct.
I am hard pressed to think of any situation in which government can forceably sterilize you – yet that IS the current state of the law.
Government can institutionalize you against your will AFTER meaningful due process where there is a hearing in court, where Government is FORCED to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are a danger to yourself or others or that you are incompetent to care for yourself,
And Government can deny you posession of firearms AFTER proving beyond a reasonable doubt that you are violent and a danger to others.
Lessor standards for serious infringements on constitutional rights are unconstitutional.
When you make it trivial to infringe on a constitutional right – especially when you make it possible to do so with little or no due process you destroy not merely that right – but the entire concept of individual rights.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 9:38 AM
Thomas says explicitly at the end of his opinion that Texas could have imprisoned and disarmed Rahimi by charging him with aggravated assault for some of his conduct but chose not to do so. So in that sense this was a case about process.
On the other hand, it was also a case about how to determine the limits of the 2nd Amendment. Here, Thomas faithfully applied Bruen and demonstrated that no historical analogy applied. Instead, he argued, and the other justices acknowledged, that this test was being abandoned, in favour of judicially discovered “principles” discernible in historical practices considered as a whole. How general these principles can be, and what historical period is to be considered, remain open questions. Barrett’s concurrence most clearly defines the new approach.
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 9:41 AM
This was me.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 1:48 PM
I knew it was before you claimed it because you repeated your lie from earlier.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 2:35 PM
And what lie would that be ?
When you accuse someone else of lying – the burden of proof is on you.
You have not even identified what Daniel said that was a lie.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 2:34 PM
I do not think this represents a deliberate rejection of Bruen. It more represents the Roberts Courts wishy washy approach to the constitution.
Principle established in other decisions, get ignored when inconvenient in others.
Thomas’s “historical proactice” observation regarding Bruen is just a restatement of the requirement that the meaning of the law MUST be understandable, and it must not change over time without actually changing the law or constitution – in otherwords it is just a restatement of originalism.
I think I understnd the majority opinion – and they are WRONG.
Again no one feels sorry for Rahimi. Nor is there anyone who thinks he should be in posession of firearms.
No right is absolute.
The question is entirely about the conditions that government must meet to overcome a right.
This is also not specifically a 2nd amendment decision. We unfortunately have other instances where constitutional rights are trampled with very little due process.
I beleive Rahimi was subsequently convicted of violent crimes – at that point – and NOT BEFORE, he can lose those rights that can be infringed for those convicted of violent crimes.
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 3:32 PM
The Court rejects Bruen insofar as its requirement to identify an historical analogue is concerned. There was none here, as Thomas showed. Now, all that is needed to limit the scope of the 2nd Amendment is a “principle” somehow discerned by judges through their consideration of history. This may be good or bad, depending on your view of gun control laws. But it is certainly a change from Bruen.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 4:58 PM
John Say posted: I do not think this represents a deliberate rejection of Bruen. It more represents the Roberts Courts wishy washy approach to the constitution.
It wasn’t – other than the three “concurring” opinions added by the three Soviet Democrat police state fascist justices whose opinions directly attacked Bruen and had little to do with the specific question before the court.
Reading the opinion of Justice Questioning Birthing Person Jackson in particular, what it looked like was laying the foundation for a later court to attempt to overturn Bruen (and Heller) at a later date when Soviet Democrat appointed police state fascists are the majority on SCOTUS. Just as Stevens did in the Heller decision – quoted in this decision by Jackson in her strident attack on Bruen.
I also don’t think this was just Roberts’ usual squish – after reading all the additional concurring decisions after the court’s decision, and Thomas’ dissent opinion, what was going on within SCOTUS before this decision was released would be fascinating to know.
It does look to me like this is SCOTUS trying not to irritate the masses with a decision throwing out this law that would have been akin to the Dobbs decision. Had this court found 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8) unconstitutional, the public outrage from both Republicans and Democrats would have made Dobbs look like a kiddy spat in a kindergarten sandbox.
Soviet Democrats because they want the ability to punish gun owners whenever possible (other than favored Soviet Democrats like Hunter Biden and felons who are found with guns who are from the black identity politics class). Republicans, because many choose to believe that it is constitutional to remove Second Amendment rights for life after a felony conviction and serving out the full sentence of the court without any further judicial proceedings (and only remove Second Amendment rights in that manner, no other).
Not wanting to go through something worse than Dobbs, at least eight on SCOTUS punted – and the three Soviet Democrat justices took advantage of that with their political concurrences that focused on not this decision, but attacking the Second Amendment, Bruen, and Heller.
What a smorgasbord this decision is – as well as a view into how SCOTUS is currently positioned where the Second Amendment is concerned. Those who couldn’t bother carefully reading the decision missed a show.
The court claims – and held – that the 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8) prohibition that removes Second Amendment rights after a civil restraining order is constitutional because it meets the text and historical requirements. They offered by way of justification for this finding the historical presence of surety and affray laws.
Justice Thomas in great detail tears that apart, piece by piece, showing that there is little to no common context/history and outcome of those laws, an analysis which is now mandatory after Heller and Bruen. He explicitly notes that this court previously held in its own Bruen decision that surety laws impose a far less relative burden and removal of Second Amendment rights.
And yet now – in this decision – the court is suddenly switching back to saying those surety laws now save §922(g)(8). Thomas went even further into why this is wrong, essentially detailing why the entirety of 18 U. S. C. §922 is unconstitutional, while the majority decision emphasized that this decision just narrowly dealt with a TEMPORARY suspension of a right. But he killed their focusing on justifying a temporary decision by pointing out they weren’t compliant with their own test following Bruen and Heller.
So there’s a question: did Roberts get this pacifying “strong” 8-1 decision with the attempted punt by focusing only on the temporary suspension of Second Amendment rights, which is also done in regard to other amendments contained within the Bill of Rights? “If you all sign on with a focus on the temporary, we won’t consider whether every/most revocations of Second Amendment rights in §922 are unconstitutional!”
And then there’s all the under the surface content with all of the concurring decisions. There’s a lot of meat on those bones!
You have the three Soviet Democrat justices concurring – while the great majority of the text of their concurring decisions is condemning Bruen especially and Heller as well. Calling for a return to times prior to that where the question of whether individuals had a right to bear arms prior to Heller was already well settled law – which in reality means they didn’t concur with any of this. Law abiding American, American under a civil undertaking, convicted felon… doesn’t matter, they do not believe anybody has an individual right to bear arms despite Heller and Bruen that many were part of.
There was the race baiting whining of the racist Wise Latina Woman Sotomayor (who at least knows what a woman is, unlike the genius Justice Jackson), which began by bemoaning along with Kagan and Jackson that Bruen was wrongly decided.
Sotomayor/Kagan took the opportunity in their concurrence to state that they were fearful that Bruen that this case was decided on would “make it nearly impossible to sustain common-sense regulations necessary to our Nation’s safety and security.”
Well, there it is in plain view: the Soviet Democrat claim that their state and federal regulations that clearly violate the Second Amendment supersede that right because (a) they are actually common-sense, because they say so, and (b) necessary to our safety and security (actually putting violent street felons in jail under existing laws as a lesser attempt to protect safety and security is NOT necessary, nor common-sense).
Sotomayor/Kagen followed by critiquing both Heller and Bruen because firearms of the 18th century took much longer to load unlike firearms today – but who believes they would use that rational if laws that impacted the First Amendment rights of CNN, the Washington Post, etc had government arguing to defend regulatory attacks on the press that digital media and it’s publishing speeds today do not resemble that of the printing presses of the 18th century like the firearms they singled out in these comments?
And predictably, Sotomayor/Kagen ended with attacking how history can be used to interpret the Second Amendment – because that period of history excluded women and “people of color” as full members of the polity at that time. And therefore, using history to interpret the Second Amendment impoverishes and hamstrings our democracy (not republic).
And then the ever disappointing “Can’t we all just get along” Kavanaugh…
Almost predictably weighed in with a long treatise on why this case was properly decided using the tests established by Heller and Bruen in particular (which it did the opposite of, as detailed by Thomas’ dissent). The central theme of his treatise, regularly repeated, is that the Second Amendment is actually vague in meaning i.e. A recurring and difficult issue for judges, therefore, is how to interpret vague constitutional text. That issue often arises (as here) in the context of determining exceptions to textually guaranteed individual rights… Absent precedent, therefore, history guides the interpretation of vague constitutional text.
There is nothing vague about the Second Amendment, and the meaning of the portion of that amendment referring to the militia of that time is known and has already been decided by SCOTUS. Numerous times. But that’s what you get from Play Along To Get Along Kavanaugh, who regularly almost ties himself in knots trying to please those on both sides – while Soviet Democrats tried to destroy his life, still do, and their street thugs are arrested while stalking him to attempt to murder him.
Barrett weighed in to mostly try and be the grey woman in the crowd with something about “today isn’t the day and this isn’t the case”. No surprise from me regarding this allegedly textualist justice. If it contributed anything to the decision by adding her concurrence, I missed it.
And then Gorsuch used his concurring decision to point out that he and Thomas could disagree on whether §922(g)(8) was in fact analogous to surety laws – but he Thomas and the other dissenting justices find that interpretive tests based on history and the text of the Constitution are in fact the right tests of constitutionality in all cases. And that judges have no business legislating their politics and personal beliefs and animosities from the SCOTUS bench.
whatever indeterminacy may be associated with seeking to honor the Constitution’s original meaning in modern disputes, that path offers surer footing than any other this Court has attempted from time to time. Come to this Court with arguments from text and history, and we are bound to reason through them as best we can. (As we have today.)
Allow judges to reign unbounded by those materials, or permit them to extrapolate their own broad new principles from those sources, and no one can have any idea how they might rule. (Except the judges themselves.) Faithful adherence to the Constitution’s original meaning may be an imperfect guide, but I can think of no more perfect one for us to follow.
He then proceeded to use his pages of decision to tear apart everything from Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson attacking Bruen, Heller, and the Second Amendment in their concurring/dissenting opinions. Along with a few sideways kicks at Kavanaugh’s claims that the problem here is “vague constitutional text”.
I am left wondering whether Gorsuch was thinking of siding with Thomas in that dissent – but decided instead to be one of the concurring voices and then use his concurrence to tear apart the concurring decisions registered by Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson with their irrational attacks on Bruen, Heller, and the Second Amendment.
If Gorsuch saw the text of their supposed concurrences as a strategy to lay the groundwork for a future reversal of both Bruen and Heller, he may well have decided it was more important to have another concurring opinion for future SCOTUS courts that pointed out how terribly flawed their comments on Bruen and Heller were.
Yep… what a show THAT must have been as the drafts of all the concurring and dissenting opinions went out – after Stevens cut whatever deal he got on the wording of the decision he ultimately offered. Four concurring opinions from five justices and one dissenting justice. How much writing/rewriting of those concurring decisions as the others saw the drafts of the Thomas and Gorsuch decisions??? How many versions went around the table before the final versions were settled? Those law clerks will have a lot to talk about over beers in private in the years that come.
Those who didn’t bother to actually take a few hours to work their way through the text of the decision cheated themselves.
And we now have a wide open window to how all of these justices are going to deal with future Second Amendment cases. And probably any issue that has political overtones where they could get a Dobbs style reaction.
Being wrongly decided as per Justice Thomas has helped at the same time by glaringly showing us the intentions of the Soviet Democrat justices for both future cases and planning towards reversing Heller and Bruen. And just how unreliable Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are concerning upholding an originalist/constitutionalist view of the Second Amendment and the Constitution. They have spines of paper machete.
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 6:35 PM
OAD, great comment.
I think Barrett wrote to make it crystal clear that “principle” not historical analogue is now the relevant standard, thus gutting Bruen. That “principle” must somehow be divined from history is cold comfort.
Gorsuch is puzzling. He appears to have sympathised with Thomas’s analysis of surety and affray, yet he did not join him in dissent. At the same time, in the very passage you cited, he opposed the recourse to “principle.” So what was he relying on?
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 7:17 PM
Daniel posted: Gorsuch is puzzling
I went into some detail previously with each concurring separate decision. Rather than repeating that, if I had to GUESS, my guess would be that Gorsuch didn’t disagree with Thomas at all – he takes some pains to say he only differs with Thomas in whether or not surety and affray laws meet the required similarity to the law in question. And that while he probably is on the same page as Thomas, he believes that a concurring decision attacking and tearing down what Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson posted in THEIR concurring decisions is far more important than just joining Thomas in dissent.
I would suggest to you that’s the point: while all three Soviet Democrat Birthing Person justices specifically attacked Bruen and how historical precedence and text must be the basis of any challenge to the exercise of Second Amendment rights, Gorsuch sided with Thomas in saying that ALL concurring justicesincluding those three were (with their concurring vote) saying that the test in Bruen that was used in this case was a proper test. Whether they went on to cry about Bruen or not.
I appreciate that one of our colleagues sees things differently. Post, at 6–7 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). But if reasonable minds can disagree whether §922(g)(8) is analogous to past practices originally understood to fall outside the Second Amendment’s scope, we at least agree that is the only proper question a court may ask.
Discerning what the original meaning of the Constitution requires in this or that case may sometimes be difficult. Asking that question, however, at least keeps judges in their proper lane, seeking to honor the supreme law the people have ordained rather than substituting our will for theirs.
In saying that, Gorsuch was pointing out that despite their focus on attacking Bruen and Heller before it, the Three SCOTUS Stygian Witches had voted to confirm that the Bruen test was proper, and therefore that’s why it was valid to use it here to deny this appeal. And that justices wanting to legislate their politics, prejudices, and hatred of firearms and the Second Amendment from the bench must stay in their proper, constitutionally defined lane.
Then having done that, Gorsuch went to great detail in pointing out how serious a constitutional violation you get when judges such as these three Soviet Democrat justices could do before Bruen that they loath so much:
Just consider how lower courts approached the Second Amendment before our decision in Bruen. They reviewed firearm regulations under a two-step test that quickly “devolved” into an interest-balancing inquiry, where courts would weigh a law’s burden on the right against the supposed benefits the law offered. See Rogers v. Grewal, 590 U. S. ___, ___, and n. 1 (2020) (THOMAS, J., joined by KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 5, and n. 1); see also, e.g., Peruta v. County of San Diego, 742 F. 3d 1144, 1167–1168, 1176–1177 (CA9 2014); Drake v. Filko, 724
F. 3d 426, 457 (CA3 2013) (Hardiman, J., dissenting).
How did the government fare under that regime? In one circuit, it had an “undefeated, 50–0 record.” Id., at 1167, n. 8 (VanDyke, J., dissenting). In Bruen, we rejected that approach for one guided by constitutional text and history.
And (provocatively to me), after the three Soviet Justices laid an opinion framework to later overturn Bruen and Heller, Gorsuch responded by laying a countering opinion framework for the future: He added that this decision did not preclude later SCOTUS decisions finding that the Second Amendment restriction they have allowed to stand in this case can be rejected by SCOTUS at another time in another case. In short Gorsuch said that this law, §922(g)(8), is not absolute nor is it a permission slip for categorical denial of Second Amendment rights (which is exactly what this statute does, although that wasn’t the question put before the court in this case):
We do not determine whether §922(g)(8) may be constitutionally enforced against a person who uses a firearm in self-defense. Notably, the surety laws that inform today’s decision allowed even an individual found to pose a threat to another to “obtain an exception if he needed his arms for self-defense.” Ante, at 12; see also post, at 23 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).
Nor do we purport to approve in advance other laws denying firearms on a categorical basis to any group of persons a legislature happens to deem, as the government puts it, “not ‘responsible.’”
Suffice it to say, there is a lot to unpack in these concurring decisions, and I have a strong suspicion that Gorsuch’s concurrence was more about countering and exposing what the Soviet Democrats three police state fascists on SCOTUS were attempting to do with their concurring opinions.
And for bonus points, Gorsuch then twisted the knife in all three co-conspirators by laying the groundwork for a future overturning this law’s removal of Second Amendment rights from persons on a categorical rather than individual basis i.e. convicted felons after serving their sentences in full.
I like what I see in Gorsuch’s opinion just as much as I like and pretty much agree with Thomas’ – despite the fact they supposedly disagreed, when in fact they agreed on pretty much everything, including the threat of justices legislating their personal police state fascism from the SCOTUS bench.
Barrett… meh… maybe I should give her opinion another read, but on first reading it was weak sauce kicking this can that is the core question down the road to avoid dealing with it.
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 8:10 PM
I actually don’t believe Gorsuch disagrees with Thomas about whether surety and affray are valid analogies. But he has to say he does if he also wants to disagree with Barrett that “principle” not analogy is what matters. Unlike Barrett and the majority he also expressly wants to see the constitution fixed in amber. Yet he did not want to allow Rahimi to be armed. So he made a big deal of how this was a facial challenge, saying it was the most difficult kind to win. I think he did his best to get the result he wanted in this case regarding Rahimi specifically when there was no real way to do that under Bruen. He should have dissented.
I think Barrett defines precisely how this decision overturns the historical analogy test of Bruen yet does not embrace fully the views of the three Soviets.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 8:38 AM
But he has to say he does if he also wants to disagree with Barrett that “principle” not analogy is what matters.
????? Gorsuch never mentions Barrett by name or any part of her opinion – which isn’t much different than her theorizing on time periods in the Bruen decision. Much less a disagreement between the two that you apparently have found in his opinion. Where did you find that disagreement?
When reading Barrett’s opinion, you would notice Barrett was in disagreement with basing originalist analysis of the Second Amendment on anything beyond the time of the founding. There’s a frozen moment in amber moment for you: not just existing laws and regulations frozen, but the weapons existing in that period of time frozen in amber as well:
In Bruen, the Court took history beyond the founding era, considering gun regulations that spanned the 19th century. I expressed reservations about the scope of that inquiry but concluded that the timing question did not matter to Bruen’s holding. It bears emphasis, however, that my questions were about the time period relevant to discerning the Second Amendment’s original meaning
And later Barrett, for part of her opinion she was a momentarily adrift originalist, having a problem with specific analogues – specific analogues that Thomas in his dissent pointed out were not present in this decision:
Besides, imposing a test that demands overly specific analogues has serious problems. To name two: It forces 21st-century regulations to follow late 18th-century policy choices, giving us “a law trapped in amber.” (NB… oh no, no more guns if they aren’t found trapped in the 18th century amber!) And it assumes that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate, thereby adopting a “use it or lose it” view of legislative authority. Such assumptions are flawed, and originalism does not require them.
As for your belief that Barrett was defending Bruen and discussion of Bruen because principle not analogy is what matters, Barrett wrote that Bruen was about ‘analogical reasoning’ and that is what revealed the principle:
“Analogical reasoning” under Bruen demands a wider lens: Historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold.
A wider lens used in Bruen to reveal the principle – referring to a longer time period rather than just limited to the 1700’s as she wrote having reservations about the court doing in deciding Bruen – the “amber period” you have concluded what Gorsuch wants. Gorsuch’s opinion on “trapped in amber” is at least as much originalist as Barrett who had reservations about parts of the Bruen decision then and she expresses them here again.
Gorsuch stated:
we seek to honor the fact that the Second Amendment “codified a pre-existing right” belonging to the American people, one that carries the same “scope” today that it was “understood to have when the people adopted” it.
When the people ratified the Second Amendment, they surely understood an arms-bearing citizenry posed some risks. But just as surely they believed that the right protected by the Second Amendment was itself vital to the preservation of life and liberty.
We have no authority to question that judgment. As judges charged with respecting the people’s directions in the Constitution—directions that are “trapped in amber,” see ante, at 7—our only lawful role is to apply them in the cases that come before us. Developments in the world may change, facts on the ground may evolve, and new laws may invite new challenges, but the Constitution the people adopted remains our enduring guide.
If changes are to be made to the Constitution’s directions, they must be made by the American people. Nor is there anything remotely unusual about any of this. Routinely, litigants and courts alike must consult history when seeking to discern the meaning and scope of a constitutional provision. And when doing so, litigants and courts “must exercise care.” See post, at 3, n. (BARRETT, J., concurring).
I don’t see anything in that to disagree with. In fact, it looks pretty originalist/textualist to me.
I think the only real disagreement between Barrett and Gorsuch is in your mind, particularly when originalist thought holds that judges do not make new laws and have no authority to question the the judgement of the people who ratified the Second Amendment – and Barrett concurs with Gorsuch that courts must take care when messing around with constitutional rights like the Second Amendment.
And this is where again I just don’t know where you’re coming from:
So he made a big deal of how this was a facial challenge, saying it was the most difficult kind to win.
HE made a big deal of it? Barrett referred to it as a facial challenge in her opinion. Every justice concurring with the majority decision also made a big deal out of it – the majority opinion references facial challenges at least four separate times. But you’re taking issue with Gorsuch – and not the rest?
The majority opinion that Barrett signed onto dwelled on it being a facial challenge at times – Gorsuch didn’t write it, he just voted for it as Barrett did. A facial challenge in law is a type of challenge. It is one of the hardest ways to win a constitutional challenge – that is not a personal opinion from Gorsuch; it is simply fact.
He should have dissented.
Achieving nothing but an 8-1 decision changing to a 7-2 decision. And the concurring opinions of Sotomayor, Kagen, and Jackson where they wrote their attacks on Bruen, Heller, and the Second Amendment as though their opinions were established fact would gave gone into the court record unchallenged and repudiated. The shared opinions of three concurring justices attacking Bruen, Heller, and the Second Amendment left untouched in this decision like a minefield – waiting for a future SCOTUS controlled by Soviet Democrats to reference them in a decision minimizing or throwing out those decisions and the Second Amendment.
Outstanding.
Meanwhile, no statement that Barrett should have also dissented? No statement that Kavanaugh should have also dissented. Just Gorsuch? Why did you choose to single out only him?
Because Gorsuch didn’t dissent, we have another concurring justice, Gorsuch, taking great care to demolish these three judges’ attacks on those decisions and the Second Amendment. Also taking great care to write that this court and all judges are constitutionally prohibited from legislating from the bench, that the ratification of the Bill of Rights and Second Amendment must be respected rather than the opinions of people living today, whether or not they’re judges or legislators wanting to do away with the Second Amendment.
And finally, ensuring to state that a similar case coming before the court in future may like the surety laws Roberts used writing this opinion, lead to a finding that in that case the government cannot constitutionally temporarily suspend Second Amendment rights as has been done in this case. Perhaps best of all, stating that this decision does not mean that this section of law that prohibits people from Second Amendment rights due to group classification is necessarily constitutional to begin with. It may not be constitutional – that just wasn’t the question put before the court that led to this decision.
When I read all of these individual opinions and imagine how many times drafts and then revised drafts keep going around the court… I wonder of Thomas and Gorsuch decided: “You write the dissent; I’m going to concur and then use my concurring opinion to counter every single attack on Bruen, Heller, the Second Amendment made by these three in their concurring opinions. Doing so while while condemning judicial activism, pitching for originalism, and laying out a counter groundwork in future striking down this entire statute which removes Second Amendment rights from Americans by the classes they fall in to.
But perhaps that’s a bridge too far.
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Daniel says:June 24, 2024 at 5:56 PM
OAD, while Gorsuch did not refer to Barrett, he said explicitly, in a passage you quoted, that discerning a “principle” is NOT what Bruen allows for.
And Barrett’s “wider lens” is not referring to an extended time period but to the act of moving beyond the need for a specific historical analogy to the discovery of a “principle” that is wider than any specific law or regulation.
Gorsuch wants to reject this, which forces him to say, contra Thomas, that surety and affray are valid analogies. Yet he never says why Thomas is wrong. He, like Thomas, is seeking to preserve the historical analogy standard, which Barrett and the others have moved beyond.
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hullbobby says:June 23, 2024 at 11:25 PM
John, the problem is that in the real world you would have had Rahimi, a man that shot at his girl friend, shot at another woman and shot at another man, walking around with his gun UNTIL he was convicted. I am sure you are against the no-bail laws in NY, as am I, well this is just the same idea, you are allowing a known danger to remain a danger due to some false idea about the sanctity of the 2A. Notice I said False idea, I too support the 2A, but as someone far smarter than me has said, “the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact”.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 11:26 AM
in the real world you would have had Rahimi, a man that shot at his girl friend, shot at another woman and shot at another man, walking around with his gun UNTIL he was convicted.
This all happened in Texas, not in NY, so I am missing the connection to the NY no-bail laws. I also don’t know anything about how law enforcement functions in Tarrant County Texas. It does appear that this drug dealer enjoyed a pretty busy crime spree of violent offences in Texas until finally being hit with this charge relating to violating the domestic violence order.
Looking at the background of the decision, here in Montana there would be at least three attempted murder charges alone. She swore an affidavit that after assaulting her he fired a handgun at her or a witness as she fled – an affidavit that he did not contest. But the police didn’t indict him on any number of felonies i.e. assault, reckless endangerment, etc. (I don’t know anything about the Texas criminal code).
A few months later he threatens a different woman with a gun while his Texas gun license has been revoked; police charge him then with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They don’t add on a similar charge for the original aggravated assault on his girlfriend, nor charge him with having the gun without the required license, nor with being in violation of the restraining order.
They then determine that after the restraining order, Rahimi drove to one of his customers’ houses and shot into it – but police didn’t charge him with that. Then he drives through a residential neighborhood firing the gun he isn’t supposed to possess in the air – but police don’t charge him with that. Then the next day he gets into a collision with another vehicle, gets out and shoots at the other driver in the accident – but police didn’t charge him with that. A few weeks later in a road rage incident he cuts across oncoming traffic to chase another vehicle and then fires that the vehicle he was chasing and another vehicle – but police didn’t charge him for that. And finally, after Rahimi pulls the gun he isn’t supposed to have and fires shots into the ceiling of a restaurant when it refuses a friend’s credit card, police get a search warrant for weapons and while doing that they find a copy of the restraining order.
And finally, after that, the decision says Rahimi was indicted on ONE crime from this lengthy little violent crime spree: possessing a firearm while subject to a violence restraining order. No aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges; not even one for any of the other instances. Nothing about possessing firearms without the required Texas gun license at the time.
I don’t see the rational for supporting infringements on the 2A throughout the entire country because there are a few jurisdictions like where this occurred in Texas that have chosen NOT to use the far less infringing means to deal with criminals like Rahimi i.e. arrest and jail while indicting each time they commit a violent offense. But instead prefer to deal with government unwillingness to enforce the law by instead infringing on ALL Americans’ 2A rights rather than deal with individual criminals by applying existing felony lies.
Lets choose collective punishment for all Americans with national infringements on 2A rights instead of punishment for individual criminals like Rahimi because of how police in these jurisdictions let criminals like Rahimi slide.
The constitution isn’t a suicide pact, but a lot of Americans are willing to engage in a suicide pact for the 2A for the Soviet Democrats and their justices currently on SCOTUS.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 2:08 PM
Instead, he (Thomas) argued, and the other justices acknowledged, that this test was being abandoned
That particular part of your analysis is completely wrong.
Not one justice whether Republican appointee or Soviet Democrat appointee wrote they were abandoning Bruen – even the Three Soviet Sisters wrote (and whined) that they were applying the Bruen test. Not a single word from any of those three that they were abandoning Bruen. What they wrote in their “concurring” opinions is that Bruen was fatally flawed and they need to go back to prior to Heller, when it was supposedly settled law that there was no individual right to a firearm. A time when and judges like themselves could do a constitutional test of a law affecting Second Amendment rights by deciding whether what the law claimed to accomplish was more important than Second Amendment rights.
The only thing that comes close to what you suggest is Gorsuch’s concurring opinion that said he and Thomas only disagreed on whether the surety and affray historical laws met the definition of the type and kind of historical legislation test they all signed off on in Bruen. Thomas dissent said it didn’t (I believe he is right); Gorsuch’s concurring opinion wrote that it did.
Barret just served up another round of “at what exact time in Constitutional history is the cutoff for what can be used for historical interpretation” – pretty much an edited copy of her concurring opinion earlier in the Bruen decision.
And did nothing to supposedly define a new approach that also does not exist, just as the other justices did not abandon the Bruen test as you claim they did.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 1:46 PM
Whats hilarious is, i said the exact same thing as john, but i did it with 9 words.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 7:54 PM
You did it with 9 words but made an a$$ of yourself. That is nothing new.
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toniwill04 says:June 23, 2024 at 10:42 AM
That Thomas noted there is no historical precedent in any way to support it was correct. Facts , not feeling here.
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 1:12 PM
That’s what I think too. Which is why this decision changes the meaning of Bruen in a significant way. It’s now conceivable that the courts will start deferring to legislative determinations that categories of individuals pose a credible threat to others and so can be disarmed, based on a “principle” discerned by judges from a variety of different historical practices.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 2:40 PM
You are atleast partly correct – SEVERAL SCOTUS decisions have atleast partly ignored Bruen encouraging lower courts to test the limits.
But on several important occuasions SCOTUS has returned to Bruen without acknowledging that it had ever deviated.
The result is various states and lower courts HOPING that their egregious violations of peoples rights will sneak through.
This is pretty typical of the roberts court and roberts specifically. Every single decision tends to be a one-off.
Roberts found that PPACA was constitutional only under the narrowest of grounds, then when those grounds disappeared he manufactured a new reason to uphold it.
SCOTUS has made several good 2nd amendment decisions.
It has also ignored those decisions several times when expedient.
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S. Meyer says:June 23, 2024 at 8:06 PM
The Supreme Court decisions decided nothing except to set the stage for producing more laws and cases. It would have been better not to take that case. I believe Clarence Thomas believes decisions should make the rule over the land clearer, and when in doubt, do not let such uncertainty and fractured thinking destroy the Constitution.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 8:06 PM
Daniel posted: Which is why this decision changes the meaning of Bruen in a significant way. It’s now conceivable that the courts will start deferring to legislative determinations that categories of individuals pose a credible threat to others and so can be disarmed, based on a “principle” discerned by judges from a variety of different historical practices.
I disagree for a number of reasons after reading the content of the concurring decisions.
1. First, Roberts took great pains to make this a decision only about a TEMPORARY removal of Second Amendment rights while under a court’s restraining order. There is lot to dislike in the holding concerning the rational and what they find to be precedent legislation (Thomas pretty much covered it all in his dissent).
That said, unless all future legislative determinations that concern you are about temporary removals, this leaves little for lower courts to take advantage of in the aftermath of this decision while Bruen is still in place.
Held: When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be TEMPORARILY disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.
2. All three Soviet Democrat Birthing Person justices raged in their concurring opinions that Bruen was improperly decided and a threat to proper judicial Second Amendment analysis – but they said the fact that it existed was forcing them to comply with Bruen and use the specific test they developed in SCOTUS to hold in concurrence with the majority.
Nothing in any of their decisions even suggested that lower courts should start deferring to legislative determinations about categories when they themselves said Bruen prevents them from doing that. Instead they complained about what lower courts could no longer do in the way of tests due to Bruen. At least one of them whined that this decision was likely to make the impact of Bruen even worse in their mind. Judicial theatrics? Perhaps.
3. Gorsuch in his concurring opinion first took a wrecking ball to the theories posed by the three Soviet Democrat justices regarding Bruen. His opinion reminded all reading it that despite all three going at length to complain about Bruen (and Heller), by their concurring votes rather than voting in dissent, they affirmed that constitutional tests of Second Amendment questions before the court were properly done using the tests this same court established in Bruen. No room provided for lower courts trying to insert legislative determinations.
4. Gorsuch reinforced with Thomas that all judges must stay in their lane following the requirements laid out for them in the Constitution and properly apply the constitution, not legislate from the bench by bringing their biases, politics, legislative determinations, etc into the question. He most likely did that after Justice Jackson in her assenting opinion complained that Bruen no longer allowed judges to give deference to legislative intent as a priority over the Second Amendment right. No room for lower courts trying to insert legislative determinations there.
5. Gorsuch addressed your concern about determinations about categories of individuals by holding that this decision did not preclude later SCOTUS decisions finding that the Second Amendment restriction they have allowed to stand in this case can be rejected by SCOTUS at another time in another case. In short Gorsuch said that this law, §922(g)(8), is not absolute nor is it a permission slip for categorical denial of Second Amendment rights (which is exactly what this statute does, although that wasn’t the question put before the court in this case):
We do not determine whether §922(g)(8) may be constitutionally enforced against a person who uses a firearm in self-defense. Notably, the surety laws that inform today’s decision allowed even an individual found to pose a threat to another to “obtain an exception if he needed his arms for self-defense.” Ante, at 12; see also post, at 23 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).
Nor do we purport to approve in advance other laws denying firearms on a categorical basis to any group of persons a legislature happens to deem, as the government puts it, “not ‘responsible.’”
6. Where Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson attempted to lay a foundation for later weakening or overturning Bruen and/or Heller, Gorsuch countered that by saying that this decision did not mean that future decisions must find all such restraining orders prevent the subject from being armed – just as the surety laws used to justify this decision did not automatically remove the right to firearms. He further held that this decision regarding one individual and one situation under one subsection, 922(g)(8), did not mean that a later SCOTUS decision considering removing Second Amendment rights from Americans on a categorical basis (as much of Section 922 does) is unconstitutional.
I think that between Gorsuch and Thomas, if anything Bruen is strengthened. And while the three hoped to build a basis to later attack Bruen, Gorsuch in countering that made it more likely that a future decision would find all of Section 922 unconstitutional.
The concurring opinions from Go Along To Get Along Kavanaugh and that huge disappointment Barrett… between them and Roberts I was left with an image of fighter with a spine of yellow jello.
All that said, what lower courts do and what SCOTUS chooses to allow them to do can make everything meaningless, whether the issue is the Second Amendment or anything else.
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 9:27 PM
We’ll see. The point I am making is that the historical analogy test of Bruen is now dead. The test now is whether historical restrictions considered in toto can give rise to a “principle” that supports a modern day restriction. As Barrett says, the question of how general the principle can be and what historical period should count are now the issues that will be considered. The search for a specific historical analogue is no longer critical. Whether categorical restrictions will now survive depends on what principles judges discern in future cases. For that reason, the specific narrow holding here is less significant than the introduction of more flexibility for judges.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 24, 2024 at 2:25 PM
Daniel posted:
The point I am making is that the historical analogy test of Bruen is now dead.
No it is not. And your opinion is just that: opinion, not fact.
Where in either the main decision or the concurring opinions do you find any mention of the Bruen test being dead. Copy and past that for all to see.
The only difference here is the majority held that Roberts combining a mishmash of the affray and surety laws was good enough to serve as an analogy to §922(g)(8). The majority argued that combination was close enough to Bruen test criteria to save §922(g)(8). Thomas, properly I believe, said that it did not.
As a personal opinion which I have no evidence for, the other Republican appointed judges went along with accepting Roberts’ test despite Thomas dissent simply to make life easier for themselves in exchange for what they thought/hoped would be minimal damage to the Constitution.
Had the majority thrown out §922 as unconstitutional, the rage mobs coming at them from both the Soviet Democrat and Republican side would have made what they went through before, during, and after Dobbs look like a kindergarten sandbox dispute.
All while the Soviet Democrats and their Mainstream Media Marxist spokesmen continue claiming this is a GOP court that gives the GOP everything they want, striking down abortion laws and gun laws alike.
The Bruen test is still there, and Barrett pretty much copying and pasting her assenting opinion concerns from earlier in Bruen has no impact now than it did for Bruen in the aftermath of the decision.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 10:52 AM
Justice Clarence Thomas was the only right statement in free Republic. If a person is being threatened by a criminal then he who is threatened should buy himself a gun and learn to use it. If a community of supposedly law abiding citizens sees that there is an infection raging amongst the community, then those citizens should inject the curing medicine into that infection.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 1:25 PM
Anonymous coward: Justice Thomas’ dissent on this particular decision is as wrong as it can possibly be.
I don’t believe for one second that you actually took the several hours to actually read and understand the reasoning being put forward in the decision – much less bothered to read Justice Thomas’ dissent. We could suspect that if you had, you could offer some sort of rational explanation to support your claim regarding Thomas’ dissent.
But let’s give you a shot at redeeming yourself by explaining where you find the error in Thomas’ dissent relating to just one small part of it:
The combination of the Government’s sweeping view of the firearms and ammunition within its regulatory reach and the broad prohibition on any conduct regarding covered firearms and ammunition makes §922(g)(8)’s burden unmistakable: The statute revokes a citizen’s Second Amendment right while the civil restraining order is in place. And, that revocation is absolute. It makes no difference if the covered individual agrees to a no-contact order, posts a bond, or even moves across the country from his former domestic partner—the bar on exercising the Second Amendment right remains. See United States v. Wilkey, 2020 WL 4464668, *1 (D Mont., Aug. 4, 2020) (defendant agreed to Florida protection order so he could “‘just walk away’” and was prosecuted several years later for possessing firearms in Montana).
That combination of burdens places §922(g)(8) in an entirely different stratum from surety laws. Surety laws preserve the Second Amendment right, whereas §922(g)(8) strips an individual of that right. While a breach of a surety demand was punishable by a fine, §922(g)(8) is punishable by a felony conviction, which in turn permanently revokes an individual’s Second Amendment right. At base, it is difficult to imagine how surety laws can be considered relevantly similar to a complete ban on firearm ownership, possession, and use.
This observation is nothing new; the Court has already recognized that surety laws impose a lesser relative burden on the Second Amendment right. In Bruen, the Court explained that surety laws merely “provide financial incentives for responsible arms carrying.” 597 U. S., at 59. “[A]n accused arms-bearer ‘could go on carrying without criminal penalty’ so long as he ‘post[ed] money that would be forfeited if he breached the peace or injured others.’”
Despite the foregoing evidence, the Court insists that surety laws in fact support §922(g)(8). To make its case, the Court studiously avoids discussing the full extent of §922(g)(8)’s burden as compared to surety laws.
Now… feel free to explain to everybody why Thomas is wrong and the majority are right in claiming §922(g)(8) is justified by being similar to surety laws and their penalties as their chosen historical precedent.
How long should we wait for your explanation, Anonymous coward?
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Daniel says:June 23, 2024 at 4:43 PM
OAD, you are exactly right. And Thomas also showed how affray laws were also not relevantly similar. Instead, the Court combined non-analogues to invent a “principle” that it then used to support its decision. Barrett’s concurrence describes this precisely. The majority opinion mentions but does not highlight this, to preserve the notion that they are simply applying Bruen.
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Estovir says:June 22, 2024 at 9:25 PM
As applicable today as in the 1960s but perhaps more so today
🎶 And how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind 🎶
– Bob Dylan, 1963
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 1:56 AM
Then sitting-Pres. Obama twice committed first degree murder, using two separate mid-east drone strikes to kill two American citizens without judicial charge (one death per strike,) father and age 16 (child) son both named Anwar Al-Awlaki.
It’s interesting that murderer Obama hung a medal around the neck of Bob Dylan, the composer of Blowin’ In The Wind and dozens of other classic anti-establishment songs. I presume Bob knew about Obama’s murders when Bob received his award, but he was not about to refuse the award solely because the sitting POTUS was a depraved, establishment, war mongering, scum of the earth.
On a separate note, Bob Mueller would never miss his chance to confirm his joy in Obama’s murders: Mueller told Obama he could also legally commit first degree murder on American soil. And all the blood-lusting war mongers yelled in unison, “Hallelujah!”
Trump would never do it, but oh the joy if he charged that sick F Obama with murder, the trial being in, oh maybe, DETROIT? (Both Awlakis were Muslim.) Even if Obama won on jury nullification, they could maybe convict downstream personnel including the drone operator.
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Young says:June 22, 2024 at 7:42 PM
Professor Turley has a succint and informative article on New York’s legal wasteland in The Hill here:
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/4734339-at-the-supreme-court-two-cases-lay-bare-new-yorks-legal-wasteland/
Bragg and James together with judges Merchan and Engoron have effectively been undermining load bearing supports in the New York legal system. No business concerned with survival will risk assets on the evidently woobly, unpredictable, grasping, politicized lawless courts of New York. They may or may not succeed in destroying Trump but they have gone a long way toward destroying New York. They seem like trying to outdo Mohammed Atta. Maybe they have but it could take a little while for the rest of the buildings to collapse. It’s a process.
In possibly related news a new stock exchange is being established in Texas and designed to compete with the NASDAQ. If successful perhaps a competitor to the NYSE can get underway as well. And here I thought Escape From New York was only a movie.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 9:26 AM
It is unlikely that Businesses will flea NY en masse – that does not alter the fact that the consequences of this will still do great harm to NY.
Your analysis is correct and exactly what businesses will do.
Many businesses will decide that the risk of their being in Trump’s posistion is low. But even there ANY risk will result in different business decisions – such as factoring that small increase in risk into prices.
But a small number of businesses and Billionaires will just leave NY – that was going on BEFORE these cases it will accelerate.
AnheiserBusch was damaged to the tune of Billions of dollars, by an unorgnaized boycott that has reduced the value of AHB by 25%.
Disney’s value remains 50% lower than it was before it started sticking its nose into politics.
NY has been losing capital for a long time – expect that to accelerate.
I expect that Jud EnMoron’s decision will const NY several Billion in tax revenue per year into the future.
That cost will continue – even after the decision is reversed.
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Young says:June 23, 2024 at 2:03 PM
John Say: “I expect that Jud EnMoron’s decision will const NY several Billion in tax revenue per year into the future.
That cost will continue – even after the decision is reversed.”
I believe you are right. The probable costs of having to fight off a corrupt government could destroy a business, or a person, even when the attacks are ultimately overturned on appeal. I suspect that is a factor in the lawfare against President Trump, stopping or crushing him now regardless of the law to keep him from regaining the White House. If they can keep him from winning the election they won’t really care if their cases are ultimately overturned.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 2:52 PM
The most significant factor in almost every economic decision is RISK.
Increase the risk and two things happen – fewer people take the risk, and those that do demand a higher return.
The profits of McD’s franchises are quite low – because the RISK is quite low. But altering the price McD’s must pay for labor raises prices, AND increases risk – the higher McD’s prices are the more they are competing with Applebees or Olive Garden not Burger King. That inreases their risk and reduces the number of people willing to invest in McD’s – particularly at locations that a re marginal.
The vast majority of NY Businesses are going to correctly look at the Trump cases and say – this will not happen to me.
The few that decide that it might – will leave NY.
But of those that stay – they will STILL factor in the small probability this WILL happen to them and that WILL result in fewer deals and greater costs.
There is as an example one trivial outcome of the EnMoron decision – and that is that businesses will REFUSE to provide lenders any valuation of their assets.
I am less sure of the direct impact of the Merchan decision. Though I can tell you even though I do NOT live in NY, the decision has given me even MORE reason not to keep traditional books in my businesses.
I primarily manage multiple small businesses from BANK RECORDS. That is harder to do as the scale of the business increases.
But there is no risk of being accused of falsifying records that you did not produce.
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Young says:June 23, 2024 at 3:11 PM
John: “There is as an example one trivial outcome of the EnMoron decision – and that is that businesses will REFUSE to provide lenders any valuation of their assets.”
I hadn’t thought of that but it sounds right. I suppose that valuations could always come with a disclaimer that they are only wishful thinking and not to be relied upon and that lenders alone have the duty to determine actual values. Lenders do anyhow but the borrower’s estimate could be useful in other ways, providing there is an Engorgeron Disclaimer for protection.
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S. Meyer says:June 23, 2024 at 8:31 PM
“But there is no risk of being accused of falsifying records that you did not produce.”
John, not surprisingly, that idea has already permeated many sectors of the economy. Say, write and do less, and one will have a reduced risk. Using healthcare as a known example, we see that in physician notes, the very academic-minded physicians, knowing all the potential diagnoses from a set of facts, might be at more risk than another because his notes create more diagnoses that cannot be excluded. He would be more suit-proof if he didn’t think of them and write them down. It is the same almost everywhere, including hiring practices and renting apartments, since the additional words are openings for trouble. One would hope physicians communicated better about their mistakes (not malpractice but a better alternative) so that others learned from them. But in today’s environment, that important avenue of learning is nearly impossible.
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Kevin Beck says:June 22, 2024 at 7:19 PM
The most satisfying point of this case, along with several others in this tern, is that the Court is reaching nearly unanimous decisions on many of these cases. And whether one feels the decision is right or wrong, it is showing that the Court is not acting based upon political motivations.
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George says:June 22, 2024 at 7:44 PM
Courts penalize the guilty routinely.
All decisions must be unanimous.
The law is nothing if not clear.
Impeachment was provided in the Constitution to address dissent.
The number of Justices must relate solely to workload, not concurrence or dissent, as was the case in 1789 when the Supreme Court consisted of six Justices.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 10:06 PM
Then i guess the law is nothing.
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Anonymous says:June 23, 2024 at 1:52 PM
Are citizen-convicts in prison allowed to posses arms?
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 9:31 AM
Good observation. While this decision is WRONG and Thomas is RIGHT in his dissent, There is no evidence this decision was based on left/right politics.
I would further note that While Thomas is RIGHT on the constitution, and right on the absence of a historic tradition for THIS specific constitutional infringement,
He is absolutely Wrong in that the court has allowed more egregiious infringements of rights on even weaker foundations and many of those remain good law.
The 8 Justices who decided this Wrongly did so consistent with centuries of similarly bad constitutional decisions abridging rights with little due process.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 1:57 PM
Kevin Beck posted: The most satisfying point of this case, along with several others in this tern, is that the Court is reaching nearly unanimous decisions on many of these cases.
I am almost certain that you did NOT actually read this SCOTUS decision before posting this. Particularly after the THREE “assenting” opinions that were used to provide encompassing dissenting attacks on the Second Amendment and the prior Bruen decision from the racist Wise Latina Sotomayor (joined by Kagen) and the Woke Questioning Birthing Person Jackson (who for this decision has suddenly developed the ability to identify what a man is, and what a woman is – unlike during her confirmation hearings).
If the wording of those “assenting” opinions aren’t political motivations straight out of Soviet Democrat headquarters – including Sotomayor’s race baiting and attacks on males – then all they lack is a label identifying the political party who own runs on those politics.
What they are is what you are going to see when a Soviet Democrat police state fascist dominated SCOTUS has a chance to throw out both the Heller and Bruen decisions.
Let me help you wake you up from your dangerous assumption with some quotes from Questioning Birthing Person Justice Jackson’s “assenting” opinion:
This case tests our Second Amendment jurisprudence as shaped in particular by New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. 1 (2022). I disagree with the methodology of that decision; I would have joined the dissent had I been a Member of the Court at that time.
The message that lower courts are sending now in Second Amendment cases could not be clearer. They say there is little method to Bruen’s madness.1 (NB she/it/questioning gives case references to three California and one NY state decisions crying about Bruen forcing them to recognize the Second Amendment)
After all, before Heller, “[t]he meaning of the Second Amendment ha[d] been considered settled b ycourts and legislatures for over two centuries,” and “judges and legislators . . . properly believed . . . that the Second Amendment did not reach possession of firearms for purely private activities.” (NB: That’s the Birthing Person justice quoting the DISSENT of Justice Stevens in the Heller decision.)
Maybe appellate courts, including ours, will find a way to “[b]rin[g] discipline to the increasingly erratic and unprincipled body of law that is emerging after Bruen.” (NB: here Justice Birthing Person is quoted from two long time Second Amendment deniers at the Yale Law Review who claim no individual right to arms exists)
If you don’t see anything political in those “concurring” separate opinions, along with laying the foundation to repeal Bruen and Heller when there’s a Soviet Democrat majority SCOTUS (as Stevens repeatedly did during and after Heller before the Birthing Person Justice), then you need to start drinking coffee before reading SCOTUS decisions.
Or actually read the opinion before posting – because given the level of political and anti Second Amendment retoric in these “concurring” opinions from these three Soviet Democrat justices, nothing could be further from being close to unanimous belief in the Second Amendment or apolitical in nature.
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Diogenes says:June 22, 2024 at 6:48 PM
Off topic but always relevant:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/former-gov-cuomo-hits-trump-conviction-if-he-wasn-t-running-case-would-ve-never-been-brought/ar-BB1oHCwH?ocid=msedgdhp&cvid=0741827d28c444abb242e991fe691621&ei=20
This abuse of power by NYC Democrats will not age well.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 5:41 PM
Forget Hunter Biden!
Look What Turley Writes!!
The Supreme Court just voted 8-1 that the law is indeed constitutional and that a court can temporarily deprive citizens of the right to possess weapons for the protection of others
The Texas trial court found that Rahimi was not only engaged in “family violence” but that additional violence was “likely to occur again in the future.”
Rahimi was not exactly a poster child for lawful gun owners and the Court failed to see the suspension of his gun rights as an unconstitutional deprivation.
Months later, Rahimi threatened a different woman with a gun and was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
While the majority found such temporary limits were consistent with historical practices, Justice Thomas,
author of Bruen, objected that the Court could not cite “a single historical regulation”.
………………………….
With efficient editing, Turley makes a powerful case for common sense gun regulations.
By all accounts Rahimi was a disaster waiting to happen. Miraculously he hasn’t killed anybody ‘yet’; but not for lack of recklessness.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 5:43 PM
Yet Clarence Thomas isn’t disturbed by Rahimi’s mindlessness. Instead Clarence Thomas frets that restraining orders have no roots in 18th Century law!
With this dissent Clarence Thomas raises an obvious question: ‘Why is an 18th Century mind sitting on the court?’
Seriously! Professor Turley successfully argues that ‘X’ number Rahimi’s are out there all around the country. And we don’t want them armed!
Therefore the Bruin Decision, which Clarence Thomas wrote, totally disregards all the Rahimi’s out there.
Bruen will go down as the most aggressively ignorant decision the court ever issued. For years the court will have to defend Bruen while chipping away at it.
Clarence Thomas is sure to go down as a sour apple whose real intelligence was greatly overrated.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:13 PM
The question is not who done what, retard. The question is not “what makes sense” retard. The question is not “should he or shouldnt he” ya spastic.
The question is constitutionality. Period.
The only thing you got right is that Bruen is unconstitutional horse shit.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:17 PM
Hey, is Alito done fvcking your wife, yet?
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 8:18 PM
Another cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat Bolshevik Biden Birthing Boy:Hey, is Alito done fvcking your wife, yet?
Another projecting useful idiot that claims to be unaware that it was The Family Cashier Formerly Known As The Crackhead kid who was fvcking his dead brother’s wife before his brother’s body was cold in the ground.
Which happened after The Big Guy was fvcking his teenage daughter in the shower during those “inappropriate showers”.
And not to be compared to eight years of Blow Jobs Bill Clinton and then eight years of Bolshevik Barack allowing a known pedophile and serial rapist in the White House to hang around their daughters – knowing that he was still out there fvcking other peoples’ young girls.
Sophomoric projection of their own evil… Soviet Democrats and their Marxist Useful Idiot grooming perverts do it like it’s a mark of honor.
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toniwill04 says:June 23, 2024 at 10:48 AM
You lieberals are predictable and pathetic in your hate of Clarence Thomas.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 2:42 PM
Another cowardly Soviet Democrat Police state fascist attempted to channel Justice Birthing Person Jackson’s “concurrence” whining and snivelling with this:
Bruen will go down as the most aggressively ignorant decision the court ever issued. For years the court will have to defend Bruen while chipping away at it.
Oh yeah! Dredd Scott wasn’t aggressively ignorant because it allowed Democrats to not only disarm black Americans despite the Second Amendment. But in a double victory, found black American slaves were just chattel property. In Dredd Scott, there SCOTUS properly got it done for Democrats.
No, it was Bruen, which allowed now free black Americans after Dredd Scott was reversed the right to bear arms for their defense against the violent felon Soviet Democrat identity politics voter class that was aggressively ignorant!
Bruen is hated by Soviet Democrats because it allowed black Americans to bear arms, whereas Dredd Scott decided that black Americans could not possess firearms. Therefore, Bruen is “aggressively ignorant” – while Dredd Scott couldn’t have been better written if done instead by Sotomayor, Kagan, and the author’s favorite, Justice Questioning Birthing Person Jackson.
It is helpful that while this feckless Anonymous coward was channeling Justice Birthing Person Jackson (who isn’t sure what having a vagina means), he also showcased the intentions of the Soviet Democrat justices on SCOTUS. All gave similar “concurring” decisions: they signaled their intention is to ultimately reverse both the Bruen and Heller decision. And their “concurring” opinions are the groundwork to do that.
Let’s have a look at how closely this cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat is channeling Justice Birthing Person Jackson’s occurance:
there is little method to Bruen’s madness… Maybe appellate courts, including ours, will find a way to bring discipline to the increasingly erratic and unprincipled body of law that is emerging after Bruen.
So close that it seems quite possible that this cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat police state fascist is actually Justice Questioning Birthing Person Jackson itself/herself!
Clarence Thomas is sure to go down as a sour apple whose real intelligence was greatly overrated.
Oh yeah… unlike the Soviet Democrats’ Justice Questioning Birthing Person Jackson – the one who apparently possesses a vagina (due to the fact it/she’s given birth to children) – but in her confirmation hearings testified that it couldn’t define what a woman is even by taking a look down inside it’s/her panties.
But Thomas is apparently the one who lacks intelligence… not Justice Questioning Birthing Person Jackson who this cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat is acting as a doppelganger for with this post.
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 4:36 PM
ATS – your rant here will go down as one of the more ignorant ones.
There will ALWAYS be X Rahimi’s out there – at any given time in this country there are about 1% of the people who are violent criminals.
We STILL expect them to be convicted by a jury beyond a resonable doubt before we abridge their rights.
This is trivially simple – any right that can be plowed under “temporarily” or “in an emergency” – particularly as in the case of Rahimi WITHOUT proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed – then there are no rights.
The least rights you have personally are the least rights you are willing to allow others.
Like ALL left wing nuts you confuse what you FEAR with what has been proven.
We do not have rights only so long as no one is afraid that we might misuse them. We have rights until we have PROVEN that we will misuse them.
You rant about “18th century minds” – that would be the age of enlightenment that has created the fertile fields that have resulted in representative govenrment throughout most of the world.
We could use far more 18th century minds like that of Thomas, and Madison, and Jefferson and Adam’s and far fewer Roberts or Bragg’s or Sotomayors.
Of course Bruen disregards all the Rahimi’s out there. For TWO excellent reasons.
The rights of each of us are not conditioned on the good conduct of a few of the worst of us.
If they were no rights would exist.
The worst of us are going to engage in egregious misconduct regardless of whether their rights are protected or not.
You and the Justices seem to forget that Rahmine WAS denied of his right to posess firearms and STILL threatened harrassed and assaulted others.
So the only thing that lower courts ignoring the constitution accomplished was to abuse many peoples rights.
Every day dozens of people are obligated to turn over their property or become fellon’s based on ax parte procedingings in domestic courts with no jury and the lowest of possible standards.
SOME of those people – like Rahimi are bad dudes. But the overwhelming majority are not. Only a tiny portion of protection orders ever result in actual violence.
With very little if any change from today to before protection orders developed criminal teeth.
Again typical stupidity of the left.
You nut jobs beleive that manufacturing crimes results in LESS crime – how stupid can you be.
Nearly all of those who are subject to protection orders that require them to surrender their property, never commit a gun crime.
The very few who do – would have done so order or not.
Regardless it is NOT the creation of laws that reduces crimes.
It is the ENFORCEMENT of laws that does so.
We do NOT need more laws – we need far far less.
But we do need to enforce those we have.
When someone with a weapon threatens another with actual harm – charge them, convict them proving the charges beyond a reasonable doubt and send them to jail – and take away their guns.
What you do not get to do is jump into a court – alone, accuse someone else of misconduct and have he court take away their rights based on your vague allegations alone.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:15 PM
Pretty sure this is the same spastic idiot who keeps posting multiple responses to himself. My guess is this is another example. Lets see.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:16 PM
Yep, i thought so.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:21 PM
No, that’s not me
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:22 PM
Yeah, it is !!!
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:23 PM
It is definitely not me.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:24 PM
Thought so
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:29 PM
Gotta say, Elvis, if these are examples of the quality of writing you do for “tv and film”, its easy to see why you are unemployed.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:48 PM
Who is Elvis ??
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 6:54 PM
He left the building
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 7:15 PM
No, I’m right here.
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Anonymous says:June 22, 2024 at 10:07 PM
Thought so
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John Say says:June 23, 2024 at 9:52 AM
ATS, you entirely miss the point of constitutional rights. But I guess that is excusable – as the justices did too.
You say a Texas Trial court found …. That is FALSE, A Texas Domestic (civil) court, found in an Ex Parte hearing that Rahimi was a danger.
Would you support taking away YOUR freedom – because judges in an exparte hearing heard from someone who FELT that you were a danger to them ?
The issue here has NOTHING to do with the 2nd amendment – even Thomas gets that wrong,
And EVERYTHING to do with requiring due process, before infringing on a constitutional right,
Before taking someone’s life, liberty or property.
Your Fears – founded or not that a person MIGHT int he future be dangerous are NOT sufficient to deprive someone of their rights.
The Rahimi case was a BAD case to use for this – because Rahimi LATER engaged in further violent acts.
But the error – of the lower courts, and of SCOTUS is using guesses about the future as the basis for depriving someone of rights in the present.
The fact that SOMETIMES those guesses prove correct is irrelevant.
We do not execute people because they have been accused of murder.
We deprive them of their life, because they have had their day in court, because their lawyers corss examined the witnesses against them, and presented their own evidence and a jury still found unanimously that they had committed a capital offenses AND that the correct punishment was forfeiting their life.
Put simply ALOT of due process is required for the state to infringe on a persons right to life.
The standard is lower for taking their property, but it is NOT supposed to be so low as to rest on the feelings of a domestic court judge in an ex parte proceding.
I do not think that ANYONE has a problem with baring Rahimi from the posession of firearms,
AFTER a criminal trial in which he is found guilty by a jury of crimes of violence.
Many of us would even support a lower standard.
What NO reasonable person Should support is depriving anyone of their rights in a civil proceding where they were not present, not represented, unable to present evidence, or cross examine witnesses, and where the standard of proof is abysmally low – no more than “I feel threatened’
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toniwill04 says:June 23, 2024 at 10:47 AM
Common sense implies using common sense. Our courts and the govt have upended common sense on its head. Brazenly they have contorted laws and created laws via agency dictates. Its people like you that give them this unholy unconstitutional power with such mockery of due process.
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Old Airborne Dog says:June 23, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Another cowardly Soviet Democrat Anonymous Useful Idiot posted: With efficient editing, Turley makes a powerful case for common sense gun regulations.
The brand label for Soviet Democrat police state fascists is their ongoing use of their favorite Soviet fascist term “common sense gun regulations”.
Like the “common sense gun regulations” that have produced the murderous Soviet Democrat utopias like Baltimore, Chicago and similar blood soaked Soviet Democrat run hellhole states like DE, IL, MD, DC, etc.
Not one single Soviet Democrat police state fascist – especially the feckless Anonymous cowards – will attempt to explain why states like Idaho, Montana, etc without any of those “common sense gun regulations”, where you can legally carry a legally purchased belt fed machine gun down Main Street without so much as a permit, have murder rates far lower than the national murder rate and especially lower than their Soviet Democrat police state fascist run states.
Murder rates that are a half to a third the murder rate of Soviet Democrat utopias with “common sense gun laws” ( MD: 9.0/100k and Il: 6.6 versus ID: 2.0/100k and MT: 2.5/100k) – how is that?
And despite these constitutional states lacking those Soviet Democrat police state fascist gun laws, these states also have murder rates the same as or lower than the socialist Canadian provinces that they border to the north. Normally, Soviet Democrat police state fascists LOVE comparing Canadian gun laws and murder rates to America – but they certainly don’t like these state to province comparisons. They hate this comparison just as much as they hate comparing MT and ID to DC, MD, IL, etc.
Any rational adult explanation for why this is so? Any of you Soviet Democrat police state fascists with your anti-American hatred of the Second Amendment?
BTW… “With powerful editing” – what anti-Second Amendment comment are you attempting to insinuate Turley edited out, Anonymous coward?
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S. Meyer says:June 23, 2024 at 8:49 PM
Many criminals thought to have committed a violent act can be set free based on legal arguments proving the evidence wasn’t strong enough. Sometimes, it takes more than one murder to put a person away, yet we uphold the law. So should the Second Amendment be upheld.
Looking for rhetorical ways to amend #2 is inappropriate, especially when other remedies exist. The Supreme Court should not look for rhetorical ways to abridge the Second Amendment to satisfy the need to curtail significant threats. Instead, the court should focus on alternative ways of managing problems rather than destroying the intent behind the amendment.
THE TROLLS DECLARE WAR!!
Just one comment down you’ll see a green anonymous post that begins with:
“Skip to content
JONATHAN TURLEY
Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks
Twitter”
Said post is basically regurgitating long sections of the comment threads, out of order, for purposes of total disruption. It’s the troll farm of Floyd TurdWaters Estovir. They are are furious because they can’t stop PUPPET WATCH.
Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:55 PM
Boom! Is this one of those “Mic Drop!” sort of post, that the hipsters like to point out on social disinfomedia?
Srsly, amazingly fine work Prof Turley.
You are becoming a national treasure, Sir!
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 5:54 PM
I agree it’s refreshing to read rigorous honesty from an intelligent man
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:48 PM
This maybe the last blog on earth that truly believes in free speech allowing (allegedly) grown ups to act like 8th graders on the playground.
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David says:June 19, 2024 at 3:44 PM
Did I miss a comment on the raiding at Mar a Lago which in my mind is his most outrageous act.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 4:27 PM
Mr. Turley, while appearing to be impartial, is no fan of President Trump. Witness his words from text of the article referencing Garland’s nomination for AG…’He was, I thought, the perfect man for the job after his distinguished judicial service as a moderate judge.’ Then, even underinformed average Americans knew Garland was slimy. Insider Turley didn’t. In his favor, of course, is his willingness to admit he was wrong. I trust his analysis now, whereas before this Lawfare season I was a skeptic.
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Mike says:June 19, 2024 at 3:34 PM
Garland was out on a revenge against the repubs for not getting the scotus job. He wanted to get mcconnel but biden probably told him to leave him alone unless Mitch acts up against him so mitch stayed quiet. Then he went after trump per their political op and now that has totally failed to stop Trump. SO knowing that trump is going to win the best thing garland can do to stop his own indictment when trump appoints his special counsel to investigate all of them is for Garland to buck biden and drop the 2 cases on trump, fire all those operatives around him, and declare that he is appointing a spec counsels on biden. Otherwise garland is going to be indicted but doing the acts I said he should do would have put him in a positive light with a trump spec counsel when biden and his whole corrupt gang get indicted. The Florida doc case will be the one where garland will be sucked into for the indictment outside of dc judges and juries to protect him. If garland thinks the old doj he runs is going t still be around top protect him when trump wins then he is making an error there all going to be fired. Garland will get the worst of the sentence because he was a judge and doj official and he twisted the law in a political op to destroy trump. Now trump will get his revenge and garland better start trying t todo what I said to make himself look better in the eyes of justice.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 6:07 PM
The reason they do this is that they know there will be no consequences.
The deep state is at the very least “deep”.
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Pelosi’s Hammer says:June 19, 2024 at 7:03 PM
Not revenge, or retribution, but justice.
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Anonymous says:June 26, 2024 at 1:11 AM
This is quite the quaint fantasy
One I’d love to see come true.
There’s a minor problem though. I absolutely believe that no way no how will Biden be allowed to lose. And he know it too. That’s why he and the left are operating with zero fear f reciprocity or future accountability. Do you really think Obama, The Clinton’s, Brennan, Coney, the entire IC, most or Congress including RINO’s like Paul Ryan, all these clowshoes, are gonna allow Trump to win- he’s an existential threat to most of DC.
The fix is in…again. Silly folks think there’s actually a lead that can be too large to be corrupted. That’s absurd.
We’re talking about folks who have done anything and everything to stay in power. Killing JFQ, Ruby Ridge, Waco, MLK, creating ISIS, jailing the 1/6 defendants..the list goes on and on. Cripes, they let a virus free that killed millions, destroyed the world’s economy, and shattered faith in public health systems, all to damage a presidency.
If you believe there ate guardrails or limits to how far they will reach to stay in power, history fully disagrees with you.
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stevofromiowa says:June 19, 2024 at 3:26 PM
My guess is that it’s all a political payback for being snubbed for the SCOTUS seat. All he’s done is prove snubbing him was the right move.
Fun fact: He’s cousins with Former Iowa Governor and Trump Administration Ambassador to China Terry Brandstad.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:46 PM
Perhaps he was a “frequent flyer” to Lolita Island or they have something else on him.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:24 PM
I salute Prof. Turley for admitting that he is wrong about AG Garland
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:51 PM
You beat me to it. It takes a brave and honorable person to own up to being wrong when they have such a large following and format. Now, how about dims voter fraud?
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:18 PM
He’s a lying leftist pha ggot cox sucker
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:23 PM
This doesn’t really advance the discussion.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 7:11 PM
I agree!
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 12:32 PM
I knew the day would come when Merrick Garland would be exposed for the fraud that he is and there it is for all the world to see and history to remember. Really, Mitch McConnel, probably the most corrupt person in D.C., really did America a great service by deep-sixing this scalawag’s nomination to SCOTUS. I’m not sure any other Republican would have had the steely nerves that Mitch has to do it. We really dodged a bullet there.
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 9:26 AM
The video of Obama is proof that they have instructed anyone in Joe’s orbit on what to do if he freezes in that goofy stance.
Just touch him on the arm.
He will snap right out of it.
What the fvck?
Can any of you apologists point to a single video of any sitting President being led around or touched on the arm in this manner?
This is pathetic.
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GiGii says:June 18, 2024 at 3:14 PM
Joe Biden is the best President of our lifetime. GDP is up, inflation is down and our adversaries are quaking in their boots at his mighty presence. DJT drove the country into the ground, he’s a felon!
Joe is just putting on an act so everyone thinks he’s dumb and senile, the when the time is right BOOM!
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 5:06 PM
Love it. But you didn’t blame near enough on Trump. Even your ear ache is his fault.
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Lee says:June 19, 2024 at 3:18 PM
What a nutsack
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Lee says:June 19, 2024 at 3:20 PM
Your a fraud just like the old man you adore
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rosettaoracle says:June 19, 2024 at 3:21 PM
Well, yeah … Biden should win the Academy Award for Best Actor in a 4-year series that should have been cancelled after the first week.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:34 PM
wow, you need to seek professional help
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:36 PM
It’s SO depressing to see how we have such an uninformed electorate.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 5:00 PM
” uninformed electorate” is code for ‘really stupid and narrow minded citizens”
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:41 PM
Drugs are bad.
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Poe’s a JEDO. says:June 19, 2024 at 3:45 PM
Pull your head out of your donkey. You can’t honestly believe any of the trash coming out of your ignorant mouth?
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:53 PM
Thanks giggles, we needed a laugh
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 4:10 PM
Living in a country where non discerning fools like the guy who wrote to this can vote is trial
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 5:12 PM
You are nuts check your facts.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 6:53 PM
He GiGii. You need to got to your doctor and get that jock itch in your mouth treated!
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Pelosi’s Hammer says:June 19, 2024 at 7:06 PM
Sarcasm? It’s difficult to tell without facial expressions.
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Anonymous says:June 20, 2024 at 11:15 AM
Apparently
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:49 PM
I recall that a woman touched McConnell on the arm prior to him freezing up in front of a press gathering months ago. Is there some kind of special [DARPA] touch that turns them off and on?
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Sam says:June 18, 2024 at 7:38 AM
The Left keeps claiming (arbitrarily) that there is no “legislative or investigative purpose” for seeing the video of Hur’s interview with Biden.
Without seeing the video, how does one know that?
And don’t claim: Because transcript. That’s a deflection. The issue is the video.
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Shakdi says:June 18, 2024 at 5:29 AM
We all know that DC is filled with farcical criminals that lie to our faces while they loot the debt treasury into blood red hell.
They enforce their crimes with the imprimatur of defending democracy and being of the utmost honorable character.
The 14 trillion of natural resources in Ukraine has nothing to do with any of it, they tell us, the phone call of President Trump to Ukraine was a massive felonious crime.
Maybelline would go broke trying to dress up the sows that they are.
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 4:38 AM
“and all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men couldn’t put (Biden) back together again”
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David Cherry says:June 18, 2024 at 2:25 AM
Mr Turley – moderate means “little to no moral convictions”. Mr Garland has had an axe to grind from the moment he was denied a Supreme Court seat. His “check all the boxes” resume just never seemed clean.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:24 PM
Turley is a milquetoast who has no clue what time it is. He thinks playing it down the middle between Jesus and Satan is being evenhanded.
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 12:43 AM
Gigi is KJP
Cheap fakes!!!
Called the video of Obama waking Joe from his stupor, “manipulated”
Pathetic.
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Anonymous says:June 17, 2024 at 10:53 PM
Ecclisiastes is in here somewhere as : vanity, all is vanity. ..
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Anonymous says:June 17, 2024 at 10:55 PM
…or Garland is just a coward.
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William Affeldt says:June 17, 2024 at 10:51 PM
Thank God that deep state pos Garland was prevented from being confirmed to SCOTUS. This goes to show you deep and how well camouflaged the deep state really is.
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Mary says:June 17, 2024 at 11:55 PM
Yup. Read Arabella.
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James says:June 17, 2024 at 9:28 PM
Seriously, anyone with intellectual faculties above those of a woke 20 year-old knows the DNC is a regime, of which Garland is a member. Modern dems have broken the laws of physics with their ever increasing lows; the only thing more impressive is their open disdain for our intelligence. And they *just keep going*:
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/06/17/kjp-says-vids-of-biden-struggling-are-deep-fakes-n2397365
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James says:June 17, 2024 at 9:33 PM
PS – if it backfires I would not be surprised to see the WH backflip and then try to convince us, ‘That video of KJP gaslighting about deepfakes was itself a deepfake. RUSSIA!’. These people are hilarious/sick. 😂/🙄 And that includes Garland.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 3:56 PM
I think “sick” is not the word. Perhaps desperate or frantic is closer to the truth. They fear that Trump will seek “vengeance” on them. He won’t, he may seek accountability though. They think it’s the same thing.
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mespo727272 says:June 17, 2024 at 8:52 PM
“You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak.”
~Abraham Lincoln
Garland forgot that – if he ever knew it to begin with.
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Milhouse says:June 18, 2024 at 9:25 AM
NOT Lincoln. Lincoln never said that or anything like it. The source for your quote, slightly tweaked, is William John Henry Boetcker (1873–1962)
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mespo727272 says:June 18, 2024 at 10:13 PM
I’ll take that correction.
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Anonymous says:June 17, 2024 at 8:42 PM
Largest crime in US history.
Jail all involved, especially Garland.
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Number 6 says:June 18, 2024 at 1:18 PM
Anonymous said: “Largest crime in US history.”
It is undeniably serious, but hardly what you claim. Just off the top of my head, I think the false flag incitement of the Spanish-American War was a worse crime, as was McNamara and LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin lie, and I’m reasonably certain there are others of comparable or greater magnitude.
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 3:19 PM
Always funded by the Rothschilds war machine Bank.
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 5:09 PM
Jail ? Club GITMO is better choice… Hold em all in the general population…
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Anonymous says:June 19, 2024 at 6:26 PM
The murder of JFK by the (!@.
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Anonymous says:June 17, 2024 at 8:37 PM
See below as turdrunner just realized that on Jan 22nd 2025, biden will be indicted for violating
18 USC 1984
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Anonymous says:June 17, 2024 at 9:16 PM
REGARDING ABOVE:
Floyd James Estovir is the one and ‘only’ Turdrunner. No one but Floyd has ever used that name.
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Anonymous says:June 17, 2024 at 10:27 PM
The name is tom, turdrummer
I am a healthy 62 year old man who still plays baseball.
Floyd is medically disabled, and is the one who mind fvcked you well before i ever came to this blog.
I am curious, Peter Shill, who you think your audience is, when u say this shit.
Turdrunner is the name i gave you. Own it. Love it. How chickenshit you would give up brandrunner just because i ridiculed you. What a little kunt.
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Milhouse says:June 18, 2024 at 9:31 AM
There is no such section. Title 18 skips from §1968 to §1991.
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Anonymous says:June 18, 2024 at 10:46 AM
That was a typo. It is 18 USC 1924
Enjoy
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