Happy New Year

If it's possible.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The immunity question

Jack Smith (through Michael Dreeben) has filed the government's response to Trump's ridiculous claim of immunity from prosecution.

 [...] 

“Rather than vindicating our constitutional framework, the defendant’s sweeping immunity claim threatens to license Presidents to commit crimes to remain in office,” Smith and his team wrote in an 82-page filing. “The Founders did not intend and would never have countenanced such a result.”

[...]

“Any burdens of post-Presidency criminal liability have minimal impact on the functions of an incumbent and are outweighed by the paramount public interest in upholding the rule of law through federal prosecution.”

[...]

Smith argues that while presidents deserve protection from civil lawsuits, there is no blanket immunity from criminal prosecution, particularly for a former president charged with making grave threats to the transfer of power. Even if presidents did enjoy immunity for their official duties, he argues, Trump’s actions would not qualify for such protection because he was acting well outside the bounds of his proper duties.

[...]

“No historical materials support [Trump’s] broad immunity claim, and the post-Presidency pardon that President Nixon accepted reflects the consensus view that a former President is subject to prosecution after leaving office.”

[...]

“Because the only remedies available in the impeachment proceedings were removal and disqualification, the defendant was never previously placed in jeopardy. But even if he were, the indictment charges different offenses than were at issue in his impeachment,” prosecutors wrote.

[...]

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court turned down a request from Smith to bypass the normal appeals process and take up the presidential immunity issue on an urgent basis. The justices did not explain their decision, but it does not preclude the question returning to the high court after the appeals court rules.

[...]

Another potential wrinkle in the case: Outside advocacy group American Oversight has urged the appeals court to essentially punt the appeal, contending that Trump — like most criminal defendants — had no right to an appeal until after a trial and jury conviction.

  Politico

UPDATE 12/31/2023:

Cross purposes?

Or just hypocrisy?

Or, perhaps it's merely a matter of keeping the American arms industry funded.  War profits keeping the economy afloat.

The administration of United States President Joe Biden has once again bypassed Congress to greenlight an emergency weapons sale to Israel, which has only intensified and broadened its attacks on the Gaza Strip despite growing international outrage.

  alJazeera

How much different is that from Ronald Reagan's circumvention of Congress in Nicaragua?

On December 9, the Biden administration made another emergency determination to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106m.

[...]

Friday’s emergency determination, which is rare but has been used by at least four previous US administrations, means that a requirement for a potentially lengthy congressional review for foreign military sales will be bypassed.

So, it's legal this way. Was Reagan not afforded that option? Also, maybe before Biden it was, but twice in one month hardly qualifies as rare.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination in less than a month, covering a $147.5m sale of equipment to Israel, the State Department said on Friday.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” it said.

Defensive needs? Is that what this is? Defense?

Ensuring Israel gets weapons to continue its intense phase of the war, while also urging it to lower the intensity of fighting, is “strategically self-defeating” for Washington, according to Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara, who called Friday’s decision “astounding”.

[...]

The move was “morally scandalous” given that the war has caused record damage and killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, Bishara said, but it is also “politically suspect in the sense that why would you want to bypass Congress twice in the same month? What is the urgency to bypass your own guidelines?”

[...]

“One really has to look deep to see if there is any meaningful explanation for why the Biden administration wants to bypass Congress in order to expedite weapons to a country that is involved in war crimes,” he said on Saturday.

I don't see it.

The Biden administration has tried to counter criticism over the mounting death toll in Gaza and continued US arms sales to Israel by saying it constantly maintains contact with Israel to stress the importance of minimising civilian casualties.

Yeah, that's working.

By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on Gaza, destroying or damaging nearly 70 percent of homes, the report said.

[...]

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the war “is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating warfare in the modern record”.

[...]

Some Democratic lawmakers have suggested further significant aid to Israel should be contingent on concrete promises by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to curb civilian casualties in Gaza.

Oooh. I'm sure that would stop him.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have now been killed in the besieged enclave since October 7, most of them children and women, in what has been widely described as collective punishment. Thousands more are missing.

[...]

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said on Saturday that Israeli authorities continue to impose “severe restrictions” on humanitarian access despite deliveries of aid from Egypt and through the Rafah crossing.

Shameful.  Obscene.

UPDATE :

Not what you were taught in school

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jack still putting Trump between a rock and a hard place

Jack keeps filing motions even with the case on hold while Trump's ridiculous appeal on grounds of presidential immunity goes through the courts.  And Trump doesn't like it.

On Wednesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the court to put the kibosh on Donald Trump’s efforts to “turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation.”

[...]

[T]he special counsel has filed a motion to block Trump from bombarding the jurors with irrelevant and prejudicial evidence. And because Smith takes no prisoners, he’s done it in the most aggressive way possible.

[...]

“Through public statements, filings, and argument in hearings before the Court, the defense has attempted to inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial,” Special Counsel Smith argued in a pretrial motion filed Wednesday. “Although the Court can recognize these efforts for what they are and disregard them, the jury — if subjected to them — may not.”

Prosecutors accuse Trump of attempting to engage in jury nullification, that is, securing an acquittal by convincing jurors to disregard the evidence and law in favor of their own personal feelings of justice. They argue that “the defendant should be precluded from raising irrelevant political issues” which might “improperly suggest to the jury that it should base its verdict on something other than the evidence at trial.”

[...]

[Trump's lawyers claim] the stay of deadlines in the election case makes it “illegal” for the prosecution to do anything at all. Since Judge Chutkan accepted his demand to put the case on ice while Trump makes his preposterous claims of presidential immunity to the DC Circuit, the government has continued to produce discovery and file their own motions.

[...]

No doubt Team Trump will be back with another round of yelling about “illegal” filings before long. But the prosecutors’ motion imposes no obligation on Trump to respond, so it seems unlikely that Judge Chutkan will reprimand the government for filing it, much less remove it from the record. That leaves Trump in an uncomfortable position. Having insisted that he cannot be burdened with litigation while he appeals the immunity issue, he can either leave this motion, which undercuts every aspect of his defense, unrebutted, or he can answer it with an “illegal” filing of his own that advances the stayed litigation.

[...]

The motion is yet another bold move by a prosecutor who hasn’t taken his foot off the accelerator since he was appointed on November 18, 2022, two days after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy. If Trump were an introspective man, he might consider where he’d be if he hadn’t been so intent on beating his hapless primary rivals to the punch that he forced the ever-cautious Attorney General Merrick Garland to hand the investigations off to a wildly aggressive prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest.

Would there be any realistic possibility that these cases might go to trial before the election if Trump had just held off a few more weeks on announcing?

Probably not. But of course Trump is not a man given to introspection, so instead he simply throws ketchup at the online wall.

  Public Notice

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Russian war crimes

And it's almost certain he could have been stopped at the onset of the Russian invasion if we had given Ukraine the planes and other support they needed and asked for.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In Trump trial news...don't forget about these

Israeli war crimes

Will it help her or hurt her?

At an event on Wednesday, a voter asked [Nikki] Haley: "what was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

She replied that the cause "was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn't do."

"I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are," Haley continued. "And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people."

After Haley gave her answer, the voter told her that it was "astonishing" that she gave an answer "without mentioning the word 'slavery.'"

  NPR

She got a lot of backlash, and that could hurt her, even as she was just pulling away from the other candidates (besides Trump). If she wants to take votes from Trump and Ramaswami, however, it will help her.

During an interview with a local radio station on Thursday, Haley addressed what happened.

"Of course the Civil War was about slavery," she said. "We know that. That's the easy part of it."

Haley explained that she was interested in talking about what lessons should be drawn from the Civil War and defended her answer to the voter.

"I know it's about slavery," she said. "I am from the South."

As South Carolina's governor, Haley ordered the confederate flag be removed from the grounds of the state capitol following the 2015 shooting of Black parishioners at a church in Charleston in 2015.

And I think her answer at the Iowa CNN town hall was meant to avoid reminding the MAGA base of that fact. What's worse, is she blamed her response on Democratic "plants".

Haley said on Thursday she thought the questioner was "definitely" planted by Democrats to trip her up.

"The same reason he didn't tell the reporters what his name was, the same reason he went and showed the guy that he was with the tweet that went up after he did it," Haley said. "We see these guys when they come in, we know what they're doing."

  CBS

Apparently she thinks she should get a town hall planted with only Republican supporters like Donald Trump gets.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/30/2023:  This will definitely help her.

Hope she has good security

UPDATE 12/29/2023:

Chicken

Boebert implied in the video that her departure from the district would help Republicans retain the seat, saying, “I will not allow dark money that is directed at destroying me personally to steal this seat. It’s not fair to the 3rd District and the conservatives there who have fought so hard for our victories.”

  Politico

She's doing it for the good of the party. Sure.

While it’s not required that a representative live in the congressional district they represent, only the state the district is in, Boebert said she would be moving — a shift from Colorado’s western Rocky Mountain peaks and high desert mesas to its eastern expanse of prairie grass and ranching enclaves.

Maybe they'll be more receptive to her ignorance and bawdy behavior there.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Any bets?

My bet is they won't block him.   First Amendment, you know.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Public interest in a speedy trial

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Happy Christmas anyway

h/t Marty

Maybe not in time for you and me. Or ever.

And...speaking of Jesus Christ...

That is some seriously sloppy light stringing. How embarrassing.

But they more than made up for it in their very cool White House decor video. 

Israel's war philosophy

We can do anything we want.

It should read: 

Proportionality: Fuck proportionality. Next item.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Night Before Christmas

Here we go

They're getting desperate now.  Time to make up some dirt on the prosecutor.

A new conspiracy theory rising on the right is being deployed to help Donald Trump.

It claims that Jack Smith, the special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and for his alleged swiping of classified documents, was part of a multimillion dollar extortion scheme when he was the chief prosecutor investigating and prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo. In the past two weeks, this unsubstantiated narrative has started popping up on fringe right-wing sites and social media posts. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and QAnonish MAGA champion, has promoted this tale. These allegations appear to be in the early phase of the right-wing transmission belt that propels false stories and conspiracy theories from less prominent platforms to more established conservative media and toward the mainstream—often facilitated by Republican members of Congress.

[...]

[The story goes that a criminal enterprise] “extorted millions of dollars from wealthy individuals targeted for investigation and/or prosecution by the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office” (known as the SPO), which brings the cases tried by the chambers. Smith was the chief prosecutor for the SPO from 2018 to 2022, and Moynihan alleges that witnesses he spoke to said Smith was an “active participant” in this conspiracy.

[...]

This campaign against Smith is based on documents circulated by John Moynihan, a onetime DEA employee who says he handled money laundering investigations for the agency.

[...]

And this allegation is mostly based on a wild account provided by a Kosovo businessman who was twice arrested in Spain for extortion, who has disputed rumors that he was tied to Russian intelligence, and who has been linked to a Russian mobster.

  Mother Jones

No matter. MAGA will buy it.

Moynihan states in his complaint that he is unable to “corroborate” these “serious allegations,” insisting the Justice Department and other US agencies must investigate them. This lack of corroboration is unlikely to keep these allegations from spreading. For the moment, they are percolating within far-right circles. But if the past is any guide, they could soon be coming to a cable news show or congressional hearing.

I'm sure the House under Mike Johnson's leadership will be eager to take it on.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But the pictures!

It bears noting that Israel itself built some of the tunnels and rooms under al-Shifa in the 1980s, and their existence has been an open secret for decades. Following their incursion into the hospital, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released footage of Israeli forces exploring the alleged network of Hamas tunnels within the medical complex. Analysis by the Post of tunnel footage, as well as maps and other materials released by the IDF, contradicted claims by Israel that several hospital buildings were connected to and could be accessed from within the tunnel network. The analysis also found that several small rooms attached to the tunnel, one of which the IDF had described as an evacuated Hamas “operational room,” contained no signs of recent use or occupancy.

  Rolling Stone

This shit happens in every war the US wants to support.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cleaning up the insurrectionists

Some states are working on it.  Including, now, Nevada.  But, like the national project, not yet getting all the dirt out.

After a change in the state Legislature, 2024 will be the first presidential year where Nevada will hold primaries at the ballot box, rather than statewide caucuses. However, the Republican Party is sponsoring separate caucuses anyway — two days after that state-run election. Only the caucuses will award delegates. But it has put Nevada in the position of having two outcomes, two days apart from one another. And candidates have had to choose which one to participate in.

[...]

“If Trump were so far ahead in the polls, why not then just let the primary play itself out?” Tarkanian said. “They’ve thrown the primary election into complete confusion and chaos.”

  NBC

I'm guessing because the more confusion they can introduce, the more chances to claim something wasn't right when Trump loses.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

SCOTUS 2023

The trap the court finds itself in is largely a function of its own behavior, both on and off the bench. The 6-to-3 conservative supermajority has radically expanded gun rights, circumscribed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect the environment, all but eviscerated race-based affirmative action, punched holes through the wall separating church from state and — most notoriously — eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. The past year has also seen increasing public scrutiny of the justices’ apparent ethical lapses, sunlight that pushed the justices to adopt their first code of ethics.

[...]

For a tribunal that is supposed to sit far away from, not astride, politics, that’s a lot for the Supreme Court to handle. And this is happening at a rough moment for the court. In August 2000, on the eve of Bush v. Gore, 62 percent of Americans approved of how the Supreme Court was conducting itself. Now, recent polling shows that nearly that portion (58 percent) disapproves of the institution, a figure that scrapes historic lows for the court.

[...]

As the Jan. 6 cases put the justices right in the middle of the 2024 election, the question is whether they’ll understand the imperative of not letting history repeat.

Ultimately, these contemporary disputes may not provide a perfect opportunity for the Supreme Court to right that wrong. But if one thing’s for certain, it’s that neither the court nor the country can afford another election-altering ruling that takes such obvious partisan sides.

[...]

A universe in which the court somehow splits the difference — for example, keeping Mr. Trump on the ballot while refusing to endorse (if not affirmatively repudiating) his conduct and spurning his kinglike claim to total immunity — could go a long way toward reducing the temperature of the coming election cycle. Such an outcome could also help restore at least some of the court’s credibility.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Let's do heat pump subsidies next

We can finally put to bed the notion that heat pumps do not work in cold weather conditions and that they are inefficient to run. We’ve observed the exact opposite. They are three times more efficient than gas boilers and work in cold weather conditions.

[...]

Because they transfer heat from outside, rather than just converting electricity into heat, heat pumps can technically produce more energy than the electricity that is put into them.

[...]

[I]n Nordic countries [...] heat pumps are commonplace – up to 60% of Norwegian homes are heated by heat pumps.

[...]

“That’s the magic of heat pumps: you’ve extracted this heat from the environment. [It] could be air source, could be ground source, could be water source, from the sea, even sewage.”

  Guardian

And in the Mar-A-Lago documents case...

Jack Smith is trying hard to move things along in every case.

Of course Cannon isn't going to move quickly.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump trials

Which was probably expected by most, and why Smith also applied to the Appeals Court which DID grant a rapid hearing.

Typical GOP maneuver

Republicans are not interested in doing anything but having power.  But when something does get done (eg. infrastructure), they claim credit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Certiorari

Smith may have a good case, but it doesn't mean this Supreme Court will grant it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01:55 pm:  And they didn't.

UPDATE 09:01 pm:

I'd sure like to know what that is if it is.

UPDATE 12/23/2023:

[M]y dream scenario would be for SCOTUS to deny cert, the Appeals court to deny trump's motion for immunity, then for SCOTUS to deny cert again when appealed after that ruling. That would mean the Appeals court ruling would be the final ruling, and it would take the least amount of time.

[...]

The [Appeals] court has set arguments for January 9th - lightning fast. They could render their decision anytime after the hearing on the 9th. Probably within a week, I'd wager.

[...]

Something else to consider: whoever dissented here and would have granted cert did not say why. Sometimes we will see a note that says "Justices so and so would have granted cert and set an expedited briefing schedule." If the liberal justices were in the minority here, I would think they'd want to say so. If the conservative justices were in the minority here, I'd also think they'd want to talk about it (Thomas and Alito love to talk). But since no one dissented, and the court only issued a single statement, perhaps that means they're all in some kind of agreement here.

I hope the agreement is that trump isn't immune and they don't want to hear the case. [...] Seems to me - and I could be totally wrong here - if they wanted to hear this case, they could have granted cert now and set a schedule. [...] I say that because if they WANT to hear the case, but denied cert to hear it before the appeals court rules, I feel like we would have heard a dissent.

[...]

It may be as simple as all the justices being in agreement that they want to see what the Appeals court does, but again, I feel like if SCOTUS were slow-walking this, the liberal justices would have spoken up.

  Mueller, She Wrote

Well, fingers crossed.

It's also of note that the Appeals court can lift the stay on the DC trial pending an appeal to SCOTUS. But if that doesn't happen, and SCOTUS eventually grants cert, this trial will be likely be pushed into the early summer. Even if they deny cert a second time and let the appellate ruling stand, I think it will still be difficult to keep the March 4 trial date.

But don't forget, Alvin Bragg is ready to go in March with the felony hush money case in Manhattan.