Thursday Open Thread

3 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. Smith Knows Exactly What Trump Is Up To. David Kurtz at TPM.

   Unlike many of us, including much of the political press, Jack Smith’s team has figured out what Trump is all about, and they’re not afraid to call it out. It’s not generalized hand-waving and pearl-clutching. It’s not broad-brush objections to Trump’s conduct. It’s a precise, sharp understanding of what Trump is doing and why – and a keen ability to describe it in writing in terms a judge can understand.

   “The defendant knows the effect of his targeting and seeks to use it to his strategic advantage while simultaneously disclaiming any responsibility for the very acts he
   causes,” Smith told Chutkan, in returning to a theme he’s raised before.

   In the same way that we might imagine how we would have reacted to Trump’s misdeeds before 2015, Smith capably takes the specifics of Trump’s misconduct and puts it in a larger context to show how strikingly out of bounds it is:

   "There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the presiding judge as a “fraud” and a “hack,” attack the prosecutor as “deranged” and a “thug,” and, after promising witnesses and others, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU,” target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility, even suggesting that one witness’s actions warrant the “punishment” of “DEATH!”

   No, there has never been such a criminal case.

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2. Attention, attention. Please direct all your thoughts and prayers towards Lewiston, Maine. That is both the least and the most that anyone can do about our periodic mass shootings in this country.

   What we know so far about the shootings in Lewiston, Maine (msn.com)

   Meanwhile, in the sausage factory, it’s good to know that Sen. John Cornhole Kennedy is doing what he can to protect the God-given Second Amendment rights of mentally unstable military veterans to access guns. 

   Senate adopts gun provision among amendments to spending bill (msn.com)

   BTW, Robert Card is a mentally unstable military veteran.

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3. Trump can be kicked off ballot in Colorado.

   In spite of the biased Microsoft-right wing slanted news article language, it does look as though TFG got his ass handed to him in court today.

   Judge Implies Trump Could Be Disqualified

   Wallace seemed to imply that the 14th Amendment could prevent Trump from appearing on the ballot when she claimed that the Republican Party’s candidate choice did not preclude Griswold from keeping Trump’s name off the ballot.

   “’urther, the United States Supreme Court has made it clear that a Party’s right to put a candidate on the ballot is not unfettered,’  Here, Colorado’s ‘legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.’”

   Here's a less biased take on the news from The Hill.

   As a participant in an insurrection, he can legally be kept off the Colorado ballot. This seems huge.

    

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