Judge Cannon, in her ruling granting Trump’s request for a special master to review documents collected at Mar-a-Lago, was clearly auditioning for a slot on the Federalist Society shortlist for the Supreme Court…
She may even have vaulted into the top position…
The judge demonstrated the key job requirement for a Federalist Society endorsement: a talent for delivering the desired ruling even if it requires a rambling shambles of tortuous and laughable logic in defiance of established precedent. Leonard Leo must be pleased…
The judge says an indictment would create a special stigma on Trump…
As a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own. A future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.
Anyone else having trouble processing Judge Cannon’s interest in preserving and protecting Trump’s reputation? That horse is long out of the barn. That horse is already three counties away and being rendered into dog food and glue…
Stigma-schmigma. Donald Trump is already a walking stigma.
Any thought to the stigma you just called down on yourself, Judge Cannon? Any thought to your self-inflicted reputational harm? Probably not. You can afford to wait decades for a Republican to gain the White House and give you the promotion you are bucking for…
Trump clearly went shopping for a judge who owed him one. What ever happened to the notion of recusal when there’s a clear conflict of interest
Is anyone in Congress working on articles of impeachment against Judge Cannon on grounds of obstruction of justice? Could that be a thing?
If there’s any upside, Cannon’s ruling reminds the broader public that the rot in the federal judiciary isn’t limited to the Supreme Court… The Federalist Society has filled the entire pipeline with ideologues of indifferent competence…
Bret Stephens, in his column in The New York Times, dings Biden’s Philadelphia speech with the standard GOP spin—he was too divisive. Stephens says Biden fell short of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (“With malice toward none and charity for all, let us bind up the nation’s wounds.”)
But Stephens ignores what Lincoln said just before he launched into his magnanimous closing paragraph:
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
President Lincoln was much more bloodthirsty than President Biden. At Lincoln’s second inaugural, the Confederacy was still at war with the Union. Today, the MAGA Republicans are still at war with democracy…
Lincoln’s penultimate paragraph was a fierce ultimatum to the Confederacy. When MAGA World follows Gen. Robert E. Lee and surrenders, when they accept the Constitutional order and peaceful transfer of power, Stephens can demand a more conciliatory tone from Biden. But if that ever happens, Stephens won’t need to ask. Biden’s natural inclination is toward comity.
Stephens would like us to think that the problem is Trump and Trump alone:
He’s one man, sinister but also buffoonish. To defeat him, the core task is to make him seem small, very small.
Stephens is wrong. Biden had it right. The problem isn’t just Trump alone, but rather the entire Trump Industrial Complex. Case in point: Judge Cannon… Also the right wing majority on the Supreme Court… the so-called Freedom caucus in Congress, and the election deniers across the land running for local and Congressional offices… Plus the 70% of Republicans who believe that Biden is not the legitimately elected President of the United States of America. We need to make the entire MAGA enterprise seem small, very small
BRAINCRACK: Apple—or some enterprising third party—should make an AirPod case with a built-in cleaning mechanism to get rid of the earwax that inevitably grunges them up…