Yuletide Open Thread: Courting Disaster!

By
Greg Diamond
– December 21, 2023Posted in: "The OC", constitution, Donald Trump, Fresh Juice, Supreme Court

It might seem early for another open thread, but the previous one has gotten congested and at 7:27 p.m. comes the winter solstice, and with it the pagan celebration of Yule. We’ve celebrated a lot of holidays here over the years, but I think that we’ve missed this one so far. So: set fire to your Yule Log and fill yourself with holiday spirit! I’ll add some linky stories, but first let’s get this thing published while it’s still a (drenched) autumn!

Made it by half a minute! OK, let’s see what stories are out there for this new season, as lightning streaks across much of (at a minimum) North County!

Let’s start with Slate.com, where you have some Supreme Court commentaries!

The Supreme Court Can’t Be Trusted to Handle the Trump Cases

The Supreme Court Did this to Itself

The Supreme Court Must Unanimously Strike Down Trump’s Ballot Removal

There, something for everyone! I’m sorry to say that I’ve been convinced by the last of these three stories, by Lawrence Lessig, that the history of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment makes it clear that it was not intended to apply to the President and Vice-President — but guess what? The conservative majority doesn’t believe in looking at legislative intent, but merely at the text itself, so they might be out of luck! Then again, there are plenty of rules of construction that could be trotted out to justify going against the text: exclusio unius est exclusio alterius, which would suggest that when some members of a category are specifically included in a statutory statement — such as who could be rejected from various public offices — other instances of that category that one might expect to be included are implicitly excluded from that statute. (One classic example of this of this is that if a sign says “no parking from 2 a.m. until 5 a.m.,” implicitly that restriction says that parking is permissible during the other 21 hours of the day.) On the other hand, it there’s a list of category members that one might not expect to be exhaustive, such as a list of cities in Orange County, California, the maxim of ejusdem generis might come into play: it’s basically a big “et cetera.” (You cannot carry guns, knives, blackjacks, socks filled with batteries or ball bearings, nunchucks, beakers of strong acid, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, tasers, and such into City Council meetings.) Amendment XIV Sec. 3 seems more like the former: President and Vice President would be expected to have been included in its wording, and a list of other kinds of less powerful office not representing the entire country would not be expected to imply their inclusion.)

But maybe my “no guns in public” example above is already moot! Judge Cormac Carney, a former OC Superior Court Judge. whom we’ve seen on these pages before, who is now a federal judge today decided that the state law forbidding carrying of guns in public is unconstitutional! The law “would have prohibited people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos.” His decision may be overturned by the Ninth Circuit, but if so it will probably be reinstated by the Supreme Court, which says that anything that used to be allowed in the past must be allowed to continue in the future. This is an especially stupid rule brought to you by Clarence Thomas, a starring figure in at least one of the links above. (Oddly enough, that ruling might be read to approve of carrying guns but not nunchucks because, he might say, the latter aren’t part of our national tradition.)

But let’s not make you comb the links for the great Pro Publica story that has been making the news! It seems that Clarence Thomas was grousing a few years ago that he was going to retire because he was not getting paid enough, and that has been what’s been behind the stories this year about his receiving a renovated camper and trips around the world on private jets and such: Leonard Leo, the PR professional behind the drive to stack the Supreme Court with brazenly partisan Justices, just recruited some wealthy people to give Justice Thomas his greatest desires as (tax-free!) gifts, obviating the need for him to get a pay increase! I don’t know about you, but if I were a district attorney in D.C., I’d consider this to be a conspiracy to either (1) bribe a federal official or (2) evade income tax laws. And with Samuel Alito likely subject to the same criticism, the Court would have only a 4-3 conservative majority, meaning that Chief Justice John Roberts might jump at the chance to put two of his more ethically challenged colleagues in jail (or, more likely, to have them resign from the court as part of a plea agreement.) But would Roberts do so? Sadly, I think that we’d have to see how the 2004 election turns out to know if he’d try!

I may add yet more stories here, but the season is already an hour old, so let’s stop there.

This is your Celestial Holiday Open Thread: write about the above or anything else you’d like within reasonable bounds of discretion, decorum, and — what’s the one I forgot last week? That right, I said reasonable bounds of dignity!

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About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)