Frank's Musings

On 28 February 2024 SCOTUS ordered the presentation of arguments on the appeal by Trump’s lawyers of the criminal charges against him based on Presidential Immunity.  This process will inevitably delay a legal resolution of the issue until after the next presidential election on 5 November 2024.   At best, it makes impossible the  determination of Trump’s guilt or innocence on those criminal charges until way past the inauguration of the next POTUS. 

Therefore, the real verdict on both issues, presidential immunity and Trump’s criminal conduct, will only be the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.  SCOTUS has effectively abdicated its responsibility to make that decision in time for fairly informing the public before its being called on to choose its next president.  The ultimate jury to decide that verdict will be the U.S. citizens who vote in that election.  They will have to rely on the evidence collected by the January 6 Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives for making that determination, just as SCOTUS was asked and failed to do.

The earlier SCOTUS decision in Bush v. Gore was based on the conduct of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, rather than on a criminal trial.  Although it showed that a SCOTUS decision bearing on the outcome of a presidential election could occur after the relevant election day, it did not address a case that would have to await a criminal case, a jury verdict and the inevitable appeals that could delay its final effect beyond the Constitutional inauguration date.   Therefore, Bush v. Gore is not fully relevant.

The Democratic opponent of Trump later this year, therefore, should make a leading element of the campaign the closing argument in what will effectively be the criminal trial of Donald Trump.  The campaign message must be prepared by experienced prosecutors who have succeeded in disabusing juries of falling for the showmanship of other narcissistic criminal defendants.  Only by keeping him out of the White House will Trump be held accountable for his high crimes and misdemeanors.

How dare Trump celebrate his victory in South Carolina by telling his MAGA Crowd that America under Biden is the world’s laughingstock?  One of many unforgettable moments during Trump’s presidency was a NATO heads of state meeting when many European leaders, including Emmanuel Macron, were pictured chatting with each other, awaiting Trump’s appearance, and joking about the ineptitude of the U.S. president.  That was a literal illustration of one inevitable consequence of an eventual return of the Donald to the White House.

It is to be hoped that in November 2024 enough members of the MAGA Crowd will remember the embarrassment and ridicule that electing so insufferable a clownish showman to lead our nation subjects us to.

The 2/20/2024 decision of the Alabama Supreme Court, LePage et al. v. Center for Reproductive Medicine et al., ruled 7-1 that an amendment to the Alabama Constitution installed by popular vote in 2018 made it illegal in that state to destroy human IVF embryos because they have the civil rights of born human children.  By extension this ruling would mean that only the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution prevent Alabama voters from stripping non-white persons of their civil rights, not to mention women.  The amended Alabama constitution is patently misogynistic and must be rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the comment by Ross Douthat in the 2/17/2024 NYT, we should ask hese questions:  Would the defense of Ukraine be such a cause for America's and NATO's strategic security if it weren't for the compelling image of Volodymyr Zelensky? Or is Zelensky so compelling an image mainly because of the importance of a free Ukraine to America's and NATO's strategic interests? It was always dangerous that as driven and effective a chief executive as Putin would assume leadership of as powerful a country as Russia. How existential a threat Putin's aggression is must be determined by the EU, and the U.S. has to follow its lead in fulfillment of our NATO commitment. There can be no equivocation on that. It goes both ways.