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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28511 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Breaking news. It looks like the jury convicted Donald Trump in the "hush money" case.

This verdict will likely galvanize voters come November – leading to record turnout among Republicans. I might even vote for the old rascal myself as I view this lawfare as both morally wrong and deeply destabilizing.

To make a prediction closer to home, we're now certain to cross 1000 posts on the weekly thread.

I'm secretly hoping for Trump to be elected while being in State custody. What actually happens in the situation? Do Federal Marshals show up at the prison demanding Trump's release?

Bidens term ends at noon and Trump's begins

Amendment XX, Section 1.

The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

However, Trump as President can't DO anything until he takes the oath:

From Article I, Section 1:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:– I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

So who has the power to act as President? No one. Note that the old executive department head's terms do NOT end when the President's term does; traditionally they resign, but perhaps they'd refuse in this case. So while Trump's VP could try to invoke the 25th Amendment and become acting President, he'd need the majority of Biden's cabinet to go along. Otherwise, there's no President until Trump takes the oath, and (perhaps) Biden's cabinet can still act.

Leave it to the Nybbler to interpret the Constitution in the most unreasonable and negative way.

Honestly, the Founding Fathers could have used you at the convention. Your fertile imagination might have warded off some of the Constitution's most obvious flaws, such as the lack of a limit on the size of the Supreme Court.

But I still maintain there is no document (or for that matter any entity or concept) so robust that a Nybbler couldn't find a legalistic way to make it suck.

As annoying as @The_Nybbler's doomerism can be, you need to engage with the words on the screen and not turn it into digs at the person.

If a State is holding the President-elect in prison, with the passive assent of the current President, you will have a constitutional crisis. Why would you expect anything different? Where have I made an error?

I would expect that the secret service requires his attendance at the swearing in ceremony, regardless of whatever else is going on.

"my people rules-lawyer God, you never stood a chance"

I don’t think Nybbler is Jewish.

As @ArjinFerman notes, half Ashkenazi -- on my mother's side -- and half Italian. It's practically an ethnicity in NJ. I think I've even repeated a variant of that joke before.

Yeah, I shamelessly stole it from your post about Orthodox communities abusing welfare state bureaucracy with their rabbinic skills

I missed that one!

I'm pretty sure he's mentioned it before, and do you really think he'd be at this level without the +2 racial bonus to kvetching? He's too good.

(Edit: sorry, only a +1 bonus for half-jews, my mistake)

Half Jewish half Italian, from what I remember.

Huh!

Started to ask "but which half" and nearly died laughing that the question makes sense.

There’s no prescription on where the oath be taken. It could hypothetically be the Chief Justice answering a collect call from prison.

Correct, but perhaps NY will not allow him that. Even if they do, you now have the crisis of a President held in prison; they're not going to let him call Seal Team 6 (or the Border Patrol) to break him out.

Supremacy clause.

Supremacy clause.

And who enforces that? Through what means?

The Supremacy Clause says that the Constitution, constitutional laws, and treaties are supreme over state laws. It does not make the person of the President inviolable. Senators and Representatives are privileged from arrest in certain circumstances; the President is not.

The constitution requires the president to faithfully execute the laws. The president being in Rikers due to state law interferes with his constitutional obligation and therefore supremacy clause.

Do you think that John Roberts will buy that rather broad interpretation of the Supremacy Clause?

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Or it could be Calvin Coolidge taking the oath in the parlor of his father's vacation home, before his father who was a justice of the peace.

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