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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29051 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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The Colorado Supreme Court holds:

A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot. The court stays its ruling until January 4, 2024, subject to any further appellate proceedings.

[recent related discussion, slightly older]

The Colorado Presidential Primary is scheduled for March 5th, for both parties. As the decision notes, January 4, 2024 is "the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot)"; while the matter is open to further stay should federal courts intervene, such an intervention would itself determine at least the state presidential primary.

How are the procedural protections? From the dissent:

As President Trump, argues and the Electors do not contest, section 1-1-113’s procedures do not provide common tools for complex fact-finding: preliminary evidentiary or pre-trial motions hearings, subpoena powers, basic discovery, depositions, and time for disclosure of witnesses and exhibits. This same concern was raised in Frazier; the then-Secretary argued that “it is impossible to fully litigate a complex constitutional issue within days or weeks, as is typical of a section 1-1-113 proceeding.”...

Despite clear requirements, the district court did not follow section 1-4-1204’s statutory timeline for section 1-1-113 claims. The proceeding below involved two delays that, respectively, violated (1) the requirement that the merits hearing be held within five days of the challenge being lodged, and (2) the requirement that the district court issue its order within forty-eight hours of the merits hearing.

And the other dissent:

Thus, based on its interpretation of Section Three, our court sanctions these makeshift proceedings employed by the district court below—which lacked basic discovery, the ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses, workable timeframes to adequately investigate and develop defenses, and the opportunity for a fair trial—to adjudicate a federal constitutional claim (a complicated one at that) masquerading as a run-of-the-mill state Election Code claim...

and

Even with the unauthorized statutory alterations made by the district court, the aggressive deadlines and procedures used nevertheless stripped the proceedings of many basic protections that normally accompany a civil trial, never mind a criminal trial. There was no basic discovery, no ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses, no workable timeframes to adequately investigate and develop defenses, and no final resolution of many legal issues affecting the court’s power to decide the Electors’ claim before the hearing on the merits.

There was no fair trial either: President Trump was not offered the opportunity to request a jury of his peers; experts opined about some of the facts surrounding the January 6 incident and theorized about the law, including as it relates to the interpretation and application of the Fourteenth Amendment generally and Section Three specifically; and the court received and considered a partial congressional report, the admissibility of which is not beyond reproach.

Did the Colorado Supreme Court provide a more serious and deep analysis of the First Amendment jurisprudence, at least?

The district court also credited the testimony of Professor Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, whom it had “qualified . . . as an expert in political extremism, including how extremists communicate, and how the events leading up to and including the January 6 attack relate to longstanding patterns of behavior and communication by political extremists.”

He testified, according to the court’s summary, that (1) “violent far-right extremists understood that [President] Trump’s calls to ‘fight,’ which most politicians would mean only symbolically, were, when spoken by [President] Trump, literal calls to violence by these groups, while [President] Trump’s statements negating that sentiment were insincere and existed to obfuscate and create plausible deniability,”

There are interpretations here other than that of the Russell Conjugation: that stochastic terrorism is limited to this tiny portion of space, or perhaps that shucks there just hasn't ever been some opportunity to worry about it ever before and they're tots going to consistently apply this across the political spectrum in the future. They are not particularly persuasive to me, from this expert.

Perhaps more damning, this is what the majority found a useful one to highlight : a sociology professor who has been playing this tune since 2017.

If you put a gun to my head, I'd bet that this is overturned, or stayed until moot. But that's not a metaphor I pick from dissimilarity.

That's the "cognitive elite" at work.

Edit: holy crap, for the record, at time of writing I didn't know that @naraburns had already made effectively the same comment down thread. Also how am I only just now realizing that Nara Burns was/is an ExoSquad reference?

Edit: holy crap, for the record, at time of writing I didn't know that @naraburns had already made effectively the same comment down thread.

By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.

Also how am I only just now realizing that Nara Burns was/is an ExoSquad reference?

Presumably you just haven't looked at my profile page or avatar in the last... 12 months? Prior to that, well, it is relatively obscure despite the cameos in 2018's Ready Player One (where both Marsh's Aerial Attack and Weston's Field Repair E-Frames make brief appearances).

By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.

So say we all.

Presumably you just haven't looked at my profile page or avatar in the last... 12 months?

I'd seen the avatar but just hadn't made the connection because as much as I was into that shit when I was 13 I hadn't really thought about it since. Apropo, I was recently helping clean-out/de-clutter my mom's basement and came across a Rubbermaid tote full of my old ExoSquad and Dino-Rider toys which we're fixing up and repurposing into Christmas gifts for the eldest. I expect there's probably some collector somewhere cringing at the thought but come on... Kid's already big mecha fan, and actually has a pretty good track record of taking care of his toys.

Apropo, I was recently helping clean-out/de-clutter my mom's basement and came across a Rubbermaid tote full of my old ExoSquad and Dino-Rider toys which we're fixing up and repurposing into Christmas gifts for the eldest. I expect there's probably some collector somewhere cringing at the thought but come on... Kid's already big mecha fan, and actually has a pretty good track record of taking care of his toys.

What a fun Christmas gift! Fasa v. Playmates Toys was actually one of the first IP cases to catch my interest (you may remember how that ended); the Robotech/ExoSquad crossover toys (especially, the Veritech Fighter) occupy a really interesting place at the intersection of fandom and licensing.

I do remember how that ended *hat tip*

I also remember lusting after the ExoSquad "Heavy Assault E-Frame" that was essentially a "MadCat" from BattleTech with the serial numbers filed off. It wasn't till years later that I realized that ExoSquad and BattleTech (along with the associated MechWarrior and MechAssault video games) were separate properties.

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