Joshua Russell had pleaded guilty to a fed charge of making an interstate #threat against #Hobbs, a Dem who was AZ’s chief #elections officer in 2022 & is now the state’s gov.
Russell also wrote an apology letter to #Hobbs, saying #socialmedia & news stories had become another #addiction for him, but has since taken courses on #anger management & substance abuse.
“I am truly sorry for my actions. I’m not a violent man, I am a broken man. No one should be the target of such disrespectful behavior,”Russell told Hobbs in the letter.
"Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny." Paul said. "They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations. I, however, have limitations. In my desire to provide an ultimate protection for my people, I forbid a constitution.”
“The president cannot function, & the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence,” the brief said, “if the president faces #criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office.” [coups aren’t official acts]
The brief, #Trump’s main submission to the justices before the case is argued on April 25, continued to press an expansive understanding of #PresidentialImmunity, one that it said was required by the very structure of the #Constitution.
#SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito on Mon extended a temporary pause on a #Republican-backed #Texas#law allowing state law enforcement authorities to arrest people suspected of crossing the U.S.- Mexico #border illegally.
#Alito's action gives the justices more time to weigh a request by President Joe #Biden's admin to freeze a judicial order allowing the #Texas#law to take effect while its challenge proceeds in the lower courts. The admin has said the TX measure violates the U.S. #Constitution & federal law by interfering w/the U.S. govt's power to regulate #immigration.
Trump is promising a 'get out of jail free' card to people who act violently on his behalf. Imagine how someone hopped up on Right Wing propaganda and conspiracy theories might act if they have no fear of legal accountability and the hope of being hailed a hero by Trump."
Today in Labor History March 16, 1995: Mississippi finally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, banning chattel slavery, 130 years after it was officially ratified by the U.S. in 1865. However, Mississippi never formally notified the U.S. archivist of its belated decision. In other words, the 1995 ratification was unofficial and did not legally count. It would not be until February 7, 2013, 148 years later, that it would make its ratification of the amendment legal.
Here is Nina Simone performing her infamous song, Mississippi Goddam!
"The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.
In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning."
"Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy. The Supreme Court has now rendered that safety net a dead letter, effectively rescinding it as if it had never been enacted."
"The threat of a white Christian authoritarian government is no longer abstract, it is upon us – but the corporate media remains tongue-tied on the subject.
Reproductive rights are the most obvious target of the extreme right. In the Dobbs decision, six extremist justices destroyed half a century of progress for women’s rights, health care, and justice."
The hope of democracy lives as we forge new online democracies all over the world wide web, with 100's of millions of people participating in small, democratically organized groups.
🔴 Successfull dictator, Vladolf #Putin, has demonstrated the 'Kremlin Model' of transitionally taking over a country's #democracy via #elections, to #authoritarianism, to finally #dictatorship - and it's inspired others around the world to follow the #Kremlin Model - even in the #US
De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies (2023) #OpenAccess#Book by M. Reuchamps, J. Vrydagh and Y Welp (eds.).
"Citizens’ Assemblies (CAs) are flourishing around the world. Quite often composed of randomly selected citizens, CAs, arguably, come as a possible answer to contemporary democratic challenges. Democracies worldwide are indeed confronted with a series of disruptive phenomena such as a widespread perception of distrust and growing polarization as well as low performance. Many actors seek to reinvigorate democracy with citizen participation and deliberation. CAs are expected to have the potential to meet this twofold objective."
Matthew Sheffield, who was raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family and was once a right-wing Republican activist, explains why it's futile to try to reason with Trump's white Christian nationalist base, whose aim is to dominate and force us to dance to its theocratic tune, not to reason or to accept pluralistic democracy:
Are you willing to submit to democratic rule? Then start a democracy. Write a constitution and submit yourself to the will of an elected membership. Lead us back to democracy through your good example.
If you will agree to submit to the rule of a constitution, I will join you and we will rule together, along with anyone else who chooses to join us in our efforts to preserve and promote democratic rule.
@futurebird well this is good point. But, historically speaking, there was a gap of exactly 50 years between the ratification of the 15th and 19th Amendments to the US #constitution
So… this dunderhead wants to go back, it would seem, to no earlier than Feb of 1869 but no later than June of 1919.
Wow. He’s like smart ‘n stuff. Well except for that part where he denies the #holocaust happened.
"'We have had 38 percent of our county clerks step down since 2020,' [Colorado Secretary of State Jenna] Griswold said. 'We can’t allow people who would use intimidation or threats to win that battle.' From the Supreme Court came the reply: If you don’t allow those people to win, the Republican Party might very well hurt you next."
"Even before the Supreme Court practically nullified the 14th Amendment’s clause banning insurrectionists and their supporters from seeking federal office, another decision all but ensured that outcome. And it was made by a single justice: Clarence Thomas….
And he should have played no part in the case’s consideration."
"The Court’s conservative majority is clearly playing games. If hurrying helps Trump, they move with alacrity: They decided the Colorado ballot case in 25 days. If dawdling helps Trump, they slow down: The presidential-immunity case (a crackpot theory they should not have even taken up) won’t be heard until late April."
"The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson is a disaster for the American constitutional order. It paves the way for insurrectionists to run for and hold federal office despite the Constitution’s categorical language that disqualifies them."
"It decides questions that weren’t before the justices in this case in the first place, and the answers they gave will only immunize these and future insurrectionists from potential consequences. It blatantly twists text and history to reach a preferred outcome. In a case about the importance of oaths of office, the justices seem to have forgotten theirs."
"The message Americans should take home from this case is that when Justice Samuel Alito says, 'I do think the Constitution means something and that that meaning does not change,' what he means is that the Constitution changes to mean what he would like it to mean."
"This case reveals originalism as practiced by the justices for the fraud it actually is: a framework for justifying the results that the jurists handpicked by the conservative legal movement wish to reach. Americans should keep that in mind the next time the justices invoke originalism to impose their austere, selective vision of liberty on a public they insist must remain gratefully silent."
"Proponents of law and order – who, for decades, railed against judicial decisions that freed from criminal sanction suspected and convicted criminals based on due process rights that are unconnected to guilt or innocence – now celebrate the possibility that a contemporary Benedict Arnold may hold the highest office of the land."
"They rejoice that the supreme Court kept the former president on the ballot in all 50 states by relying on alleged constitutional rules that do not require Trump to defend himself against treason allegations. ...
Had Trump been a poor, young man of color, conservatives would have insisted that Trump rebut the evidence and findings that he is a traitor."