I literally missed the Biden statement this evening…I wasn’t really interested in watching but I figured I’d tune in but by the time I did, he was a couple minutes gone. I don’t know the exact time but it was less than five minutes and he took no questions. I did see the video of him shuffling off afterwards and that is just the symbol of his Administration now…a hollow wreck of a man shuffling off to oblivion. Also: who the heck put the orange makeup on? They must have used a trowel. Our Orange Man may be Bad but at least he isn’t senile.
Now, as to the Court decision, itself: precisely what I expected from the start. The non-lunatic justices know enough history to know that if you start prosecuting former Presidents you’ll shortly have no former Presidents. Caesar crossed the Rubicon because his opponents proposed to prosecute him after his term as Governor of Gaul ended. It was kill them or be killed. That is the choice the Democrats want us to face in the future. The Supreme Court at least temporarily spared us that choice. The legal eagles will analyze it but my quick reading of it is that if you can accuse the President of a crime which is no related to official actions, knock yourself out. So, the President taking a bribe or some such. But, very broadly defined, if the President is just carrying out the powers of the office, you’ve got no case…and you can’t even use such actions as a predicate for a case (so, if the President were essentially to bribe a foreign leader to swing over to the US side in a conflict). The case is remanded and Judge and Prosecutor are going to have to figure out if any of the charges meet the Court’s definition. That pushes any trial beyond November…and some have written that it might take until 2026 to bring this to trial because there will be back and forth as the two sides argue details, possibly requiring one or more trips to the Supreme Court to sort it out.
Side note: Nixon is vindicated. It can be argued that his orders to staff to cover up Watergate were part of official actions. Bottom line, this wasn’t tested in 1974 because Ford pardoned Nixon.
I don’t know who’s idea it was to have Biden give a statement – he looked, as noted, terrible. Taking no questions was a bad idea, as well. Not that he could answer them but to have him trot out, slander the Court and then just wander off is very bad optics. I can only assume that the political professionals are being frozen out and this is now the Jill and Hunter show. They apparently believe they can animate this corpse sufficiently to prevail in November.
I doubt that will work – we’ve now got post-debate polling showing Trump ahead in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire and down just two in New Mexico(!). Nationally, the RCP average shows Trump up about two. There are rumors that Democrat donors are nervous, that plenty of operatives are in a funk – and a continuing rumor that Obama wants Biden out but Jill isn’t allowing him any access. That story is that Obama is willing to roll the dice with an open convention (probably on the theory that he can control such a thing and get his favored person the nomination – he’s probably right about this). Meanwhile, other rumors have Whitmer in Michigan convinced that Biden can’t win – and perhaps willing to make prophecy into reality because her best path to a 2028 nomination is a defeated Biden in 2024, thus taking Kamala pretty much out of the nomination picture.
I do lend some credence to the theory that Obama does want Joe gone – because at least part of the MSM is still attacking Biden. This indicates to me that at least some of the Democrat power structure is pressing for a Biden exit and that part of the MSM most favorable to Obama is falling in line. Keep an eye on Hillary – if she starts showing up in the media a lot then we might have a plot afoot to scratch Biden at the Convention if not before. Hillary would naturally be angling for the slot but I’m confident that Team Obama will thwart that. Main thing is that until all the Democrat leadership is on board, you’re going to see elements of the Democrat coalition pushing and pulling in different directions. And these fractures might continue right up to election day.
Blogs For Victory 
my quick reading of it is that if you can accuse the President of a crime which is no[t] related to official actions, knock yourself out. So, the President taking a bribe or some such.
I would take that to mean that after Trump is elected, he could have Obama prosecuted for bribery. Biden is on tape bragging about extorting Ukraine to the tune of a billion dollars in loan guarantees to have the prosecutor that was investigating Barisma Holdings, the energy company where Hunter Biden was on the Board. When pressed by the Ukrainians that, as Vice President, he didn’t have the power to make such a demand, he told them to call Obama. That’s not speculation – that’s on video.
And just as a side note; how stupid do you have to be to brag about committing extortion on video, and implicating your boss.
Yep. But, now a lot of that risk is gone for Pudding Brain. The Ruling spares him a lot – of course, not for things done before and between offices…certainly not the massive money laundering scheme his family has engaged in. I’m pretty sure that is what is keeping Hunter determined.
What about purposefully allowing millions of illegal immigrants into the country while he’s been President. Couldn’t Biden be prosecuted for that?
Biden Stupid. It’s a whole category
The entire Democrat agenda has been built on sand. Nothing but lies that are now all unraveling and Democrats politicians and activists are becoming more unhinged by the day. These are dangerous times because America now has a violent activist class in charge of the Country. A violent activist class that has been taught to hate this country, its founding, its charter, and its people. They label their opponent as the second coming of Hitler, so what is to stop them? If one honestly believed that Trump will “destroy democracy” and become a dictator, then why wouldn’t they use every means possible to eliminate him? Not that they haven’t already but there is still 6 months to go and I believe e it’s going to get worse. Democrats have lost all semblance of decency, rationality, and civility … they are physically attacking Jews, attacking the SC, attacking the Justices, and of course their favorite targets, MAGA supporters.
Make no mistake though, Biden will not go anywhere and he will be the candidate, Jill will make sure of that. She waited her entire life for this moment. So what do we do? BE BOLD. Be loud and vocal in your opposition to them and your support of Trump. Our house is built on rock so keep the Faith.
To answer Spook’s question, yes IMO both Biden and Mayorkas could be charged with human trafficking. There is a strong case for that.
Once we win, and we will, we need to immediately begin repairing the country, eliminate all the hysterics of the Democrat agenda, and shame those who perpetrated all of this madness since 2020, and that includes NeverTrumpers. In fact, NeverTrumpers are the most guilty in my opinion because they understand the destructiveness of the Democrat agenda, but allowed their personal hatred of one man to get in the way and support the decline of America. Those people should never have a public voice, and that include these two pieces of shit … Neil Cavuto and Bill Barr
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/neil-cavuto-yucks-it-up-bill-barr-after/
To answer Mark’s contention, I don’t think Nixon would have immunity against Watergate. IMO, that act of breaking into DNC HQ and retrieving an enemies list, was not within the “duties of the President”. But honestly Watergate pales in comparison to the unlawfulness of the Biden regime.
This is from the text of the actual SC decision:
The way I read that is if an official act, ie., forgiving student loan debt, is unconstitutional, immunity does not apply. ANYTHING that he does in an official capacity that is unconstitutional is not immune from subsequent prosecution.
And your conclusion not only makes sense, it is a sad commentary on the state of our nation that it even has to be stated. Any act by any government official that violates the Constitution should be, by definition, improper and unenforceable and subject to prosecution.
I looked up a couple of words. These have evidently not gotten enough political attention for Merriam-Weaver to redefine them in PC terms so I will use their definitions:
Conclusive: something that ends a debate or question by reason of irrefutability
Preclusive: to make impossible by necessary consequence
Interesting. Evidently the Court, in pedantic fashion, intended to say that this immunity not only applies to actions which are irrefutably legal or within his constitutional authority it also applies to actions intended to make an unconstitutional act “impossible by necessary consequence ” or, to cite the Collins Dictionary, the constitutional authority “to prevent the presence, existence, or occurrence of; make impossible” something potentially harmful to the nation.
It also refers back to his “constitutional authority”. Trump was extremely careful in this regard during his presidency, constantly consulting his legal staff to confirm that an action would fall within this constitutional authority. I’ve always been amazed at the hubris of the Left declaring Trump to be a “dictator” when his record was always one of stringent compliance with the restrictions of presidential powers.. while worshiping at the feet of such as Obama who openly mourned his inability to be a true dictator and bragged about his ability to rule with his “pen and phone” and the blatant tyranny of Biden in his Covid mandates.
The way I read that is if an official act, ie., forgiving student loan debt, is unconstitutional, immunity does not apply. ANYTHING that he does in an official capacity that is unconstitutional is not immune from subsequent prosecution.
I know we give the Lefties a hard time for relying on Wikipedia, but that is when they turn to it for biased contributions. People forget that it is populated by contributions from readers, who have the ability to edit other contributions or add their own. But having said that, it can be a source of excellent information, especially on subjects not currently contentious. So, from Wikipedia on presidential powers, Article 2, Section 3 of the United States Constitution. This is a compilation of opinions and rulings, and anyone who goes to the link can click on the enclosed links to see the origins of the comments.
Clause 5: Caring for the faithful execution of the law
The president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”[49] This clause in the Constitution imposes a duty on the president to enforce the laws of the United States and is called the Take Care Clause,[50] also known as the Faithful Execution Clause[51] or Faithfully Executed Clause.[52] This clause is meant to ensure that a law is faithfully executed by the president[50] even if he disagrees with the purpose of that law.[53] Addressing the North Carolina ratifying convention, William Maclaine declared that the Faithful Execution Clause was “one of the [Constitution’s] best provisions.”[51] If the president “takes care to see the laws faithfully executed, it will be more than is done in any government on the continent; for I will venture to say that our government, and those of the other states, are, with respect to the execution of the laws, in many respects mere ciphers.”[51] President George Washington interpreted this clause as imposing on him a unique duty to ensure the execution of federal law. Discussing a tax rebellion, Washington observed, “it is my duty to see the Laws executed: to permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to [that duty].”[51]
According to former United States Assistant Attorney General Walter E. Dellinger III, the Supreme Court and the Attorneys General have long interpreted the Take Care Clause to mean that the president has no inherent constitutional authority to suspend the enforcement of the laws, particularly of statutes.[54] The Take Care Clause demands that the president obey the law, the Supreme Court said in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, and repudiates any notion that he may dispense with the law’s execution.[55] In Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court explained how the president executes the law: “The Constitution does not leave to speculation who is to administer the laws enacted by Congress; the president, it says, “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Art. II, §3, personally and through officers whom he appoints (save for such inferior officers as Congress may authorize to be appointed by the “Courts of Law” or by “the Heads of Departments” with other presidential appointees), Art. II, §2.”[56]
The statement that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” is not an opinion but the actual wording in the Constitution, and the word “shall” is an imperative—-a specific duty delegated to the president, one might even say “conclusively”. Therefore, I think it can be argued that to refuse to take care that the laws be faithfully executed is a prosecutable offense that has no presidential immunity.
I hope you’re right on this and I’m wrong!
Well, you know me and my pedantic insistence on words meaning what they say
That’s probably already illegal in several States.
Or at least racist
(Haha you made me look! I actually looked up “pedantic” to see if I spelled/used it right!)
The Cambridge Dictionary expands quit a bit on the word “preclusive.”
I’ve read it several times, and I’m still not sure what it says or exactly what the President’s preclusive authority is. Mark – any thoughts?
No lawyer but I think that the Court was trying to tell the lower courts that, hey, it had better be serious and not in any way related to something a President can call an official action. This does protect Biden even though, for instance, his border policies clearly violate the Constitutional requirement that the President see to it that the laws are faithfully enforced…I was thinking we could nail him on that but reading the decision, I think that is off the board…it might be an asinine argument, but the argument could be made that somehow or another not enforcing the border laws is an Executive action and so we can’t indict.
OTOH, if it is found out that the President acted this way on, say, the advice of a family member who was bribed by the Cartels to do so…that would be criminal.
I don’t agree. No Executive Action can override the Constitution. Not even legislation can do that, though God knows Congress has tried many times. And I look at the legal absolute of the word “shall” in the actual words of the Constitution: shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed with the added emphasis of “faithfully”. That doesn’t seem to leave much wiggle room.
While President, George Washington observed, “it is my duty to see the Laws executed: to permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to” that duty.
At a minimum, the Clause means that the President may neither breach federal law nor order his or her subordinates to do so, for defiance cannot be considered faithful execution. The Constitution also incorporates the English bars on dispensing or suspending the law, with some supposing that the Clause itself prohibits both. Hence the Constitution itself never grants the President authority to either authorize private violations of the law (issue individualized dispensations) or nullify laws (suspend their operation).
Anyone else noticed how the Left has thrown Jonathan Turley under the proverbial bus? I would guess he would have described himself as a Progressive Democrat a decade ago. Now that he has decided to side with the Constitution instead of the Progressive agenda, the Left hates him. The same could actually be said of Donald Trump himself. He was a darling of the Left a decade or two ago.
Democrats are in the process of burning every bridge imaginable in their uncontrolled childish temper tantrum
While there is no doubt celebration among the hardcore radicals every time someone who has strayed from the orthodoxy is punished for doing so, I am sure that every time this happens a few think to themselves that they, too, can be treated this way if they dare to voice any opinion or belief that is not in complete lockstep with the rigid dogmas. Every time a rational thought enters the head of one of these people he has to face the reality that if he were to voice it, or even fail to openly support its opposite, he would face the same treatment.
My belief is that the more extreme a movement becomes, and the more demanding it is of absolute fealty, the more self-limiting it becomes as it decreases the number of those willing to submit to this level of control.
I always seem to go back to the Big Tent concept of the old GOP, where commitment to Constitutional governance was basically the price of admission, and once in the tent people could have a lot of different and sometimes even conflicting ideas and issues. The Republican Party started down that path of self-limitation and has seen the cost, and I think is starting to open itself up a little bit, but the Democrat Party, increasingly under the control of the rigid and dogmatic Left, is eating itself from the inside. I don’t think a party can be successful it if is based almost exclusively on freaks and hysterics and is wholly dependent on lies and propaganda. It can make a lot of noise but I think its actual effectiveness has to be limited.
Nextdoor is a local blog that is supposed to be about neighborhood news and things like notices of lost dogs or strangers prowling the streets. In just the last two weeks it has been flooded with posts that make me feel kind of like the character in a movie who starts to realize the people next door might be aliens. This is a typical post from a presumably real person and not a bot, as the site does try to screen for real people at real neighborhood addresses:
I am very impressed with Pete Buttigieg. His intelligence is off the charts. He has military experience. His ability to speak quietly with command of language and communication skills is impressive.”
And this gem of political analysis
Where Buttigieg impressed me most is how he took on the job with of Transportation Secretary with such enthusiasm, and developed a passion for all it entails. It wasn’t the job he interviewed for in 2020 (president), but he “bloomed where he was planted” and definitely made a name for himself. In his current position, we’ve been able to witness how he responds to sometimes difficult challenges. I’m glad there’s so much public facing exposure, as it’s serving as another type of “interview”: a working one.
Ahhh. They live among us. And they vote.
Can anyone believe for even a moment that these “opinons” are based on observation of Buttigieg and research into his past, including his stint a mayor? Of course not. These are so blatantly recycled “opinions” planted by the Complicit Agenda Media and/or the Buttigieg PR group (as if there is any difference). They are obedient recitations of scripts.
“President Biden, acting within the scope of his official duties, could dispatch the military to take out the conservative justices on the Court” – Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Or this example of sheer brilliance:
It’s like a race to the bottom of the Stupid Barrel!
ORANGE MAN BAD
ORANGER MAN BADDER
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-fc-2461&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-2461&hspart=fc¶m1=7¶m2=eJwtj8tugzAQRX%2FFy0QKMGPjB2YXIB9QddUoC2IcYvEUEFH162un1WzOvXNHM9O65prfPkoEoArE9XQbvc6yTHkMLWA0o8wL8%2Bd7crNHKoBrnhmlOZNUNxxBS95YbcBYba0AfedU%2BnhrJ59%2FrR5ftadh%2BnF9Xyc8BnLY3dhM%2B0rGjSDEkBNviDQn3yI9knqee7vbe%2Be2xG%2BJmSCH7rkN%2FYn0rrOktaabjsQ8l2mwCVIRQyiy1o96cf8j4eD1%2FWU4YLXLm9OqQEQJ0fmiZIRYVZGC4hKdM4ZIU1qUJYa8CWEKNI0AIwaf6J8GzXgsFfv6BXMgWnU%3D&p=FRIENDS+ROSS+SPRAY+TAN&type=fc_AC934C13286_s58_g_e_d032923_n9998_c999#id=3&vid=df14a0c3671bd3520b5686d03fbbfb16&action=click
ROFL
For some reason this link didn’t show with a thumbnail of the video, like most do, but it’s what came to mind when I saw that face.
As for it being due to “lighting” let’s look for that lighting expert at the next Academy Awards getting a statue for knowing how to light most of a face one way and the eyes and hairline another. Ain’t technology great?
Help me out here—during the NY *trial some other trial had either its verdict or its sentence tossed out because the judge had allowed testimony that was not relevant to the case. Now I can’t remember whose trial it was. I was thinking it was someone connected to Trump or maybe J6 but am drawing a blank. I just remember thinking it was pretty bold of Marchan to continue with the Daniels testimony while this was happening, before I remembered that (1) they would get their verdict anyway, by hook or by crook, and (2) all that mattered was the verdict, those two magical words “convicted felon”, even if it was overturned the next day.
Harvey Weinstein had testimony tossed out of his trial.
Thank you. I wondered why this didn’t make Marchan rethink his plan to have her testify about something not relevant to the charges. (Though, to be fair, the actual nature of the charges was pretty flexible and a work in progress.)
Well, according to what I have just been posting about the requirement for the president to enforce the law, the 1st Amendment includes the right to petition the government for redress of wrongs, the J6 rally was specifically to ask Congress to temporarily postpone certification to at least determine if there was a wrong to redress, Trump was still president and therefore merely enacting his delegated duty to enforce the law/right outlined in that Amendment. That was not “personal activity” but an official act.
It does look very much like all of the cases against Trump are done via the Immunity decision…even the documents case (which is drivel on other grounds, as well). Basically, and as per usual, Trump keeps his legal affairs in order. He hasn’t committed anything that can be classed as a crime.
I remember that Trump was assiduous in consulting his legal team for advice on the legality of what he did. I remember that comment being related to his Executive Orders, but it would make sense that he checked out the law regarding things like declassifying documents and what former presidents have taken with them.
I also think that the revelation of the fact that Trump did not pack up those documents but that they were assembled, packed and delivered to him under the Biden administration will have something to do with how the documents case is finally handled. He may have set aside those he wanted to take, but he did not do the packing and delivery. And I am pretty sure he personally took the Crossfire Hurricane information himself—another reason for the Left to panic about the idea of him getting back in charge of the Executive Office.
That’s another thing about him – of all the post-WWII Presidents, Trump has been the most diligently law-abiding. Biden, naturally, is the most law-breaking…but its all built up, Administration by Administration, for decades…increasingly ignoring the laws. Trump doesn’t. Of course, he’s the first President we’ve had with real private sector experience since Reagan, and Reagan’s business was entertainment, not making things. Prior to that, you have to go back to Coolidge for significant real-world experience. The rest have all been creatures to a greater or lesser degree of a privileged Ruling Class…they simply don’t understand how crucial it is that rules be obeyed.
Not sure if y’all saw this, but this is why we need Trump
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/rep-wesley-hunt-recounts-trumps-legendary-move-threatens/
Yep; he has been slandered all along.
He’s the normal man.
He’s the intelligent man.
He’s the man who knows how to deal with both friends and enemies.
Trump is not some super genius. He’s just normal. He’s one of us.
Spot on
Happy Birthday America.