FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER AT JUSTINIAN...

 

Last days of Nero

ROGER FITCH ESQ • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2020

Pardon me ... Trump's Dolchstosslegende ... Republicans' strong electoral showing down ballot ... Tejano vote ... Victory for Koch candidates ... Census case in Supreme Court ... The wreckage continues ... Oil leases in Alaska ... Last minute federal executions ... Roger Fitch, our man in Washington, reports 

"... in all of Anglo-American history, no monarch, royal governor, president, or other executive officer has tried to pardon himself ... the idea of a self-pardon is so antithetical to the constitutional structures of England and the United States ... that no one has ever had the effrontery to try it" - Just Security

"A self-pardon would be the ultimate act of constitutional onanism for a narcissistic President" - historian quoted in the New Yorker

•   •   •

It was a near-run thing. The attempted coup failed, but democracy got a scare.

"Shameless" has lost all meaning under Donald Trump, but many were still shocked by the loser's clumsy efforts to corrupt Republicans among Michigan's official election canvassers (they ultimately confirmed Biden's win). Georgia's governor rebuffed a seditious request that he call a special legislative session to overturn the state's popular vote, and subversive appeals to Republican legislators in Pennsylvania also failed.

Even after the last two states whose votes Trump contested had approved electors supporting Biden, far-fetched lawsuits continued, but on December 9, the safe harbour deadline for submitting electors passed. A last-minute supreme court appeal failed, but disgraced Texas AG Ken Paxton filed an absurd "motion" invoking the court's original jurisdiction.

Paxton, who's awaiting trial for securities fraud, was joined on cue and at public expense by Republican AGs of 17 states, a sign of how desperate Republicans are to annul a fair but uncongenial election result. 

Within days, the supreme court summarily threw out the case. What did Texas AG Paxton hope to get out of it? Perhaps a pardon by Trump for possible federal crimes, but that won't help him with the state felony charges.

Trump's four-year demolition derby, his dismantling of America's political system, is ending - capped by an election more outrageous than the infamous 1876 presidential election (more here), and there was fraud: Donald Trump's.

Aside from possible pardons, what's left is a final money-raising hustle, a grift by the greedy president, fleecing his credulous followers on his way out.  

•   •   •

READ THE REST HERE...

40 years ago today...

 

The Talking Dog interviews Sarah Mirk

 The dog has been off the interview cycle for too long but alas he is back. Sarah Mirk is the author of "Guantanamo Voices" and the Dog interviews her about her book and how she happened to write it. I for one will be picking up a copy later today. Read the interview here.

Killing US citizens without due process CORRECTED

 My country has long killed people from other countries. And in fact we have drone (and otherwise) killed our own citizens without most people even giving it a second thought. But, I think we enter a new universe when our government argues in court that killing our citizens without judicial oversight is ok.. 

My friend The Talking Dog reminded me that the killing of US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki because he was an alleged terrorist and the killing of his US citizen teenage son -- because he was the son of a terrorist -- did make its way into the US court system and was deemed to be just fine. You can read more about Mr. Al- Awlaki and his young son here and here . I have lots of posts on these two killings back in my archives from 2014. It was the grandfather of Al-Awlaki's son who brought the action here. So that was the Obama administration finding that it was just fine to kill US citizens if they are suspected of being terrorists or are related to someone suspected of being a terrorist. Outrageous in its own right. 

But now my criminal president has gone one step further and is now claiming the right to kill US citizens "when state secrets are involved"...  As I mentioned yesterday this is a caveat without meaning as the government has long claimed total bullshit as "state secrets." For example, could they kill someone who read an unredacted Mueller report? 

Shit, there are hundreds of thousands of us who have security clearances that allows us to learn "state secrets."  Are we all potential targets? Seems so....

" Drawing alarm at the D.C. Circuit, a lawyer for the United States argued Monday that the government has the power to kill its citizens without judicial oversight when state secrets are involved."

Read the rest here.

Can Biden finish the job Obama botched and finally close Guantanamo?

 Biden of course should close Guantanamo. Whether he will, and if so, how -- are important questions. I am providing a link to this suggestion (A path for renewing Guantanamo's closing... I do not agree with how the author describes the 40 men left but that is neither here nor there at this point. The place should be closed and it is time to have open discusssions about finally closing the place..

The talking dog speaks...once again

 This time the dog looks at our election and the winter heading our way in the good ole U S of A.

Read the latest here.

While we wait this out...

 

LET ME EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS DIFFERENT

 Several years ago -- actually 15 years ago -- I took on the representation of the first of my two clients at Guantanamo. Shortly after I took on that representation a man by the name of Cully Stimson decided that it would be fun (his word not mine) to go after the bottom line of the big firms who volunteered to represent men at Guantanamo. I wrote about Cully's idea of fun for Huffington Post (click here to read my article). I lamented the fact that I was not a big firm (only had two attorneys at the time!) so Cully really couldn't pick on me. 

The reason that what Cully was doing was so insidious was that we were all attorneys who were working without pay -- and in fact had to expend large sums of money for things like translators, travel, lodging etc. - in order to try to uphold our legal principles. 

So now we have some very large law firms making a ton of money to represent trump in frivolous lawsuits. These law suits are not trying to uphold our legal principles but in fact are destroying those very principles. It is wrong and they should be widely criticized for filing these frivolous cases. 

If you agree with me you can email these law firms yourself and express your dismay at their attempts to dismantle our rule of law. trump and his cronies -- which includes these two law firms -- are putting our country and our democracy at risk and they need to stop.

Email for Law Firm Calls

Jones Day: tmtabacchi@jonesday.com
King & Spaulding: zfardon@kslaw.com

You can use the language suggested below or even better -- come up with your own language:

Hey XYZ Law Firm, we know you are representing Trump and we want you to stop! He lost the election and he’s still trying to take votes away from Black and Brown people. You representing him is in direct opposition to the oath you took as lawyers. Stop helping Trump steal the election and cause chaos!

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian...

 

Post-election prospects

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Still an enormous number of hypnotised chooks in America ... What's on the cooker till January 20 ... The prospects of plunder during the interregnum ... The presidency as a private financial asset ... Republican judicial mischief ahead ... Corporate prosecutions on easy terms before the Democrats take over ... Roger Fitch in Washington rakes over the ruins 

"Shared psychosis or folie à millions has been well-documented ... contagion of symptoms dissipates when exposure to the primary person is reduced, which is why Donald Trump holds rallies like his life depended on them ... It is also the reason why he cannot leave the presidency - in addition to the possibility of prosecution" -
Yale psychiatrist. 

"Never before in US history has a president done such lasting damage to the fabric of American democracy in such a short amount of time ... The Mess Created By Trump Will Be with Us for Years." -
Der Spiegel

The long-fought election campaign is over, with America's unconventional president breaking laws to the last, even flouting federal court orders to process postal ballots. 

Despite predictions, the expected buyers' remorse among 2016 Donald Trump voters didn't happen, and more Americans than previously suspected were outed as Trump-supporters, arguably a case of mass psychosis or, as an Australian might say, hypnotised chooks. 

Even so, after four years of daylight robbery accompanied by oafish belligerence and bad manners, the president has been expelled, not by congress, but by voters, after his party spent $20 million on 300 lawsuits to deter them from voting. 

The initial election results favouring Joe Biden were predictably contested, using the game plan from the Republicans' notorious 2000 election-theft. As in the 2000 "Brooks Brothers Riot", a Republican rabble besieged vote-counting centres, now in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona rather than Florida.  

The strategy was the same: harass election authorities into pausing the count (preferably while you're ahead), and then invent a pretext to go to federal court. 

It's not likely to succeed, and the New Republic found the attempt farcical, but one law prof took it seriously.

After four long days of counting, the media (of all people) declared Joe Biden Jr the winner, but the incumbent persisted in election litigation, attacking (as expected) the ballots in states with Democrat governors but Republican legislatures, e.g. Pennsylvania, where Trump's lawyers were encouraged by helpful hints from conservative justices, especially Brett Kavanaugh. 

Even so, absent supreme court intervention, come January 20th, America's comprehensively-crooked president will be removed (perhaps forcefully) from the principal crime scene, and could even face jail, more here. Some think he's a flight risk, like other autocrats who lose elections.

Sadly, Mr Trump will not be taking the Republican senate with him, as Democrats netted only one of the three senators they need to take control, although January runoffs in Georgia could result in two more. Without the senate, the Democratic house's election-law reforms, designed to avoid future chaos such as that in 2020, are doomed. 

Real judicial reform, more here and here will also be off the table, and with a newly-minted two-thirds supreme court majority, Republicans can move on from executive power to judicial mischief. 

Americans must now endure, instead of a corrupt Republican administration, a Republican-subservient supreme court, bolstered by the alarming addition of the party loyalist Amy Coney Barrett, the first justice in 151 years to be confirmed without bipartisan support. 

READ THE REST HERE.

This chapter is over.

 But it will still be an ugly couple of months....

Georgia...

 He will probably not go quietly in the night but he will go. And it is so poetic that Georgia is the state that sealed our hope. Thank you John Lewis (RIP) and Stacey Abrams.

and now we wait...

 

h/o to mother jones...

The Final Days...

 yes, things are a bit stressful here in the U S of A.  so, with that I leave you this...

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian...

 

According to Le Monde, "Donald Trump torpille son premier débat". Torpedoing his debate was one way to describe a comprehensive disaster in which the president displayed his usual unbearable rudeness, continuously interrupting and insulting Biden, and lying ceaselessly. 

One writer wondered if it was Donald Trump's Senator McCarthy moment, another found it was a good debate for revealing the president's character.  

Trump was probably Covid-19 positive as his family and other hangers-on attended the debate, without face-masks, contrary to agreed rules. Within days, Trump's Covid hospitalisation engulfed the news and opinion. As the president's polls plunged and re-election prospects dimmed, the Lawfare blog posted helpful "Rules for Displacing an Ailing Presidential Candidate."

Most other news is very bad: as America's most vulnerable election approaches, the Reichstag is burning, and it's a six-alarm fire. Will the election finish the US? The Atlantic and the New Yorker are sounding the alarm. A constitutional coup is not impossible.

The Republican party seems afflicted by madness, not unlike the malignant normality of its candidate, a man who refuses to say he will accept the results of the election and whose personality traits portend disaster. He's a man who, if he loses, may not leave office, and could go to jail if he does. He has his own Praetorian guard, and his die-hard supporters, some violent, are already disrupting early voting.

As a minority party, Republicans must be ruthless in order to maintain office. Historically, they have had to cheat to win elections, and this year, it's all hands on deck to impede an honest election November 3rd.

The Republican-controlled states are doing their bit. The vote-suppressing Texas governor ordered each county to limit its drop-off  box for ballots to one location. Democratic-leaning Harris County (Houston), with 4.7 million residents and one sixth of Texas' population, will have a single drop-off point. 

In the swing states that Trump unexpectedly won four years ago, postal ballot sabotage is underway, and planning for polling-day intimidation, reminiscent of Mr Trump's 2016 black voter deterrence. 

READ THE REST HERE...

REST IN PEACE RUTH BADER GINSBURG

 A HERO OF THE HIGHEST CALIBER. WE MUST WIN THIS ELECTION TO PRESERVE HER LEGACY.  RUTH CRIED POWER TOO.