January 10, 2025

Our courts have proven themselves an inadequate defense of democracy

...and the rule of law.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision granting a combination of “absolute” and “presumptive” immunities that apply to all so-called “official” presidential acts, much of the focus has been on the Justice Dept.'s backpedaling - first from the initial indicting of Trump for directing the DOJ to commit crimes, and then from the indictments themselves after he was reelected.

But we've mostly ignored the wave of capitulation and outright obstruction of prosecuting Trump from judges and justices more engaged with finding loopholes in the prosecution than his defense team.

The capitulation seems almost complete as you listen to Judge Merchan adopt the perverse illogic of the Supreme Court dons in his decision to protect Trump from punishment like a mafia lieutenant afraid of getting bumped off for disobeying his boss' orders.

But the real disgrace was the way he blamed his own recalcitrance to punish Trump on the people who voted, as if the verdict wasn't dealt out by a jury of his peers, but is really a political decision up for popular vote in an election.

"The protections afforded the office of the president are not a mitigating factor," Merchan told Trump from the bench. " Ordinary citizens do not receive those legal protections. It is the office of the president that bestows those far-reaching protections to the office-holder. And it was a citizenry of this nation that recently decided that you should once again receive the benefits of those protections which include, among other things, the supremacy clause and presidential immunity."

The absolute cynicism in that disingenuous claim that it was the voter who tied his hands is compounded by his OWN decision to delay sentencing until after the election, knowing full well the consequence would be this faint of throwing up his hands like he's helpless to impose punishment.

We all watched as Trump displayed utter disregard for the court, in proceedings and when he left the courtroom; threatening the judge and his family, and showing zero remorse for the 34 felony counts he was found guilty of committing. But, still this judge wished the man who subverted an election and his courtroom, 'godspeed,' whatever that corruption of the term means in his weak and unconcerned mind.

Stating the obvious because, it's apparently not so obvious to many, prosecutions of Donald Trump have been routinely delayed by myriad, successive courts packed with republican and Trump-nominated judges and justices.

It made no difference to this judge that Trump was convicted by a jury in May 2024, or that he initially had set sentencing for July 11, more than enough time before we voted. Merchan dithered with ridiculous appeals and was so entranced with self serving whispering in Supreme Court rulings threatening to find immunity in the slightest of 'official acts' that he froze in place.

Like the multi-felony federal indictments that dropped in August 2023, this case should have been over and done before the election, but were deliberately delayed by judges and justices who have exclusive control over the scheduling of hearings, like we watched Judge Cannon manipulate like a Trump defense attorney as she worked toward a certain move to dismiss the charges altogether before a hearing.

So this isn't actually a case of just an institutional failure of the courts; it's a tyranny of justice orchestrated, albeit independently, in support of one party's political leader. All of them knew when the election would be held, and Trump compliant (mostly appeals) judges and justices advantaged themselves of that deadline to delay accountability for Trump until we voted with overtly political decisions and rulings.

We know that when interested and concerned, courts can act with speed and decisiveness; mostly against average citizens without the protections Donald Trump was afforded. That makes this not only a tyranny of justice, but a travesty, as well.

January 9, 2025

District Attorney Fani Willis has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to reverse her disqualification

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1
New filing: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to reverse her disqualification in Trump's election interference case.

"No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest."

Law & Crime @lawcrimenews · 1h
‘Overreach both upward and downward’: Fani Willis accuses appellate court of disregarding ‘decades of precedent’ in state supreme court bid to undo disqualification from Trump RICO case

“The majority’s opinion below overreached the Court of Appeals’ authority in all directions and warrants review on certiorari,” the petition for writ of certiorari filed Thursday morning begins. “The State respectfully requests that this Honorable Court grant certiorari in this case and correct the errors found in the majority opinion.”

The strongly-worded filing rubbishes the appellate court’s decision for creating “a new standard for disqualification unique to prosecutors,” and disregarding “decades of precedent” when Willis and her office were tossed for the “significant appearance of impropriety.”

“The opinion managed to overreach both upward and downward, invading the provinces of the trial court and this Court simultaneously,” the petition reads. “No Georgia court has ever identified or applied a standard for disqualification unique to prosecutors. No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest. And no Georgia court has ever reversed a trial court’s order declining to disqualify a prosecutor based solely on an appearance of impropriety.”

read: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/overreach-both-upward-and-downward-fani-willis-accuses-appellate-court-of-disregarding-decades-of-precedent-in-state-supreme-court-bid-to-undo-disqualification-from-trump-rico-case/

December 24, 2024

I was a cowboy Christmas of '67

...woke up one winter morning to find a cowboy outfit just my size under the Christmas tree, complete with fringe vest, fringed chaps, a red cowboy hat with a multi-colored rolled stitch around the brim, and two six-shooting pearl handled pistols which fired off rolls of red caps.

I wore that outfit everywhere until it wore out years later, storing all my cowboy gear at night in a smooth, rounded wooden chest by the window where I kept the rest of my toys hidden away until the next day arrived and I became a cowboy once more.

I almost didn't become a cowboy that year. Two days before Christmas, my older sister led me down to the cellar where the root beer Dad had made and bottled was stored, the same homemade brew that exploded one day and sliced his arm open so bad that Mom made me drive with him to the hospital. He had made his way there wincingly in our olive green Impala and I stood beside him as he got stitched up, just as he stood beside me when I broke my arm after he tried to straighten it out by himself and ended up racing us to the hospital in that same green Impala and I got my first plaster cast.

My sister Maria told me that day there was no Santa Claus, and she'd prove it to me in the basement. There behind the stacked cases of potentially explosive brew looked to be a pile of every toy we'd written Santa for, and more.

My sister looked triumphant, and, while I was a little excited to see the toys, I was a little bit crushed that she'd managed to spoil my visions of other-worldly magic and wonder with her selfish act of superiority; my know-it-all big sister beating me over the head with yet another tattle-tale truthing to shatter my childhood dreams.

"Nuh-uh,' I shot back.

"Uh-huh," she retorted - and before she could twist the knife any further, Mom appeared behind us and we scattered, denying we'd seen anything, but she'd heard everything. There was no punishment dished out for being down there, but it felt like I'd been caught trying to rob a bank.

That feeling of dread was still with me on Christmas Eve, and, no one was more excited and relieved to see the presents under the tree than I was. But before I could dive in, Dad called me over and said he was phoning Santa to tell him about my sister and me sneaking and peeking at presents. When he finished his strange conversation into the receiver, he told me Santa would forgive me 'this time,' and let me have my gifts.

It started out the most frightening Christmas Day ever in my life, and ended as the best one yet. It's really the only one I can remember well, except for the 'Christmas play' my sister wrote and organized around our piano for our parents in which I just stood there dumbfounded while my ballerina sister acted out her calculatingly prepared Christmas present which obviously designed to make me look like an ungrateful idiot.

Finally free from my penance, and after attacking every present and littering the living room with wrapping paper and ribbon, I quickly slipped into my new cowboy duds and went out back to play, popping off the red roll of caps through the pistols, then just banging the caps on the frozen ground with my shiny new pistol's pearl handles (no they didn't last long, not the caps, nor the pearl handles).


It's a cold and windy holiday this year, without any snow, but it's still a perfectly picturesque Christmas Eve with a dusting of sleet that fell just before dawn covering the street and sidewalks until it melted.

A pair of young deer are ambling around among the bushes I planted in the backyard, sheltering against the cold, even more of them likely to inch out one by one on Christmas morning to warm themselves in the dappling sun, taking refuge along with the fox who's waiting to pounce on the squirrels and birds who are gathering and feeding on the seed mix I scattered on the patio after I made coffee...

Here's a poem I wrote a while back... I wish everyone here a very merry Christmas! -ron

November 26, 2024

Many thanks to folks who couldn't be bothered to talk about the actual investigation and prosecution of Trump

...but spent all of the time they could have been working to convince voters to allow the process to continue, denigrating that legal process to the point of claiming there wasn't even an investigation.

Congrats to all the folks who spent their time deriding the prosecutors instead of the perps; bashing DOJ instead of the Trump-appointed judges and justices who obligingly set court dates on appeals to evidence seized as early as 2021 far enough into the future to allow the defendant to win and end his prosecutions.

Bravo to those who convinced enough Americans that nothing was being done to prosecute Trump, making it so they didn't bother to notice he was already in court before voters pulled the rug out.

Looking forward to when Jack Smith releases a report with all of the work DOJ did to prosecute Trump... anticipating all of the confusion over whether Garland critics can, nonetheless, use all of the stuff they claimed wasn't being done by his DOJ to then point to Trump's guilt.

Might be easier to just keep pretending none of it happened, and none of the evidence Garland gathered and fought through myriad courts, and dozens of republican judges and justices, to make available to use in grand juries and courtrooms actually exists.

My actual advice to these folks is to get as much denial about the prosecutions out their systems as possible before those historians everyone is talking about today -the ones who will supposedly judge Garland harshly in the future - get their hands on all of the facts and evidence in the final report and conclude DOJ actually had a prosecutable case; one that was brought forward extraordinarily fast for a high profile prosecution; and was ultimately upended by voters.

November 13, 2024

Republicans foisted a convicted criminal on the nation, again, but some are still insisting Democrats are the problem

...we may have different ways of expressing ourselves in our campaigns, but none of our candidates advocated anything near electing a Putin-loving, election-denying, twice-impeached insurrectionist to lord his convicted criminality over us with the prospect of pardoning all of his co-conspirators and roiling democracy.

No Democrat did that. No Democrat advocated that.

Here I am as a law abiding American wondering why that wasn't enough to support Democrats in this election, since almost the entire republican party invested their efforts in excusing and defending all of that anti-American degeneracy.

We're talking about this message or the other, when the most salient argument for Democrats and against republicans is right in front of us.

I mean, you can propose this or that to influence the voters who did this to the nation, but we're not talking about reason in that effort. It's actually sophistry to promote the notion that Democrats don't know how to speak to voters about policy.

In study after study, a majority of Americans have registered their support for most planks of our Democratic agenda, and this election was no different in generic polls that didn't attribute policies to parties or candidates.

The problem in this election is that a narrow majority of voters overlooked or dismissed the danger of placing a proven criminal willing to sell America out for flattery or personal favor in a position to lord it over us all.

No Democrat supported that. No Democrat voted for that. No Democrat will ever support putting a criminal in the White House. That principle difference represents the true dividing line between Americans now, not merely the legislative politics that many are presenting as the main impact or importance of this Trump victory.

Sure it's ultimately going to be about all of the people who will be impacted by this presidency, many who will lose their lives and livelihoods because of it, others who will struggle financially, many will lose even more protections that we've relied on for decades and decades. because of the wanton deviancy of republicans from what Democrats have been building up with our leadership for decades.

Republicans spend all of their political and elected time working to take things away from Americans. Democrats work to provide. The self-loathing vindictiveness from republicans against their own country can't be overstated. These people mean to take us all down in some kind of nihilist revolution. Always have, they've just never had this kind of 'permission structure' to accomplish it.

This emerging politics even comes with a predictable and familiar refrain that the danger from Trump was overstated and 'hyperbole,' as one new denizen of the dark age of fafo offered up to us today like butterscotch candy.

We've slipped past the barrier of democracy, into the early days of fascism, and we're intended to be frog-boiled until we're red or dead. My focus is still fixed on the convicted criminal that republicans have foisted on the nation, again, who intends to end us, and I'm standing firmly behind the party that intends to stand in their way and defeat them at every turn possible.

That's the message I want to hear from the party. Any less of an ultimate goal is frog-boiling.

November 6, 2024

Like it or not, presidents traditionally greatly influence the nation as a role model, or as an example

...what example will the nation follow as they witness a president who has been convicted of crimes - in the newly ascending president-elect's case, election fraud and an adjudication for what the judge termed as a rape committed by Donald Trump?

Imagine any young person with an underdeveloped sense of life's consequences and a shaky hold on the concept of right and wrong. What example with they take from seeing how Trump evades the law as he assumes the highest office in the land?

What will they aspire to as they reflect on their country and it's elected leader? Will they adopt a sense of invulnerability and lawlessness as our nation's most prominent leader is allowed to wield the power of the presidency, despite his conviction(s)?

What about the impunity for his criminality which the president-elect has been allowed to assume as he advances to the White House? No consequences.

Not to mention the effect on those who are convicted of far lesser crimes and are made accountable in sentences up to incarceration? There has never been equal judgment under the law in the U.S., and having an unrepentant convicted felon in the White House just makes that disparity all the more glaring and outrageously obvious between average citizens and the man who is supposed to uphold and defend the laws of the land.

I don't have young kids, but I would tell them in a heartbeat that they have no obligation, and should have no interest in respecting an office held by someone who doesn't respect it or them; by someone intent on ignoring the law to get his way, advantaged by a Supreme Court majority of republicans who insist that just assuming the office makes him immune against the judgments of our legal system, and to the law itself.

This isn't going to end well for obvious reasons, but the worst of it may be the influence of an actual criminal bully from the bully pulpit on our nation's youth and others who may be asking themselves, 'what is the value of the law to them in the shadow and influence of a president who refuses to abide by the same laws they are subject to?'

I'd tell my children that the nation's laws shouldn't transgress what would apply to the head of our government, but that they shouldn't expect to be granted such an immorality by their community and law enforcement.

At some point in their lives, they would realize what a crock of shit that is, and I'd agree with them. They would view the nation, including me, as enabling something immoral and wrong, and wonder at our seeming inability to make him accountable.

Will they see someone in that office they admire because of his ability to skirt the law with arrogance, or will they loath and disrespect adults in our voting generations for allowing it to happen?

No way we can paper this over for them.

November 5, 2024

MASSIVE crowd at Philadelphia Museum of Art where VP Harris is holding her last rally of the campaign (watch)

Victor Shi @Victorshi2020 3h
WOW. This is Philadelphia right now. There is no end in sight for this line to see Kamala Harris tonight. Thousands of people are already waiting and she doesn’t speak for another 5 hours. There is so much joy. People are singing and dancing and having a blast. This is amazing.








Brendan Scanland @b_scanlandTV 2h
Massive crowds making their way toward the Philadelphia Museum of Art where Kamala Harris will be speaking later this evening. On a press call this afternoon, the Harris campaign suggested today’s rallies across PA would be one of the largest GOTV events in history.





Jo @JoJoFromJerz
I am here in the great city of Philadelphia to witness Kamala Harris deliver her closing message to America and I cannot tell you how exited I am to be here right now. Because I KNOW she is going to win. I know right will prevail. If you haven’t done so yet- you have to #VoteKamala tomorrow!!





Mark Baquiran-Esposito @MarkBaquiran 4m
Whoah! This massive crowd! It didn’t even started yet😱 Let’s go @KamalaHarris !!!!






give the thread a little poke if you'll be watching this historic event along with me

November 4, 2024

Huge crowd packed in for VP Harris' second rally, at Carrie Blast Furnace near Pittsburgh, Pa. (watch rally)

KDKA @KDKA 1h
Preparations underway last night at the Carrie Blast Furnaces for campaign visit today from Vice President Harris on the eve of Election Day.




x.com/cedricfaiche/status/1853541134485660051




Julia Burdelski @JuliaBurdelski 12m
Doors are opening now for VP Kamala Harris’s rally at Carrie Blast Furnaces in Rankin.





Shane Dunlap @shanedunlap 38m
Crowds of supporters are filling in at the Carrie Blast Furnace just outside Pittsburgh, Pa. for a rally with VP Harris





David Bink•oski @BiNK_PA
The road to the White House goes through PA. Pittsburgh is Harris Country & We are ready to Win This.





Chris Potter @CPotterPgh 43m
Solid food truck game here.





Matheus Silva @math3usof10m
🇺🇸 Tudo pronto na Filadélfia para o comício final de Kamala Harris. Mas antes, a vice-presidente participa de outro comício em Pittsburgh.





Drew Fields @DrewFields1
In line at Harris rally tonight in Pittsburgh







give the thread a little poke to let me know you're watching along with me

November 4, 2024

VP Harris' first Pa. rally in Allentown is packed, hundreds in overflow room and spilling outside (watch)

Stephanie Sigafoos @ssigafoos
Kamala Harris in Allentown update: Memorial Hall is full, several hundred in an overflow room and additional overflow is now spilling outside.



(Overflow photo courtesy @DanJKroll)






Peter Hall m@PeteHallPA 1m
The line for the Harris rally at Muhlenberg College in Allentown stretches for several city blocks around the football stadium and through the campus.


https://x.com/gabegutierrez/status/1853475414020174093





Tom Shortell @TShortell 24m
Good morning from Muhlenberg College. VP Kamala Harris is expected here in a few hours. I'm still scoping out the line, but it's several blocks long and at minimum 1,000 people right now. Hard to say because the line is about 1/2 mile long...










Londyn, 5, attends the Kamala Harris rally at Muhlenberg College in Allentown on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024.



give the thread a poke if you're watching along with me

November 4, 2024

VP Harris made a stop today at Elam's Barber Shop in Pontiac, Michigan

best of kamala harris @archivekamala
@VP Harris made a stop at Elam's Barber Shop in Pontiac.



📸: @Jacquelyn_M


Vice President Harris is greeted Elam's barber shop owner Roland Elam Jr., left, and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., center, as she arrives for a roundtable discussion with local leaders at Elam's barber shop in Pontiac, Mich.





Vice President Harris greets Martha Roland, mother of Elam's barber shop owner Roland Elam Jr., as others look on before participating in a roundtable discussion with local leaders at Elam's barber shop





Children and onlookers react as a motorcade for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Harris drives past en route to Oakland County International Airport following a roundtable discussion with local leaders at Elam's barber shop, Sunday



Jacquelyn Martin, AP