The Rude Pundit: The Question that Justice Sonia Sotomayor Should Have Asked About Absolute Immunity for Presidents [View all]

[babylonsister]

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-question-that-justice-sonia.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
4/28/2024
The Question that Justice Sonia Sotomayor Should Have Asked About Absolute Immunity for Presidents


Last week's Supreme Court hearing in Trump v. United States (as accurate a case name as I've seen), aka "The One About Immunity from Prosecution," was, to put it mildly, a shitshow at the monkeyfuck factory. In a case that should never have been taken, at least 5 of the justices, all the men, seemed to actually believe that Donald Trump and, presumably (but who knows), every president should have some immunity from being charged and tried as a criminal from acts done while president. In this case, it's to try to get Trump out of any responsibility for the January 6 insurrection, which Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to get to trial. Frankly, the hearing was a disgrace, a disgusting display of a deviant ideology that was disposed of in the goddamned Declaration of Independence. These right-wing dickholes actually tried to come up with ways that laws don't apply to a president.

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See, what Sotomayor should have asked at that moment of panicky bullshit from Alito was "Could President Biden decide Justice Alito is corrupt and order that he be assassinated? Is that an official act for which he could get immunity?" Because then Sauer would have had to repeat his answer that it "could well be an official act" and then that puts things in fucking stark territory: A vote to uphold this insanity is a vote for your own murder.

That's the thing that annoys the shit out of me about the Supreme Court. Only rarely do the justices allow that their decisions might have an impact on themselves, or, you know, real people in general. I know that they're supposed to put that out of their heads, that they're supposed to concentrate on dry issues of the law (which is how, earlier in the week, a case about allowing abortions to save women's lives became a discussion of the fucking spending clause in the Constitution, even as the women on the court tried to assert the bloody reality of the situation). But this would have have been the perfect moment to remind some conservative motherfuckers that their own asses are on the line here.

Hell, Sotomayor could have gone scorched earth and asked, "Could President Biden decide that Justice Alito and his whole family need to be murdered for the good of the country as part of his duty to protect the nation and still be immune from prosecution? Could he order the killing of Justice Alito's grandchildren in order to end the Alito bloodline? Could he have Justice Thomas's wife, Ginni, a true enemy of democracy, eliminated?" What's the fucking limit? That's a legitimate question if you're going to entertain the completely irrational idea that a president is above the law.

See, all this shit has consequences. It's fucking time that the Supreme Court justices are asked how they would like the consequences of their decisions enacted on them. The rest of us sure as fuck will have to deal with them.

(Note: I know that Trump's lawyers said that the only way that said murderer/president might face some sanction is if they're impeached and convicted and thrown out of office. But they also argued in 2021 that Trump shouldn't be convicted in his second impeachment trial because he could face criminal charges after he's out of office. So, really, none of the process shit matters, and it's time we stop pretending that it does.)