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I think it's okay to say "if you charge someone with 34 crimes it's not because they committed 34 crimes"
Anyone remember that young black guy who leapt on the old lady judge and went to town on her before they pulled him off? He got charged with fucking everything, almost the definition of having the book thrown at him. Expulsion of bodily fluids toward a government official is one I remember in particular because he happened to let some spit out of his mouth while he whaled on her for a few seconds.
Now, there are few people on the planet earth that are more against young black criminals whaling on old ladies than me. But the fact he was charged with 57 crimes instead of 1 felony assault charge for the assault he actually committed is a gross and obvious miscarriage of justice. It's absurd. It's banana republic shit to charge a guy with 57 felonies for jumping on an old lady and hitting her for a few seconds before being pulled off.
Oh, absolutely. I'm sort of a law anarchist at this point--the text of the law matters very little. Judges and lawyers have proved over and over again their willingness to creatively interpret laws to get whatever outcome they want, without consequences. Why should honest judges voluntarily limit themselves and abide by rules which other judges routinely ignore?
Trump legitimately did commit those crimes as far as I can tell. If he didn't, New York certainly has the power to write new laws which he is guilty of. To what extent must Trump abide by the legitimate rule of law of one state?
So far as I know, there is no law which prevents any state from writing a law intended to jail a presidential candidate. However, everyone recognizes this would be a terrible thing to do, so doubtless the supreme court would step in and fabricate some legal reasoning interpreting such a law as unconstitutional. It's harder to do so when, as in this case, the state does have a pretty good legal pretext to justify its legal decisions, and it's not extremely clear to everyone that the law was meant specifically to target one person.
We ceased to be a country of law a long time ago.
Legislative lawfare is prohibited (or at least made difficult) by Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
Very easy to circumvent. Just pass a very broad law and only prosecute political enemies (perhaps along with a host of other undesirables).
Which, again, I'm sure would be ruled unconstitutional somehow, but not in any principled way.
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Action starts at about 30 second mark
Homeboy was like a flying squirrel, should've sent his ass to the paratroopers instead of prison
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