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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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You thinking it's absurd doesn't mean it's not important.

That it is absurd means it's not important. That it is absurd means there's at least 6 and maybe 7 members of the Supreme Court who are going to throw it out quickly if anyone manages to get a lower court ruling based on it.

I believe they'd have no objection to Trump or others presenting suits to argue that he is, in fact, eligible, if people try to remove him from ballots or take other actions, which might mitigate some of your concern about no formal determination?

No. A formal determination would involve either Congress declaring him attainted (which has other Constitutional problems) or some sort of criminal trial. If the clause is self-executing it means one can skip to actions removing him from the ballot without any prior determination that he has engaged in insurrection. That is, any judge can make a determination (probably by a preponderance of the evidence) with the same effects as impeachment. This is not what that clause was for.

I'm not going to get down in the weeds of parsing the arguments in a 126 page document about this; that's like trying to engage with Time Cube.

I saw this again after deciding to look through my most downvoted comments. You were right.

Hey great idea! Someone should try this. Then when Justice Sotomayor and Jackson dissent we can use Jack Smith’s theory on defrauding the US by pursuing bogus legal theories to jail Sotomayor and Jackson!

That it is absurd means it's not important. That it is absurd means there's at least 6 and maybe 7 members of the Supreme Court who are going to throw it out quickly if anyone manages to get a lower court ruling based on it.

There's already a lower court ruling based on the same legal theory: https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/D101CV202200473-griffin.pdf

It appears they got prevented from appealing to Federal court for lack of standing, the usual procedural nonsense. They won't be able to pull that off with Trump. It's still absurd.