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Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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Yeah, none of those things count. I don’t think Watergate would have counted, and that was leading a government arm in actual crimes against Americans. Trump’s stunt may or may not have counted, but without a conviction or even a criminal charge, there’s no way.

Yeah, none of those things count.

The text of the Fourteenth Amendment specifies "insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution of the United States. Conspiring (within the Executive Branch) to issue orders that violate its plain textual explicit separation of powers (which SCOTUS ruled those orders did) sounds at least as plausibly in violation as Trump "raising an army."

(Although this would probably effectively rule out any incumbent president running for re-election, to which I probably say yeschad.jpg)

I believe "the same" refers back to "the United States", not to "the Constitution". It makes no sense to speak of rebellion against a constiution, and barely more sense to refer to giving aid and comfort to enemies of the Constitution. And of course the original public meaning of the clause was that it meant rebellion against the US.

I would note, however, that your interpretation would be very bad for Trump; given that the J6 rioters were attempting to stop a Constitutionally prescribed procedure, the argument that they were rebelling against the Constitution is stronger than the argument that they were rebelling against the US.

This is exactly my point. In fact, I think the case against Biden is cleaner in that the eviction order was one of the most brazen “I know it’s illegal but I don’t care” moves done in decades.

Trump may very well believe that laws were broken and therefore his action on Jan 6 was actually consistent with his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Biden has no such excuse.

Trump’s stunt didn’t either. The constitutional provision was pretty clear that it was referring to raising an army and starting a war, not a badly planned protest that turned into a riot which may or may not have been a coup attempt.

Those are to my mind the same category as J6. Why do you think they are different or don’t count?