ChiGoose

“Jim Jordan covered up sexual abuse and is somehow incapable of wearing a suit coat, but he’s a totally trusty source whenever his lunatic rantings match my conspiracy of the moment” -Idiots.

The idea that 2020 was the same as what the Democrats did in 2016 is just false and relies on a misunderstanding of the facts. 2016: Some Democrats call for "faithless electors" which are duly elected electors to choose someone other than the winner of the popular vote in the state. 2020: Trump engages in a conspiracy to replace the duly elected electors with a slate of electors of his choosing. One of the purposes of the electoral college is so that it could act as an intermediate body to prevent a dangerous candidate from being elected. The founders were concerned that a candidate might whip up the masses and wanted the electors as a check against that. Had Trump tried to convince the actual electors to change their votes to him, that would have been similar to 2016. Instead, he and/or his advisors had them create fraudulent documents in an attempt to overthrow the election.

I don't think people should be charged with crimes without evidence. Thankfully, that's not what happened here. So, while the system is definitely in need of reform, the DoJ is not making things up to get political actors.

The charges were reduced because he's pleading guilty... That is pretty standard. DoJ charges person with crime. Person negotiates to plead to lesser crime. DoJ agrees, expensive trial is avoided, case closed. I think there are fair critiques to this process, but this is all in alignment with how things work across the country and his treatment is no different.

The average length of pretrial detention is 50-200 days: (from page 7) "Most directly, the amount of time that a person is detained if they are unable to afford bail is substantial, ranging from 50 to 200 days, depending on the felony offense. The pretrial detention period is also growing, compounding the costs to those who cannot afford bail." These guys were arrested on March 14th, which was 135 days ago. They are still within the average length for pretrial detention. It's not a political gulag, this is just how our system "works". Also, given the sheer number of people who were arrested in DC in conjunction with January 6th, it's likely that the volumes are overwhelming the system, leading to delays in hearings. If you want to argue that this is not how justice should work in America, that maybe we should have fewer people in pre-trial detention and maybe we should properly resource our courts to avoid lengthy delays for cases to be heard, then I think you'd find a lot of agreement from those on the political left.

I think we have enough evidence to charge several people close to Trump, and Trump himself, with conspiracy to defraud the United States. If a jury acquits him, then we *have* to accept that. Whether or not Garland has the stones to actually do it, remains another question.

The fake electors signed documents that they were the true electors and transmitted those documents to the national archive. That is fraud. There is no legal justification for their actions. Where the conspiracy to defraud comes into play is that some of Trump's advisors wanted the fake electors to take those actions so that when Pence rejects the certification, they can have Congress vote on which slates of electors to accept, hoping they would select the fake electors and overturn the election. Here is a timeline of the scheme: https://www.justsecurity.org/81939/timeline-false-alternate-slate-of-electors-scheme-donald-trump-and-his-close-associates/

I understand why everyone focuses on the violence of January 6th, but a charge under 18 U.S. Code § 2384 is probably the least likely charge due to the difficulty in proving intent. If Trump himself actually faces a charge, it is far more likely to be either 18 U.S. Code § 371 - Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States or 18 U.S. Code § 1505 - Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees. Given what we've seen in the reporting, it seems the DoJ is very interested in the fake electors scheme, which would likely fall under conspiracy to defraud the United States. All of that being said, I am skeptical that Merrick Garland would approve an indictment of Trump himself, even if it ends up being a slam dunk case.

She’s gotta check out some of the chip manufacturers to know which ones to buy stock in… err… include in the CHIPS bill…

I see we’ve gotten to the “make fun of someone for identifying themselves at an event for people with disabilities, including the visually impaired” part of the discourse. Truly, lovely people right here.

Yes, it is my opinion that allowing states to legislate rights is dangerous and in this case will result in increases of maternal morbidity, uncertainly in healthcare, and pave a nice slope for zealots to see how many things that Americans currently enjoy they can outlaw.

I think it’s fair to debate when life begins. That’s a reasonable thing to have differing opinions on. But to look at the current abortion law landscape, their effects, and the trends, and to think that they are moving in a direction that balances the rights of women and their healthcare against that of the fetus takes an incredible amount of credulity.

“Trust the process” is an incredibly belittling and asinine response. All day, every day on this board, everyone talks about how corrupt all politicians are. How they don’t care about the people, only their own power and money. And when we see something like a 10 year old rape victim having to cross state lines into Indiana, the actual reaction by politicians is for Indiana to pass tougher restricting and their AG to threaten to prosecute the doctor who performed the abortion. In Texas, we see doctors waiting until a woman’s life is in danger to treat a non-viable pregnancy, and women who were trying to start families are now giving up because it’s too risky under the laws just passed by the legislature. A long-sought victory for “pro-life” people is resulting in an increase in sterilizations. And in red states across the country, the reaction from politicians is to try to pass laws similar to those that resulted in these scenarios. Not prevent them, but to create more of them. And your response is to ignore all of reality, put your blinders on, bury your head in the sand, and pretend none of this is happening and it will all magically be solved at some point in the nebulous future by virtuous legislatures responding to the will of the people. How could anyone be convinced by that argument? It requires an insane amount of ignorance of reality.

No. In the tradition of the founders, the courts should try to draw the lines on where our rights are. By abdicating this and leaving it to the states without any guardrails, we are asking for terrible things to happen.

Yeah, and if states decide that rapists get to decide the mothers of their children even if the would-be mothers are children themselves, that’s fine! It’s the process working!

We had that compromise: bodily autonomy in first trimester, right of the baby in the third trimester and states could regulate in the second trimester.

So you, and solely you, get to determine when life begins?

This is a good question, I’ll take a stab at explaining it. The text of the constitution generally talks about what the government itself can or cannot do. It explains the boundaries of the government. However, at the time there was concern about the rights of the people themselves. So while the Constitution spoke to the government, the Bill of Rights was drafted to outline the rights of the people. This was controversial, because how could you possibly list every single right a person has? Many founders were concerned that future generations would interpret the Bill of Rights to be an exhaustive list of rights and that if something does not appear in its text, then it is not a right. The consequences of them not thinking of a right they believe in while drafting the amendments could be massive. The solution was the 9th amendment which states that just because a right isn’t listed in the text does not mean it doesn’t exist. This is where we’re find the unenumerated rights. It is further expounded through subsequent amendments like the 14th. The Bill of Rights explicitly states some important rights, but it is not exhaustive of all rights retained by the people. So I think it is fair to say that part of the Supreme Court’s job is to draw some lines in that gray area. And we can debate about where the best place is to draw that line. However, the argument that something isn’t a right simply because it doesn’t appear in the text of the constitution or its amendments is antithetical to what the founders intended. It’s hard to argue that something left to a legislature is a reliable right since it can easily be revoked by the legislature. I’d also encourage you to think about things that are not explicitly stated in the constitution that maybe you wouldn’t want to leave to the whims of politicians. Interracial marriage, privacy, even the right to travel, are all unenumerated rights not explicitly stated in the constitution. Do you think all of these should be left to politicians to decide, or would it be better for those rights to be established guardrails that legislatures cannot override?

This would come as a surprise to the authors of the 9th amendment and the Bills of Rights in general.

I’m beginning to feel bad ragging on you because I’m starting to think something might not be right with you given your demonstrated level of reading comprehension and grasp of reality. The Trump campaign knew he lost. His top advisors looked into the fraud claims and found nothing. His lawyers did the same. His DoJ leadership as well. They chased down everything and found nothing to show he had won or that widespread fraud had taken place. All of these allegations of mail in fraud and they could find no evidence to support them. When Trump would raise one of the conspiracies, they would explain to him that they had looked into it and there was nothing there. He would accept it and then ask about another one, which they had already debunked. Even his looniest of advisors generally knew there was no widespread fraud. John Eastman admitted that the plan for Pence was illegal before they pushed for it. When asked in court during one of the lawsuits, Giuliani specifically stated that they were not alleging fraud. The Trump campaign went 1-61 in court cases. Even when Trump appointed judges looked at the allegations (and yes, they even looked at the merits), they found nothing. In fact, some of the court filings by the Trump team were so bad and so baseless that the lawyers got sanctioned. At this point, to believe that the election was stolen, you would have to believe that: - Trump’s campaign, whose jobs depended on him winning were sabotaging him - Trump’s lawyers, whose jobs depended on him winning, were sabotaging him -Trump’s DoJ leadership, whose jobs depended on him winning, were sabotaging him -Every judge they went to, including the ones appointed by Trump were corrupt -Every person who testified about the election under oath was lying and only the people refusing to testify under oath are telling the truth -The people testifying under oath did so to destroy their careers and face threats, so they are not credible. The people refusing to testify under oath are making money off Trump supporters so they are more credible -The Democrats are so evil and immeasurably competent that they engineered a nationwide plan to steal the election but somehow forgot to do anything about the House and Senate seats (as well as state and local elections), resulting in them losing seats in the House and needing an improbable two wins in Georgia to have a tie Senate that would thwart most of their agenda. Not to mention putting the GOP in a position to continue to gerrymander the absolute hell out of a bunch of states. And finally, it is entirely possible for someone to do something for a reason and have that action also cause other things to happen. It is not true to say that every consequence of an action is the intended result of that action, and your inability to grasp that despite having it explained to you many times makes me wonder how anyone takes anything you say seriously.

Just because something isn’t the most important thing to every voter doesn’t mean it’s not important at all. And just because many voters may not care about something doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t care about it. Donald Trump and a small handful of cronies tried to overturn an election they knew he had lost. Now, we have candidates across the country running on that baseless lie that Trump’s campaign, lawyers, and DoJ leadership have all rejected. If these people are elected, then they will try to throw the 2024 election to their candidate regardless of whether or not that’s who the people voted for. So yeah, I think it matters.

In Ohio, the people trusted the process and now rapists get to choose the mother of their children. So we should all be happy that things have worked out well, right?

“If women live in deep red states, screw them! Make children carry pregnancies to term no matter the risk! That’s what the people want! Trust the process! America!” I have to admit, it’s not a very convincing argument. What other rights should we let legislatures decide? Interracial marriage? Access to contraceptives? Which religion people practice? I mean, I’m sure all of that would be fine so long as we “trust the process” right?

Sums it up better than I could:

I was directly responding to the post of throwing a brick, lighting a match, and taking down a statue. All of those (I think it’s implied in the first two) are destruction of property and would amount to crimes if it wasn’t your property. I never mentioned, referred to, or responded to anything about burning down black neighborhoods or looting. I don’t appreciate words being put in my mouth, but I get that things can get heated in political discussions and we bring our own biases in, coloring the words we read. I wanted to know if there was a line between types of property destruction or if it was simply the viewpoint or content of the speech of the person doing the destruction.