OK, let's start talking about the House's 80 page brief on impeachment. It really is an incredibly well-done piece of work. There are some things I'd do differently and some pieces I didn't love, but overall, it's very very good.
Again - this thread will happen in fits and starts. I'm swamped at work and this will come in 10-15 minute chunks as I take a break
Let's start by taking a look at the table of contents. After a 4-page intro (that's relatively long, don't love it), the brief spends a solid 30 pages walking through the facts underlying the impeachment - and, the subheadings tell us, tying in Trump's general refusal to accept
This is the rare occasion where I disagree with Ken on defamation policy. True defamation involving a public figure is vanishingly rare, and everyone should err on the side of not chilling core political speech.
That means you put on your grown-up pants and suck it up a lot. BUT
A political culture that embraces anyone saying anything at all at any time, completely without regard for truth and despite knowing it was false, is toxic and damaging to the country. And without consequences, it will continue to proliferate
Everything in that first tweet is still true, and that means that if there's any rational defense at all, you should err on the side of not suing folks like Rudy for being political hacks.
But insane conspiracy theories even they don't believe, deployed to rally the gullible?
The Constitution unequivocally allowed to the house to impeach president Trump. Nobody disputes that.
The Constitution also unequivocally provides that the Senate SHALL try all impeachments
It's not discretionary.
Also, impeachment is a POLITICAL solution to a POLITICAL problem. There are some subtle signs of that in the Constitution, like, I don't know, the power to impeach being handed to one political body (the house, not a prosecutor), the trial to another (the Senate not the courts),
This is NOT something you ever want to see as a litigator. It means that the judge chose to read your pleadings and thought that they were so jacked up, somehow that she wants you in her courtroom, right goddamn now, to explain what the hell you were thinking
That's one way to describe the Plaintiffs' blind, repeated, flailing attempts at submitting a motion for a TRO, I guess. Seriously, if you haven't followed these filings, they're SPECTACULAR
If sex for purposes of this rule is based on "reproductive biology and genetics at birth" no "genital exam" conducting on someone in school could ever be relevant, because it wouldn't shed light on "reproductive biology AT BIRTH"
I get that there's a "how would you know to enforce this" issue, here, but the only conceivable way would be based on the birth certificate. No school-age exam could ever have relevance