1/7. Right-wing justices postulate Trump's "immunity." The objection is that this makes him a king. Not so. It's much worse.
2/7. A king can be subject to law. Even George III was subject to law. The American Revolution was justified by the notion that he had overstepped the law.
3/7. This discussion of immunity is something else. The justices are not discussing any constitutional system at all, including a constitutional monarchy.
4/7. Justices are instead flirting with the idea that a single person can be outside any constitutional system, outside the rule of law as such.
5/7. What justices seem to find charismatic is dictatorship, specifically fascist dictatorship. It is making an exception for a person that attracts them.
6/7. That is the basis of Nazi legal theory (Carl Schmitt). The law and the constitution are just there so we can find the person, the Leader, the Führer, who breaks them, who makes an exception.
7/7. I am not claiming that right-wing justices read Schmitt, or anything else. Simply that their emotive affinity for fascist law is troubling.
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Biden and NYT. The problem with this very helpful report is that it implicitly reinforces the two-sides-to-each-story framing that is the underlying problem. 1/4
The real story is democracy, and the real question for NYT and everyone else is whether that framing is dominant. Some great reporting there, but general failure on the framing. 2/4
As a citizen, I couldn't care less who in the White House and who in the NYT has hurt feelings. I do care about who is doing their job well. The Biden administration, with mistakes of course, has done that. 3/4
1/3. Respect for the 101 Republicans who voted their conscience on Ukraine aid despite all the propaganda and pressure.
2/3. Pride in the 210 Democrats who voted yes (without a single no vote) on aid to Ukraine.
3/3. Appreciation for all the Members (@jamie_raskin, @jasmineforus, my own Rep. @rosadelauro, so many others) who could see and articulate Ukraine as an issue of justice.
3/6. Russian propagandists say they expect Johnson's visit to Trump this weekend to kill Ukraine aid once again. We shall see. There's a new nervous vibe here.
1/5. Predictably Putin has blamed Ukraine (see my thread from yesterday) for the terror attack in Moscow (for which ISIS claimed responsibility).
2/5. Putin's argument that the suspects were heading to Russian-Ukrainian border makes no sense – Russia has 20,000 km of borders, why would they head to the one place where Russian army and security forces are most concentrated?
3/5. Putin's claim is that suspects were stopped in Bryansk. Assuming this is true: from Moscow that's rather the route to Belarus.