Insurrections and rebellions against the Constitution of the United States — the kinds of attacks on the Constitution by former officers that disqualify them under Sec 3 of the 14th Amendment — are of two main kinds: the first involve attempts to rend the constitutional fabric of the Union horizontally, through secession (as in the 1860s, in the lead up to Fort Sumter);

1. 100 leading scholars of democracy warned yesterday that the laws being passed across the country to make voting harder, coupled with lies about who won in 2020 and whether our elections can be trusted, put America in grave risk of becoming a nation where a clique rules us all. 2. The loss of power to govern ourselves on the basis of free, and fair and elections will strip not only Black and Brown citizens but all citizens of a meaningful franchise, replace rule by laws with rule by rulers, and make everyone vulnerable to the whims of a select few.

Come gather 'round, people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin' Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'

1.Ken Gormley says his executive unpardoning idea “might sound strange, even extra-constitutional.” In fact, it wd be UNCONSTITUTIONAL even though I agree a self-pardon, if issued, should be judicially declared void if invoked as a defense to prosecution

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/… 2. The reason is that even a pardon that’s subject to invalidation by a court is an entitlement that can’t be taken from its holder without due process of law. See Amendment V.

1. Candidate DT violates federal criminal campaign finance laws by conspiring (as Individual 1) with his fixer, MC to get hush money through corporation A to a porn star, SD, to buy her silence & help him become POTUS months later. 2. As POTUS, he grants himself a “full and complete pardon for any federal crimes I may have committed in the past as to which the statute of limitations has not run.”

1. 40 days till Election Day. But “Election Day” is a dangerous misnomer. Congress set the first Tuesday after the first Monday every 4th November as the date for states using a popular election (which all 50 now do) to appoint Electors. 3 USC Sec.1. This year, that’s Nov. 3 2. The day Electors "give their Votes...shall be the same throughout the U.S.," Art. II, Sec.1 (Dec. 14 this year) but no provision of law says Electors, who must all be "appoint[ed] in such Manner as [State] Legislature[s] may direct," must all be appointed the same day.

This is the actual test that Trump brags about acing. He says the final few questions were “really hard.” That statement is Exhibit A that Trump is mentally disabled. Retweet if you find the test ridiculously easy 👇🏼

m.lasvegassun.com/news/2020/jul/… ALERT: This is the sweeping executive order Trump will invoke to patrol public spaces in the states he deems out of control. Get ready to take him to court every time he uses the order to suppress 1st Amendment “freedom of speech” & “peaceable assembly.”
whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…

1. The United States has had 121,000 deaths from Covid-19. With about 4% of the world’s population, that’s about 25% of the world’s deaths from this pandemic. That means over 100,000 of us (and counting) have died because of our government’s miserably bungled response. Go to # 2. 2. American exceptionalism surely can’t mean we’re uniquely susceptible to this 🦠 virus! Nor can this be a punishment for the original sins of slavery and genocide. Go to 3

The 5-4 DACA decision was an important victory, though not a permanent one, for the DREAMers, whose long-term status now becomes a campaign issue. It’s too bad that only Justice Sotomayor embraces the claim that the history surrounding DACA’s rescission by Trump established a plausible equal protection claim.

1. Today’s 6-3 triumph for the rights of homosexual and transgender people in Bostock v. Clayton County is a victory for justice and for reading laws as they were written rather than as some assumed or intended them to operate. Please read the rest of this thread. 2. Justice Gorsuch conducted a master class in interpreting legal texts when he patiently explained why the unexpressed intentions of a law’s authors or the conversational conventions of its users cannot be permitted to trump its unambiguous meaning. Go to #3:

There are millions of eye witnesses to the heartless murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. You don’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt to arrest and prosecute the officer we all saw with his knee on the immobilized victim’s neck as he repeatedly cried out “I can’t breathe” and called for his mother. What in the name of God are the local authorities waiting for? They’ve arrested CNN crews just doing their jobs as reporters but are still pondering whether to arrest the cold-blooded killer. Even the officers who stood by and didn’t lift a finger

If Trump’s May 28 executive order were to end up restricting the ability of private social media platforms like Twitter to tag tweets like his as misleading, it would violate not just the Communications Decency Act (CDA) but the First Amendment. See this thread for my analysis: Nothing the president or agencies like the FCC and FTC can legally do could successfully censor such private Internet comment, so the executive order (EO) that Trump has unfurled is a big nothingburger in terms of responding to what Twitter did to provoke Trump’s outrage.