We Are Veering Closer to the Constitutional Edge

Immediately after the Supreme Court's ruling at the beginning of July last year, this page said,

"But now, this Court has bestowed immunity on the one potential president most likely to commit illegal acts."

Sure enough, Donald Trump has gone on to break so many laws it has become difficult to count. That this citizen, no law degree, writing the above from way west in North Carolina, foresaw what would obviously happen and the chief justice did not, makes him a fool. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion and engineered the 6-3 decision and now will reap what he has sown when Trump commits the ultimate crime of refusing to abide by a Court decision. The Court has tied its own hands by giving Trump the immunity to do so.

And Trump is grateful. After the joint session of Congress last month, he stepped off the stage to shake Roberts's hand saying, "Thank you , thank you, I won't forget it." (He later claimed that he was thanking Roberts for swearing him in on Inauguration Day. Sure. We're that dimwitted, he thinks).

It may be that it is dawning on the justices, who surely follow the lawless conduct of the new administration, that "they're not any safer from the chainsaw than the rest of us", as Heather Digby Parton writes at Salon.

D.C. District Court James Boasberg's requirement that the plane carrying members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and of MS-13 be returned to the U.S. and the Justice Department's refusal to cooperate is like to be the first case for the Supreme Court to deal with. The desirability of expelling immigrant gang members is undisputed, but our country prefers constitutional due process that at least determines that they are actual members of those gangs and not just people plucked off the street, identified only by tattoos. Donald Trump, who habitually creates a reality that suits his preconceptions, doesn't require proof. They are "criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people gang members, gang leaders", he concluded with no evidence apparent in an interview by Fox News's Laura Ingraham. "These were bad people That was a bad group of, as I say, hombres" he said aboard Air Force One, exhibiting his fluent command of Spanish.

Trump avers that the deportations are justified under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that allows the president to detain and deport citizens of "an enemy nation" without a hearing of any sort in wartime. But we are not at war. The Act was last used in 1942 when Japanese residents in the United States were herded into internment camps in the belief that some could be spies. History records that as a disgraceful action, but Trump is content to repeat it.

But then we were actually at war. The law requires war to be formally declared by Congress – think of Franklin Roosevelt going before Congress to make that request after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. "That's an invasion, they invaded our country", Trump said to Ingraham. "In that sense, this is war". A new definition of war to suit his actions.

Judge Boasberg had questions. Trump administration lawyers refused to answer them. That's new. Lawyers know to go before federal judges well prepared to answer likely questions else earn their disfavor, but Trump lawyers are showing a propensity to disregard any court interference. Our new attorney general, Pam Bondi, has novel interpretations of the law. She issued a statement saying, "The Government maintains that there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate". On Fox News she said,

"This judge has no right to ask those questions. The judge had no business, no power to do what he did. This judge had no right to do that."

A federal judge has no right to ask questions. That's worse than nonsense, but she dug herself deeper.

"The Government should not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations.”

There was nothing classified about where the deportation flights went, who was on them, or why. Sadists at Fox News gleefully and repeatedly showed video of the prisoners, bent into stress positions, heads being shaved, herded into El Salvador's notorious mega-prison, its Terrorism Confinement Center. The world saw that footage of the new United States. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele sassed the U.S. judiciary posting on X, “Oopsie…Too late”. Our distinguished Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, even promoted the tweet. Bondi on Fox again:

“This is an out-of-control judge. A federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy and he  can  :not  do  it”

Foreign policy? Trump now tweeting that Boasberg should be disbarred. In a manic tantrum, Trump tweeted:

"This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges' I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!"

That prompted a reaction from Chief Justice John Roberts:

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

The media made fuss over how unusual it was for a justice to speak out other than at court, and described in words such as "stern rebuke" and "sharp reprimand". In fact, it was timid. He could have reminded Trump how often he and his lawyers had availed themselves of the appellate process.

Media writers are paid to write and tend to insert their own words in place of longer quotes uttered by their subjects. As example, the short "IMPEACHED!!!" quote above. In the case of Trump, that practice shields from public view the disordered mind of the 47th president that the full text of his rampant diatribes, seen here, makes clear.
The judge is a "radical left lunatic", a "troublemaker and agitator" for calling a halt for review of a snatch-and-run operation conducted on a Friday night and weekend in the hopes of escaping notice. His delusional mind, at least in this constitutional republic, believes that for not having been elected, for not winning "ALL SEVEN SWING STATES" — and "by a lot!" — should deprive Judge Boasberg of any right — or clearly anyone else, for that matter — to question his actions. To feed a narcissism beyond what this writer ever thought humanly possible, everything must be supersized. His winning the popular vote by 1.5% becomes "AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE". His troubled mind needs to scream in all caps.

This has been going on for ten years. No one highlights his crazed ravings any more when we should be scared out of our wits that this man is once again president, given that he holds the nuclear power to end civilization. Ten years ago we already knew how sick he is. This publication and others reported then on psychiatrists who diagnosed his dangerous malignant narcissism, yet Americans elected him twice. The question is, Who is more insane?

Ten days ago Trump went to the Justice Department to be sure to break yet another norm, making the heavy-handed point that Justice is no longer hands-off for this president, no longer free to operate independently. Picture this: He's standing in the Great Hall of their headquarters to tell them how corrupt they had been, but according to his upside-down version of reality. Quick review: Led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, the department had done what it would have been corruptly derelict not to do: prosecute one Donald Trump who had tried to overthrow the government to keep himself in the presidency after losing the 2020 election, and then refusing to return hundreds of government documents, including some top secret, repeatedly claiming In his inverted reality world that the documents belonged to him according to the Presidential Records Act — exactly the opposite of the law enacted when President Richard Nixon sought to destroy records relating to his presidency.

This is what Justice Department lawyers and staffers were told about themselves — in a long quote that we complain the media abbreviates such that the public is left unaware:

"We're turning the page on four long years of corruption, weaponization and surrender to violent criminals. We're restoring fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law... So proud of the people in this room, but first, we must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls. Unfortunately in recent years a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations…They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff, and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States."

These are people that are bad people, really bad people.

”They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third world country. But in the end the thugs failed, and the truth won, freedom won, justice won, democracy won.”

Which is to say, Trump won. He beat every criminal rap.

”There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked, and that's what they were doing at a level that's never been seen before.”

Does that sound like the America of Joe Biden’s years when even the Supreme Court protected Trump? He called himself "the chief law enforcement officer in our country" — step aside, Ms.Bondi — who "will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred" in the Justice Department.

He tells the very people who had performed the Herculean job of identifying and prosecuting some 1,500 of the mob who had staged the insurrection at the Capitol that “I pardoned hundreds of political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated.”

Strangest of all, decrying the media's “horrible treatment” of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who had slowed his documents case to a crawl to insure it would never go to trial, were his lamentations that…

“It's sad what they do to other judges, but they do it all the time with judges. They're in a position, they can't really fight back really very well… a lot of the judges that I had, if you look at them, they take tremendous abuse in The New York Times and The Washington Post, all of the different networks… These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal. It's influencing judges and it's really changing law and it just cannot be legal. I don't believe it's legal and they do it in total coordination with each other.“

To this Heather Digby Parton, doubtless agape, wrote:

”By this time you are probably screaming to yourself, ‘Is he kidding?’ The man who so gravely insulted, threatened and degraded nearly every judge he came in front of they had to throw gag orders on him to keep their families and courthouse staff safe from his rabid followers is saying it should be illegal to criticize judges?"

For the rest of his speech, he went off script and it became a shambles difficult to follow even with benefit of a transcript. Running through his talk was a long, irrelevant, peculiar diversion about basketball coach Bobby Knight which must have had his audience thinking Trmp is possessed of a more serious mental problem than Joe Biden ever exhibited. It was a return to the incoherent ramblings of his campaign rallies and an unnerving reminder that that we at grave risk of his chaotic mind. And when you thought it was going to stop, it just went on and on some more.