IN CONSTITUTION, DEMOCRATS, LAW, SUPREME COURT
You might think the Democrats would be able to keep it together, given that they control the presidency, the Senate, the federal bureaucracy, and the press, and are only a few seats away from controlling the House. But, for whatever reason, they have gone mad. Democrats have reached a fever pitch of hysteria that I doubt we have seen before in our history.
One example among many is their mental breakdown over the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, Trump v. United States. As I wrote here, that decision was moderate, middle of the road, and entirely predictable. While it addressed a novel issue, it is consistent with past Supreme Court decisions.
But to hear the Democrats tell it, the Court has unleashed anarchy and turned the president into a dictator. This kind of thing is typical:
Other Democrats have suggested that Biden has authority, under the Court’s decision, to assassinate the six members of the Court who comprised the majority. This is, of course, complete insanity. But to be fair, it is insanity that began with the three dissenting Democratic Party justices.
In a disgraceful dissent authored by Sonia Sotomayor and joined in by Democrat loyalists Kagan and Jackson, the minority deliberately fanned the flames of ignorance. Sotomayor wrote:
The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
It takes a special kind of dishonesty to read Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion as authorizing political assassination, military coups and bribery. The “Seal Team 6” reference is to a question that was asked during oral argument. Trump’s lawyer, arguing for the broadest possible immunity, said that a president would have to be impeached first, and then prosecuted criminally for such an act. But the Court’s majority didn’t adopt that theory; on the contrary, they rejected it in favor of a middle of the road rule.
What the majority opinion actually holds is:
[T]he nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.
Note that Sotomayor dishonestly fails to characterize the majority’s holding correctly. She claims that immunity attaches when the president “uses his official powers in any way,” such as by ordering a political assassination. But obviously, ordering assassinations, pulling off military coups, and taking bribes are not “actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” The president has no constitutional authority to order murders, carry out military coups or take bribes. On the contrary, murders and coups would be high crimes and misdemeanors, and the Constitution specifically calls out taking bribes as a ground for impeachment.
Do these justices seriously think that if a future president were to carry out a political assassination, and the case were to come before this Court’s majority, they would say, “Yes, that is what we had in mind. Political assassination is A-OK!” Of course not. These three are not intellectual giants, but they can’t possibly be that stupid.
The Democrats’ dissent is so dishonest, and so obviously a political rather than a judicial document, that it must sadden anyone who believes in the rule of law, and who has any respect for the Supreme Court as an institution. It was obviously intended to provide fodder to rile up Democratic voters so as to help Joe Biden (or whoever) win the 2024 election. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson should be ashamed of themselves, but it seems that on the Left, shame is an obsolete concept.
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