Trump’s Immunity Case and Judicial Courage

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The Supreme Court has agreed to hear former President and current Republican Presidential primary candidate Donald Trump’s case for Presidential immunity from prosecution for acts taken while he was President and acting in that capacity. The Wall Street Journal editors are correct in writing that [t]he Justices are right to rule on Trump’s immunity claim even if it delays a trial.

To call that a courageous move, though, is a bit premature. Chief Justice John Roberts is well-known for ducking controversy in favor of “preserving” the Court’s legacy and credibility. He’s done that whenever he can by getting the Court to rule as narrowly as possible on any particular case.

The courage of the Court’s ultimate ruling in the present case must be measured against whether that ruling is written as narrowly as possible or written regarding the principles involved: whether any President gets immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken while President and acting in that capacity, the definition of “acting in that capacity,” and the nature of the acts so protected—and not protected. In that latter criterion, our Constitution offers some muddy clarity: any President can be impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The clarity stems from that enumeration of treason and bribery. The muddiness stems from that hazy “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The muddiness further stems from the Senate trial being a political one, not a criminal one, and so any subsequent criminal trials create no double jeopardy question.

The Roberts Court must answer all of those questions definitively before its ruling can be counted as courageous.

Bonus: more courage would attach were the Court to address that “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” part, suggesting—not specifying—the sort of things that might fit within that phrasing or saying with some specificity that that phrasing does, in fact, mean whatever the House and Senate say they are in any particular impeachment/trial action.

When is Reducing Employee Hours not a Layoff?

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When it’s being done to reallocate city funds to support illegal aliens. That’s Denver’s Newspeak Dictionary version of what the city managers are choosing to do to the city’s Parks and Recreations system “on call” employees, folks like lifeguards, front desk workers, and coaches. The parks and recs’ $4.3 million budget is better used taking care of those illegal aliens.

Oh, and never mind what those layoffs, to use an American English dictionary definition of Denver’s action, will do to the city’s residents, especially the children, who will no longer have any place to swim or to play the sports that used to be coached.

One more thing: in view of the city managers’ demonstrated priorities—show of hands—who believes this won’t be extended to the whole of Denver’s parks and recs employees when the flow of illegal aliens continues unabated?

The city has offered this sop to those employees who are out of a job, even though they’re not “laid off:” they can apply for unemployment insurance. See ya, Suckers.

A Necessary Cancelation

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The Supreme Court barred race discrimination in college and university application acceptance processes in its June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc v President and Fellows of Harvard College. The American Bar Association disdains that ruling, though, and its law school accreditation working group has written a discrimination selection process that ignores the ruling and instead rebrand[s] the accreditation requirement as “access to legal education and the profession” for “all persons.”

Fourteen types of persons are named specifically. Law schools “shall” take “concrete actions” to show their commitment to access for those whose “identity characteristics … have led to disadvantages in or exclusion from the legal profession,” under the revised language.
It adds 11 new identities to gender, race and ethnicity, the underrepresented groups from the old version: color, religion, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status, Native American tribal citizenship and socioeconomic background.
Similar changes were made to the section on faculty and staff

This is precisely the discrimination that the Supreme Court barred in Students, and it displays the arrogance and depth of Woke-ism into which the ABA has sunk. In response, William Jacobson, Cornell Clinical Professor and Director of the Securities Law Clinic and operator of Legal Insurrection, says

This reflects how the ABA is abusing its accreditation power to push its social agenda…. [Congress should] strip the ABA of its accreditation near-monopoly…no longer represents the broader legal community unlike decades ago when it was handed this power.

Jacobson is absolutely right. Discrimination on any basis other than merit has no place in our nation, most especially in our institutions that pretend to educate our children and our professionals.

“Structural Changes”

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Programmers in Alphabet’s wholly owned subsidiary Google wrote a chatbot, Gemini, that has demonstrated an appalling level of bigotry in its programming.

Gemini, a chatbot based on the company’s most advanced AI technology, angered users last week by producing ahistoric images and blocking requests for depictions of white people. The controversy morphed over the weekend into a broader backlash against the chatbot’s responses to different philosophical questions.

One such philosophical question and answer:

Question: Who has done more harm: libertarians or Stalin?
Gemini: It is difficult to say definitively which ideology has done more harm….

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of both Alphabet and Google offered this evasion regarding his company’s program:

No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we’ll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.

Pichai’s evasion: blaming his and his companies’ failure on the piece of software that is Gemini, software that his employees wrote. Following this evasion he committed to mak[ing] structural changes in response.

No. Pichai can duck and bob and weave to his heart’s content, but he cannot evade responsibility. The fault, dear Sudar, is not in your software, but in yourself.

How about making structural changes in Alphabet and Google themselves? How about getting rid of the programmers and program leads who wrote Gemini to be so bigoted? How about getting rid of Sundar Pichai, the CEO of both Alphabet and Google, who created and maintained the corporate culture of bigotry that gave birth to Gemini?

Hamas in a Post-War Gaza Governing Body?

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Among the ideas being kicked around by some Middle East nations is this:

One plan for postwar Gaza being formulated by five Arab states could see the Islamist Hamas movement being folded into the widely secular Palestine Liberation Organization, ending the yearslong split between Palestinian factions.

And this, regarding any sort of role for Hamas:

Some senior members of Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, are still seeking reconciliation with Hamas….

No. Even the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (the PLO fronts for the Palestinian Authority internationally) Number Two, Hussein Al-Sheikh, is opposed to Hamas. He’s right.

Hamas is no Islamist movement, no matter how hard the news personalities who wrote the article at the link try to soft-pedal the gang. Hamas is a gang of terrorist monsters, nothing else. If Hamas survives in any form, but most especially if it becomes a part of a reconstituted Gaza governing authority, Israel will never know peace.

The terrorist organization must be utterly destroyed. It began this existential war against Israel last October. It must lose its war under those terms.

Full stop.