Colorado Supreme Court yesterday became the first to declare former President Donald Trump ineligible to run for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. This removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, but the court immediately stayed its own order until the Supreme Court settles the issue for all time. With several Democratic operatives and allies trying this legal Hail Mary to remove the major threat to the party holding on to the Presidency, it was inevitable that SCOTUS would have to deal with the crack-brained theory eventually.
The reaction to the decision was something I’ve never seen before: the desperate Axis (the resistance, Democrats and the mainstream media) was giddy about the decision because it provides some hope that Joe Biden won’t have to face Trump in the 2024 election, while conservatives and Trump-supporting Republicans were high-fiving each other because they believe the decision provides smoking gun evidence that the Left is trying to win an election by keeping its most feared political opponent off the ballot “by any means necessary.” That certainly is the sense that was conveyed by Althouse’s mostly conservative (but not strongly Trump-supporting) commenters last night. Althouse called the 14th Amendment ploy a “wild legal theory.” Here are the first 19 comments (the 20th is too long, but it also rejects the decision…):
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“He wasn’t winning Colorado anyways…CO not thinking long game- what if he wins?”
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“Whatever it is, the constant barrage has to be coordinated. Now there is no doubt in my mind.”
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“Election interference, if there ever was such a beast, couldn’t be more blatant.”
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“Colorado is the new Berkeley. Who would have guessed that 20 years ago? The left is insidious and must be broken for good. On to SCOTUS…”
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“As a young Charles Bronson said in the Simpsons, “This ain’t over!”
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“Kickin’ n screamin’ the USSC will have to take this one on.”
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“You’re just begging me to vote for Trump with this crap, aren’t you? OK. You win. (Not that it matters; I live in a firmly blue state.)”
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“I’m a conservative who will fight to the death to defend states’ rights. But Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot demands an immediate reversal by the federal government.”
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“So instead of a Bill of Attainder declaring Trump guilty we have a Decision of Attainder?”
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“Remind me again when Trump was convicted of insurrection or sedition?”
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“Otherwise the people might actually vote for Trump. Presumably this is to save our Democracy.”
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“I can’t wait to disqualify Democrats who supported the Black Lives Matter insurrection with their incitement.”
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“The voters have to be prevented from voting for Trump……to protect democracy.”
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“The Colorado Supremes are gettin’ high on their own supply.”
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” …and since the SCOTUS believes the Trump lawsuits must be settled on the Democrats hurried timetable they will lack the capacity to consider any appeals of this decision until standinglachesmoot…”
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“For Our Democracy it’s important that our betters bar unsavory candidates from the ballot, just like in Iran.”
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“So dangerous. Are there any lines these people will not cross?”
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“This is a Trump voter creation machine”
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“Isn’t the “qualification” up to the voters? I thought we just went over this.”
It is hard to find anyone who thinks the ruling will stand. Prof. Turley wrote on “X” last night that SCOTUS might overrule the decision unanimously. (It should, but it won’t.) Even cautious analysts like the Election Law Blog hinted that affirming the Colorado ruling would be radical step for the Justices, writing, “In the end the legal issues are close but the political ramifications of disqualification would be enormous. Once again the Supreme Court is being thrust into the center of a U.S. presidential election. But unlike in 2000 the general political instability in the United States makes the situation now much more precarious.”
Translation: it’s a reckless, unethical and dangerous decision, and SCOTUS, at least a majority, will treat it as such.
Ethics Alarms 
Do you remember Maraxus?
Because I will never forget Maraxus.
Here is Maraxus, writing in support of prosecuting Rick Perry for abuse of power.
https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=161693&sid=bf1e964b2d36e629e063999b4953f65a
Back in 2014, this was an extremely fringe belief. There was no way Maraxus’s ideals could become mainstream.
Now it is clear that the Democratic Party adopted Maraxus’s ideals.
The Democratic Party is the party of Maraxus, now.
In the animated series Gargoyles, there is a character called Demona, whose schtick was vengeance against those who hurt her and her kind.
To deal with Maraxus, we must become the party of Demona!
Yes, I remember this asshat, because you won’t let us forget him. Fair enough, guys like him shouldn’t be forgotten unless we know they are dead. Yes, I also remember Demona, voiced by Star Trek, TNG’s Marina Sirtis as that gig was winding down. Arguably she was an even bigger villain than David Xanatos, since she had bigger plans and greater power.
She was destructive.
Buyt sometimes, destruction is precisely the point, despite its downsides, and it is sad it has come down to this.
If your goal is constructive, then any destruction you engage in has to be principled, with clear terms. “Here’s what we will and won’t do. Here’s what we want, and why we think we’re entitled to it.” You have to show you can be negotiated with. Otherwise you just look like a bigger threat.
In the eyes of the uneducated, an opponent who becomes violent is nothing more than a villain. Whatever else you do, you must educate them. Or at least surprise them by adhering to some standards you both share even when it’s disadvantageous. That’ll shake up their assumptions. In a war based on mistrust, an honorable enemy is the most devastating.
You win the war of ideas by presenting better ideas, not by copying bad ideas and pointing them in the other direction.
Unfortunately, EC, we are at the point on both sides where we believe that the other side must either convert, leave, or be killed. This is just one more step in that direction. By the way, it has also been my experience in life that those who bully and abuse others most hate and fear others turning their own tactics against them. It’s also been my experience that turning a mirror on someone else’s bad ideas or bad tactics just makes them angrier. Jerks and bullies may not understand or care to understand reasoning, but they understand a blow to the face or a twist of the arm beyond what the human body is meant to tolerate or someone grabbing their scrotum and twisting it around very well. It’s very easy to brush any kind of reason discussion aside with a shut up, but if you cause the other person pain they’re going to be saying ow.
I very much agree that if someone truly understands nothing but the language of violence and coercion, then they should be spoken to using violence, if only to persuade them to learn another language or keep quiet.
For exactly that reason, I assert that it is important that we ourselves learn more effective nonviolent languages. Otherwise we risk becoming those people who only know how to get their way through violence.
Many people resort to violence when they believe it is the only remaining option to protect them from what they fear. They way to stop those people from using violence isn’t to criticize their violence, or even to do violence to them. It’s to show them that there’s a better way to get what they want, even if it’s not exactly what they had in mind.
They’re looking for a way out. It doesn’t matter what you say or what you do to them. If the only way out that they see is through you, they’ll fight.
Anyone who knows how to use violence (or politics) effectively knows that if you want someone to stop fighting you, you have to present them with an avenue of retreat.
If the SCOTUS throws out the Colorado Supreme court decision could the four judges on that court be guilty of election interference even if they believe they were on firm legal ground?
I ask this because the attempts to overturn some dubious decisions by election officials and Secretaries of State – specifically in PA – are part of the effort to claim Trump tried to overturn the election.
In short, does the claim work both ways?
I am sure that judicial immunity insulates partisan judges so the question is probably moot.
“Colorado is the new Berkeley”
Someone help me…. Isn’t Berkeley in Colorado?
I guess there’s a Berkeley in Colorado, but the commenter means the famously left-leaning University.
Sooo, when do we start posting the Colorado justices’ home addresses on the internet? How about the attorneys who pushed for this? I’m just saying, given the attempt to rev up a pro-abortion Kristallnacht last year (which mostly fizzled, although Nicholas Roske actually tried to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh), why shouldn’t it go the other way this time out?
All ranting aside, this is putting the SCOTUS in the toughest place it’s been in since probably 2000. The law in this case is clearly against them for reasons already well known: Trump was never convicted of anything, this is a political issue, there isn’t enough evidence tying him to an insurrection, the statute was never intended to bar someone from the presidency, etc.
From a practical standpoint, they can’t possibly let this stand, or it’s going to be open season on presidential candidates in the courts. Every crackpot in the country is going to think this kind of lawsuit is justified, and state parties will use them to try to cement power for their own parties.
The justices chose NOT to get involved in the 2020 election, despite maybe some reasonable questions, probably in large part because Chief Justice Roberts’ primary concern is preserving the Court’s reputation in the long term. They sure as the devil are not going to affirm a crackpot decision by a partisan court (pretty much all the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats) barring a major presidential candidate from a contentious election. They would be asking for every presidential election going forward to ultimately need their validation and make themselves a de facto Politburo or council of ayatollahs without whose blessing no one could run. That was never their intended role, and they know it.
The real problem issue here is that, no matter which way the justices rule, they become the losers. I think it’s a given that Justices Thomas, Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are going to vote to reverse. I think Chief Justice Roberts will also, since voting to affirm would damage his reputation more. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ketanji-Brown are almost guaranteed to vote to affirm, although I do question whether Justice Kagan ultimately might not see it the other way, since she is not as big a political hack as the other two. If you think the Dobbs case was contentious, this one is going to be twice or three times so. Dobbs only sent a contentious question of law back to the states. This is going to open the way for the return of a president that a substantial portion of the left sees as the Antichrist. If folks on the left were willing to kill for abortion, how much more willing will they be to kill to stop the return of the man they hate? Then again, how willing might the right be to kill those who rule against their guy who they see as and now have reasonable evidence to believe to be the victim of a political witch hunt?
This country has turned a dangerous page, like it or not, and God help us if it reads the way it could read.
Berkeley neighborhood of Denver is adjacent to Lakeside Amusement Park, which seems appropriate. This has become a clown show and we can expect a roller coaster ride.
As I heard one pundit say last night (and no, it was on CNN, not Fox). This is like getting drunk at an office holiday party. Seems like a good idea at the time, but the next morning there are consequences.
Sometimes very bad consequences. It’s also like Pearl Harbor, taking your chance to run amuck in the hopes you’ll win before the other side can get its act together. Of course then you run the risk that you lose that race…
Kind of like a certain incident that took place on the 7th, but October instead of December.
Here is Ilya Somin’s take.
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/12/19/colorado-supreme-court-rules-trump-is-ineligible-for-the-presidency-under-section-3-of-the-14th-amendment/
TDS can rot even the best of brains. Somin was already advocating for this result.
You should read the comments; they are very enlightening!
For the Colorado Supreme Court to even consider making this kind of ruling that I believe is a clear bastardization of the Constitution is signature significant as to how far the USA has slid down the slippery slope into totalitarianism. The political left is intentionally poking the bear to see what they can get away with.
I think this ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court is a sign of really bad things yet to come.
I shared this article on Threads.
https://www.threads.net/@mejercit/post/C1FYvpZvtsv
Check out my profile and my posts and replies!
When I heard about this, my reaction was basically, well, they just had to go down that road, eh? They keep doing these things that boost Trump over and over, and then next November they are likely to look up and say “How could this possibly have happened?”
This is the slipperiest of slopes — once you do this with Trump, who (or what) will be next? All the Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election? The Republican party as an entity? What about the Texas Supreme Court? Or North Carolina, or Florida? Who will they then go after?
I cannot conceive of the US Supreme Court letting this stand. What I truly hope is that they will be able to craft a reversal such that they can get 7 or more justices concurring. Ideally unanimous. Surely these folks can see what a dangerous precedent this would set.
They won’t. Frankly, I wish there was a valid application of the 14th to get Trump out of the way and to stop him from running a third party campaign. But there isn’t.
Here is a comment I read on Ilya Somin’s article.
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/12/19/colorado-supreme-court-rules-trump-is-ineligible-for-the-presidency-under-section-3-of-the-14th-amendment/?comments=true#comment-10364698
– Z Crazy
Jack Marshall wrote, “Frankly, I wish there was a valid application of the 14th to get Trump out of the way and to stop him from running a third party campaign. But there isn’t.”
As I currently understand it, if a court somewhere in the USA were to try and a jury convict Trump of insurrection then the 14th Amendment could be used to ban Trump from ballots. Am I misunderstanding something?
…furthermore.
What if SOTUS included in their opinions of the Colorado Supreme Court ruling how the courts could use the 14th Amendment to ban Trump from ballots, essentially giving courts across the USA a roadmap to follow of how to ban Trump from ballots that SCOTUS would deem constitutional?
That’s why the Col. decision is nuts. They declared Trump guilty of a crime without his being convicted of a crime. The Supremes can toss out this case on the basis of due process alone and never get to its “merits” I don’t see how any Justice can avoid voting that way. One that does permanently labels herself a partisan hack. I doubt Kagan will do it. The other two—I dunno. I hope not.
As I read in comments on other posts, FJB could be disqualified for aiding and comforting the Taliban!
Imagine if I said I wish there was a valid application of law that would bar any candidate I disliked from the ballot and stop him or her from running a third party campaign. I would be seen as a threat to Democracy.
Lamenting the fact that there is not such a way validates the desire of the elites to do what they just did.
Such ideas are antithetical to a representative democracy. It is the height of conceit to determine which candidates are unsuitable and thus ineligible. That is exactly what the Colorado court did because they believed they were applying the law in a valid manner. This court played right into Putin’s narrative about American “Democracy”.
The best anyone can do is to campaign for your preferred candidate. The statement that says “I may disagree vehemently with your statements but I will fight to the death to allow you to make them” is appropriate here. In this case, I don’t want Trump to be the nominee but I will defend his right to run and win if he can.
Anything short of this is at best an oligarchy and at worst a dictatorship.
About the best take I’ve seen on this ruling comes from a singularly unlikely place — leftist law professor Lawrence Lessig writing in Slate, of all places, that the Supreme Court must unanimously overturn the Colorado Supreme Court. Money graf:
But even if one assumes that Section 3 was meant to be prospective, there is an obvious reason why the only two nationally elected officers would be excluded from its reach. It took mere moments after the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to see why, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick threatened to remove President Joe Biden from the Texas ballot as retribution. You see, with every other officer excluded under the provision, the state official or state court effecting that exclusion would feel the political costs of their decision alone.
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But if state officials from blue states can remove red state candidates, or vice versa, that state bears no cost. Instead, it gains a political victory. In the language of economics, the decision imposes an externality on the nation, which is exactly the kind of decision that states alone should not be making for other states. Such behavior is obvious to lead to a tit for tat and a breakdown of our entire electoral system. (My emphasis)
Read the whole thing. Lessig is anything but a Trump defender, but he seems to understand that a single state cannot impose a federal Constitutional provision on other states by affecting a national election with such a dramatic and unprecedented political action robed in a veil of legal reasoning. It is a direct attack on the federal system itself at a fundamental level, and as Luttig points out, is bound to spread.
Whether or not the Colorado justices voting for this outcome did so for purely partisan or purely altruistic reasons, the outcome is still an assault on the Republic by one state; applying an obscure, vague, and poorly written Civil War era amendment part clearly not intended for the present day.
Lessig is a screwball, but apparently a screwball with integrity. Good for him. Ethics hero.
Agreed.
It’s a stupid thought, I know. But…
Is it remotely possible the Colorado Supremes did this intentionally, including the “putting their own decision at “Stay” part,” as a means to put some of the many political insanity hot-button issues to rest in a hurry?
Yep, a stupid thought for sure. In the end, though, this absurd CO Supreme decision will have that effect.
That requires Democrats to think two steps ahead.
the past seven years belie that.
It is decisions like this that make it hard to respect the judicial system. It isn’t that this is a partisan decision, it is a blatantly partisan decision using an interpretation of the law so tortured that no one is safe from it. Not only is it such a blatantly partisan decision, they made it in broad daylight with no care that everyone KNOWS it is a blatantly partisan decision. This is like a witness against the Clintons being found dead, naked, handcuffed, stuffed into a duffel bag in the bathtub and the official cause of death is suicide. Everyone knows it isn’t suicide, you aren’t supposed to believe it was suicide. The ruling is made to let everyone know that they can do whatever they want and there isn’t anything that can stop them. How can anyone in Colorado look at this decision and think that their courts aren’t partisan? Why should anyone respect such a system? It is actions like this that break down society and the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. The Colorado courts are to justice what the New York Times is to journalism.
All they did was prove Trump was right about the rigged system and the two systems of justice in this country. Hunter Biden’s blatant disregard for a Congressional subpoena, supported by his attorney and a member of the Senate showed this quite wel (you don’t really think Garland is going to send a SWAT team after Hunter like he did the others). This utter corruption of the justice system, shown above and by all the incidents involving Black Live’s Matter, Trump’s presidency, school boards and conservative Catholics being targeted as domestic terrorists, etc is possibly the biggest threat to our society. Despite that, the only candidate who opposes this threat is Donald Trump.
Oh, and I have seen reports that as many as 30% of the people pouring over our Southern border right now are military aged Chinese men. How did that happen? How did they get there? Even the government propaganda press is admitting that they apprehended 24,000 Chinese at the border in the first 3 quarters, up from 2000 total in 2022, and they are allowing them in. Who is opposing this? The Democrats are just asking for more money to house them.
It started in 2014, with the prosecution of Rick Perry.
Michael McCrum should have been disbarred.
He was not.
This just out from Alan Dershowitz….
Colorado’s unconstitutional anti-Trump judicial power grab will trigger Republican retaliation and plunge the 2024 election into chaos
Here is Glenn Greenwald’s take.
https://rumble.com/v42dziu-sustem-update-show-202.html
I shared this article on various Usenet newsgroups.
https://groups.google.com/g/Talk.Politics.Guns/c/KReXbG_f9xI/m/cIn2_YqZAAAJ
None of the repliers could explain why Jack was wrong. Instead, all they could do is use racial slurs!
What? Referring to whom?