Friday, February 9, 2024

E.J. Dionne, of The Washington Post, gave it serious thought and decided it was correct to boot Trump off the ballot; maybe SCOTUS should give that a try

E.J Dionne, of The Washington Post
 

The Washigton Post's E.J. Dionne Jr., one of our top political columnists for more than 30 years, long has been one of my favorite reads. In his latest piece, Dionne shows what can happen when a smart person, who cares about our democracy and the rule of law, gives serious thought to the idea that Donald Trump should be removed from the presidential ballot for his actions as an insurrectionist on Jan. 6, 2021. Dionne once was suspect of the idea that Trump was disqualified under Section 3, 14th Amendment of he U.S. Constitution. But after fully applying his considerable knowledge and intellect to the issue, Dionne changed his mind. 

Maybe the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) should try a similar process because yesterday's opening arguments in the case of Trump v. Anderson sounded like an episode of "Sideshow Bob" and suggested the justices had not given the first serious thought to the facts and law of  the matter, possibly committing any number of crimes in the process. Yes, judges can, and do, commit crimes -- and yesterday's peculiar handling of oral arguments suggests to me that justices on the high court need to be investigated for their apparent determination to give Trump a free pass, despite his clear engagement in an insurrection that was televised live for millions of Americans to watch. In short, Trump v. Anderson should have involved the application of a simple provision of law that dates to the Civil War, but SCOTUS appears determined not to take the straight and narrow path -- and that could involve criminal conduct at the highest levels of our judicial system.That might sound alarmist on my part, but Americans should not discount the possibility that it happened. Here is another case of a federal judge stepping in deep doo-doo.

As for E.J. Dionne, he describes his epiphany re: the Trump case in a column titled "Why I changed my mind and think Trump should be thrown off the ballot." Dionne writes:

It is annoying when your political judgments come into conflict with what you decide is right. That’s what has happened to me on the question of whether Donald Trump should be barred from running for president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

The section disqualifies from office those who took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged “in insurrection or rebellion against the same” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

When a narrowly divided Colorado Supreme Court threw Trump off the state’s primary ballot in December on the basis of Section 3’s plain language, my initial reaction was, well, political — and skeptical.

In short, Dionne was thinking beyond the boundaries of a legal case, and that probably is what led him astray. But as he took a deeper dive on the case, he came out on the other side:

 


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