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Friday 19th of April 2024
2016 Presidential election
Fuck the law.
I don't give a fuck about the law.
I want my fucking money.
Shut it down.
Donald Trump,
reacting to the news that his campaign was
paying for its transition team members,
as is required by federal law
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2018 midterm elections
They [people] should vote
against Republicans in a spirit that is,
if you will, prepartisan and prepolitical.
Their attitude should be: The rule of law
is a threshold value in American politics,
and a party that endangers this value
disqualifies itself, period.
In other words, under certain peculiar
and deeply regrettable circumstances,
sophisticated, independent-minded
voters need to act as if they were
dumb-ass partisans.
Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes,
“Boycott the Republican Party”
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2020 Presidential election
The only thing worse would be
not charging him.
Barbara McQuade,
"United States v. Donald Trump,"
on the failure to criminally charge Trump with
conspiracy to defraud the United States and
obstruction of an official proceeding for
pressuring Pence to overturn the election
due to fears about potential negative
consequences for the country, such as
violent protests, civil unrest, loss of life,
or an acquittal, which would embolden
other domestic wannabe autocrats
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2020 Presidential election
The subpoenaed House Member's
willful failure to comply with
a congressional subpoena
reflects discredit on Congress.
If left unpunished, such behavior
undermines Congress's longstanding
power to investigate in support of its
lawmaking authority and suggests that
Members of Congress may disregard
legal obligations that apply
to ordinary citizens.
January 6 Commitee Report - Summary,
referral of members Kevin McCarthy,
Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs
to the House Ethics Committee for
failure to comply with subpoenas
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2020 Presidential election
What I'm asking you to do is
just say that the election was corrupt
and leave the rest to me
and the Republican congressmen.
Donald Trump,
to acting attorney general Richard Donoghue
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Affirmative action
With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness,
today, the majority pulls the ripcord
and announces “colorblindness for all”
by legal fiat.
But deeming race irrelevant in law
does not make it so in life.
And having so detached itself from
this country’s actual past and present
experiences, the Court has now been lured
into interfering with the crucial work
that UNC and other institutions
of higher learning are doing to
solve America's real-world problems.
Katanji Brown Jackson, dissent in
Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.
Harvard College and University of North Carolina
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Alabama Republicans say
The age of consent is fourteen, period.
Or whichever comes first.
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Authoritarianism
The country wants the President
to be “one of us” who bears the
same responsibilities of citizenship
that all share.
But I believe that the President
should be excused from some of the
burdens of ordinary citizenship while
serving in office. … the indictment and
trial of a sitting President, moreover,
would cripple the federal government,
rendering it unable to function with
credibility in either the international
or domestic arenas.
Brett Kavanauhg,
arguing presidents should be above the law
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Autocrats say
For my friends, everything.
For my enemies, the law.
Óscar Raymundo Benevides,
Peruvian dictator, 1933-1939
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Bullshitters say
In the United States of America
we do not prosecute people
based on politics
and we don't cut them a break
based on politics either.
William Barr, Trump's fixer,
who interfered in Michael Flynn's case,
Roger Stone's case, Rudy Guiliani's case,
the Mueller investigation, etc.
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Bullshitters say
President Trump
has always stood for law and order,
and protecting the Constitution.
Steven Cheung
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By the numbers
Percentage of students
at the top 30 U.S. law schools
who are Asian-American:
10
Of elected prosecutors who are:
0.2
Harper's Index, October 2017
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Cocks of the walk say
I am pleased to inform you that
I have just granted a full pardon
to 85 year old American patriot
Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
He kept Arizona safe!
Donald Trump,
7:00 PM - 25 Aug 2017,
displaying his eagerness to
pander to his base's prejudices
and enough deep-rooted contempt for
judges, the rule of law, and the Constitution
to act as a warning that he'll pardon
any associate or family member
convicted of any crime,
however egregious
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Corporations
All laws on corporations, on taxation,
on trusts, wills, descent, and the like,
need examination and extensive change.
This is a government of the people,
by the people, and for the people
no longer.
It is a government of corporations,
by corporations, and for corporations.
Rutherford B. Hayes
(1822-1893)
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Dead-in-the-heads say
The defendants' actions were motivated by
a personal vendetta and a desire to gain
fame, notoriety, acclaim and a financial
windfall and were further intended
to advance their political agenda.
The brazenness of the defendants' actions
cannot be understated.
From page one of Donald Trump's lawsuit
against Mary Trump, the New York Times and
its three reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize
for reporting on his history of tax dodges —
for “no less” than than $100 million each
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Dead-in-the-heads say
God is the only source of
our law, liberty and government.
Roy Moore
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Dead-in-the-heads say
I hadn't had a chance to
go through all the boxes.
It's a long tedious job,
it takes a long time
— which I was prepared to do,
but I have a very busy life.
I've had a very busy life.
Donald Trump,
trotting out his "I'm-a-busy-guy" defense
for not returning government documents
to the governmet after he left office
and was subpoenaed to do so
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Dead-in-the-heads say
[It] reflects the very reason
we voted President Trump
into the Oval Office,
to uphold the rule of law.
Republican Congressman Paul Gosar,
commenting on Trump's pardon of Joe Arpaio,
who had been convicted of criminal contempt
for refusing to obey a court order to stop
racially profiling Latinos, both of which
Gosar and his ilk must approve of
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Dead-in-the-heads
Many lawyers and top law firms want to
represent me in the Russia case…don't
believe the Fake News narrative that it is
hard to find a lawyer who wants to take
this on. Fame & fortune will NEVER be
turned down by a lawyer, though some
are conflicted. Problem is that a new……
……lawyer or law firm will take months
to get up to speed (if for no other reason
than they can bill more), which is unfair
in our great country - and I am very
happy with my existing team. Besides,
there was NO COLLUSION with Russia,
except by crooked Hillary and the Dems!
Donald Trump,
7:40 AM + 7:49 AM - Mar 25, 2018
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Dead-in-the-heads say
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now 85 years old
and after more than 50 years of
admirable service to our nation,
he is [a] worthy candidate for
a Presidential pardon.
White House press release announcing
— prior to Arpaio's sentencing, without
him having shown remorse for his crimes,
and without the standard prior review
by the Department of Justice —
that Trump granted a full pardon to Joe Arpaio,
the virulently xenophobic and racist deposed
sheriff of Maricopa Country, Arizona, who was
convicted of contempt of court for refusing to
comply with a judge's order for 17 months
to stop racially profiling Latinos, which he
did for 24 years as a thug with a badge
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Dead-in-the-heads say
There are communities under
Sharia law right now in our country …
in Illinois, Indiana – up there.
Roy Moore
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Elites
Of the elite corporate professions
— law, finance, consultancy —
the first two are vilified as ruthless.
But only the third is seen as
outright bullshit.
Janan Ganesh,
Financial Times, February 24, 2023
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Gun control activists say
21st
century
weapons
18th
century
laws
Placard,
Geneva, Switzerland,
March For Our Lives rally, March 24, 2018
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Hypocrites say
The Attorney General must insure that
the administration of justice
– the enforcement of the law –
is above and away from politics.
William Barr,
during his confirmation hearings
to become Attorney General
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Ignorance
Ignorance of the law excuses no man;
not that all men know the law,
but because 'tis an excuse
that every man will plead,
and no man can tell how to confute him.
John Selden
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Impeachment
Whether in London or Washington,
what liberals are ultimately defending
is not any policy but the rule of law:
the frame within which a nation paints
its politics, not the choice of colours.
Protecting the one might entail
some sacrifice of the other.
Ms Pelosi seems ready to brave the cost.
The test is whether she holds
to her course if voters revolt.
Janan Ganash,
Financial Times, September 25, 2019
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Kwiple dictionary
tort reform (tôrt ri fôrm'),
n.
A corporate-sponsored movement
to achieve (1) legal immunity for
damages or injuries resulting
from using their products, and
(2) legal immunity from being
sued or having to provide victims
with financial compensation. A
post-tort-reform example: Your
baby becomes mentally retarded
from eating peeling paint. Tough
shit. Learn to be a better parent.
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Kwiplers say
Nondisparagement agreements
are nothing but silencers
on corporate guns
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Law
Being inanimate
should not be a barrier
to legal personhood – the courts are
well populated by inanimate objects:
the State, the Church and the corpo-
ration have all, over the centuries,
been recognized by the law.
Why shouldn't nature have the same
legal standing as the companies
seeking to exploit it?
André Dao,
“What if trees could sue?”
New Philosopher #14: Nature
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Law
I don't want to steal the thunder
from the other lawyers,
but Nebraska, you're going to hear,
is quite a judicial thinking place.
Bill Castor, Jr.,
Trump's legal counsel,
in his Day 1 remarks during
Trump's second impeachment trial
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Law
The life of the law has not been logic:
it has been experience.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Law
One of the striking things is that
if you're middle class,
if you're upper middle class,
if you're a single-digit millionaire
like Hulk Hogan, you have no
effective access to a legal system.
Peter Thiel, billionaire entrepreneur
who paid the millions of dollars in legal fees
for Hulk Hogan's invasion-of-privacy lawsuit
against Gawker Media for posting a tape
of him having sex with the wife of
his friend, Bubba the Love Sponge
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Law
The purpose of the law is to work,
to work for the people.
Stephen Breyer
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Law
So that, however it may be mistaken,
the end of law is not to abolish or restrain,
but to preserve and enlarge freedom:
for in all the states of created beings
capable of laws, where there is no law,
there is no freedom:
for liberty is, to be free from
restraint and violence from others;
which cannot be, where there is no law
John Locke,
Second Treatise on Civil Government
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Law
Racism and segregation
is no longer de jure,
but it is still de facto.
Alvin Holmes
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Law and order
It was the most beautiful thing.
It's called law and order.
Punchline to the tale Donald Trump
tells attendees at his rallies about how
Minneapolis police shot an MSNBC reporter
covering protests of George Floyd's murder
in the knee with a rubber bullet
while fleeing marauding police,
which tale invariably ignites
Day-of-the-Locust-worthy
cackling and blood lust
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Law and order
… knocking over a 7-Eleven
makes you a “criminal” but
looting a pension fund does not.
Trump's unusual level of personal
crookedness dovetails with a familiar
reactionary agenda of combining per-
missive enforcement of white-collar crime
with a crackdown on street crime – or,
as Trump calls it, simply “crime.”
The implicit meaning of “Law and Order”
is that order is distinct from lawfulness
and that some crimes create disorder
while others do not.
Jonathan Chaitt,
New York, September 14-27, 2020
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National security
[Special counsel Jack] Smith’s job is straight-
forward. He must … make clear to the jury
that this case is about two simple things:
First, a former president took documents con-
taining some of our nation's most sensitive se-
crets, which he was no more entitled to remove
than the portraits of George Washington and
Benjamin Franklin hanging on the walls of
of the Oval Office. Second, when he was caught,
he persistently made up excuses, lied and tried to
cover up his behavior, which he continues to do.
…
It is impossible to overstate how essential it will
be for Mr. Smith to … persuade the trial jury …
he committed serious criminal acts. The conse-
quence of doing that would be nothing short of
affirmation of the rule of law in this country.
The alternative is too grim to contemplate.
Norman Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Joyce Vance.
New York Times, June 9, 2023
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Nukes
What, for example, might chemical or
biological weapons by now be capable of
had they and their delivery systems
received the same investment of
resources, across sixty years and more,
as has been devoted to nuclear armouries?
From this standpoint the advent of nuclear
weapons may have been no more than the
particular form first taken—perhaps to
macabre advantage, in that its savage
abruptness made the reality unmistakable—
by an evolution that was anyway inexorable.
The issues for strategy and statesmanship,
and for ethics and law, need therefore
to be recognized as not only novel,
but also broad and basic.
Michael Quinlan, 2009
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Post-truth
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump
has been our post-truth president.
When we give up on truth, we concede
power to those with the wealth and
charisma to create spectacle in its place.
…
Post-truth wears away the rule of law
and invites a regime of myth.
Timothy Snyder,
New York Times, January 9, 2021
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Presidential immunity
from criminal prosecution
I think it’s paradoxical to say that
his constitutional duty to take care
that the laws be faithfully executed
allows him to violate criminal law.
Karen LeCraft Henderson,
a judge on the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit, responding
to a claim by Trump's lawyers that presidents
cannot be criminally prosecuted for official acts
performed while they were in office once they
have left it, unless they had been impeached
and convicted for the acts before leaving it
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Republican Party
A certain form of partisanship is now
a moral necessity. The Republican Party,
as an institution, has become a danger to the
rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.
The problem is not just Donald Trump; it's
the larger political apparatus that made
a conscious decision to enable him.
In a two-party system, nonpartisanship
works only if both parties are consistent
democratic actors. If one of them is not
predictably so, the space for nonpartisans
evaporates. We're thus driven to believe that
the best hope of defending the country from
Trump's enablers, and of saving the Republican
Party from itself, is to … vote mindlessly and
mechanically against Republicans at every
opportunity, or until the party either rights
itself or implodes (very preferably the former).
Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes
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Republicans Party
(1)
The GOP has become the party of
Trumpism.
(2)
Trumpism is a threat to democratic
values and the rule of law.
(3)
The Republican Party is a threat to
democratic values and the rule of law.
If the syllogism holds,
then the most-important tasks in
U.S. politics right now are to change
the Republicans' trajectory and to
deprive them of power in the meantime.
In our two-party system, the surest
way to accomplish these things is to
support the other party, in every race
from president to dogcatcher.
Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, 2018
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Republican Party
So why have we
come to regard the GOP
as an institutional danger?
In a nutshell, it has proved unable
or unwilling (mostly unwilling) to
block assaults by Trump and his base
on the rule of law.
Those assaults,
were they to be normalized,
would pose existential, not incidental,
threats to American democracy.
Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes
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Republicans say
Curtailing enforcement of laws
prohibiting discrimination in education
is change we believe in
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Republicans say
Curtailing enforcement of laws
requiring schools to reduce/address
sexual harassment and violence
is change we believe in
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Republicans say
Defunding programs providing
legal assistance to women trying to
escape domestic violence
is change we believe in
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Republicans say
Forcing individual complainants
to ferret out proof of institutional bias
by preventing government from
investigating charges of it
is change we believe in
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Republicans say
I'm not going to answer that question.
a.k.a.
The I-just-don't-feel-like-it privilege
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Republicans say
If it's not illegal,
just do it!
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Republicans say
Letting Republican presidents
use a presidential pardon to block
the enforcement of a court order
is change we believe in
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Republicans say
Passing laws by rubber-stamping bills
written for us by corporate lobbyists
is change we believe in
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Right-wing populists say
For us real Americans, everything;
for the others, the law
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Rule by law
The lawsuit [filed by Parents' Choice
Tennessee, a conservative activist group
created specifically for the purpose]
may have been designed, in part, to give
the impression there was more opposition
to Wit & Wisdom [English and Language
Arts curriculum] than actually existed.
There are eighteen thousand students in the
[Williamson County, Tennessee] district's
elementary schools, but according to a
district report only thirty-seven people
had complained about the new curriculum.
Fourteen of the complainants
had no children in the system.
Paige Williams,
The New Yorker, November 7, 2022
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Rule of law
I don't get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes.
My lawyer does.
Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway)
to J. J. “Jake” Gittes (Jack Nicholson),
in
Chinatown
,
written by Robert Towne,
directed by Roman Polanski
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Rule of law
Mr Linick is the fifth inspector general
to be sacked in the past two months.
“Someone was walking my dog
to sell arms to my dry cleaner,”
was how Mr Pompeo mocked the uproar.
That is the language of impunity.
Edward Luce,
Financial Times, May 21, 2020
[Linick was investigating Pompeo for
using State Department employees as his
and his wife's gofers and for bypassing
Congress to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.
Pompeo asked Trump to fire Linick.
Trump said he never heard of Linick
but fired him anyway.]
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Rule of law
The rule of law is not a meal that
can be ordered à la carte.
Stephen Breyer,
The Authority of the Court
and the Perils of Politics
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Rule of law
The west was law-governed
before it was democratic.
(The universal franchise is about a century old.)
And if the rule of law was earlier to arrive,
it is also shaping up to be the first to go.
It is hard to imagine a western nation
ceasing outright to be democratic
any time soon, if we understand this
to mean that it would no longer have
fair elections whose results are enforced.
Chaos, though? Entropy?
Those are easier destinies to picture,
at times by just looking around.
Janan Ganesh,
Financial Times, Augusr 29, 2023
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Rule of law
What makes an officer a principal
officer is that he or she reports only
only to the president. … A principal
officer must be confirmed by the Senate.
And that has a very significant conse-
quence today. It means that Mr. Trump's
installation of Matthew Whitaker as
acting Attorney General of the United
States after forcing the resignation
of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional.
It's illegal. And it means that anything
Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do,
in that position is invalid.
Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III,
New York Times, November 8, 2018
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Selfie
I can't afford your Harvard ethics.
Roy Cohn,
to a lawyer in his firm
who refused to sign a false affidavit
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Selfie
I don't want to know what the law is,
I want to know who the judge is.
Roy Cohn
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Selfie
I didn't like law.
Every client had a problem,
and I didn't want to listen
to people's problems;
I had enough of my own.
David Tang
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Selfie
I never had a lawyer who took notes.
Donald Trump
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Selfie
I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees
and they spent a lot more.
I did it to make his life miserable,
which I'm happy about.
Donald Trump,
on spending two years
before his case was dismissed
suing Tim O'Brien, author of
TrumpNation,
for writing that his net worth was most likely
not in the billions as he frequently claimed
but in the low hundreds of millions
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Sleepers at the wheel say
Arbitration benefits all parties
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Sleepers at the wheel say
Arbitration is
not
in the pocket of corporations
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Sleepers at the wheel say
It is a big mistake for us to grant
any validity to international law
even when it may seem in our
short-term interest to do so–
because, over the long term,
the goal of those who think that
international law really means anything
are those who want to constrain
the United States.
John Bolton
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Snapshot
For someone who is head of a party
that's all about government backing off,
he's very much for telling people
what to think, what to watch,
who shouldn't be speaking out
–he's very authoritarian.
The rule of law is
his
law,
which I find quite menacing.
Donald Trump
portrayed by Armando Iannucci
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Sports
It was fun.
We had a great lawsuit.
Donald Trump,
recapping his experience as an owner in the
United States Football League (USFL),
which he convinced to sue the NFL
to force a merger with the USFL,
which lost, causing its demise
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State of the union
The Supreme Court has weakened the conflict-
of-interest laws we have on the books.
Trump and his Republican wrecking crew
are ripping out the floorboards under
the government ethics porgram.
His administration has taught us
the difference between theory
and application and shown us what
immunity to accountability looks like.
What good are laws
if no one in power will enforce them?
Before Trump, our nation was admired
for its anticorruption mechanisms,
and its ethics program was considered
the gold standard. No more.
Once a model for other nations,
we are now an object lesson for them.
Walter M. Schaub. Jr.
New York Review of Books, Juky 2, 2020
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Supreme Court
The current court's
concept of equal protection
has essentially boiled down to
supporting white plaintiffs who
claim to have been disadvantaged
by affirmative action.
Eric Foner,
“Partisanship Rules” (2001)
© 2017 Kwiple.com
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Supreme Court
[T]rust is built on consistent
adherence to the rule of law.
The recent, radical rulings by
the Supreme Court, which itself reflects
political polarisation, have made clear
that the law won't be applied
in the same way everywhere.
The legal framework that binds you
will depend on who you are,
and where you live.
Rana Foroohar,
Financial Times, July 10, 2022
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Surely you jest
No man is above the law,
no man.
Neil Gorsuch,
during his Senate confirmation hearing
for appointment to the Supreme Court
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Tech bros say
Customers bear legal responsibility
for misuse
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Trumpism
One of the most corrosive effects
of Trumpism upon the political culture
has been to detach the law from any
behavioral definition and to attach it
to political identity.
As Trump likes to say,
“The other side is where there are crimes.”
He has trained his supporters to under-
stand this statement as a syllogism:
If Trump's opponents are
doing something, its a crime;
if Trump and his allies are doing it,
it isn't.
Jonathan Chaitt,
New York, September 14-27, 2020
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Trumpists say
Blah, blah, blah.
If you're trying to silence me through
the Hatch Act, it's not going to work.
Let me know when the jail sentence
starts.
Kellyanne Conway,
giving the finger to the Trump-appointed
Office of Special Counsel, who recommended
that she be removed from office for
repeatedly violating the Hatch Act
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Trumpists say
I’m going in with 20 strong men.
I’m gonna speak in front of the school
board and I’m gonna give them an option.
They can leave or they can be removed.
And then after that we're gonna replace
them with nine parents and we're gonna
vote down the mask mandates
that evening. That evening.
This is how you get stuff done.
Forget writing your legislators. Forget it.
They’re not listening. You gotta do
something. It's us. It's we the people.
Steve Lynch, August 29, 2021,
Republican candidate for Northhampton
County, PA, executive, on school boards
that invoke anto-Covid mask mandates
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Trumpists say
The rule of law appears to be suspended
tonight — not just for Trump, but for anyone
who would consider voting for him.
This is what it seems to be.
It is a political purge.
…
[It's] probably not the best time
to give up your AR-15.
Tucker Carlson, March 30, 2023, on
a Manhattan grand jury's indictment of Trump
for crimes related to paying hush money
to Stormy Daniels
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Trumpists say
We have to blur some faces
of persons who participated in
the events of that day because
we don’t want them to be retaliated
against and to be charged by the DOJ.
Mike Johnson, December 5, 2023,
who tried to overturn the 2020 election,
here obstructing justice by trying to prevent
online slueths who've helped identify hundreds
of Capitol rioters from seeing the faces of rioters
in previously unreleased footage of the attack
on the Capitol, while simultaneously making
himself an accessory after the fact to multiple
federal crimes, in announcng he's releasing
doctored versions of all footage of the attack
in an attempt to counter the narrative
of the January 6 commission report
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Trumpists say
You are living in territory
controlled by enemy tribes.
You, and all like you, must assume
the innocence of anyone remotely
like yourself who is charged in any
confrontation with those tribes
and with their authorities – until proven
otherwise beyond a shadow of
your
doubt.
Take his side. In other words, you must
shield others like yourself by practicing
and urging “jury nullification.”
And, by the way, when the police –
a fortiori
the FBI – come to talk, you don't know or
remember anything – except that they answer
to your enemies. Don't be a good German.
Angelo Codevilla, October 23, 2020
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Wannabe autocrats
That is not normal. That is not OK.
First of all, he's just making stuff up.
But, most importantly, the president
of the United States is calling for
the imprisonment of a private citizen,
as he's done for a whole lot of people
who criticize him.
That is not acceptable in this country.
The president doesn't get to decide
who goes to jail.
James Comey,
on Trump's call to imprison him for
allegedly leaking classified information
and lying to Congress
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Wannabe autocrats say
If I say do it,
they're going do it.
Donald Trump,
when asked what he would do
if the US military refused to follow
the [illegal] order he vowed to issue
to kill ISIS family members
in reprisal for attacks
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Wannabe autocrats say
It's a disgrace.
It's frankly a real disgrace.
It's an attack on our country
in a true sense.
Donald Trump,
conflating law enforcement
– executing a search warrant for records
pertaining to fraud and campaign finance
violations by his lawyer, Michael Cohen –
with an attack on the country
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Wannabe autocrats say
The saddest thing is that
because I'm the President
of the United States,
I am not supposed to be involved
with the Justice Department.
I am not supposed to be involved
with the FBI. …
I am not supposed to be doing
the kind of things that
I would love to be doing.
And I am very frustrated by it.
Donald Trump
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Wannabe autocrats say
When the president does it,
that means it's not illegal.
Richard Nixon
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Want ad
I am in the process, along with my team, of
interviewing various law firms to represent me
in an Appeal of one of the most ridiculous and
unfair Witch Hunts our Country has ever seen—
The defamation Sham presided over by a Clinton
appointed, highly partisan, Trump Hating
Judge, Lewis Kaplan, who was, together with
certain other Radical Left Democrat Judges,
one of the most partisan and out of control
activists that I have ever appeared before. …
Any lawyer who takes a TRUMP CASE is either
“CRAZY,” or a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT.
I will make my decision soon!
Donald trump,
Jan 30, 2024, 11:08 PM,
after a jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $88.3 million
in her second defamation suit against him
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