Yes. And to be clear I don’t think this is a good thing. I’m actually very much against the courts deciding the preview of what is lawful conduct for the president within his duties to the Constitution and what is not.

As someone who lives in the PNW that PNW clued me in.

You know what’s kind of funny. Both my parents identify as Gen X. Both of them are actually Baby Boomer’s. With the pre-requisite feral children. But I’m a millennial and it’s kind of funny that having grown up basically a feral child my generation doesn’t get to claim that.

Somewhat elder millennial.

OPP. - Naughty By Nature

Reading even the first few pages would be preferable to the fear mongering and panic in my opinion. If you’re getting a pared down version from Cornell law, fine. If it’s coming from fox news or vox media, I don’t think that should be the end of anyone’s endeavours to understand what is going on.

They aren’t though. They say in the document that they are the final word on what is within the scope of official acts. So it’s not even a separate regulating body purpose built for that. It’s lower courts making a decision and the SCOTUS deciding if it is right and wrong and having the final say.

Those things are already happening and will get worse if we don’t lobby and vote. This has been the vendetta of the conservative party in this country for several decades. They have been taking small chunks out of every regulatory legislative government branch and agency for literal decades with the intent that eventually they could undermine the government process enough to get what they want.

The reason I said “citizens worried about the President signing their death warrant” is because that’s literally what headlines have been saying and I see a lot of those same headlines parotted both on Lemmy in these discussion threads, and in other web forums in relation to the topic of criminal charges being brought against a sitting or former president.

We should have always been worried about our rights. We should have always been lobbying to further limit the government in what it can do against the people. Instead we haven’t made a new amendment to the constitution since '92, and we are leery of doing so and keeping it a living document because we fear all the things the other side will do, and they’re doing them anyway.

I’m a bit bothered that people aren’t going to the web to read the ruling in full. They’re relying heavily on dissenting SCOTUS member’s statements and the media. I’m also disheartened at the number of people who don’t know their rights, don’t understand the government’s functions in society, and don’t understand that the constitution is meant to be a living document that restricts what the government can do, not what its citizens can. Of course the number of people who don’t know what’s in the constitution and its amendments is also very high.

It wasn’t that terribly long ago that we didn’t have presidential term limits. There’s absolutely a way forward with further amendments to the constitution which is something we as a people should also lobby for.

Edit: Speak of the devil: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4750735-joe-morelle-amendment-supreme-court-immunity-ruling/

I don’t actually think that statement is true. Polls are notoriously wrong all the time, and the members of the Democratic Party requesting he drop out are doing so because they’re afraid to say otherwise. I’ll give you an example. Members of the Republican party notably were very critical of Trump until they realised that to continue in the political sphere they were going to have to get along to get along when it became clear he was the front runner.

The members of the DNC who are asking for Biden to step down are doing so even though they know that no other possible candidate is likely to win. They did the same with Bernie Sanders in 2016. They aren’t worried that he’ll lose the popular vote. They’re worried he’ll lose Electoral College votes because some of them are apparently still on the fence. If they wanted to put forth another candidate they would have already. Who have they put forward to put on the ticket? No one. Because they don’t have anyone else either. For them it’s a no win situation and they’re scared so they’re trying to cover their own asses.

It is absolutely highly concerning. That said, there’s way too many people who haven’t read the official ruling who are panicking instead of advocating for people to vote to keep Biden in office and prepare another viable candidate for that office once his second term is up. Because the only way to get these idiots off the SCOTUS is to elect non-conservative presidents who can win. And that only happens if people both vote and lobby for what they want. We need better electoral college regulations. We need ranked voting. We need the people to lobby to further limit the government because obviously this is what happens when we don’t.

This ruling, coupled with the whole “Biden is too old, he should step down” BS is exactly the kind of propaganda concoction that will lead to Trump being re-elected in November if we don’t do something.

Do I think this is a way for a President to sanction and enact the murder of political rivals? Under certain circumstances, yes. Do I think the average citizen should be worried about the President signing their death warrant? No.

You have to understand that we’ve had alphabet agencies for a long time and the President literally could use certain pretexts to kill a person if they wanted so long as they did it a specific way. That has not changed just because of this ruling and that’s a big factor people should look at. There’s a reason former Presidents haven’t been prosecuted for drone strikes. Technically they could have been held accountable in a court of law before that. But we’ve known for a long time that in all actuality the law only works that way if you’re poor or if you’re going up against someone else who’s independently wealthy. That’s why Epstein is dead after all. Not because he trafficked young girls. But because his imprisonment put other rich people in danger. Sam Bankmanfried isn’t in prison because he stole money. He’s in prison because he stole from other rich people. Same with Elizabeth Holmes.

When Trump was in office, I need you to understand that the government (the people who guard national secrets) actually considerered him a threat and limited his ability to do damage by not telling him things. We would have been much worse off if they hadn’t.

As a result, the apparatus of the government is not a monolith, just like the apparatus of the military or even just the US as a whole. It’s made up of people. And we’ve limped along this far because we could rely on them not to do certain things. But what Trump was able to get away with by being elected and being in office? This is the fallout of that.

Your statement that the president can “personally” violate any law without criminal liability isn’t correct. Here’s a direct quote from the ruling “Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

“As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Clinton, 520 U. S., at 694, and n. 19. The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President’s unofficial acts.”

On its face this ruling admits there is a such thing as an unofficial act. The problem is that the SCOTUS should not be allowed to make this decision without checks or balances in place. I.e. if they are making the deduction that a President has immunity, they must cede the determination of such acts that have immunity vs those that don’t to another regulatory body. That’s the disturbing part to me.

This also makes me question what the point is of the impeachment process specifically because of this passage from the same ruling:

“When the President exercises such author ity, Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions. It follows that an Act of Congress—either a specific one targeted at the President or a generally applicable one—may not criminalize the President’s actions within his exclusive constitutional power. Neither may the courts adjudicate a criminal prosecution that examines such Presidential actions.”

Technically an impeachment is not a criminal trial. But that passage doesn’t specify the scope. So it could be used to argue that impeachment (while not a criminal proceeding) is an examination of the Presidents actions that potentially would not be allowed. And since the impeachment process is a check and balance for the presidential office, that’s not okay.

That not what I said. What I said is their comments aren’t legal precedent. That’s not the same thing. Or are we taking everything that’s ever come out of Clarence Thomas’s mouth as legal precedent now?

https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/07/01/scotus-ruling-seal-team/

That conflicts not just with other established law, but also with what I actually said and what the ruling says. The problem with it is that the order can’t be considered lawful regardless of what the Supreme court ruled because it doesn’t fit all the criteria of a lawful order.

“What is considered a lawful order in the military? It must not conflict with the statutory or constitutional rights of the person receiving the order. Finally, it must be a specific mandate to do or not to do a specific act. In sum, an order is presumed lawful if it has a valid military purpose and is a clear, precise, narrowly drawn mandate.”

https://ucmjdefense.com/resources/military-offenses/the-lawfulness-of-orders.html

One other thing is that you’re quoting dissenting members of the SCOTUS, not the ruling itself. That’s a single interpretation of it, and one deliberately intended to alarm people so that they push back against it.

But that doesn’t sanction military members to break the law or the UCMJ. And that’s the point. They do not have immunity, qualified or otherwise. The order would be unlawful simply because of the issuing parties bias and personal gain from the act.

I’m not saying there are not people in the military who would follow this type of order. I’m saying that they don’t have the protections or immunity, qualified or otherwise, and honestly, a presidential pardon doesn’t do anything for them if the state decides to prosecute them. Plus military members are basically the only people in the US subject to legal double jeopardy because they can be tried by the military separately from state and federal law.

The answer really is that desperation is a design feature not a flaw. The system is working as intended. And people who speak up about it don’t get silenced. They just get caught out fighting to survive unless they’re already very rich. So for every Bernie Sanders you’ve got thousands of poor people who would fight for the same but not at the expense of feeding their families and losing their homes.

Before smartphones we had snake and Tetris on non smart phones and we liked it. Before that books and news papers were popular.

Other platforms exist. I’m sure they’ll be fine.

You’re in for a treat, my friend. I hope you love the book.

Manual lawnmower.

The surface RT and windows ME e-machine computer were both a close second.

If we used billboards for something like missing children or traffic announcements etc I’d be okay with that. But pretty much no actual ads for products. Billboards are a driving distraction and I don’t approve.