Tuesday, July 10, 2018

SCOTUS Pick: Two Wrongs Make Me Right

Last week, in my posting "Prediction re: SCOTUS Pick", I wrote:
Trump will pay zero heed to positions on abortion or immigration...the one and only qualification is some prior decision or writing demonstrating executive privilege maximalism. And he won't be content with private assurance (though he'll surely demand it); there will need to be a solid position statement already out there, preferably unsubtle and flagrant. That way he knows he can count on it.
So I was right. Even though I wasn't. The problem is that we're peering through two levels of stupidity: Trump's and the Left's.

Regarding the latter, read this excellent and very short Twitter thread from Andrew C Laufer, an anti-Trumper legal expert. It has infuriated the Left, which reserves its most visceral outrage for flat-out indisputable truth conflicting with their outrage ("How dare you tell me to be rational?").
I have already seen several misinterpretations on his President immunity opinion. [Kavanaugh] stated specifically that Congress has to change the law in order for POTUS to be immune from prosecution.
The furor over Kavanaugh's expressed distaste for the option of indicting a president is fog. He was urging Congress to change the law. This means the exact opposite of what the press has been bellowing all day. It means he strongly and demonstrably believes that, as the law stands, a president can be indicted. For Trump, that's bad.

Two more factors from Laufer:
We are dealing with very heavy criminal issues involving Trump. I don’t think he was contemplating a President facing possible racketeering, corruption, and treason type charges.
And, what's more,
CJ Roberts can force his recusal on any #TrumpRussia issues. I have been told that the CJ has already done this with Gorsuch. We need to take a breath and move one step at a time. He has to make it through senate confirmation first. Remember, Mueller isn’t going anywhere.
So that's how the press and the Left have lost their minds. Now here's the Trump stupidity: I think Trump made the same bone-headed error. Kavanaugh "seems" temperamentally in favor of executive maximalism because he doesn't want presidents to be indictable. To a cornered rat, this seems like his "heart is in the right place," and that's a straw to grasp at...even though he's actually saying the opposite thing. Even though he's on the record as conceding something not everyone (ask Dershowitz!) concedes: as present law now stands, a president can be indicted.

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