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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • The speech and debate clause is separate from the arrest clause. The Treason exception only applies to the first part.

    Additionally, Treason has a definition elsewhere in this document, and just giving any kind of speech doesn’t meet the standard.

    Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

    It would be pretty hard to claim that any kind of speechifying amounts to “Aid and Comfort”, especially if you can’t identify the “Enemy” in a time when the nation is at peace.

    Now the first amendment does apply here, but I expect a legal defense to go to this speech and debate clause first, then 1st amendment. Because 1st amendment has a bunch of exceptions of the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” type, but speech and debate is going to be more ironclad. Once you convince a court that you were doing Congressional speech or debate, then the only discipline you can face is from your chamber’s rules, period.



  • Double jeopardy is not a factor in this situation, because the first jeopardy “does not attach” until a jury is seated and sworn in for trial, or when a guilty plea is accepted. The trial by jury is the “jeopardous” part of the criminal justice process. If the case is tossed before that point for any reason, then there is no jeopardy bar to refiling.

    If a trial starts, but ends in a mistrial, then it is usually possible to go to another trial, even though jeopardy “has attached”. A mistrial ruling effectively “unwinds” the entire trial like it never happened.

    or is it like an annulment where it kind of never happened?

    This is what Judge Currie said in her opinion. The indictments didn’t happen because they were run entirely by a pretend US attorney.





  • It’s a real geopolitical problem for Russia. Russia got screwed by geography in terms of natural harbors that don’t freeze over in the winter. It’s why they’ve always had a crap navy, going way back into the imperial days.

    Right now, the Russian Navy is based in Murmansk (brrrr. limited routes to get out into Atlantic) and the Black Sea. The Black Sea is bad for them because Turkey (a NATO member) makes sure to maintain total control of what passes through the Bosphorous.

    Part of what Russia did in Syria during the civil war netted them a lease on a base on the Mediterranean. That could have had some use for power projection, but I think they lost it when a certain opthalmologist was expelled.

    Anyhow, it’s hilarious when the trolls posing as MAGA Americans bring this up, because real Americans just take their total abundance of ports that don’t freeze over completely for granted. That’s why I point out secondary, less busy port cities on the Gulf of Mexico, where the water is actually pretty warm (instead of just not freezing over). Just to highlight how good the US has it. Even if we were forced to give up Norfolk and Coronado, there are plenty of other suitable places we could have naval bases.






  • It’s really just Alito, not the full court.

    Each circuit is assigned to a justice who initially handles emergency motions from that circuit. Alito is assigned to the 5th circuit, which contains Texas. Jackson handled the recent SNAP funding case because she is assigned to the 1st circuit which contains Massachusetts.

    So Alito’s stay will be redecided by the full court. He set the response deadline on Monday, so it could be any time after that. It could be real fast or it could be a month.

    Speaking on the merits of this application, it seems kind of rich to me to say that the court challenge is too close to the election, but it’s not too close for the legislature to change the map like a month earlier.






  • Each one of those bullet points is potentially a way for Comey to get his whole case thrown out. In addition to that, Comey has 4 other motions to dismiss pending right now, and they’re pretty good arguments. At this point, Comey has so many different ways to win, that it is really hard to imagine that he won’t win on one of them. (In which case he still has an entire trial to defend himself on).

    The issue where there’s no case law is a pretty narrow one, I think: The grand jury voted to approve the words of the charges (except that the charge numbers were different), but not the specific piece of paper that the words ended up typed out on. Is that important for the formal charging process or not? Either way this gets decided, it won’t effect very many people, because any competent prosecutor will just re-run the new piece of paper past the jury to make sure. And it may not get decided at all if Comey’s case is dismissed on any of the other reasons.

    EDIT: If it’s not true. If it turns out that the grand jury no-billed all three counts, then we’d be looking at a forged indictment. And that would be a serious crime.