In my state, the county Board of Elections (and their staff) is in charge of the voter rolls. They are employed by the state to do that job, and can be fired if they do a bad job. They also can have access to state vital records, and can take deceased voters off the rolls right away.

On the other hand, if we leave this job to unelected busybodies, then there is nothing keeping them from adding some extra names to their list, to harass neighbors they don’t think belong there.

Yeah, but why do private individuals have to police voter rolls? It should be the state’s job to do that.

Hey, can you let me in? I prefer Tim Hortons coffee to Dunkin, that’s gotta be worth some expedited consideration.

I was in Montréal a few years ago and thought it was awesome that Tim’s served fast food Poutine.

No, but the issue is that some of the evidence that was presented at trial came from after Trump was President, and members of his inner circle had White House roles. Under this new doctrine, simply presenting that evidence that involved White House officials would no longer be allowed, even if that evidence pointed to a crime. So the judge now has to make a determination of how much of the prosecution’s case depended on that. The Judge himself may have to throw the verdict out, if too much of that seeped into the trial. It wouldn’t let Trump totally off the hook, but would necessitate a new trial. Which is bullshit, because there’s nothing the prosecution could have done about it. The SC changed the rules after the trial was over.

This was the very point that Amy Coney Barrett wrote about in her concurring opinion, she felt this part went too far. So this evidentiary point was really decided 5-4, and seems to be the most egregious part of it.

And now, all any corrupt President needs to do is give their corrupt friends roles in the Administration, and they can do all the crime they want, knowing that prosecutors are shielded from ever using evidence from those people in court.

Conventions aren’t just for amendments. They can be a vehicle to start over from scratch, just like they did in 1789. Then the only barrier we have is that final 3/4 threshold…

… But do you really think it will stop if they hold the thing, come out with a new document dominated by red state ideas, and it fails to get enacted? They will view the 13+ states that are not going along as traitors, and our newly minted President-King will do something rash to get the new document approved.

If a constitutional convention gets called, I fear we’ll end up with a 2-for-1 deal, and those MAGA bastards will finish the job that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee started.

Prepare to be tricked. They need 34 states to call a new convention, and already have 28

https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/constitution-courts-and-democracy-issues/article-v-convention/

What business is it of anyone if the rolls have too many names? People can still only vote once, and the system comes down hard on people who try and trick the system. It should be the State’s job to purge registrations after due process, not the voters’ (and certainly not some random busybody).

You joke, but I have always thought that the reason why the modern Conservative movement leans so heavily on the Founders is that they want to call a constitutional convention to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, and become the new Founders who courts 200+ years from now have to defer to.

“You have the constitutional right to challenge any other voter in your county,” Frank said at Cherokee County Republican headquarters in Woodstock. “In fact, it’s not merely your right. It’s your duty to clean the voter rolls.”

Which Constitution says that? Not the US Constitution, the word “challenge” doesn’t appear there at all. And not in the section of the Georgia State constitution regarding voting, either. Is there a secret MAGA Constitution which only they know about, but applies to everyone? That might explain some of the recent SCOTUS shenanigans.

When this first dropped, all the news media had kind of cautious titles. It wasn’t until after their legal reporters actually read it that they started getting the point.

After mulling this over for these few hours, I realize what this ruling really does is render the President unaccountable to his Oath of Office. Any official act is presumed to be totally legal by the courts, unless he is impeached and removed from office over it. Much of his communications with his staff is now also not subject to review anywhere but Congress, as part of a formal impeachment proceeding.

A President is now officially a king, restrained by no law in what he can use his office to do, as long as he has the support of half of the House, or 1/3 of the Senate.

Because presiding over the counting of the votes is one of the very few duties the Constitution allocates to the VP, so is covered under this new doctrine. He has the absolute right to conduct that how he sees fit, without regard to whether he is upholding his oath to the Constitution or not, and any conversations he had with the President are part of that duty, and similarly protected. If it turns out he is not upholding that oath, the only remedy is impeachment. (And finding 67 Senators to agree to convict.)

Absolute power, just as the Founders intended.

Everything is going to suddenly be a private record.

Except the audio transcript of Biden’s Special Counsel interview, of course.

Some of the evidence that Jack Smith has put together involve some form of Trump’s official capacity. for instance, the Times notes that one of the points of the prosecution was that Trump tried to get Jeffrey Clark installed as acting AG in the days before Jan 6, presumably because he would go along with the coup. One of the findings of the Court is that appointments like that are within the President’s direct duties, and can’t be used as evidence against him, even if it can be proven that the appointment was made to directly piss on the Constitution Trump swore to protect.

The Times also notes that Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence is similarly protected now.

You are correct, of course. And that’s why this movement to get him to step aside is gaining so much traction. The more I see key Democrats defending him in public, the more I think the private conversations are getting heated.

There is so much riding on this election that we can’t just call a mulligan and say “we laid an egg this time, we’ll try again in 2028”.

To me, it looked like the problem was not his brain, it was between his brain and his mouth. His brain knew what it wanted to say, his mouth took the long road to get there. And when you only have a minute or two to make your point, every second counts.

I am not saying that to try and gloss over the problem. But I’ve watched older relatives succumb to Alzheimer’s and dementia over the years, and this is not it. It’s different. It’s still bad for any older person, though, much less a President.

The article itself is worth reading, but it includes a link to a Sacramento bee article about this woman and her trans kid. It seems like after the kid came out as trans, the mom really went off the deep end :

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article285961211.html

This woman is so wrapped up in her anti-trans crusade that it’s not just ruining her relationship with her child, but it’s consuming her to the point that it’s all she talks about. The article mentions that her friends and co-workers have had to ask her to stop sending articles about it. And now she’s been kicked out of the hotel she was staying at because she saw some guys in dresses and started throwing a fit. The hotel even offered to refund her stay, but she persisted and got escorted out by the cops instead.

She seems stuck in a misery of her own making. At least her kid seems to have a level head about all of it. I will never understand how some parents would let stuff like that get in the way of their relationship with their kids.

This is exactly what we should expect all of Biden’s top allies to say, publically, unless he decides to back out, in which case all these same people will publically say the next lady is the best bet now.

Biden clearly does not have dementia. He has some other serious problems, but his mind is there. Once you decode his halting delivery, the ideas behind his positions are sound. You can tell his mind is still sharp, it’s his body that is betraying him.

In fairness, the job of VP is to keep a low profile. Support the President and be involved enough to take over in a heartbeat, but don’t be too visible or else people might think the VP is trying to overshadow the main guy.