Senate The US Politics discussion

I think by some people. He was never going to win the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.

 

i mean after he **** the bed last time around... i guess he's got that "border crisis" spotlight going on since the media has decided its "a thing" right now, and he's certainly dialed up the bluster and posturing over it, which plays well to "the base". but that already seems to be winding down. you can only pretend its this huge urgent departure from the status quo for so long before it becomes background noise when people realize they aren't literally drowning in guatamalan children

 

yeah the musical chairs that cycle went in some impressively insane directions. remember herman cain? the pizza guy with the 9-9-9? good times

 

Seriously, the GOP must've cycled through at least half a dozen front runners before the nomination. It was like one of those old cartoons with Yosemite Sam trying all sorts of different weapons to kill Bugs Bunny, then failing and panicking every time. "Doggone that lousy varrrr-mint!"

 

like, going in for some reason i remember naively thinking there was no way it could be as fun an election season as 08 but then it just kept getting wackier and wackier. im tempted to say there's no way 2016 can top it but i know that's not true. id have no right to be surprised if we had pundits talking with absolute sincerity about President Joe the Plumber by the time its over

 

Has anyone seen a single pundit, of any political persuasion, defend the Perry indictment? I haven't. Given how much the Tea Party thrives on the fantasy that white conservative Christians are unfairly persecuted in this country, this singular instance of that actually being true will probably serve ultimately as a net gain for Perry.

Now, granted, he still has no chance, since anything multiplied by zero is still zero, but still.

 

How do you mean? What is there to "defend?" A Republican special prosecutor appointed by other Republicans brought the charges before a grand jury after a panel of Republican judges allowed the complaint to proceed. You can't really argue that this is some partisan witch hunt.

Yes, the woman whose resignation Perry tried to force seems like an awful person and a hypocrite. I hope she is booted out of office. But that doesn't give someone in a different branch of government powers they didn't previously have to unilaterally boot her out. That's not how the system works. That's not how the basic idea of having a system of any kind works. We should be able to distinguish "sympathetic" from "legal."

 

so he can't block funding using his line-item veto power?

 

Not after making an explicit threat to do so conditional on a separate branch of government doing exactly what he wants, no.

That's why the charge is about "abuse of power." If he didn't have the power to do what he did in at least some circumstances, his threat would've been moot and the Public Integrity section would still have a budget. It's called an "abuse" because it acknowledges that the particular thing he did with his legally granted powers was inappropriate.

 

Pretty much. All you have to do is just run that debate, particularly the 'OOPS" moment over and over and over again.

 

I'm sorry, but where are you getting your legal analysis of the indictment? You might want to forward it to Eugene Volokh, because he's earnestly looking for any legal scholar who is actually trying to defend the content of the indictment. He has provided an analysis of both the first and the second counts in the indictment, outlining the text of the laws in question and the controlling precedent (with the caveat that he isn't an expert in Texas law), and finds them a stretch in every sense of the word.

In part based on Volokh's analysis, Patrick Frey (a prosecutor from California) provides an even more detailed legal analysis of the indictment.

Now, you might say that because both Frey and Volokh tend to lean conservative/libertarian, they are making their arguments for partisan reasons, but that doesn't explain why Jonathan Chait makes the same basic arguments against the indictment. As Chait (no friend to Perry) says, "They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. ... Perry may not be much smarter than a ham sandwich, but he is exactly as guilty as one." Or how about David Axelrod? I'm sure he's just a closet Perry supporter, right?

In fact, the most supportive analysis I've read of the indictment came from ThinkProgress, and even that is quite skeptical of its validity.

I've seen a lot of political analysts arguing in favor of the indictment, not for its content, but simply because of what it could potentially do to Perry's chances for 2016. I've yet to see any supportive legal analysis, though. If you have some, would you care to point it out?

EDIT: Also, what is your source for referring to Michael McCrum as a Republican? In 2010, he was described as "a first-rate, prosecutor-first-Democrat-second lawyer". According to OpenSecrets, his only "partisan" donation was to a Democrat. (Although he has also donated to 3 judges in "non-partisan" elections - two Republicans and one Democrat. The most recent of those donations was to the same judge that appointed him a special prosecutor.) He is also currently embroiled in his own ethics scandal resulting from a contempt citation for trying to get a witness to avoid a subpoena.

 

The Travis County DA has done this before - launching highly questionable indictments against Kay Bailey Hutchison and Tom DeLay before this, largely over political objectives.

I think it is time to start looking into that office, and to clean it out.

 

There actually might be something to that; I think the best course of action is to wait and see how this plays out.

Better to reserve judgement until there is a trial, and the airing of facts.

Peace,

V-03

 

Senator Durbin: prisons are great job creators, and they key to our economic future

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/20/dick-durbin-prison_n_5696072.html




Meanwhile, red-state Democrat Mark Pryor... one of those few Democratic Senators who was brought kicking and screaming to originally pass healthcare reform (along with Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landreau, Ben Nelson, and Joe Lieberman)... is now running on ObamaCare to help him win his tough re-election fight.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/20/mark-pryor-obamacare-ad_n_5695747.html

 

Durbin is right. Prisons bring a ton of money to the local economy and to his private contractor friends.

 

It's my understanding that there's nothing actually "flimsy" about Perry's prosecution. Rather, it's a situation akin to jay-walking. On paper, it's quite easy to make the case that what he did is a clear-cut violation of the relevant statutes. In practice, it's something that happens pretty frequently without drawing prosecutorial ire. Unfortunately, while that sort of reasoning is very persuasive for calling the charges "unfair," saying that "other people do it too" tends not to be a good legal defense. Nor is "this shouldn't be a crime." If it technically is, then he may still be convicted, and there wouldn't be anything "flimsy" about it.

 

That's certainly not what I'm trying to comment on. I'm trying to make a distinction between "Is this case legally viable?" and "Should anyone ever actually bring a case like this?" There's absolutely no requirement at all that those two questions have even remotely the same answer.