189 Comments

On the upside, if states must keep trump on the ballot, then his wall of whining will have one less brick unit when he resoundingly loses the election like no one has ever lost before! 🤡

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I think the only way we can and should defeat him is at the ballot box.

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I agree but he’ll call foul no matter what.

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That’s true, because he is so predictable, but he won’t be sitting in the White House when he does that, Biden will be. So an attempted coup will be less likely, and if it does happen, it will be crushed.

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He will. Unless the world has their lips tightly pressed to his rump, he's not happy. Probably because he can't even stand himself.

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Yep, claim it was rigged.

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As someone else, who is smarter than me, wrote: from your keyboard to God’s inbox!

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I like that one!

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I agree, let his ego see how ‘unwanted’ he really is by everyone. Even his own wife detests him.

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🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

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I read Smith's filing and came to the realization that:

1. Cannon is so inexperienced (and incompetent?) that she doesn't know relevant case law and doesn't apparently bother to have her clerks look it up (I assume she has clerks to do research for her?)

2. She takes Trump's filings as being in "good faith" and rules on that basis to favor him, rather than looking at the issue from both sides and considering the consequences of her ruling

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.294.0.pdf

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I tend to agree.

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It’s obvious that she is doing tRump’s bidding by the simple fact that tRump never, ever “Truths” against her. Not . . . One . . . Peep.

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Feb 9Liked by Jay Kuo

It's disheartening to see people caving to Trump, whether they're judges or Members of Congress. I'm understanding how people choose autocrats who then make dictatorships happen. It's so much easier to cave than to speak out and stand up. Maybe Cannon is herself afraid of retribution if she defies Trump, maybe she likes him -- it almost doesn't matter.

What does matter is us. As David Maserang commented here - we must make sure Trump and MAGA candidates lose elections. Organize, volunteer, donate, run for office. Each of us must act to guarantee our democracy.

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➡️➡️ "What does matter is us." ⬅️⬅️

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Feb 9Liked by Jay Kuo

Chief Justice Roberts said, “Do we wait until near the time of counting the ballots and sort of go through which states are valid and which states aren’t?”

Yeah, you mean like SCOTUS did in 2000 in the Bush v. Gore decision? As if it’s bad enough that one state (keep in mind, Florida was the pivotal state in the 2000 presidential election. Florida’s population then was 16 million) should be able to decide a presidential election, how about nine non-elected justices?

Yes, I know this is apples-and-oranges, but it once again highlights how much times have changed in the past 24 years.

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Not apples and oranges at all. Bush v. Gore effectively disenfranchised everyone who voted for Gore in 2000. Now SCOTUS is worried about tRump voters having their candidate taken away? Didn’t bother the court at all 24 years ago.

Let’s not forget Roberts was working for Bush’s legal team in 2000 and since being on the federal bench has a strong record of being anti-voter rights.

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Three of the members of the Kangaroo court were involved in preventing the Florida votes from being counted to hand the election to Shrub. And NONE of them on the side of democracy or justice.

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Biden won the NH primary by a landslide as a write-in candidate. His name wasn’t on the ballot. Surely anything Joe can do Don can do better! Don can do anything better than Joe! (Not saying I think Trump is better, just got caught up in the song.)

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In addition, the Electoral College already allows a handful of states to elect the president.

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Totally true which demonstrates clearly why the electoral college should be scrapped in favor of electing POTUS by popular vote….

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‘Hanging chads’ sound familiar to anyone other than me…

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And the image of that guy looking at a ballot with a magnifying glass

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Yes!! Hypocrites that they are

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I remember trying to properly fill out the infamous ‘butterfly ballot’. What a nightmare.

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I think I just avoided that stuff. Thank goodness.

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Yes, Mr Chief Justice Roberts, sometimes you actually have to just buckle down, grind it out, and do the actual work.

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Garland should be forced to resign, he appointed a republican to be "fair." And now allowed him to submit a report that violated DOJ policy. I'm sick of democrats coming to a gun fight with a short stick.

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Garland and Hur should both resign.

For Hur to submit something so blatantly partisan is outrageous.

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Hur had already resigned at the end of trumps term. Garland brought him back to be special counsel for the Biden documents investigation. Garland did it to try and appear "fair."

Now Hur gets to go back to making millions at the private law firm he was working at.

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I've generally been supportive of Garland, but my patience is wearing REALLY thin. Like the loser from Illinois that is allowing the GQP to prevent dozens of Biden's judicial appointments to be blocked by the ridiculous "Blue Slip" tradition (which Moscow Mitch already gutted for Circuit appointments as soon as it was inconvenient), Garland is being played over and over. Bending over backwards to show respect for the rule of law only works when the other side isn't celebrating open criminality. He is just showing that he's a chump. . .

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Nice guys finish last. He could use a few poison pointers from his predecessor Bill Barr.

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Garland should have looked at that report carefully, which I assume he had to do, and redacted some of the political content. This is an absolute travesty. I have never been a Garland fan from day one, but he is unfit to do his job. He is helping Republicans be a threat to our continued democracy.

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CAN an AG redact the report of special counsel? Isn't that just what Barr tried to do, at least informally? He could, at least, come out with a statement that the DOJ does NOT endorse the ageism and would not, support a decision to decline prosecution base on the idea that a jury would not convict an doddering old person if there were actual grounds to prosecute such dodderer.

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The DOJ policies determine the content of the report, there should have been no need to redact anything. The AG should have made sure the policies were followed, he obviously didn't. In fact, Hur should never have been appointed to begin with.

It's not Hur's place to speculate or give his opinion on what a jury MIGHT have thought. When you present a report that recommends NOT indicting, it stops at that point.

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I agree with you about Hur's exceeding policy. But I'm not sure what the REMEDY is where the failure to follow policy results in superfluous verbiage in declining prosecution. This is, after all, just a report. If Hur had recommended prosecution based on this crap, the AG could just decline to do it.

What is needed is a statement from Garland making your point--that the verbiage is against DOJ policy, with an overt reprimand to Hur.

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Don’t hold your breath on that one.

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The problem is Hur made it sound like the only reason he didn't indict Biden is he's just a silly old man with a faulty memory. He did that to throw red meat to the maga cult members, and they are running with it. Reprimanding her won't do anything, now that his report is filed. He's done at the DOJ. It's a huge mess and the only one to blame is Garland.

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The reprimand is to show the public that he done wrong, not to do anything to him. He'll make a fortune on talk shows.

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“No” is a complete sentence !!!

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Barr came out and spitballed about the Mueller Report and made it up on the fly, we could all see what he was doing. But WE have to be fair??

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Yes. Otherwise, we're them.

I know it's frustrating, but if we're them, what are we fighting over? Who gets to screw the other side? No, thanks.

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"CAN an AG redact the report of special counsel?"

Nope. That is the point of the "Independent Counsel" (which is the actual title). No one can mess with his stuff. Barr was stretching it when he refused to issue the Moeller report, but instead issued his own digested memo.

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Not sure…I’m just guessing, but I agree with Chris’s comment. It was not Hur’s role to add unrelated details or opinions. He totally overstepped and needs a reprimand from Garland. I won’t hold my breath.

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Feb 9·edited Feb 9

He needs to be fired for cause.

[Edit:] I was reminded (thanks!) that he had already resigned from Cheetolini's corrupt DoJ and Garland inexplicably brought this partisan hack back in. Garland's got some serious 'splainin to do . . .

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My understanding, George, is that this guy doesn’t even work full-time for the DOJ. He was called in specifically to do this investigation into Biden‘s classified documents.

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Good point. They pulled this partisan hack back in. Forgot about that. Assuming he's an attorney, maybe recommending him for sanctions from the bar based on clearly unprofessional (and likely dishonest) behavior.

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I would love for these appointees to stick to —-the facts & just the facts —-like they warned us on Dragnet!!!

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I'm done with Garland and Biden should be, too. We need a personality like Lina Khan in the AG's office.

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Thank you for reporting on these somewhat discouraging tidings.

The SCOTUS edging around any and all discussion of insurrection like a tarantula on the patio strikes me as rank cowardice, but they have so narrowly focused the scope of their ruling that it is as though they have a microscope trained on a grain of sand while ignoring the beach or the tide coming in.

If somebody had found a way to eliminate Hitler as a leader between 1933 and 1938, imagine the difference it would have made to the world we live in. At some point somebody besides Jack Smith is going to have to grasp the nettle.

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Cowardice for sure and it didn’t help the Colorado legal team really dropped the ball in their argument.

Great use of metaphors by the way. This from a guy that barely passed an English class that required creative writing.

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Upvoting for "somebody besides Jack Smith is going to have to grasp the herbaceous plant which has jagged leaves covered with stinging hairs."

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Feb 9·edited Feb 9

Funny how it's fine for individual states to determine a woman's reproductive rights, but it's not fine for individual states to determine whether to keep a criminal off the ballot for president of the United States.

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Yesterday was a sad day in American Society. What have we become? The Biden story made me sick to my stomach. I want to write him a letter of support. And someone assured me that the majority of Americans think Biden is too old and he wont win in November. And your choice is a rapist with 91 felony counts? GET OUTTA HERE. It's absolutely critical that we beat Trump in November or we'll lose this country for good. I'm just disgusted and pissed off. I need to get some air. 😡

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I wish the coverage of Hur’s ignorant mentions of Biden’s mental state had more frequently included contrasts with Trump’s own floundering memory and mental ability — his repeated confusion of Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and his frequent word salads that altogether lack meaning.

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The former guy has been an unhinged ranting word salad from the start. I can't even follow what he says. It's crazy nonsense! How do people understand him?

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It's just key words. Push the cult's mental buttons, get dopamine hit, repeat. Blahblahblah poisoning the blood blahblahblah rapists and drug dealers blahblahblah IALONECANFIXIT...

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Disqualification always seemed like an iffy proposition though I wasn’t sorry the suit was filed.

Hur’s impersonation of Comey was awful, but Merrick Garland gets some blame for that too.

Truly hope Cannon’s sycophancy gets her tossed from the case.

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We literally have a judge helping a sadistic madman by making it easier for him and his depraved cronies to dox witnesses. It’s insane.

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Sycophancy is insane. Don’t understand the need to worship at the feet of a known liar, sexual assaulter, and wannabe dictator

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We don’t understand it because we are not in that state of mind. There must be some kind of chemical imbalance in the brains of people who cannot see the depravity that they are supporting.

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Feb 9·edited Feb 9

I was just thinking that as I was driving to get some lunch. How do they not see how terrible this person is--immigrants are poisoning our blood except his two immigrant wives and their anchor babies? the failed businesses and fraud involving charities? Kow-kowing to Putin and every other dictator in the world? Pull out of NATO? Insert bleach or aquarium cleaner for a covid cure? Just his nasty name calling 3rd grade behavior? He gives them permission to be their worst selves. But bottom line, he would not let most of them walk thru the doors of his home or resort/hotel in Florida.

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Your last line is the kicker, because these people are too stupid to understand that he is not doing one thing for them, and they are throwing money at him to help him. It’s the most baffling thing ever, but that’s why most psychologist agree that this is a true cult.

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Ding ding ding ding !!!!

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Perhaps or just plain meanness

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The whole Trump movement is based on hatred of others. And hatred is a very strong drug.

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Hate, fear, anger, and racism.

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Cruelty is the point

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Or at least another public smack down from her more seasoned superiors @ 11th Circuit.

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That would be nice and certainly deserved.

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I’m sorry! It strikes me that both Mr Hur and Ms Cannon are both helping to give lawyers (& judges) a bad name! (As if that profession’s reputation didn’t already suffer!)

As for Mr Hur’s very politically biased 300 + page finding, shouldn’t that be of interest to his local Bar Association for extremely unprofessional conduct?

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Yes!! I think he should be referred to the bar for review.

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By Robert's logic, Nevada switching to caucuses to affect the GOP candidate for the entire nation is unconstitutional. And I wish everyone would stop calling Haley's showing in Nevada surprising, disappointing, and pathetic, as if she were running against no one. We know who "None of these" is, and he waged a huge campaign claiming the primary was rigged for not having him on it, to get his faithfuls to vote against Haley. I would say it is disappointing to see the Great Pumpkin, the most popular person in the world, lose 30% of his party to an unknown candidate. Not that I like her, but why is main stream media pumping for Trump on this? Not to mention using Hurr's derogatory statements without pointing out that he is not qualified to make those assessment and is acting solely as a partisan for OJ.

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Linus would take offense to your use of Great Pumpkin.

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Yes. His opinions were totally superfluous & unwarranted. Putin must be so very pleased.

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It amazes me that one fat orange guy with bad hair can transform the party of Reagan into communists in just 4 years.

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I'm really fed up with this nonsense. It's infuriating to see a repeat offender skirt the law so effortlessly. I don't care who he thinks he is; we need to figure out a way to hold him accountable, just like we do with others. Why is it that individuals like Jack Teixeira are rotting in jail for much lesser offenses while this guy continues to roam free? It's unacceptable.

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Ben Hur?

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I think I like that name better than Robert Hur, right? 🤣

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Larry, I wondered when “Ben” Hur would come up. Was Jay just making a joke?

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Who knows? At first, I thought it was a “brain fart”, but when I saw it the second time, it definitely seemed intentional…

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No it was autocorrect…

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I assumed it was meant to be sarcastic.

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If Trump had been convicted of insurrection would a state be justified in not putting him on the ballot? To whom and when can Section 3 prevent someone from being on the ballot for President? Who would decide that? Fed? State?

So, basically a President can organize an insurrection that fails but then run in the next election for President if his supporters nominate him. So, southerner separatists could have nominated General Robert E Lee to run for President in 1868 against Ulysses S Grant.

Someone needs to take this case to the Federal Court if that states can’t make the decision. Since the President and Vice President are the only candidates where the same people are on all state ballots, it seems that someone needs to bring this directly to SCOTUS.

Trump not being allowed on the ballot does not disenfranchise voters. They can still vote. Is a person who wants to vote for Haley but can’t disenfranchised? Also, the objective of the 14th Amendment was in fact to “disenfranchise” specifically those citizens who wanted to vote for a confederate candidate.

What BS…the only originalist thinking on the Supreme Court is ignoring history to come of up with their own original ideas.

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Once again, I'm astounded by the media's treatment of Biden's Mexico gaffe. He's been doing that all his life, not only as an old guy. I was a stutterer, too (not so much anymore, but once in awhile it will flare up). The reason we stutter is because a word escapes us so we just muddle through. Biden, in overcoming it, errs on the side of getting a word wrong. He's been doing this a long time. His alternative is to stutter.

Those who crucify people with these kinds of handicaps have no shame, and I don't forgive ignorance. Biden, by the way, was perfectly cogent in his explanation of the Gaza situation (which I think he is getting wrong until he slaps Netanyahu across the face on national TV).

My favorite quote about this was from a Redditor (sorry), who said, “I am almost half Biden’s age and sometimes I forget that my first husband has died and wondered why I haven’t texted him in a while. And I would still be a better president than Trump.”

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Hur’s report was a disgrace to himself and to Garland, who should’ve edited out the political content. And I agree with you about these gaffes. The press are like vultures. They are no longer fulfilling their role as defenders of democracy.

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Maybe I could live with it if the press used its raptor ways on Trump, too. But his Pelosi/Haley mixup was basically just laughed off, because his base of malfeasance is so deep that it was simply a funny moment to the press.

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Totally, sigh…

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Feeding frenzy is more like it. Thanks to Donny our political discourse has sunk to even lower lows. SMH

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When was the decision made that all special counsels need to be Republicans? This is really getting old. (No pun intended)

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