Section 3 of the 14th amendment
Conservative lawyer says why Trump is disqualified.
[Michael] Luttig, however, has a plan to stop him. In August he joined with the liberal constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe to publish an article in the Atlantic magazine under the headline “The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again”.
The pair argued that section 3 of the 14th amendment automatically excludes from future office anyone who swears an oath to uphold the constitution and then rebels against it. Irrespective of criminal proceedings or congressional sanctions, they contended, Trump’s efforts to overturn the election are sufficient to bar him for life.
It makes sense. If you, as president, swear an oath to uphold the constitution, and then rebel against it, you’ve pretty much shredded your own allegiance to the very thing you want to be the boss of. You’ve also demonstrated that you’re an oath-breaker. If he did get elected he would have to swear the same oath again, and this time no one would believe him, so where does that leave us?
Luttig elaborates by phone: “The former president is disqualified from holding the presidency again because he engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the constitution of the United States when he attempted to remain in power, notwithstanding that the American people had voted to confer the power of the presidency upon Joe Biden.
“That constituted a rebellion against the executive vesting clause of the constitution, which limits the term of the president to four years unless he is re-elected by the American people. I cannot even begin to tell you how that is literally the most important two sentences in America today.”
He tried to steal it, using force and violence, and now he wants to try to get it by legit means.
Luttig this week helped form a new conservative legal movement, relaunching an organisation formerly known as Checks & Balances as the Society for the Rule of Law. The move was billed as a nationwide expansion aimed at protecting the constitution and defending the rule of law from Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. Its leadership includes Luttig, the lawyer George Conway and former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock.
“We believe that the time has come for a new conservative legal movement that still holds the same allegiances to the constitution and the rule of law that the original conservative legal movement held but has abandoned,” Luttig explains. “There’s a split in the conservative legal movement that mirrors the split in the Republican party about Donald Trump.”
On other side of that split is the Federalist Society, a group that for decades has played a crucial role in grooming conservative judges – its prominent figures have included Leonard Leo, who advised Trump on his supreme court picks – but has said little about the threat posed by the former president to the constitutional order.
Luttig, who, unlike Conway, has never been a member of the Federalist Society, said: “We believe that the Federalist Society has failed to speak out in defence of the constitution and the rule of law and repudiate the constitutional and legal excesses of the former president and his administration and, most notably, failed to repudiate the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”
What ever happened to law and order?
According to Wikipedia “Biden won the election with 306 electoral votes and 51.3% of the national popular vote, compared to Trump’s 232 electoral votes and 46.9% of the popular vote.” This was a decisive win, in fact it wasn’t even close. If Trump’s carryings on in the wake of that election isn’t insurrection and rebellion against the Constitution, then I don’t know what is. I’m particularly irate that the stupid bastard tried to disenfranchise those of us here in Georgia, including me personally, who voted against him.
To be fair to Trump, I don’t think he’s limiting himself to legit means. He’s still willing to use force and violence, if that’s what it takes.
I still don’t get how you lot have never gotten around to taking your
democracyrepublic out of the horse and buggy days.How can democracy be served when the loser is still POTUS for three months after being sacked by the electorate?
Why do you persist with the farce of the Electoral College, subject to as much manipulation and partisan gerrymandering as it is?
And why can’t you figure out a way to stop forever electing geriatrics?
Unfortunately the founders made it well-nigh impossible to amend the Constitution, so we’re not going to be rid of the EC anytime soon (though I think speeding up the transition could be a bipartisan issue). But there are ways short of amending the Constitution to make it more representative. One approach is to enlarge the House. The size of the House was capped at 435 back in 1929, when the population was around 120 million; these days it’s almost thrice that. All the Constitution says about the size of the House is that you can’t have more than 1 rep per 30,000 people, so the House could have more than 10,000 members. That would clearly be too big, but doubling the size would dilute the electoral advantage small states get from having two senators.
Another approach is to end the winner-takes-all-electoral-votes system that most states have, and make it proportional. Maine and Nebraska already do something like that; there’s no particular reason why other states can’t (though I doubt Republicans in Texas or Democrats in California would go along).
And of course giving DC and Puerto Rico statehood would help.
As for geriatrics, well, we did go fairly young in the Clinton-Bush-Obama years.
You know, something just occurred to me. I moved from one of the states with proportional EC votes, and moved to the other. I knew that, but I’d forgotten. Thanks, WaM.
As for updating our system, I suspect that is probably a non-starter politically. Especially with a POTUS that loves “original intent” as though somehow in 250 years nothing has, or should have, changed. We are hopelessly caught in a national narrative that contains at least as many falsehoods as truths, and we have a million cheerleaders for American exceptionalism. Those factors make it difficult to admit that our system is archaic.
iknklast,
Well, Nebraska is essentially the Maine of the Midwest. Without the ocean, of course. Or the mountains, or the magnificent forests, or the lobster, or the somewhat decent politics….
So, uh, not really like Maine at all.
Or the border with Canada.
Yes, I plan to make use of that border proximity; I’m only 11 miles from Canada. I just gotta get my passport renewed.
The 3 months allows for an orderly transition. It was never an issue before the country did what the Founders never believed was possible: electing someone with no qualifications who was also a criminal.
There is another way around the EC, The Nation Popular Vote Compact. It is a law each state can adopt that says the state’s Electoral votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote. It becomes effective when it has been adopted by states representing 270 Electoral votes. 17 states representing 205 Electoral votes have adopted it.
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Technically, the EC isn’t subject to gerrymandering, gerrymandering warps the results for the House and state legislature seats. To the extent gerrymandering lets Republicans control the state legislature without winning close to the majority of votes within the state and pass voter suppression laws that reduce the state wide Democratic vote it does impact who wins the state, but that isn’t gerrymandering per se.
Forever electing geriatrics? Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama were hardly geriatric.
The Constitution has been amended 27 times in 233 years. That is far from impossible.