The proposal would also grant those top judges broad authority to pause court proceedings during emergencies. It would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings,” according to draft legislative language the department shared with Congress.That basically means that someone could be arrested and held without bail, without arraignment, until such time as Trump decides that the Coronavirus emergency is over.
Which, judging by the history of authoritarian states, would be never.
Given that we have already seen one Trumpist governor use the Coronavirus as a tool to mess with the process of selecting a nominee for the Democratic party, it may not be beyond the realm of possibility that the Party of Trump will try to find a way of postponing the election this Fall.
That would be a severe degradation of our democracy, and one that I wager that most of the Trumpanzees will loudly applaud.
We should not let Trump do what we let Bush do after 9-11: Use a national crisis as a way to strip us of more of our liberties and freedoms.
'Twas Congress, not Bush that did the "Patriot" act.
ReplyDeleteBut he didn't do anything to stop it either.
I doubt that Donald Trump will be able to postpone the elections.
I know you hate him, but really...
Poor Trump, his hands tied by China and the Fake News Media from taking substantial action on the pandemic.
ReplyDelete/s
The Constitution doesn't allow postponing a Presidential election.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, primaries are fair game. The Constitution is silent on primaries. But in that case, the Democratic Party simply nominates Joe Biden (it's pretty clear he's going to win if the primaries continue anyhow, given how far behind Bernie has slipped) because there's nothing in law that says that they must hold primaries to select their candidate anyhow.
Of course, the Constitution is just a piece of paper. If Hair Twitler decrees and the Republican-dominated Supreme Court concurs, I have no idea what happens. Nothing good, I suspect.
Wyden and Klobuchar have a bill calling for mail-in voting in November. Fergus already has the delegates to be the Republican nominee, and Biden is within seven hundred or so, which could be had in mail-in states if the Dems get their shit together. Whether there will be conventions or not is only a matter of intraparty rules I think.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes me nervous is 1) relying on the Dems getting their shit together, and 2) what will happen if this situation gets a lot worse, like it is in Italy, and the Republicans get worried and desperate about the election and start pulling "emergency measures" out of their asses.
They were already gonna cheat on an unprecedented scale, and this may look like cover for them.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
"They were already gonna cheat on an unprecedented scale"
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHA
What color is the sky in your world?