Supreme court judgment only partial protection for Trump
Americans have long proclaimed that no one is above the law but one was elevated over the rest of them yesterday (Monday).
The top court had never before been called on to set out “a rule for the ages”, as one conservative justice called it, on the immunity from criminal prosecution enjoyed by the president. In doing so, it advanced the so-called imperial presidency that the country’s founding fathers tried to prevent.
No president had ever faced federal prosecution before but along came Donald Trump and challenged many of the nation’s presumptions, so the Supreme Court had to act.
American folklore sets out how the plucky colonists overthrew the absolutism of George III, which was always a useful myth, to create a republic where “all men are created equal” and treated as such under the law. That was a myth too, in a state originally run on slavery.
Yet as they prepare to celebrate the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Supreme Court issued a wide-ranging but also inconclusive explication of when a president can act safe in the knowledge of immunity from prosecution.
The core constitutional activities of the president have absolute protection, the court ruled, meaning that Trump’s interactions with the Department of Justice over the election – including threatening to replace those who did not go along with him – fall under its scope.
All other official activities were ruled to have “at least presumptive immunity from prosecution”. Trump’s discussions with his vice-president, Mike Pence, were ruled official acts and it was left up to the prosecution to make an argument that he went beyond the scope of this official relationship.
But the court simply opted out of deciding whether Trump’s pressure on state officials or some of his tweets were official acts and therefore immune, adding that “most of his public communications are likely to fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities”.
The court tried to set general rules for the ages which will require much more legal argument to discern in real-world situations. It concluded by asserting that “the president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the president does is official. The president is not above the law.”
But, predictably in a case with implications for this year’s election as well as posterity, the Supreme Court was split with the six conservative judges in favour of the main decision and the three liberals against. This deepens the image of the current court as ideologically driven.
However, the ruling was not as hair-raising as claimed by the most liberal member, Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote: “When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organises a military coup to hold on to power? Immune.”
This went way too far but she was right to state that it “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding”.
This “law-free” zone exists only for the president’s core official actions, the top court ruled. Now the lower courts have to thrash out what constitutes the core, the official and the unofficial case-by-case.
Sooner or later, in the absence of statute, these parameters of the Oval Office shield were going to have to be set down in black and white instead of simply presumed
The Supreme Court articulated something that has long been apparent – that the US president is not only the most powerful elected office in the world but is also, necessarily, very well protected, not unlike a British monarch of George III’s era.
It is clear that Democrats will now campaign hard on Trump’s alleged capture of the Supreme Court to help him evade prosecution.
But in drawing a distinction between absolute immunity, presumed immunity and legal jeopardy for private acts, the court has only just begun the process of defining the boundaries of criminal liability for the occupant of the White House.
Incredible clash of identities: Hatred of a female black politician from a homosexual man
Julie Burchill
Most people have a soft spot for the first ‘X’ film they legitimately saw as an alleged ‘adult’; mine was Magic, the 1978 film by Richard Attenborough, starring Anthony Hopkins as a mild-mannered ventriloquist who becomes possessed by the spirit of his verbally vicious dummy, leading to awful consequences when a steaming hot and sex-starved Ann-Margret happens by. The creepy plot of Magic came to mind when I saw a clip of the actor David Tennant’s astonishing outburst of spite directed at the Tory MP Kemi Badenoch while he was picking up a prize at something called ‘the British LGBT Awards’:
What Tennant said was mind-bogglingly stupid
‘If I’m honest, I’m a little depressed by the fact that acknowledging that everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life how they want to live it – as long as they’re not hurting anyone else – should merit any kind of special award or special mention, because it’s common sense, isn’t it? However, until we wake up and we live in a world where Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore…I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up…while we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this.’
Perhaps Tennant should stick to the day job. Then again, maybe not: when he played Dr Who from 2005 to 2010, Tennant’s acting was so terrible that he often seemed to be mentally unbalanced.
As anyone who has ever hidden behind a sofa as a tot knows, Dr Who is full of fearsome monsters. Did he have a run-in with one of these on set? Has Tennant perchance been taken over by the spirit of the Abzorbaloff, who liked to eat people but leave them somehow alive as polyps on his skin, comparable perhaps to the way social media trends consume people? Or a Judoon, putting nothing before their desire to police wayward opinions and crush nay-sayers?
Then there are the more obvious tin-can tyrants Tennant may have been channeling when he bashed Badenoch; the Cybermen’s catchphrase ‘DELETE!’ could well apply to the way those brainwashed by the Magical Thinking of trans-substantiation seek to extirpate uppity women, or even that classic old Dalek answer-to-everything: ‘EXTERMINATE!’
Mrs Badenoch was, as ever, magnificent in her cold fury:
‘I will not shut up. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls. A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end. Tennant is one of Labour’s celebrity supporters. This is an early example of what life will be like if they win. Keir Starmer stood by while Rosie Duffield was hounded. He and his supporters will do the same with the country. Do not let the bigots and bullies win.’
We’re used to opinions being called ‘hate speech’ these days; it’s generally used by the Cry-Bullies of Woke to censor those they oppose. Most adults shrug off such accusations, because they know that what they’re saying – women don’t have penises – isn’t hate at all, but Biology 101. As someone who’s never accused anyone of Hate Speech in their life, and never gone complaining to the law about any of the verbal aggression from misrepresentation (the columnist who accused me of writing a love letter to Osama bin Laden comes to mind) to the death threats I’ve received since I was a teenager (never cross a Bay City Rollers’ fan), Tennant’s rant sounds close to the bone.
No wonder Badenoch’s existence makes little men feel even smaller
What Tennant said is also profoundly, mind-bogglingly stupid. Someone could just about get away – the climate of misogyny now being as rabid as it has been since they stopped burning ‘witches’ – with wishing that JK Rowling didn’t exist. But one of the few black women in public life? Can we only imagine the squealing outrage that Owen Jones and his cronies would whip up on X if, say, Laurence Fox had said that he wished Diane Abbott didn’t exist? Yet if one identifies as a Good Guy – as Tennant so laughably does – it’s just another way of being inclusive and caring to wish that a black woman you disagree with could somehow be vaporised.
Like Hate Speech, ‘fascist’ – another word the trans-lobby like to lob at anyone who disagrees with them that testicles can be feminine – is a word I have no truck with beyond what happened in Europe in the twentieth century. It’s too serious a word to toss around like a frisbee in a park. But the road to fascism definitely begins with the desire that those who think differently from you should not exist. Tennant and his ilk might like to portray sex-realists like myself as people who wish to actively do away with transsexuals, but I don’t feel that way at all; as a child, I loved Danny La Rue.
All I want is for men who pretend to be women to keep away from actual women’s hard-won stuff, be they single-sex toilets or sporting trophies. Stop bullying us and telling us it can’t be bullying because you’re one of us: that’s called gaslighting, you gormless great navvies.
Actors often attempt to insert themselves into politics, usually making seven sorts of horse’s asses of themselves along the way. But there’s something particularly pathetic and pitiable about a performer – a person paid to preen and pretend – taking up the trans-cudgels.
Tennant prances around acting as something he’s not – a Scot playing a Cockney, a vicious little lickspittle playing a Nice Guy – just the way his imaginary friends do. We don’t hear the phrase ‘The Politics Of Envy’ much these days. But it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to feel the inadequacy of a white man who has spent his life being handsomely rewarded for capering around next to a black woman like Mrs Badenoch, who has made her way in life through sheer hard work: real work, not sitting in a make-up chair memorising lines written by someone with a brain.
Badenoch has made her way in life through sheer hard work
Kemi Badenoch returned to London by herself at the age of 16 – after doing her homework by candle-light in Nigeria – to realise her ambition of completing her education here, enrolling in a modest part-time A-Level course in Morden, south London, and working at McDonald’s; it’s likely that she will be the next leader of the Conservative party. No wonder her existence makes little men feel even smaller.
At the weekend, I was at the LET WOMEN SPEAK rally in Brighton where a crowd of masked, black-clad men – the trans-allies known as the ‘Black Pampers’ due to their extreme youth and their verbal incontinence – told us that we were Nazis for believing that women should be permitted to hold on to our rights, making so much racket with various noisy toys that the women’s voices were all but drowned.
I have no doubt that, could they make it so, they would arrange it so that we didn’t exist either. The Starmer government seems sensible and dull, but in the area of women’s rights, they sing from the same page as these strange, sick creatures; they too have been infected with the trans-madness, the strange danse macabre which sees common sense and women’s rights as the enemy of all good people.
Still, it’s good that – unlike the Black Pampers – David Tennant has shown his true colours. Maybe he’ll regenerate as a decent human being one day. We can but hope. Until then, shame on him, for this vile attack on this exceptional woman.
If you want to know why prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical schools is a bad idea, consider your priorities in a medical emergency.
Early this month, my youngest son came howling and holding his left arm. My wife thought it was broken. When he turned it, his forearm flopped and rolled like it was made of rubber. Not great.
My wife used a spatula to stabilize his arm and wrap it up. Off we went to the urgent care. His arm was indeed broken, but they didn’t feel comfortable setting it. My wife took him to a pediatric ER. They set it but wanted an orthopedic doctor to check it before putting on a cast. The next day, the orthopedic doctor saw him. He now has a big blue cast and a summer filled with regret that he jumped off the fort his brothers made in the living room.
Throughout the whole ordeal, my wife and I’s only priority was finding someone who could help our son. You know what we didn’t care about? The skin color or sex of the doctors or nurses.
Now, that sounds basic. A decade ago, it would have been so obvious that it wouldn’t have been worth mentioning. My son’s broken bone wasn’t going to throw itself back into alignment if someone with the right skin color or sex walked into the room. What mattered was a doctor’s knowledge and skill.
That’s why medical schools should be looking for the best and brightest. Medicine is hard and the stakes are high. Unfortunately, the medical training field is awash with schools and groups prioritizing how doctors look, not their ability to heal.
Consider the Association of American Medical Colleges. It’s a major player in medical education. It runs the MCAT exam, which helps determine which applicants will make it into medical school. Along with the American Medical Association, it sponsors the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which provides “accreditation of medical education programs.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges has fully embraced leftist dogma. It “works to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles across the continuum of medical education,” it states on its website.
That includes advising medical schools on how to get around the 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned racial preferences in higher education admissions. One recommendation is a “holistic review in admissions.” That “allows admissions committees to consider the whole applicant, rather than disproportionately focusing on any one factor.”
Translated: Don’t put too much focus on test scores. Look at applicants’ skin color.
One medical school that’s been doing that is at UCLA. As The Washington Free Beacon reported last month, the school has been prioritizing race over merit in recent years. The result? In some cohorts, “more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. The national failure rate is 5%.
DEI turned a once-elite medical school into a failure factory. The implications are terrifying.
My son received care from a top-notch doctor. If DEI continues to fester in medical schools, doctors with that level of skill will become harder and harder to find.
In the ACT, Shane Drumgold created still ongoing problems for many people by prosecuting Bruce Lehrmann against police advice. He took the feminist "believe the woman" approach instead of a proper judicial stance.
It now seems that NSW has a similar problem with prosecutor Sally Dowling. Launching a prosecution against someone can itself be a form of punishment so launching a prosection against someone on flimsy grounds in an extremeny irresponsible and reprehensible act. No wonder that even female judges are critical of her
NSW District Court judge Penelope Wass has taken the extraordinary step of making a formal complaint against chief prosecutor Sally Dowling SC, after Ms Dowling raised secret grievances about her to the court’s chief judge in the middle of a criminal hearing.
Judge Wass told the Taree District Court on Tuesday morning that she had made the complaint to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, telling counsel she was disclosing it in case they thought it was grounds for her to withdraw from any matters before her currently.
The Australian understands the complaint was filed on Friday.
Last month this masthead revealed Ms Dowling made a complaint about Judge Wass during a sexual assault prosecution, alleging the judge was jeopardising the right to a fair trial by directing witnesses to present their phones as evidence, and threatened in correspondence with Chief Judge Sarah Huggett to “take the matter further” if the directions continued. The communications were not disclosed to the defence.
That was interpreted as a “warning” by Judge Wass, who in the past has criticised Ms Dowling’s office for shepherding “incredible and dishonest allegations of sexual assault” through NSW courts amid ongoing tension between Ms Dowling and the state’s judges.
Ms Dowling’s complaint at the time became the latest missile thrown in a war between Ms Dowling and the judiciary, after five judges complained about processes governing rape complaints, with some believing a pattern is emerging in which prosecutors prefer to take a “believe the victim” stance and push a matter before a jury, rather than dropping impossible cases.
Judge Wass disclosed Ms Dowling’s complaint to Judge Huggett the matter in an interlocutory judgment for R v SF, delivered on May 27.
According to the judgment, Ms Dowling emailed Chief Judge Huggett on May 22 “without the knowledge or consent of the other party of the Crown briefed in the trial” to make the complaint about Judge Wass directing witnesses in three separate matters to hand up their phones and, at times, their passcodes.
“The terms of the correspondence, the fact that it came from Ms Dowling who prosecutes on behalf of the Crown, a party to this litigation, the fact that it was sent to the chief judge only days before I was due to give judgment in two of the three cases mentioned, and because it contains an express warning to me, has meant that, at the very least, I am required to disclose it to the parties in those two cases, and I do so now in respect of this case,” she wrote in the interlocutory judgment.
“The content and the timing of the complaint is a relevant matter. The comments made by Ms Dowling were conveyed to me by the chief judge shortly after they were received, as was in my view appropriate. Indeed, the final remarks by Ms Dowling, as they contained a warning to me, made clear that they needed to be conveyed to me forthwith.”
The three matters were R v Chambers in 2021, R v Stenner-Wall in 2023 and R v SF.Judge Wass, in the interlocutory judgment, noted Ms Dowling did not make any complaint or comment in the Chambers or Stenner-Wall cases when the direction was made for a witness to hand up their phone.
Judge Wass, at the time, said she was preparing a sentence for the Stenner-Wall matter.
She said the direction to have a witness hand up their phone “resulted in a proper disclosure being made to both parties (that had not been made to or by the Crown) and the subsequent entry of a plea of guilty to the relevant counts on the indictment”.
In the Chambers matter, she said, the direction stopped a witness taking her phone to the bathroom with her when she sought an unscheduled toilet break during cross-examination.
Judge Wass said Ms Dowling had included a “warning” that she would “consider steps she considers to be properly available to her to seek judicial review should further directions of this nature” be made in the future.“
I regard such a warning of the contemplated judicial review, although delphic as to what form it might take, as extremely serious, particularly as it was delivered during the course of my consideration of two of the three cases at hand and where it sought to have me take that matter into account in my determination of future cases,” she said.
“Had this opinion been conveyed directly to me at any time, but particularly at this time, I would have regarded it as being highly inappropriate, particularly from an experienced Senior Counsel … particularly when I am so obviously part heard. I wish to say no more about that at present.”
The Australian has in recent months revealed Ms Dowling is facing a bitter dispute with sitting judges and members of her own staff, some of whom say her office consistently puts accused rapists on trial for crimes that will never secure a conviction.
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