First, the commentators above (along with other commentators) believe their position carries a strong presumption of correctness (if not certitude), that it is my duty to displace that presumption, and that they will be the judges if I have carried that burden. Certainly, I have never agreed to such terms for this debate. Nor should I. The text of the Constitution does not expressly state that the Foreign Emoluments Clause applies to the President. The text of the Constitution does not expressly define the scope of the Constitution’s “Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States]” language. The Supreme Court has had no occasion to address the scope of the clause or the meaning of the clause’s operative language (or even the scope of similar language in other clauses.). As educated generalists who have chosen to recently inject themselves into this debate, their opinions should get a hearing. I would add: so should mine. And since, what is involved here is a debate between opinions lacking firm judicial support, our divergent ideas (and we) meet as equals. I add that the Legal Historians are supporting the plaintiffs in active litigation. Generally, in civil litigation, the burden of proof, production, and persuasion falls on the plaintiff, not on the defendant.
Second, it is time for my intellectual opponents to be fair. Claims that they have made that they know or now know to be incorrect should be withdrawn or revised. Claims that they have made asserting the existence of documentary support, should be supported, and promptly, with actual documents—or else the claims should be withdrawn. If they have to go through this process repeatedly, they might ask themselves if their position (and expertise) is really as strong as they have led themselves and others to believe.
Third, it is time for my intellectual opponents to be forthcoming in regard to an improved debate and debate atmosphere—an atmosphere rooted in mutual respect and goodwill…
Trump
Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman: The Emoluments Clauses Litigation, Part 6: Are the Claims Against the President in his Official or Individual Capacity?
Arguments progress:
On January 25, 2018, Judge Messitte held oral arguments in Greenbelt, Maryland. Blackman attended. The very first question from the bench referenced our amicus briefs, and asked the parties to address whether the Maryland Complaint concerns actions taken in the President’s official or individual capacity. Over the course of nearly five hours of argument time, counsel for the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia maintained that Trump’s receipt of (purported) emoluments concerned his official capacity. But once confronted by skeptical questions from the bench, Plaintiffs volunteered to amend their complaint to bring claims against the President in his individual capacity.
Judge Messitte did not order the Plaintiffs to amend their complaint, but during the hearing, counsel for Plaintiffs represented that they would do so in due course, presumably through a Rule 15 motion. At the hearing, the Justice Department did not indicate that it would oppose such a motion—rather, the Government suggested that it would file a new motion to dismiss. In short, the Maryland action, which had been set either to be dismissed or to proceed onto discovery, now sits in limbo awaiting a Rule 15 motion to amend, a new round of briefing on a motion to dismiss (and possibly in regard to the Rule 15 motion too), and, presumably, a new oral argument on the revised motion to dismiss (and, perhaps, also in regard to the Rule 15 motion). Moreover, all Plaintiffs have to do, to move the litigation into its new “path,” the obvious direction it should always have been in, is to change the Complaint’s caption and the 1-page prayer for relief; yet, it is now more than a week later, and still no amended complaint has been filed.
Trump’s “American Heritage Pheromone Fumigation” of The Federal Gov’t and The Coming Defenestration of The Deep State
So what did you all think of Pres Trump’s SOTU “American Heritage Pheromone Fumigation” of the Congress? Trump’s systemic use of American symbols and American success stories, in short American Patriotism, had political and media elites melting down. The videos of the Democrats during and after Trump’s speech certainly showed a lot of people who were acting like they were smelling week old road kill.
So what was Pres. Trump up too and what does the Nunes Memo have to do with it?
On the surface, Trump mentioned nothing about the FBI and Department of Justice civil rights abuses of his campaign and the spying on him during the first six months of his Administration, detailed in the Nunes Memo. Despite the President reading and vetting it during his preparation for the State of The Union Address and executing plans against these scoff law internal security thugs.
Huge hint — It was part and parcel of Trump’s long term political strategy tree in setting up the Nunes Memo release last Friday (2 Feb 2018). So far only Daniel Greenfield over at Frontpage understands anything at all of what Trump was doing.
See:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269181/trump-divides-americans-and-un-americans-daniel-greenfield
Understanding Trump’s Political Strategy Tree
Most Presidents are the head of a major political party faction who win the nomination as head of faction that unites the party for the general election. Then the party sells an agenda to the general public to govern in a wider governing political coalition.
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President Trump, in contrast, is building a governing coalition -AFTER- he was elected. He was his own party faction in the GOP and he is willing and messaging into existence a resurgent, predominantly working class/suburban/rural “Heritage America” as his governing coalition. This general public coalition is dragging existing GOP party factions to Pres. Trump to unite the GOP under his banner.
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The only DC politico that seems to understand what is going on is Texas Tea Party-elected U.S. Senator Ted Cruz with his talk of nuking the filibuster.
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The Senate filibuster now is about retaining the “Uniparty” elites last real hold on elective power in DC. The GOPe Senators who want to keep the filibuster want to use it against political factions in their own party, not the Democrats. The Senate filibuster’s destruction will mark the full blossom of Trump’s populist hostile take over of the Federal government.
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And carefully note, those pro-filibuster GOP senators are mostly #NeverTrump, open borders, tools of the Deep State, and they start throwing accusations off racism, sexism, Alt-Right white nationalism etc when ever Trump uses his “American Heritage Pheromone” shtick.
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“This Civil War – My South Carolina Tea Party Convention Speech”
The attacks on Trump show that elections don’t matter to the left.
Republicans can win an election, but they have a major flaw. They’re not leftists.
That’s what the leftist dictatorship looks like.
The left lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats.
Every time that a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States can’t scratch his own back without his say so, that’s the civil war.
Our system of government is based on the constitution, but that’s not the system that runs this country.
The left’s system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.
If it’s in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited.
He’s a dictator.
But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented.
A Democrat in the White House has “discretion” to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the “discretion” to reverse him.
That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run.
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The Trump years are going to decide if America survives. When his time in office is done, we’re either going to be California or a free nation once again.
Read the whole thing.
Flyoverphobia
So, there has always been a tension existing between city folks and country folks; the tale of the city mouse and the country mouse being an example. Then there are all those jokes about the city slicker and the country bumpkin, the effete city dweller and the down-to-earth country folk, the books, movies and television series painting the city as a glamorous yet spiritually and physically unhealthy place, the country being dull, desperately boring, backwards, even a bit dangerous … all in the spirit of good fun, mostly. But now we have a new and malignant version, and there is nothing at all fun about it. Here we have the bicoastal enclaves, all drawn as the glamorous and fabulously wealthy, sensitive and with-it woke folks … and then you have the flyover country in between, filled with as the bicoastal see it with those hateful, stupid looser deplorables, clinging to their guns, and religion, and hating on all those with darker skins.