Sovereign Impunity: A Child of the Supreme People - 2

Spanking: Where the rubber
meets the road

The ongoing presidential election fever is a product of a sickening society that has allowed "supreme people" to be above the law through propaganda devices or supreme arrogance:

"We have seen the emergence of a new type of 'accountability' during the past decade.

We could describe it as stealth accountability, which is being framed and presented as 'policy differences'.

Instead of political wrongs, crimes, or sources for proper retribution, the worst of governance is accepted simply as bad policy for which impeachment is off the table.

The official story line designed to launder egregious and treaty violating government behaviour is composed of a one liner something like 'one administration cannot punish a prior administration for what that prior administration did based on policy differences between the two administrations'.

Having declared that premise, the official exercise then becomes one of describing everything the prior administration and everyone in it did as 'policy', even to the degree of calling war crimes a policy of government."

(When Accountability Is A Plague, Dredd Blog, 2009).

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that he would never allow any of the Israel's leaders or soldiers to be put on trial for war crimes.

Netanyahu opened his fiery speech at the inauguration of the Knesset's winter session by blasting the Goldstone Commission's report sponsored by the United Nations, that accused Israel of committing war crimes during its war against militants in the Gaza Strip last year."  

(The Supreme Being Netanyahu, Dredd Blog, 2009). Have you seen anything similar to that this month ... about a decade and a half later?

It is one of those hidden in plain site thingys:

"The Government presents an impressive array of theories which would preclude it from any liability ... we ... hold that the Government should escape unscathed ... It is often said that the doctrine of sovereign immunity is a derivative of the common law maxim 'The King can do no wrong.' But conceptually it is far older. Zeus himself carried an aegis or breastplate, a buckler, and a thunderbolt which made him, the mythological sovereign, immune from all that could beset him. And common law provided its sovereign with the immunity of Zeus ... The tide of history is running clearly against the concept of sovereign immunity. The disfavor into which the doctrine has fallen was observed as far back as ... 1939 ... [and] this Court pointed out that the assault upon the citadel of immunity continues presently apace."

(The Battle of Immunities & Diseases, Dredd Blog 2011, quoting a court). See also these: Sovereign Immunity Source: Toxins of Power?, Follow The Immunity, Sovereign Impunity: A Child of the Supreme People, Will The Military Become The Police? - 2, Founding Fathers' Conspiracy Theories, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Supremes Are Well Oiled, My Lawyer Said I Could, Supreme Arrogance.

Too many folks are not taking their constitutional medicine (The Constitution Is Quite A Medicine).

But, two cases recently took place in the District of Columbia which are of the opposite sort, in that they were decided by judges who are taking their constitutional medicine:

"In sum, neither the Double Jeopardy Clause nor the Impeachment Judgment Clause prevent Defendant, who while President was acquitted in impeachment proceedings for incitement, from being prosecuted after leaving office for different offenses" (p. 44) ... For the foregoing reasons, the court will DENY Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on Presidential Immunity" (U.S. v Trump, pp. 44, 48, Federal District Court).

"Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982), Presidents have carried out their official responsibilities free from any exposure to civil damages liability. Nixon established a President’s absolute immunity from civil damages claims predicated on his official acts. The object of a President’s official-act immunity is to assure that he can fearlessly and impartially discharge the singularly weighty duties of the office. The President, though, does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities. And when he acts outside the functions of his office, he does not continue to enjoy immunity from damages liability just because he happens to be the President. Rather, as the Supreme Court made clear in Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), a President’s official-act immunity by nature does not extend to his unofficial actions. When he acts in an unofficial, private capacity, he is subject to civil suits like any private citizen." (Federal Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, pp 2-3).

(These were two recent December, 2023 cases). They held that ex-president Trump is liable for any crimes committed even while he was president because by definition, a crime is not an official act of any office holder, nor is civil wrongdoing an "official act";

Officials work to help, not hurt the people by their actions. 

Trump's medicine is of the spanking variety, not the constitutional variety.

The previous post in this series is here.