Cannon’s ruling is going to be appealed. If it gets appealed all the way to the supreme court, again (and Clarence Thomas has specifically asked for this in one of his prior rulings), and the supreme court holds with them, then any charges brought by a special counsel in any case are gone.

Have you been paying attention? For the last two and a half years, we've seen the entire court system bend over backwards to carve out special exemptions that only apply to Trump, or make Trump exempt from certain laws because reasons. Trump has received special accomodations for no reason other than the fact that he's Donald Trump. They could very easily declare that the Supreme Court will determine which special counsels are valid and which ones aren't on a case-by-case basis. And in this case, the special counsel is invalid because Trump couldn't have been investigated for official acts in the first place, per their previous ruling. And since this presidential immunity doesn't also cover the president's children, the special counsel in that case is valid and therefore Hunter's conviction stands.

If you objectively follow the logic of their previous rulings, this is pretty much where that road leads to. Special counsels investigating Trump are invalid because Trump is covered by Presidential immunity. Special counsels against Hunter biden are valid because that immunity doesn't cover a president's son (until Eric, Don, Ivanka, or Jared need it to). Special counsels currently investigating Biden are valid because it's not the court's place to interfere in ongoing investigations, and removing the special counsels would be too disruptive. Or something. It makes sense as long as you don't think about it too hard. Or at all. Or if you're a brazenly corrupt Supreme Court judge.

Precedent doesn't matter any more. The rules now apply when the Supreme Court says they do. And if they say that the rule only applies to Trump because fuck you that's why, they're going to say that the rule only applies to Trump because fuck you that's why.

Thomas is not the supreme court. And he’s starting to alienate himself from even the other conservative justices. He’s on an island and I doubt the others would follow his lead if this reaches SCOTUS on appeal.

None of them went out of their way to distance themselves from his comments, either. They didn't offer any kind of dissenting opinon. They didn't speak out against his advisory opinion, which is supposed to be against SC norms. And they haven't spoken out since. And given their rulings since gaining the supermajority, along with their "nuke it and everything close to it" approach to ruling on matters, and there's no reason to believe they wouldn't gladly just go along with whatever Clarence Thomas says, or at the very least, not care enough to vote against him.

This isn't even the first time he gave an advisory opinion. Remember the literal list of cases he said he wanted to review and overturn? He wouldn't be so brazenly and openly giving these literal roadmaps of what cases to bring before them if he didn't believe he had at least four more votes. And none of them have given us any reason to believe otherwise.

I'm from Massachusetts. One of the bluest states in the country. I can't vote any harder.

Ok, so in the past two weeks alone, we've seen:

• Biden completely collapse at a debate that he himself issued the challenge for, essentially scoring not one but two potentially fatal own goals at once, giving the RNC enough ammo to fuel months of attack ads while subsequently doing little to nothing to convince his own party he has a realistic chance to win now.

• the Supreme Court enact significant power grabs for both the President and themselves by saying that Presidents are absolutely immune when committing official acts or anything even related to an official act, essentially saying that an "official act" is anything they say it is, while also implying that an official act is basically whatever the President says it is until they say otherwise.

• One of Trump's four cases dismissed, with the other three essentially on life support at best due to the above ruling, essentially allowing Trump to walk away scot-free.

• Trump survive an assassination attempt, giving legitimacy to the conspiracy theories that fuel his campaign and allowing him to exponentially ratchet up his attacks on Democrats, knowing that Democrats are on the defensive and cannot really defend themselves without playing right into Trump's hands and giving the appearance that they supported the attempt.

• Trump not only survive the assassination attempt, but come out of it with a series of pictures that, objectively speaking, are so defiant and patriotic in the face of a real-time assassination attempt that those pictures alone would carry any other candidate to victory in a landslide. Seriously. Defiant look, fist pump in the air, blood splashed against one side of his face, perfect sky, American flag in the background. If you can't get elected after that, your entire campaign staff should be fired, sued for neglegence, and be declared legally stupid.

And he's carrying all that momentum and more into the RNC. At this point, this is really Trump's election to lose. And none of this even counts all the GOP thumbs that are going to be on that scale in November.

If you think the first term was bad........

Because Thomas literally gave her that argument to make in the immunity ruling. She literally cited his comments and basically copied his ruling like a high school kid copying off the "smart" kid in the class.

He basically told her "Hey, throw the case out. We've got your back."

I hate to say it, and I know it's going to sound fatalistic, but her decision is very likely going to stand.

Clarence Thomas literally handed her this argument on a silver platter. And say what you will about him, the legal system still considers him one of nine justices of the highest court in the land, and his words still carry that legal weight.

If Jack Smith appeals, there's (IMO), a 50/50 chance he wins on appeal. I could see the appeals court using things like logic and rational thought, kicking Cannon off the case and reinstating the charges against Trump (Or however that would work in the legal sense). But I could also see them saying that since she was merely following what Clarence Thomas told her to do, her decision is on sound legal footing, would most likely survive Supreme Court scrutiny, her decision was proper based on the SC ruling, and the decision stands. And from a strictly legal standpoint, they'd be right in doing so.

And if this case were to make it all the way up to the SC......since Cannon was literally following their blueprint, there's 0% chance that they'll suddenly rule against her. Nothing good can come out of appealing to the Supreme Court, and in fact it may be exactly what this supreme court wants and why Clarence Thomas added that little tidbit into the decision, so the SC can rule that all special counsels are illegal and the entire J6 investigation was unconstitutional as a result.

(Of course, Hunter Biden's conviction will still stand, because reasons.....)

This case is dead. The other three are on life support, and the doctor has already called for the chaplain to deliver last rites.

You say that sarcastically, But I'll put 10 to 1 odds that at least one Republican lawmaker seriously makes that suggestion, and at least even money that says this Supreme Court would actually uphold it if it were to make it to court.

if people aren’t very satisfied with normal, offering them more normal probably isn’t going to get you very far.

Here's the thing. You're right, in that Trump got elected because people were unhappy with the status quo. And Trump at least offered something different.

But what we're seeing isn't being "unhappy with the status quo". It's believing in fairy tales. It's believing in conspiracy theories. It's making it up as you go along. Worse, it's wanting to force you to adhere to it too.

I've always said that if you're in an election where your opponent is saying monkeys are flying out of your ass and terrorizing the city, and 51% of the people believe that flying monkey terrorism is a huge problem, you can try appealing to logic and saying there are no flying monkeys coming out of your ass, but you'll be doing it during your concession speech, while your opponent is not only making his victory speech but boasting about the fact that he solved the flying monkey problem on day one.

This is where we are as a society. A sizeable chunk of our society really is listening to Trump's claims about whatever is flying out of Biden's ass, and they have absolutely no appetite for things like truth or logic. Biden is trying desperately to stick to this realm of reality, but it looks more and more like he's going to be making that appeal while watching Trump's inauguration and listening to Trump's supporters cheer on the chaos.

This is a shining example of people downvoting something not because it's false, but because they don't like hearing it. This is an absolutely true statement. Between this and Biden's complete inability to recover after that horrid debate performance, I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump take at least a solid 5 point lead. Minimum. This will absolutely drive every single MAGA moron in this country to the polls.

You know what's sad about this?

If the roles were reversed, Trump would be offering the shooter a posthumous pardon and probably a medal. And no, I'm not joking. Trump would never be seen giving someone else the respect he demands from others.

Any vote for anyone other than Biden (or whoever replaces him if he steps aside) is a de-facto vote for Trump, no matter how you try to justify it to yourself. Susan Collins knows this. She is fooling nobody.

Trump's mantra is to say it first, say it loudest, and say it often and eventually you'll get some people to believe it. He doesn't have to get many. Just enough to matter. And we've (sadly) already proven there are enough people out there prone to racist influence where getting enough to matter may not be all that difficult, so long as he repeats it often and loudly enough. It's been pretty successful for him so far.

Football fans will know the analogy of "This is a game of inches". Same thing applies here. This election is going to come down to small pockets of independent voters in key swing states. Those states may have a few center-right people who think that Trump is bad enough where they'll hold their nose and vote for the old white guy, but asking them to vote for a <gasp!> black woman! is just a bit too far. They may be a fringe minority, but a fringe minority may be all he needs in a couple of these states.