Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Johnson dismisses Democratic ‘hyperbole’ over immunity ruling: ‘It’s madness’

 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4750970-house-speaker-dismisses-presidential-immunity-fears/

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday shrugged off Democrats’ concern over the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, calling their fears of future presidential criminality “madness.”

“Look, there’s all sorts of hyperbole tonight…and just this, fantastical, these hypotheticals they’ve made up [that] future presidents are going to turn into assassins and all the rest,” Johnson said Monday in an interview on Fox News. “It’s madness.”

“Listen, remember this. The president and vice president are the only two officers in our constitutional system that are elected by all the people, no one who is elected to that office going to be prone to this kind of crazy criminal activity,” Johnson added.

America now ruled by King

Lawrence reveals the ‘very bad news’ for Trump in the immunity decision

‘Death squad ruling’: Maddow reacts to Supreme Court Trump immunity decision

Trump’s Assassination Fantasy Has a Darker Purpose

 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/trump-biden-assassination-fbi/678476/

Trump has a way of projecting his own vices onto others. His view of presidential power is absolute—to the point that his lawyer recently argued before the Supreme Court that ordering the military to assassinate a political rival “could well be an official act.” There is probably some limiting principle to this particular argument, but the fact that the issue is even under discussion is not a good sign for our democracy. Perhaps he believes that Biden was out to shoot him because he thinks that’s an order that presidents can freely give.

The Supreme Court’s disastrous Trump immunity decision, explained

 https://www.vox.com/scotus/358292/supreme-court-trump-immunity-dictatorship

Roberts’s opinion in Trump, however, seems to go even further than Trump’s lawyer did. The Constitution, after all, states that the president “shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” So, if presidential authority is “conclusive and preclusive” when presidents exercise their constitutionally granted powers, the Court appears to have ruled that yes, Trump could order the military to assassinate one of his political opponents. And nothing can be done to him for it.

Macron’s implicit endorsement of ‘antisemitic,’ ‘pro-Hamas’ far left shocks French Jews

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/macron-partys-endorsement-of-antisemitic-pro-hamas-far-left-shocks-french-jews/

Macron, who will remain president regardless of the parliamentary electoral results, “just endorsed a party controlled by pro-Hamas” forces, Yohann Taieb, a French-Jewish journalist, wrote on X on Monday. The Jewish groups that endorsed him were “being taken for a ride,” Taieb added.

This sentiment, shared by many French Jews, stems from a series of unusual choices by Macron throughout one of the most tumultuous political episodes in France’s recent history.

Hypothetical SEAL Team 6 political assassination resurfaces in Supreme Court presidential immunity dissent

 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/seal-team-6-assassination-hypothetical-scotus-presidential-immunity/story?id=111583216

In their dissents, both Sotomayor and Jackson addressed the question of whether a president would have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts of murder -- including ordering the assassination of a political rival.

"This new official-acts immunity now 'lies about like a loaded weapon' for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation," Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

When the president "uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution," she continued. "Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune."

I Saw the Grim Brutality of a Conservative Supreme Court Close Up

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/today-i-saw-the-grim-brutality-of-a-conservative-supreme-court-close-up?ref=home?ref=home

As Justice Sotomayor began to read her dissent, the atmosphere in the courtroom grew palpably more tense. In a powerful dissent joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor called out the majority’s lack of legal reasoning, writing: “[a]rgument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force” and calling the majority’s conclusions “utterly indefensible.”

Supreme court ruling would permit Biden to assassinate Trump as a threat to Democracy

 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-immunity-trump-biden-assassinate_n_66831f73e4b06575b36641d8

Legal experts said Monday that yes, as horrific and authoritarian as that sounds, the 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative supermajority means that President Joe Biden could theoretically order that Trump be killed and be immune from criminal prosecution.

Biden issues a warning about the power of the presidency – and Trump – after Supreme Court’s immunity ruling

 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/joe-biden-immunity-supreme-court/index.html

 President Joe Biden on Monday condemned the Supreme Court’s decision which ruled that presidents have an absolute immunity from prosecution for core official acts, and issued a stern warning over a possible second term for former President Donald Trump.

“There are no kings in America. Each, each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Biden said in a speech from the White House.


Sigmund Freud and the Lubavitcher Rebbe

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12519653_Sigmund_Freud_and_the_Lubavitcher_Rebbe

In the winter of 1902-­1903, Rabbi Shalom Dov-­Ber Schneersohn, the 5th Lubavitcher Rebbe (known by the acronym RaSHaB), from a scion of Chassidic Rabbis, travelled from Russia to Vienna to consult with 'the famous Professor Sigmund Freud. This paper discusses their 'encounter.'

Monday, July 1, 2024

As a Therapist, Freud Fell Short, Scholars Find

 https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/06/science/as-a-therapist-freud-fell-short-scholars-find.html

New revelations depict a Freud who seems at times mercenary and manipulative, who sometimes claimed cures where there were none, and who on occasion distorted the facts of his cases to prove his theoretical points. And, judged by current knowledge and standards, it is a Freud who, at least once, stepped over the line into malpractice.

In one little-known case that barely missed becoming a major scandal, researchers say, Freud induced two patients to divorce their spouses and marry each other. In addition, he hinted that the man should make a generous donation to his psychoanalytic fund.

Supreme Court Deals Blow to Trump’s Prosecution, Ruling He Has Broad Immunity

 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/donald-trump-immunity-supreme-court-ruling-7ce6415b

The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges he sought to subvert the 2020 election, ruling 6-3 Monday that former presidents enjoy sweeping immunity for their acts while in office.

The president “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, joined in whole or part by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The court on its own threw out parts of the prosecution’s case against Trump, including on his alleged efforts to use the Justice Department to advance his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and submit slates of false electors to replace those President Biden won.

The ideologically divided decision didn’t kill the prosecution entirely, with the chief justice saying a president “enjoys no immunity for unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official.”