The Tennessean, July 5, 2024: If Joe Biden does not step aside, his legacy will be a second Donald Trump presidency
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Saturday, July 06, 2024
Friday, July 05, 2024
Brentwood's Tractor Supply ends DEI initiatives, pride funding
Former Fifth Congressional District candidate Robby Starbuck brought the complaints to light in a June 6 social media post on the topic.
Starbuck said that Tractor Supply had a DEI Council, it funded sex change operations and it funded pride and drag events, climate change activism and hosted LGBTQIA events at the office.
“We must make our voices heard,” Starbuck wrote. “(CEO) Hal Lawton needs to understand that we don’t want our hard earned money spent on these woke priorities. If he supports this stuff then he should spend some of his $11M salary or tens of millions in stock on it instead of using the money we spend at Tractor Supply.”
In response, Tractor Supply said it was discontinuing the DEI efforts, is withdrawing its carbon emission goals and focus on both land and water conservation efforts and it would further focus on “rural America priorities” such as ag education, animal welfare, veterans causes and being a good neighbor.
The company said it would stop being involved in pride festivals and voting campaigns.
“This monumental change is thanks to all of you who supported my work exposing this, to the whistleblowers in Tractor Supply and my fellow farm owners who respectfully spoke up,” Starbuck wrote about Tractor Supply’s statement. “I’m working to get more information about these changes but this is a fantastic moment for the fight to banish wokeness, DEI and ESG from the workplace.”
In response to the changes at Tractor Supply, National Black Farmers Association President John Boyd called for Lawton’s resignation.
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Tuesday, July 02, 2024
Monday, July 01, 2024
Supreme Court: President has 'absolute immunity' when performing Core Constitutional Duties
By Casey Harper, The Center Square, July 1, 2024- The president of the United States has "absolute immunity" when acting in his core constitutional duties, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision Monday.
"President's exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute," the ruling said. "As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity."
The 6-3 ruling made clear that the president has no immunity for unofficial conduct.
"As for a President's unofficial acts, there is no immunity," the ruling said. "Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President's decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct."
The ruling comes in response to former President Donald Trump's claim that he has presidential immunity against the charges brought against him over actions he took as president. He is the first former president to face criminal charges.
Most relevant to this ruling specifically, Trump faces charges for his role in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, namely that he allegedly lied and stirred up the crowd that eventually entered the Capitol. Trump's defenders point out he did release a video calling for peaceful protests on the day of the riot.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying that because this case was expedited the court did not have time to lay out the detailed differences between official and unofficial. The court also did not rule definitively on the Jan. 6 case, but sent it back to the lower courts with the new guidance laid out in the ruling.
"Certain allegations – such as those involving Trump's discussions with the Acting Attorney General – are readily categorized in light of the nature of the President's official relationship to the office held by that individual," the ruling said. "Other allegations – such as those involving Trump's interactions with the Vice President, state officials, and certain private parties, and his comments to the general public – present more difficult questions."
The ruling also said that "whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct. The indictment's allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct."
The ruling also said that it is the government's burden to rebut the presumption of immunity.
Supreme Court Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson and Justice Sonia Sotomayor both filed dissents to the majority opinion.
"Once self regulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible," Jackson said in her dissent. "So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future.
"The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious."
The court's ruling has broad and even historic implications for future presidencies. It also means that much of the future grappling in Trump's cases will be over whether his alleged crimes were committed in an official, and therefore protected, capacity or an unofficial one. That poses a new legal question that could itself return to the Supreme Court.
"The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official," the ruling said. "The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts."
Trump faces an array of legal woes, including his May conviction on 34 accounts related to his hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump also faces charges in Georgia, Florida and Washington, D.C. for his handling of classified documents, the Jan. 6 issue and more.
Leading up to this ruling, Trump has repeatedly and publicly made his argument that a president should not be afraid of criminal prosecution from his political rivals for making tough decisions while in office. He argues his prosecution will start a vicious cycle of presidents facing prosecution from political opponents after leaving office.
"Without Presidential Immunity, a President of the United States literally could not function! It should be a STRONG IMMUNITY, where proper decisions can be made, where our Country can be POWERFUL and THRIVE, and where Opponents cannot hold up and extort a Future President for Political Gain," Trump said in a statement Sunday. "It is a BIG decision, an important decision, a decision which can affect the Success or Failure of our Country for decades to come. We want a GREAT Country, not a weak, withering, and ineffective one. STRONG PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY IS A MUST!"
During oral arguments, Trump's lawyer made a similar claim, asking whether former President Barack Obama could be prosecuted for drone strikes overseas that killed Americans or President Joe Biden for refusing to enforce border laws.
"Without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it," Trump's attorney D. John Sauer told the justices in April, as The Center Square previously reported. "For 234 years of American history, no president was ever prosecuted for his official acts."
Trump's staunchest allies echoed that argument.
"If there's no presidential immunity for President Trump: There's none for Joe Biden," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Fla., wrote on X ahead of the ruling. "None for Barack Obama. None for George Bush. None for Bill Clinton. And every single one of those have committed actual crimes as president."
Rod's Comment: I think the Court got it right. It is a nuanced ruling as it should be. While I would not be displeased if Trump was jailed, we must think beyond the particular effect of any ruling and consider a rulings impact on our constitutional system of governance. The result of this ruling may be that Trump's pressuring of Pence to not count electoral votes is immune from prosecution. I don't like that outcome, if that is the outcome; however, it does seem reasonable that a president should be immune from prosecution for arguing policy with his vice president. As ruled, presidents must have some level of immunity.
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Sunday, June 30, 2024
Our nation can survive bad policy. We cannot survive a president willing to torch the Constitution.
Rod,
This year’s election isn’t about inflation, budget deficits, national security, or any critical issues Americans usually face.
In fact, I don’t think this is a policy election at all.
Think about it. What President Trump did on January 6th was an assault on the foundations of our constitutional republic.
Our nation can survive bad policy. We cannot survive a president willing to torch the Constitution.
Donald Trump has said he is willing to “terminate” the Constitution. He has shown he has no respect for the rule of law. He is the first president in history to refuse to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power. Defending the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power are not partisan issues—they are fundamental to our republic.
So that is the choice we have this November. The 2024 election will determine whether we continue to be a nation of laws. It is not about partisan differences but preserving our democratic institutions.
We must prioritize our love of country over partisanship, and that’s why I’m writing to ask for your support today.
I launched Our Great Task to stop Donald Trump, protect our democratic institutions, and preserve the rule of law. Today, I’m asking you to do your part to ensure we have the resources to power our efforts in the critical months ahead.
Thank you,
Liz Cheney
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The Biden Debate Debacle
By THE EDITORS, National Review, June 28, 2024 - Democrats cannot say they weren’t warned. Joe Biden’s age has never been a secret. He shows it every time he appears in public. We warned them ourselves. Back in February, we wrote that Biden should have withdrawn from the race last year — and still owed it to the country to do so. ...
... It was an unspinnably bad performance. The people who claim that Biden is consistently sharp and vigorous behind the scenes always strained credulity. They should now be ignored or mocked. ...If Biden’s performance had not been so halting and weak, Trump’s own ramblings and flights from reality — on tariffs, on January 6, on deficit spending — might have cost him. But Trump was himself more disciplined than he had been during the 2020 debates, making relatively focused defenses of his record and attacks on Biden’s. ... Democrats can scarcely hide their sense of panic and dread. They have only themselves to blame. (link)
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