To the Editor #1:

In a lengthy smokescreen in last week’s Editorial, you deflected to Robert Bork’s rejection 40 years ago because he was a condescending, authoritarian, end-of-his-nose “originalist.” It was dwarfed by the dishonor of the Republican Senate when Mitch McConnell refused to even consider Obama’s SCOTUS March 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland because, at 9 months before the election, “it is too close.” But Republicans pushed through Amy Barrett’s confirmation on October 27, one week before the 2020 election. Republicans have repeatedly maneuvered undemocratically and disdained respect for the principles of democracy. Please boo-hoo your outrage about something that is not ridiculous.
In Trump v. United States, note that the “originalist” point of view is discarded by Repo SCOTUS when politically expedient (*).

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent to the Immunity Decision included, * “The majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now…and invents an unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably.”

Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson wrote: “Departing from the traditional model of individual accountability, the majority has concocted something entirely different: a Presidential accountability model that creates immunity - an exemption from criminal law - applicable only to the most powerful official in our government.”

CJ Roberts wrote that his three liberal colleagues had misinterpreted the majority’s opinion and were engaging in “fear mongering,” and “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today.” The familiar “don’t worry your empty little heads” dismissal.

Roberts scoffed at Sotomayor’s dissent, saying that her “most compelling piece of evidence consists of an “old debate” (ignoring that Alito argued the Middle Ages in his decision overturning Roe). * “But those statements reflect only the now-discredited argument that any immunity not expressly mentioned in the Constitution must not exist.” Note that the Republican SCOTUS “originalist” arguments are ghosted when it benefits their political objectives.

Trump v. United States proves that “originalism” is a fraud. Nothing in the Constitution provides for presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that presidents in the new republic would not have unlimited power but could be prosecuted for criminal acts to enshrine the core principle that “no one is above the law,” and that the new republic would be free from the danger of an absolute monarchy rejected by the Founding Fathers.
The SCOTUS “originalist” Republican supermajority eliminates rights already in place (Roe v. Wade), denies expansion of rights to ordinary citizens (often gaslighting the truth, e.g., the Immunity Decision) and increases rights to the Executive and the Courts (but not to the Congress who represent the people at a more local level). They are making it up and increasingly embrace the objectives of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca.