Yeah…that’s about the right title…other choices were “Why Don’t People Read” and “People Only Read The Parts They Like”…but Ima just going to put it down to basic human stupidity (I woulda used a more colorful noun but Ima trying to keep this kid and work safe).

Don’t worry though…there are some images at the end…

You probably have seen the recent brouhaha about our former President and various and assorted courtroom antics…but as noted below the stupidity is most certainly not limited to people that like the man…nah, the other side of the argument has it’s fair share of stupidity as well.

We keep reading about his 91 felony counts total in indictments but none of those trials have happened yet. We also keep reading about how he clearly and obviously participated in an insurrection from the left up to and including our current President…who stated unequivocally that he participated in one. And we keep reading from the other side that he was legitimately protesting the unfair election and all that…but that’s not really the point I’m making here.

Let me remind you again…that we are not supporters of former…in fact he should never elected to anything ever again and likely has committed crimes…although he hasn’t been convicted of anything. And likewise…we are not fans of either current or his Veep either…none of the 3 of those people needs to be our next President for various reasons. But…unlike most far left and far right people…we are capable of actually analyzing both sides of a situation and aren’t blinded by either MAGA devotion or Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Of most pressing concerns are two cases involving the SCOTUS…both of which need to be adjudicated in the near future. The first of these was from the special prosecutor Jack Smith who…after the trial judge paused his trial pending the outcome of former’s appeal that he was constitutionally protected from being charged for anything he did during his term office…appealed directly to SCOTUS so as not to impact the scheduled trial in March. Obviously former wanted to have the case heard by the appeals court first with initial arguments due in court Jan 9…but former’s entire game plan appears to be to delay the trial until it is election time and if he wins order the DoJ to drop the case after he is inaugurated. Mr. Smith’s attempt to short circuit this delay…which seems somewhat valid to us here…was turned down by the court and I’m guessing that mostly they want to not have to decide the issue. Internally…I’m sure they have their opinions about his absolute immunity claims…but if the court of appeals decision matches with what they think…then they can just decline to hear any further appeal and that’s a smaller political hit to their reputation. Our personal opinion is that absolute presidential immunity is an oxymoron and is most certainly not what the Constitution says…and if forced to vote on that issue he will lose and I would not be surprised to see a 9-0 vote on it. If a President has absolute immunity…he could just declare martial law, suspend elections, and essentially become king…and that just is as wrong as it could be.

The second and more pressing issue is the recent decision by the CO Supreme Court that he participated in an insurrection and thus is constitutionally prohibited from office and thus is banned from the primary ballot in CO…that decision was stayed by that court until Jan 5 to allow SCOTUS appeal since Jan 5 is supposedly the drop dead date for printing the primary ballots. Former’s obviously upcoming appeal to the SCOTUS really doesn’t have anything to do with CO…the party could just have a caucus and choose him as it’s state delegate nominee anyway but he doesn’t want the legal precedent that he can be banned since other (particularly blue) states will do the same thing. 

So…the original case was held as a judge only 5 day maximum trial by an election law judge in the state (that’s what the CO election laws require) and after this trial…the judge (and I’m not sure exactly that an election law judge is the right person to make this determination) declared in his Findings of Fact that it was an insurrection on Jan 6, that former participated, but that he should not be banned from the primary ballot because it wasn’t the actual election. He appealed to the state Supreme Court (composed of 7 Democrat appointed and therefore likely Democrats themselves judges)…who found 4-3 that the Findings of Fact were correct but reversed the no primary ban under section 3 of the 14th amendment. So you don’t have to go look it up…here is the entire text of the 14th amendment as copied from https/constitutioncenter.org.

 Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

 

Section 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

 

Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

 

Section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

 

Section 5

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

There are several arguments to be made here…and to be fair I’ll try and summarize the positions of both sides.

First…whether or not Jan 6 was an actual insurrection…that is an armed attempt to overthrow the government according to the applicable federal statute…or whether it was just a peaceful protest that involved some lawbreakers. Frankly…it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to call what was essentially a riot an insurrection even though some participants were armed…but then the left has declared their opinion that it was and the right that it wasn’t. Strangely enough…and I have the same issue here…both sides have the completely 180 degrees opposite opinion about whether the disturbances in Portland were an insurrection or not…and to be factual those disturbances actually occupied and destroyed a federal building and declared that some number of square blocks had seceded from the state and the union. Now…until a court hearing testimony actually makes a decision and it is affirmed on appeal either way…whether either was a riot of an insurrection is what lawyers would call “facts not in evidence”…but to the guy in the middle either both were insurrections or both were riots…neither side gets to have it both ways.

Second…is the President actually covered under section 3. Again…in the absence of a legal decision…nobody really knows. I can say that the list of people banned under section 3 in an early draft included the President (according to a couple of articles I saw but didn’t further research in detail) but it was removed for reasons known only to history. On one hand…it seems that the President should have been included…but then there is a specific list of who is included and it doesn’t include the word President. Further…whether the President is an “officer of the United States” and I have to admit the wording isn’t specific. Again…no court has ever officially answered this legal question.

Third…is the 14th amendment “self executing” or does it require a conviction. The Democrats claim that since it doesn’t say conviction that if you engaged in an insurrection in their opinion that’s all that is required. However…as we all know everybody has an opinion just like everybody has a navel…and your opinion and $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks until your opinion is actually ratified as a legal certitude by appropriate court action. The Democrats claim that the trial judge in CO issued a finding of fact…and that thus he has been immutably and permanently branded as participating in an insurrection. The Republicans on the other hand…state that he has been neither charged or convicted of the crime of insurrection…and that therefore even if President is an Officer of the United States…he has not participated. And in fact…they point that section 1 of the same amendment requires due process and that due process means a conviction by an unbiased jury of his peers…which hasn’t happened.

Thus…SCOTUS needs to answer these questions.

First question…was there an insurrection as defined by the federal statute. The wording is sorta vague and the definition of “armed” and “overthrow the government” is also sort of nebulous and not being a lawyer I did no legal research…but the judicial system can and will do that and then we’ll know (and only then).

Second…if there was an insurrection…did he participate. My personal opinion is that there was enough evidence for Mr. Smith to have indicted him for insurrection if he chose to…but he did not choose to do so. And being a politician himself…the likelihood that he made that decision with out consulting with (in my opinion) both the Attorney General and the President is pretty darned small despite his status as an “independent” prosecutor…he still works for the Justice Department and it’s never good to piss off your boss. So one thing to ask here is…why didn’t he indict for insurrection as we all know a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich as the saying goes. My guess is that several possibilities exist…he couldn’t find evidence to get a conviction under the specific terms of the insurrection statute…he had some evidence but decided that the likelihood of conviction was low enough that he didn’t want to take the risk of losing the case…or he (and potentially his boss and his boss’s boss) didn’t want the political hit of seeming to be a banana republic by disqualifying his political opponent from the election…or the most likely outcome some combination of all of the above. In any event…no insurrection indictment, trial, or conviction exists…and since the accused is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by an unbiased jury of his peers…former is at this point still innocent of the crime of insurrection and thus the 14th amendment doesn’t apply.

Now…if he was convicted…and if President was determined to be an “officer of the United States”…then yes, he should be excluded from the ballot since he can’t hold office. Until then however…to me section 1 of the amendment clearly makes section 3 not self executing because of that whole due process thing.

As an aside…even if convicted…could the man really get a fair trial by an unbiased jury of his peers? Personally…I think the odds of that are vanishingly small…because everybody has pretty much made up their mind already…and the anti former people will vote guilty regardless of the evidence while the pro former people will vote to acquit because of the “stolen election”. While neither Connie or Neil likes the man or will vote for him…they’re both in their view fair minded enough that they would be able to listen to the evidence and determine whether the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt…but they also realize they’re in a very, very small minority there. And since neither the prosecution or defense would be able to select a jury entirely to their liking…any trial is likely to end up in a hung jury anyway…and that’s always going to be the case.

I’m pretty sure that SCOTUS will overrule the CO court on the insurrection issue…at least for now…and again it won’t surprise me if it is a 9-0 vote…because innocent until proven guilty…due process…and all that entails.

Gee…wasn’t that fun?

OK, on to some images. None of these are new but on one of his photo forums they asked each member to submit their 8 best wildlife photos of 2023…and since he did that he figured it would do to post them here as well. He went through his 300odd blog published images of the year and got it down to 39 pretty easily. Getting to 20 was harder and down to 12 even harder still…and then the final 4 cuts were pretty hard as all of the images were worthy and he didn’t want to over represent any particular species. They’re all birds…but that’s just because we didn’t go anyplace other than FL for wildlife this year. So…here are what he says are his 8 best of the year…they’re in chronological order of taking and all were from Jan to May because after that the heat and low water make the bird population mighty sparse.

Female Belted Kingfisher…the orange-brown belt is only on the female

Snowy Egret fishing

Red Shouldered Hawk…showing you why it got the name it did

Female Anhinga (rusty brown neck) with some nesting material

Osprey with breakfast

Reddish Egret…one of the last 4 cuts was of the same individual with wings spread out in front umbrella like in their classic hunting pose…but he decided the successful stab was slightly better

Male Red Bellied Woodpecker…the red on the female doesn’t extend to the top of the head…one might wonder why this isn’t called the red headed woodpecker…but that species looks like the whole head was dipped into the paint bucket

Male Red Winged Blackbird…the female is brown and does not have the red or yellow epaulets

Math skills needed for various life stages…and it’s perfectly on point.

And since Neil’s going to Africa…he thought this illustration of just how darn big the place is was pretty cool…it plops some other countries (at the same scale) on top of the continent. Tanzania (specifically the Serengeti region) where he is going in the spring is just above the D in India

Cyas.