Excerpt:
It’s extremely difficult to square this ruling with the text of Section 3 [of the Fourteenth Amendment]. The language is clearly mandatory. The first words are “No person shall be” a member of Congress or a state or federal officer if that person has engaged in insurrection or rebellion or provided aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution. The Section then says, “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.”
In other words, the Constitution imposes the disability, and only a supermajority of Congress can remove it. But under the Supreme Court’s reasoning, the meaning is inverted: The Constitution merely allows Congress to impose the disability, and if Congress chooses not to enact legislation enforcing the section, then the disability does not exist. The Supreme Court has effectively replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office — a supermajority vote by Congress — with the lowest bar imaginable: congressional inaction.
This is a fairly easy read for the legal layperson, and the best general overview I’ve seen yet that sets forth the various legal and constitutional factors involved in today’s decision, including the concurring dissent by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson.
And then when it gets to Congress they’ll throw their hands up and say “He’s not president we can’t impeach him!” as if that’s all they could do. Then when he is president (I fully expect him to win…) they’ll say “impeachment is just a political tool it’s not about crimes!” So they can continue to do absofuckinglutley nothing about it, again pretending that this is an impeachment thing.
I’m almost 40 and I’ve never lived in a time where Congress served any useful purpose. We already don’t have any representation yet we pretend like we do because like 6 people exist (AOC, Porter, Sanders etc…)