A new report from National Audit Office suggests massive cuts to #legalaid have not saved the #publicsector much money because its made some cases more expensive (i.e. when defendants represent themselves), while pushing costs onto other parts of the public sector (as in #housing disputes).
Not only that, the reduction in #lawyers willing to take on legal aid work means it is impossible to ascertain whether those eligible can access legal representation.
Another day, another #HomeOffice + #BorderForce#brexit aggression against isn EU citizen... its almost like they are working hard to ensure EU citizens feel insecure & precarious in the UK.
As many have noted around other aspects of law enforcement, the #ruleoflaw is fading in the UK... this looks like just one more indicator that this is the direction of travel.
🤔 So Trump claims he hasn't been an "Officer of the United States", who would be amenable to the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment's Section 3, potentially disqualifying him from running for & holding public (presidential) office.
He's freaking wrong!
And he should know damn better. As he's himself officially & publicly been insisting on being treated like an "officer" in court.
Just like now-AG Garland certainly remembers his own time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which wrote: "President Trump removed the suit to federal court under the federal officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1)." in K&D LLC v. Trump Old Post Office LLC and Donald J. Trump.
@GreenFire One precondition to make overwhelming voter turnout happen is to successfully challenge "traditional" methods of systematic electoral fraud like brazenly legislated voter suppression, gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, in the courts.
Like what @marcelias & many others are excellently & thankfully very busy with.
What's been "legislated" doesn't naturally mean it's legal and/or constitutional at every level.
We all know, that today's "GOP" aims at denying as many voters as possible their fundamental right & opportunity to vote — which is completely unacceptable for every true democrat.
Just in case you'd forgotten, Trudi Warner still faces prosecution for pointing out to jurors that they have the right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience - a principle that sits well within the #ruleoflaw.
This is what authoritarian looks like as it breaks cover....
#Justice delayed is justice denied... and in England & Wales massive backlogs in the Courts are ensuring that victims are not finding justice for the crimes against them.
Once again, we are seeing what a party of wreckers can do to social #infrastructure through defunding & political antagonism.
And if you think these problems have little to do with the #Tories, think again.
They care little for the #ruleoflaw nor our safety... they're too busy punishing protestors!
however, of course, the police actions did what they wanted & both disrupted the demonstration & will act (perhaps only marginally) to chill further demos.
perhaps participants should print this out & show the police next time they are questioned at a demo!
"Keep the church and the state forever separate."
— President Ulysses S. Grant, meritorious target of today's rebellious revanchists —
What was in it for Trump in Opus-Dei-$$ for selling a cabinet job, that injected "religious" zealot Mike Pompeo into the United States executive branch of power?
"As a congressman, Pompeo had voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Pompeo co-sponsored the State Marriage Defense Act that would have allowed states to not recognize same-sex marriages. He co-sponsored the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act in order to protect the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations with religious objections to same-sex marriage. Neither bill passed."
Even Jefferson Davis, leader of the Confederacy — and his lawyer — knew the insurrection clause in the U.S. Constitution not only disqualified him from holding office but, importantly, that Section III of the Fourteenth Amendment “executes itself” and once that constitutional Rubicon is crossed, disqualification was his “automatic” punishment.
@Brandi_Buchman More on disqualification for insurrection in U.S. history:
Baude & Paulsen explain, that the "officer" reading distorts methodology:
"a reading that renders the document a ‘secret code’ loaded with hidden meanings discernible only by a select priesthood of illuminati is generally an unlikely one.
...
Gentle reader, can you seriously imagine that our 19th-century ratifier—an informed, loyal American who had just lived through a brutal war that took more than 600,000 lives for the sole reason that Southern whites would not accept that Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election—would have understood Section 3 to mean that a traitor couldn’t be a Senator, or a Representative, or a governor, or a state legislator, or for that matter a dog-catcher—but that Robert E. Frickin’ Lee could turn his coat one more time, swear he really would support the Constitution this time, and waltz into the White House?
Having had the fee for #workers to bring cases at employment tribunals struck down in 2017 by the UK #SupremeCourt as a clear impediment to access to the #ruleoflaw, the #Tories are at it again;
new proposals intend to levy a £55 fee for commencing an employment tribunal case.
You might see this as a fee for a service, but I see it as paying for a hope of justice.
The UK's #legal system after years of cuts to #legalaid is already skewed towards the interests of the rich....
Republican judge in Illinois finds that Trump engaged in insurrection & is disqualified under 14.3. He ultimately finds a higher court, not the electoral board, must decide this. First Republican judge in the nation to issue such findings!
-John Bonifaz
@JoeyBoughtACola A lot of complicit "lawyers", who aid(ed) & abet(ted) an individual, who incited an insurrection to overthrow the will of the majority of the people to escape justice & the laws, are queuing up in a long line to be disbarred, investigated & prosecuted.
When "MAGA" turns into "Make Attorneys GoToJail Again"...
"History will teach us, that … of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their carreer [sic], by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants."
— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1 —
"The key to the Founders’ fear of the demagogue was not merely that he might secure high office, but that the means by which he would attain it – appeal to the mob – would allow him to corrupt or overthrow the Republic in order to transform himself into a dictator. The source of the demagogue’s power does not expire if he is expelled from office; so long as he retains the loyalty of the mob, he may return to power.
...
Trump was the man against whom the founding generation armed the constitution with the disqualification clause. They would surely think anyone quite mad for suggesting that a president who actively sought the overthrow of democracy could not be disqualified from trying again because the failed plot reached its crescendo too close to the expiration of his term."
The Founders would've found the madmen suggesting, that a president, who actively sought the overthrow of democracy could not be disqualified from trying again in the majority of contemporary Senate "Republicans" & the majority of their House "Republican" accomplices.
Studies of various historical forms of governments & their respective leaders enabled Hamilton & other Founders to identify & even foresee worse & worst examples of self-centered reckless sociopathic ruling figures like Trump, Putin, Stalin, Hitler & other tyrants the empires of whom thankfully were never allowed to make it to eternity.
For two years, the Biden administration led an international coalition to provide military aid to Ukraine. Majorities in the U.S. and in Congress continue to support Ukraine. Now, a minority of Republicans are preparing to cut it all off.
@anneapplebaum Congress is not abandoning support for Ukraine in Putin's war of aggression against it — a number of congressional "Republican" extremists is, effectively & "faithfully" serving Putin, the committed adversary of democracy, sovereignty, self-determination, independence, lawfulness, international rules-based order & humanity.
Which in any normal country abiding by the Rule of Law would deservedly designate them targets of domestic counterintelligence.