Beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs

Our legal system is a shambles that is clearly not prepared to handle this kind of thing, even setting aside the situation with the supreme court. It's become clear that the "shadow law" of simply passing unconstitutional statutes, filing frivilous lawsuits, etc., is operating independently of the real legal system moves too slowly and does not have adequate mechanisms to prevent what is essentially a DDoS attack. All justice is delayed and so all justice is denied.

> passing unconstitutional statutes > independently of the real legal system

The former is literally the real legal system, nothing shadow about it. Shadow would be some hidden deal to drop charges or something.

It's also not DDOS when a huge part of what you call "real" is exactly the same, so not unwillingly overloaded but willingly complicit.

the real legal system is slow by design, to carefully review cases and ensure fairness. It should also be based on good faith. The vulnerability comes from one bad faith party flooding the system with bad faith cases and appeals (as trump is doing). Even when he fails, the process becomes the punishment for the opposing side (journalists, political opponents...). When he wins, he wins.

> The vulnerability comes from one bad faith party flooding the system with bad faith cases and appeals

No, this is literally a "both sides" issue. Lawfare is not new. See the continuous legal battles over the second amendment in states like NY, NJ, and CA.

i was not aware of Biden or Democrat presidents filing personal lawsuits against journalists and politcal opponents...

Just last week a New York intermediate appellate court overturned the $500 million fraud judgment against Trump: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/21/new-york-civil-frau.... Yes, it wasn't brought by Biden--but it was brought by an elected Democrat Attorney General who campaigned on "going after Trump." Note that, out of the five judge panel, three would have overturned the underlying conviction, while two would have granted a new trial, and one would have thrown the case out entirely:

> Two other judges, John Higgitt and Llinét Rosado, said James had the authority to bring the case but argued for giving Trump a new trial. And the fifth judge, Justice David Friedman, argued to throw out the case, saying James lacked the authority to bring it.

The case was based on Trump's former attorney mentioning criminal acts his client had done -- it was an attempt to hold Trump accountable for those crimes.

The reason a democrat would be involved in such prosecution is because every GOP member has effectively sworn fealty to Trump and they will fiercely protect him from any accountability.

Biden was many things, but not corrupt in the sense that Trump is. Yes, his son did business trading on his relationship but that was legal (albeit distasteful).

Most dem voters dislike corruption, even if it's one of their team; I don't see that on the other side of the aisle. Disclaimer: I am not a dem.

The link above is about the New York civil case.

If you're talking about the criminal case, it's even worse, as CNN's chief legal correspondent explained: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-... ("Most importantly, the DA's charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process."). Or, as an MSNBC legal columnist explained: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hus... ("Most DAs wouldn’t have pursued this case against Trump. Alvin Bragg got lucky. Let’s be honest with each other. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump was convoluted.").

You could write an entire Harvard law review issue about the novel legal issues raised by the Trump criminal case: Can a state crime be predicted on an uncharged federal campaign finance violation? can someone violate campaign finance law--which is focused on preventing candidates from misusing donated funds--by using their own money to pay off a porn star? Can you bootstrap a misdemeanor into a felony through a triple-bank-shot involving an uncharged secondary crime and a choice of three possible tertiary crimes? When you prosecute someone for a business records misdemeanor, but almost all the allegedly bad conduct relates to unspecified secondary and tertiary crimes, how do you instruct the jury? When you give the jury three different options of uncharged tertiary crimes to support the uncharged secondary crime, which in turn supports the charged primary crime, on what points must the jury reach a unanimous decision?

Google's and Apple's "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" was a more straightforward legal theory than the Trump criminal case.

In the interest of avoiding partisan squabbling on HN, I'm going to state the following and let you walk away feeling like you "won" this debate:

  1. Trump is the epitome of a corrupt pol and has pretty much gotten away with everything his entire life.
  2. Prosecuting him was not in the form of of attacking a rival, it was addressing issue #1
  3. If the roles were reversed and this was Biden we were talking about, most dem voters would still be for prosecution of blatant corruption. The magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of) are fine with him doing anything he wants, up to and including shooting someone on Fifth Ave

So congratulations! You are right and I am wrong and I'm so sorry to bother you with my clearly not-Trump-loving observations.

> 1. Trump is the epitome of a corrupt pol and has pretty much gotten away with everything his entire life. > 2. Prosecuting him was not in the form of of attacking a rival, it was addressing issue #1

You're correct about (2), and that's the problem! A criminal case that relies on an uncharged secondary crime, which in turn relies on one of three uncharged tertiary crimes, to bootstrap a primary misdemeanor into a felony must stand on its own. Uncharged, unproven past conduct is irrelevant.

> magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of)

My wife and I are Fed Soc members, but we like the Georgetown cocktail parties and voted for Biden in 2020! We weren't going to vote in 2024 until the Trump criminal conviction. It was literally radicalizing. My wife used to loathe Trump, but she drove up to Pennsylvania to volunteer for his campaign after that conviction came down.

> It was literally radicalizing.

No shit.

You're a case study in radicalization by this point and one that I follow with some morbid fascination. If you, an intelligent lawyer and son of an immigrant can be radicalized to the point that you are cheering on the people who would be more than happy to deport you and most of your family on the basis of your skin color alone without any kind of due process can be radicalized then anybody can be radicalized, including me and that is a very sobering thought.

I sincerely hope that when this is all over you are still living where you do and that you and yours get through this in one piece but I would hate to be in your shoes when - if - the moment comes that you realize you are on a very dangerous path. Note that your strengths - intelligence, knowledge of the law - are being used against you.

I've seen a similar thing happen with two close friends who after 9/11 fell in with the wrong crowd and turned into 'truthers'. They were both very smart but also apparently quite gullible and they and their fellows were pushing each other ever further down into the hole.

I wrote about them:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/2020-12-19-complot-theory-believ...

Since then, after burning up all of their friendships they moved to the heartland of Australia where they are now prepping for the end times.

Sometimes it doesn't take much for a person to be radicalized and the way out is a lot more difficult than the way in.

> immigrant can be radicalized to the point that you are cheering on the people who would be more than happy to deport you and most of your family on the basis of your skin color alone

Based! I can just picture Kash finishing the job by deporting the last remaining immigrant: himself.

Regardless, it’s telling that we were talking about legal theories but you couldn’t keep out that intrusive thought about my skin color and immigration background.

That's because you seem to be carrying water for the regime in your increasingly narrow interpretations of legal issues to defend that which is clearly indefensible. Intent matters. I understand that is not how the American legal system works. But it is how you avoid sliding into setups that no country should want. It boggles the mind that after six months of this you still have not had any insights that have given you pause to reconsider your stance. In fact, it seems to only get worse.

There was a time that I looked up to you, but that time is definitely past.

As for KP: he is just an even more extreme example of the same thing.

> That's because you seem to be carrying water for the regime in your increasingly narrow interpretations of legal issues to defend that which is clearly indefensible.

Hey now, my interpretation of legal issues has been narrow since I was a law student. My second-year administrative law class used Gary Lawson's textbook (https://fedsoc.org/contributors/gary-lawson). The seminal cases all had notes after them along the lines of "isn't this clearly unconstitutional?" I remember nodding along and getting angry that the mid-20th century Supreme Court had fucked up the Constitution so badly.

So, no, I don't care that Trump is dismantling an administrative state that shouldn't exist in the first place. Despotism is not when the President fires Department of Education bureaucrats. It's when the President tells you what you can and cannot build on your own land. So far, Trump hasn't been doing that.

Putting all that aside, I'm perfectly fine for you to attack me as a constitutional Taliban. But why bring my skin color into it?

> I remember nodding along and getting angry that the mid-20th century Supreme Court had fucked up the Constitution so badly.

As opposed to what is happening right now?

Do you think Trump is fixing the constitution somehow? He's all but wiping his ass with it.

> So, no, I don't care that Trump is dismantling an administrative state that shouldn't exist in the first place.

He's not just dismantling an administrative state. He's wrecking your countries' institutions left, right and center and those institutions are the glue that kept the country alive and together. It kept you healthy, educated and employed.

> Despotism is not when the President fires Department of Education bureaucrats. It's when the President tells you what you can and cannot build on your own land.

I don't think that matters much when your land is bought at firesale prices right out from under you because otherwise you won't be able to make ends meet. The manufactured crisis you are going through right now is redistributing wealth at a fantastic rate. And guess who is on the receiving side.

> But why bring my skin color into it?

Because unless you are living under a rock it should be painfully clear by now that you've voted massively against your own interests. Skin color is exactly the thing that this administration seems to be using as the distinguishing factor between the 'in' and the 'out' groups and that does not change because there are a couple of convenient exceptions. Or do you think giving White South Africans a speedrun through US immigration is an accident of chance?

Maybe you think that you too will be one of the exceptions but more and more people are finding out that they too voted against their own interests. This doesn't stop just with illegals, criminals, immigrants or homeless people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump

Have a look there and then look through that lens at the last six months. See a pattern?

It's racism as one major theme and probably misogynist overtones as another. The last thing Trump has respect for is the law (whether private, constitutional or criminal does not seem to matter much) unless it is as a tool to exact revenge.

That a lawyer would support the man whose own lawyer needed a lawyer and ended up convicted is already weird enough.

> He's wrecking your countries' institutions left, right and center and those institutions are the glue that kept the country alive and together.

What keeps America alive and together is the virtue of the average American, not counter-democratic "institutions." America was a stable democracy from the beginning long before we had any of these institutions. I'd trade every Ivy-league grad in the world in all the most august institutions for a million ordinary Iowans.

>> > But why bring my skin color into it?

> Because unless you are living under a rock it should be painfully clear by now that you've voted massively against your own interests.

But that wasn't relevant to our discussion. Why are you so fixated on the racial angle that you brought it up in unrelated conversation? Why does it feature so prominently in your mental model of Trump?