Philip Rosmarin

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Thursday’s was likely the most pathetic debate between two candidates for the office of president in the history of the republic. Call it the Gumfight at the Not O.K. Corral. The Felon versus The Melon.

This was supposed to be the debate that would save our democracy, that would prevent one of these guys from eluding justice after engaging in an insurrection and conspiracy to overthrow his own government.

Two very old white men who seemed most energized about who could hit a golf ball farther. It was as though just before the debate they had stood face to face, teed off and hit each other in the forehead.

One of them shamelessly lied time and time and maybe thirty times again, with such conviction that I almost believed he believed his lies; the other I wasn’t sure could have told me the time.

The liar had previously been investigated and convicted or adjudicated of thirty-four felonies for falsifying business records and for election and tax fraud to hide a not quite two-minute sex act with a woman who was not his pregnant wife; of sexual abuse which a judge said was in most states rape; of slander against the woman he raped; of business fraud for which he’s been ordered to pay almost half a billion dollars. Many, many other felony indictments are pending trial for such things as conspiracy to overthrow the election he embarrassingly lost, and theft of state secrets he embarrassingly kept by his toilet.

The other president up there was likewise investigated for years by Republican congressional committees and a Republican special counsel who concluded he was a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory, but for some reason declined to indict him for that.

One of those men didn’t belong on the same stage with the other, but hey, that’s American politics these days.

The one who did deserve to own that stage might have fared better in the debate a few years ago, but he didn’t fare better Thursday night, and his age was appallingly evident. Even the nearly as old criminal who debated him seemed taken aback.

At the end of it, the First Lady of the United States held the hand of the President of the United States to help him negotiate — sideways — the couple of steps to the safety of the next flat surface.

At what was meant to be a celebration afterwards, she said to him, “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question.” In the manner of a pre-school teacher to a toddler.

The crowd, who must have seen a different debate than the rest of us, burst deliriously into “Four More Years! Four More Years! Four More Years!”

Four more years?

To save our democracy, to save a justice system founded in the idea that no one is above the law, first this guy’s gotta somehow get through four more months.

Best luck to him, to the rest of us.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

We’re just gonna have to come up with a new name for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Because of recent “Supreme” court action, and inaction, women and girls are dying in this country, denied health care that could save their lives.

A fake macho ex-president, who was declared ineligible for political office by my state’s Supreme Court because he engaged in insurrection against his country, is being protected by its “Supreme” court against federal prosecution, so he can do it again.

Our “Supreme” court, which follows no ethical rule required for every other court beneath it, yet has no end of its own ethical challenges, decided only yesterday that state officials, much like several of the court’s justices, may accept financial rewards for jobs well done, so long as they don’t ask for them in advance, which of course would be a bribe. These folks prefer to think of it as a tip, like you’d give a waiter for good service. It’s not a bribe for a government contract, see, it’s a tip. Keep those tips coming.

Since the time I was born, we’ve always cloaked the justices in dark robes from neck to toe. There’s a reason they are cloaked, and there’s a reason why they are dark.

They’re just naked under there.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Supposedly that’s the advice Louisiana Senator John Kennedy gave Texas Senator Ted Cruz when asked how best metaphorically to kiss the ring of disgraced President Donald Trump.

Louisiana does things differently. It’s the only state in the union that bases its civil code on French law instead of English common law. Now it’s the only state in the union to require that every public classroom display the Ten Commandments. Not just one classroom, or a few, in every state elementary school, middle school, high school, charter school, college and university. Every classroom.

Governor Napoleon Landry signed the new legislation into law, declaring “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Charlton Heston.” (I may have mangled the quote slightly.) It wasn’t immediately clear if people like the former president would still be welcome in the state.

“I can’t wait to be sued,” the governor crowed. He had to wait but five days.

Though Landry wasn’t personally sued (no stupidity statute in Napoleonic Code), the ACLU obliged with a lawsuit filed today.

No one who has ever been to law school, and almost everyone who hasn’t been, believes a law that elevates one Protestant faith above all other faiths, above all other believers and nonbelievers, is anything but an insult to the founding document of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, no word yet on whether all Louisiana public school cafeterias will have to likewise display the commandments, with an eleventh locational proviso:

“Thou Shalt Not Start Food Fights.”

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

I’m not sure, because I may have been thinking about other things during elementary history class, but this may be the first presidential campaign in the United States where the candidates suggest they might just assassinate each other.

And when I say candidates, I mean candidate.

Donald Trump says Joe Biden already ordered the FBI to kill him if he ever got off the toilet long enough to try to stop them from taking back the national secrets he stole and stored next to the gold throne at Mar-a-Lago for handy reading. [Editor’s Note: I originally wrote “for easy reading” there, but for him no reading is easy.]

The once and horribly possible future president [Editor’s Note: he’d prefer the usual word “king” there] says Biden bungled the job because he forgot that Trump wouldn’t actually be there that day. If true, he might finally have solid proof of Biden’s cognitive decline.

Proof of his own decline may be that Trump apparently forgot he’s argued that when you’re president it’s okay to assassinate your political opponents, because when you’re president…it’s okay! If it wasn’t, every president would be afraid to leave office for fear of criminal indictment (take it from someone who knows) and would just have to declare themself dictator on Day One.

You have to admit that’s a solid argument.

Two or three Supreme Court justices admitted it (they might have just been kidding) during argument before the full Court. As of today they haven’t decided whether a president is immune from criminal prosecution for ordering the assassination of a political opponent. I hope they’ve screwed their thinking caps on right, because I never thought any American would ever live to write a sentence like that last one that wasn’t in a work of fiction.

Donald Trump should hope that, if this Supreme Court is so stupid or politically deranged that they agree with him, they don’t announce their agreement until after the next presidential inauguration.

Because if Donald Trump wins reëlection, and Joe Biden isn’t as cognitively impaired as Donald pretends he is, Joe might remember that until around noon 20 January he’s still the president, and still Commander in Chief of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force.

The Coast Guard would have a ball at Mar-a-Lago. Maybe even score a gold toilet.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: at least two of my country’s Supreme Court justices have betrayed their sworn allegiance to the Constitution they also swore to support and defend.

Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Sam Alito both have chosen their wives, if they are to be believed, over our founding document.

Both refuse to recuse themselves over matters before the Court relating to the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That, despite Ginni Thomas helping to lead the fact-free “Stop the Steal” campaign in part by urging Republican state legislators to overturn their citizens’ votes, and Martha-Ann Alito flying daft upside-down flags associated with that campaign on the family front lawn.

Both claim that neither of their sweet sweet ladies have the slightest influence on them.

I’m not sure anyone who’s ever been married can say that, not without the slightest dent in their straight face.

I can’t honestly be too hard on the robed rascals, though.

I too can’t say I would choose a piece of parchment, however sacred, over the woman I love.

Guess that qualifies me to be a member of the Supreme Court, right there.