Trump Considering Pardoning Sheriff Joe

[Derec]

...It's not a derail...

THIS thread is about JOE ARPAIO!!!

Stick to the topic!!!

It's about how horrible this pardon supposedly is. Mentioning other pardons and commutations by recent presidents is perfectly on topic, as it provides context. It is by no means a derail.

 

[Derec]

Oh, and another thing: usually, a pardon takes place after the matter is settled. Pardons aren't supposed to castrate the judicial process before it's completed review. So hurray for your fucking orange despot.

Usually, but not necessarily.
 Pardon of Richard Nixon
I guess Ford was a despot too ...

 

[fromderinside]

Oh, and another thing: usually, a pardon takes place after the matter is settled. Pardons aren't supposed to castrate the judicial process before it's completed review. So hurray for your fucking orange despot.

Usually, but not necessarily.
 Pardon of Richard Nixon

I guess Ford was a despot too ...

Woo woo. Derec takes two examples of republicans behaving badly. As liberals we only care that such scum were removed from office. Yeah, you stung us with that one guy. So you got another Ollie North, so what. Oops there's another one.

 

[Derec]

Woo woo. Derec takes two examples of republicans behaving badly.

Not just Republicans ...

 

[Ford]

Usually, but not necessarily.
 Pardon of Richard Nixon

I guess Ford was a despot too ...

Woo woo. Derec takes two examples of republicans behaving badly. As liberals we only care that such scum were removed from office. Yeah, you stung us with that one guy. So you got another Ollie North, so what. Oops there's another one.

Funny how Derec is bent out of shape over a black man commuting the sentence of a brown man, but sees no problem with an old white racist pardoning an old white racist.



And while there are vast differences between Nixon and Arpaio's pardons, the fact is that both of them were purely political. In both cases, the government had the perps dead to rights. There was no question of misplaced justice. Their respective pardons were handed out because they served the purpose of the President politically. Ford didn't want his legacy to have been President during the Nixon trial, and Trump wanted to send a message to his racist base that the white man is back in charge.

 

[Bomb#20]

Arpaio was about to be sentenced improperly. Arpaio was convicted improperly. This is obvious to anyone who has examined the matter with any intellectual honesty. There simply aren't any legitimate arguments that this was a proper conviction. The judge who convicted him was wiping her ass with the Constitution. The appellate courts that would have upheld it were just going to wipe it in everyone else's face. Pardoning him was the only effective remedy against despotism. What the bejesus is wrong with you? What the bejesus is wrong with all of you who approve of that conviction? If you're going to accuse your opponents of wiping their asses with the Constitution, first you might want to bloody well read it. Exactly which part of

"The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury"​

do you people not understand? Seriously, explain yourselves. Are you barking about the Constitution while simply wallowing in complete ignorance of the Constitutional principles that are at stake here? Are you imbeciles? Or are you simply so corrupt that you equate "Constitutional" with "I get what I want"?

Here's what the ACLU had to say about summary trials for criminal contempt. https://aclu.procon.org/view.additional-resource.php?resourceID=003397

Here's what Justice Black had to say about them. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6886651914045843455&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

Which one of you has both the balls and the intellectual dishonesty to tell us they're wrong?

First, YOU explain your links: how they're on point, and how they apply to Arpaio. I'll bet that you can't. Your <expletive deleted> legal research on google is just that: <expletive deleted>.

The intellectual level on which you are capable of arguing is noted.

My links are links to two cases in which the SCOTUS ruled on the far-and-away most significant legal issue in the Arpaio case: the legality of summary trials for criminal contempt. They contain a brief by the ACLU explaining why precedents on this point are wrong and should be overturned, and a dissenting opinion to the same effect by one of the outvoted Supreme Court justices. Their arguments are sound. The opposing arguments at the same links are transparent self-interested sophistry.

Here's how it works in general. You're entitled to a jury for offenses where you may spend a year or more in jail.

Why, because you and the Supreme Court say so? When the Constitution says one thing perfectly clearly, and the Supreme Court says the opposite, and offers no justification but precedent, why do you find that a convincing argument as to what you're entitled to?

Let's put it in stark terms. The U.S. Supreme Court spent 135 years upholding convictions for gay sex, in blatant violation of the plain text of the 14th Amendment. If President Clinton had reacted to this appalling systematic abuse of government power by pardoning a man convicted of screwing his lover, would you be screaming about how by overriding the power of judges to do whatever they bloody well please he was wiping his ass with the Constitution? Do you think Lawrence v Texas was wrongly decided, because the SCOTUS ought to value its own previous misconduct more highly than the Constitution it exists to uphold?

Understand that? Arpaio wasn't going to spend a year in jail. The judge then has the discretion to provide a jury or not. Get it?

Get what? Get that to you the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, it means what five Supreme Court justices say it means? Yes, I get that. Show me one word in the Constitution that authorizes judges to make up a rule that a Constitutional right goes away when the penalty is less than a year. If Trump orders you jailed for six months because you called him an orange despot, are you cool with going to jail? Would you happily kiss your 1st, 5th and 6th Amendment rights goodbye because after all it's less than a year out of your life?

In addition, when a judge issues an order/injunction for a defendant to refrain from engaging in certain conduct, the defendant agrees not to engage in conduct lest they be found in contempt. It's what's referred to as a "negative" injunction and such injunctions are considered to be more easily enforceable than affirmative injunctions, BECAUSE THE DEFENDANT CAN BE FOUND IN CONTEMPT FOR VIOLATING THE ORDER.

Do you understand the difference between civil and criminal contempt? The behavior on Arpaio's part that the order was intended to stop had already stopped. This was not about enforcing an injunction. This was about the judiciary getting revenge on Arpaio for his past crime. Why on earth would you think that's an issue that shouldn't be put to a jury?

Now look, I did you the favor you couldn't do the rest of us: I found something online that explains in layman's terms how this <expletive deleted> works. Observe:

According to the Supreme Court, the jury-trial right applies only when “serious” offenses are at hand—petty offenses don’t invoke it. For purposes of this right, a serious offense is one that carries a potential sentence of more than six months’ imprisonment. (Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66 (1970).) If the penalty is six months or less, the crime is serious only if the sum of its penalties are weighty enough. The Supreme Court decided in one case that up to six months’ incarceration or five years’ probation, plus a $5,000 maximum fine weren’t enough to make a certain kind of DUI a serious offense. (U.S. v. Nachtigal, 507 U.S. 1 (1993).)

Now that you're less ignorant: you're welcome.

Are you attempting to outdo your own earlier idiocy? What on earth would make you imagine I'm ignorant of the Supreme Court's view on this point? I already told you the appellate courts were going to uphold the conviction; and I'm the one who posted the links to the Supreme Court decisions!

According to the Supreme Court, the jury-trial right applies only when “serious” offenses are at hand. According to the Constitution, the jury-trial right applies to all federal* criminal prosecutions -- it says not a word about whether they're "serious". When a president chooses the Constitution over the SCOTUS's made-up rule, why should we suppose it's the President and not the SCOTUS that's using the Constitution as toilet paper?

Funny story about that. Christ said not a jot or tittle of the Law of Moses was repealed. Paul said Christians get to eat whatever they please, kosher or not. The people who call themselves "Christians" generally take Paul's word on this point over Christ's, and go ahead and eat non-kosher food. By any reasonable standard, that makes them Paulians, not Christians, yes? If you'd said Trump was wiping his ass with the Supreme Court, you'd have a case. But you said he was wiping his ass with the Constitution. So quote us the Constitution saying petty offenses don’t invoke the right to trial by jury. Quoting us the Supreme Court does not qualify as support for your contention.

In any event, as you'd know if you'd bothered to read my links, the SCOTUS upheld the judge-only convictions and sentences of two men who were sentenced to three years for criminal contempt. That makes criminal contempt a serious crime, by the precedents you are relying on. That Arpaio was only threatened with six months is neither here nor there.

(* This is not to say that Baldwin v New York was wrongly decided. Whether states can limit it to serious offenses is a trickier question.)

Oh, and another thing: usually, a pardon takes place after the matter is settled. Pardons aren't supposed to castrate the judicial process before it's completed review.

Everything of importance to the issue at hand had been completed. The wrongdoing on the part of the American court system was a fait accompli the minute she declared him guilty without Constitutional authorization. It's not as though an appellate court was going to overturn precedent; and the SCOTUS had already declined to reconsider the matter.

So hurray for your <expletive deleted> orange despot.

He's not mine. I didn't vote for the idiot. And you're the one advocating rule by decree.

 

[ronburgundy]

Hurray for Trump! First good thing he's done in his whole stupid administration. Probably did it mostly for the wrong reasons, but hey, let's take what we can get.

Is this pardon really worse than Obama's commutation of the sentence for anti-American terrorist Oscar Rivera?

... Rivera did 35 years in prison and there are legitimate arguments for why he was sentenced improperly. This is not comparable.

Conservatives just love to wipe their ass with the Constitution and then wipe it in everyone else's face, all the while claiming they love the Constitution. ...

Arpaio was about to be sentenced improperly. Arpaio was convicted improperly. This is obvious to anyone who has examined the matter with any intellectual honesty. There simply aren't any legitimate arguments that this was a proper conviction. The judge who convicted him was wiping her ass with the Constitution. The appellate courts that would have upheld it were just going to wipe it in everyone else's face. Pardoning him was the only effective remedy against despotism. What the bejesus is wrong with you? What the bejesus is wrong with all of you who approve of that conviction? If you're going to accuse your opponents of wiping their asses with the Constitution, first you might want to bloody well read it. Exactly which part of

"The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury"​

do you people not understand? Seriously, explain yourselves. Are you barking about the Constitution while simply wallowing in complete ignorance of the Constitutional principles that are at stake here? Are you imbeciles? Or are you simply so corrupt that you equate "Constitutional" with "I get what I want"?

Here's what the ACLU had to say about summary trials for criminal contempt. https://aclu.procon.org/view.additional-resource.php?resourceID=003397

Here's what Justice Black had to say about them. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6886651914045843455&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

Which one of you has both the balls and the intellectual dishonesty to tell us they're wrong?

Odd that you would provide links to the historic court case that proves you are so definitely wrong, in which SCOTUS ruled the no jury trial is required for contempt of court instances because ...
"The First Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789 conferred on federal courts the power 'to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same'... It is undisputed that this Act gave federal courts the discretionary power to punish for contempt as that power was known to the common law."

IOW, this judge followed the rule of law and the courts, and Trump just proved his utter lack of regard for the rule of law in addition to love for and deliberate alliance with the white supremacists that comprise most of his base.

 

[Bomb#20]

Odd that you would provide links to the historic court case that proves you are so definitely wrong, in which SCOTUS ruled the no jury trial is required for contempt of court instances because ...
"The First Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789 conferred on federal courts the power 'to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same'... It is undisputed that this Act gave federal courts the discretionary power to punish for contempt as that power was known to the common law."

IOW, this judge followed the rule of law and the courts, and Trump just proved his utter lack of regard for the rule of law in addition to love for and deliberate alliance with the white supremacists that comprise most of his base.

So in your view does that also prove that the SCOTUS was so definitely wrong in United States v. Windsor about the requirements of the Fifth Amendment, because the 104th Congress in the "Defense of Marriage Act" conferred on federal agencies the power to rule that "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."?

Where on earth did you get the notion that an ordinary act of Congress outranks Article Three of the Constitution?

(And where on earth did you get the notion that using boldface and extra-large print makes your argument more compelling?)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Will the pardon stick, though? I thought you couldn't pardon for contempt of court.

 

[RavenSky]

Will the pardon stick, though? I thought you couldn't pardon for contempt of court.

I thought so too, but apparently that is at the state level. The Big Loser can pardon for anything he wants at a federal level except for his own impeachment

 

[Opoponax]

First, YOU explain your links: how they're on point, and how they apply to Arpaio. I'll bet that you can't. Your <expletive deleted> legal research on google is just that: <expletive deleted>.

The intellectual level on which you are capable of arguing is noted.

My links are links to two cases in which the SCOTUS ruled on the far-and-away most significant legal issue in the Arpaio case: the legality of summary trials for criminal contempt. They contain a brief by the ACLU explaining why precedents on this point are wrong and should be overturned, and a dissenting opinion to the same effect by one of the outvoted Supreme Court justices. Their arguments are sound. The opposing arguments at the same links are transparent self-interested sophistry.

Here's how it works in general. You're entitled to a jury for offenses where you may spend a year or more in jail.

Why, because you and the Supreme Court say so? When the Constitution says one thing perfectly clearly, and the Supreme Court says the opposite, and offers no justification but precedent, why do you find that a convincing argument as to what you're entitled to?

Let's put it in stark terms. The U.S. Supreme Court spent 135 years upholding convictions for gay sex, in blatant violation of the plain text of the 14th Amendment. If President Clinton had reacted to this appalling systematic abuse of government power by pardoning a man convicted of screwing his lover, would you be screaming about how by overriding the power of judges to do whatever they bloody well please he was wiping his ass with the Constitution? Do you think Lawrence v Texas was wrongly decided, because the SCOTUS ought to value its own previous misconduct more highly than the Constitution it exists to uphold?

Understand that? Arpaio wasn't going to spend a year in jail. The judge then has the discretion to provide a jury or not. Get it?

Get what? Get that to you the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, it means what five Supreme Court justices say it means? Yes, I get that. Show me one word in the Constitution that authorizes judges to make up a rule that a Constitutional right goes away when the penalty is less than a year. If Trump orders you jailed for six months because you called him an orange despot, are you cool with going to jail? Would you happily kiss your 1st, 5th and 6th Amendment rights goodbye because after all it's less than a year out of your life?

In addition, when a judge issues an order/injunction for a defendant to refrain from engaging in certain conduct, the defendant agrees not to engage in conduct lest they be found in contempt. It's what's referred to as a "negative" injunction and such injunctions are considered to be more easily enforceable than affirmative injunctions, BECAUSE THE DEFENDANT CAN BE FOUND IN CONTEMPT FOR VIOLATING THE ORDER.

Do you understand the difference between civil and criminal contempt? The behavior on Arpaio's part that the order was intended to stop had already stopped. This was not about enforcing an injunction. This was about the judiciary getting revenge on Arpaio for his past crime. Why on earth would you think that's an issue that shouldn't be put to a jury?

Now look, I did you the favor you couldn't do the rest of us: I found something online that explains in layman's terms how this <expletive deleted> works. Observe:

According to the Supreme Court, the jury-trial right applies only when “serious” offenses are at hand—petty offenses don’t invoke it. For purposes of this right, a serious offense is one that carries a potential sentence of more than six months’ imprisonment. (Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66 (1970).) If the penalty is six months or less, the crime is serious only if the sum of its penalties are weighty enough. The Supreme Court decided in one case that up to six months’ incarceration or five years’ probation, plus a $5,000 maximum fine weren’t enough to make a certain kind of DUI a serious offense. (U.S. v. Nachtigal, 507 U.S. 1 (1993).)

Now that you're less ignorant: you're welcome.

Are you attempting to outdo your own earlier idiocy? What on earth would make you imagine I'm ignorant of the Supreme Court's view on this point? I already told you the appellate courts were going to uphold the conviction; and I'm the one who posted the links to the Supreme Court decisions!

According to the Supreme Court, the jury-trial right applies only when “serious” offenses are at hand. According to the Constitution, the jury-trial right applies to all federal* criminal prosecutions -- it says not a word about whether they're "serious". When a president chooses the Constitution over the SCOTUS's made-up rule, why should we suppose it's the President and not the SCOTUS that's using the Constitution as toilet paper?

Funny story about that. Christ said not a jot or tittle of the Law of Moses was repealed. Paul said Christians get to eat whatever they please, kosher or not. The people who call themselves "Christians" generally take Paul's word on this point over Christ's, and go ahead and eat non-kosher food. By any reasonable standard, that makes them Paulians, not Christians, yes? If you'd said Trump was wiping his ass with the Supreme Court, you'd have a case. But you said he was wiping his ass with the Constitution. So quote us the Constitution saying petty offenses don’t invoke the right to trial by jury. Quoting us the Supreme Court does not qualify as support for your contention.

In any event, as you'd know if you'd bothered to read my links, the SCOTUS upheld the judge-only convictions and sentences of two men who were sentenced to three years for criminal contempt. That makes criminal contempt a serious crime, by the precedents you are relying on. That Arpaio was only threatened with six months is neither here nor there.

(* This is not to say that Baldwin v New York was wrongly decided. Whether states can limit it to serious offenses is a trickier question.)

Oh, and another thing: usually, a pardon takes place after the matter is settled. Pardons aren't supposed to castrate the judicial process before it's completed review.

Everything of importance to the issue at hand had been completed. The wrongdoing on the part of the American court system was a fait accompli the minute she declared him guilty without Constitutional authorization. It's not as though an appellate court was going to overturn precedent; and the SCOTUS had already declined to reconsider the matter.

So hurray for your <expletive deleted> orange despot.

He's not mine. I didn't vote for the idiot. And you're the one advocating rule by decree.

I would say "nice try," but I'd be lying.

You don't get to interpret the Constitution. Wanna know why? It's because you're not capable of it. You don't have the education for it. And you don't have the independent intelligence for it either, as is clearly evident by your inability to understand legal thinking or even the most basic constitutional theory.

You think you can understand the law by reading something. Well, guess, what: you can't.

If you want to know why, then get your ass to law school for three years, take a bar exam, and then get admitted to X state's bar. Or, you can continue to look like the idiot you are and think you can just make shit up. Good luck with that.

 

[Derec]

Funny how Derec is bent out of shape over a black man commuting the sentence of a brown man, but sees no problem with an old white racist pardoning an old white racist.

As usual, you are the one obsessed with the hue and the albedo.
In reality, Obama's commutation of Lopez' sentence was bad because he is an unrepentant terrorist. He never said that the he and his terrorist group were wrong for building and planting bombs (and which killed a number of people).

And while there are vast differences between Nixon and Arpaio's pardons, the fact is that both of them were purely political.

I think most if not all pardons are on some level.

In both cases, the government had the perps dead to rights. There was no question of misplaced justice.

Neither is there in the case of Lopez for that matter. I think vast majority of people pardoned or commuted are guilty as charged. Marc Rich really evaded taxes for example.

Their respective pardons were handed out because they served the purpose of the President politically.

Or how Marc Rich served the purposes of Bill Clinton to have his library funded and his wife elected to the Senate. Reading all the boo-hooing over Joe Arpaio (not only here) one would think that Trump invented the presidential pardon, or at the very least the idea that somebody controversial would be pardoned.

and Trump wanted to send a message to his racist base that the white man is back in charge.

Enforcing immigration laws is not racist. Hispanics are an ethnolinguistic and not a racial group anyway (a fact that even US census acknowledges), so the claim is not even the right category. Almost as bad as calling criticism of Islam "racist".
And just because somebody speaks Spanish as their native tongue does not mean they are exempt from laws.

 

[RavenSky]

Enforcing immigration laws is not racist. Hispanics are an ethnolinguistic and not a racial group anyway (a fact that even US census acknowledges), so the claim is not even the right category. Almost as bad as calling criticism of Islam "racist". And just because somebody speaks Spanish as their native tongue does not mean they are exempt from laws.

Arpaio was not "enforcing immigration laws". He was engaging in a lifelong pattern of unrepentant racism against Hispanic under the pretence of "enforcing immigration laws".

And you aren't educating anyone on this board with your comments about what "Hispanic" means. This is Arpaio's word of choice, which shows that his motives are racism, not immigration.

"They hate me, the Hispanic community, because they're afraid they're going to be arrested. And they're all leaving town, so I think we're doing something good, if they're leaving." Arpaio 2009

ETA:

 

[ronburgundy]

Odd that you would provide links to the historic court case that proves you are so definitely wrong, in which SCOTUS ruled the no jury trial is required for contempt of court instances because ...
"The First Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789 conferred on federal courts the power 'to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same'... It is undisputed that this Act gave federal courts the discretionary power to punish for contempt as that power was known to the common law."

IOW, this judge followed the rule of law and the courts, and Trump just proved his utter lack of regard for the rule of law in addition to love for and deliberate alliance with the white supremacists that comprise most of his base.

So in your view does that also prove that the SCOTUS was so definitely wrong in United States v. Windsor about the requirements of the Fifth Amendment, because the 104th Congress in the "Defense of Marriage Act" conferred on federal agencies the power to rule that "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."?

Where on earth did you get the notion that an ordinary act of Congress outranks Article Three of the Constitution?

No, that is the point. SCOTUS examined and came to exact opposite conclusion about constitutionality in those two, because like other rational people they did not make the absurd false equivalence between them that you just did. DOMA was about case of Congress saying 220 years after the Constitution that it should be applied completely differently to different people based upon how members of the current Congress personally feel about those people.
The Judiciary ACt was about clarifying laws that would apply equally to all. It was about the very First Congress (comprised of most of the same people who wrote Article III) as one of their first acts in their first year, prior to even passing the Amendments, passed the Judiciary Act to clarify that contempt of court was a special instance and that requiring a jury for such rulings would unduly hamper the court from being able to enforce any of its procedures or rulings.

SCOTUS rulings are a part of the rule of law. This judge acted in accord with that rule of law, while Trump showed pure disdain for it.

 

[Bomb#20]

I would say "nice try," but I'd be lying.

You don't get to interpret the Constitution. Wanna know why? It's because you're not capable of it. You don't have the education for it.

I see, it's okay for non-lawyers to say what conflicts with the Constitution when you do it, but not when I do it. Hypocrite.

And you don't have the independent intelligence for it either, as is clearly evident by your inability to understand legal thinking or even the most basic constitutional theory.

You think you can understand the law by reading something. Well, guess, what: you can't.

If you want to know why, then get your ass to law school for three years, take a bar exam, and then get admitted to X state's bar.

"You don't get to interpret the Bible. Wanna know why? It's because you're not capable of it. You don't have the education for it. And you don't have the independent intelligence for it either, as is clearly evident by your inability to understand religious thinking or even the most basic theological theory. You think you can understand the Bible by reading it. Well, guess, what: you can't. If you want to know why, then get your ass to seminary for three years, take a theology exam, and then get ordained as a priest. Now go away and buy your indulgences like everybody else." - The Catholic Church during the Reformation

How the bejesus did a nation of religious dissidents allow itself to be indoctrinated into such a Catholic attitude toward its legal hierarchy?

While we're at it, how the bejesus did you conclude that a freethinkers' forum is a place where argument from authority is an adequate substitute for addressing your challenger's arguments?

Or, you can continue to look like the idiot you are and think you can just make <expletive deleted> up. Good luck with that.

I take it you still haven't read the links I posted. When you claim I'm making this up, that's you making something up about me. And when you're dishing out your "You don't get to interpret the Constitution. Get your ass to law school for three years" sermon, you might want to spend a few seconds contemplating whether the people who write ACLU briefs and dissenting SCOTUS opinions got their asses to law school. You want to call somebody an idiot, get a mirror.

 

[ksen]

Dissenting opinions are on the losing side, right?

 

[Bomb#20]

So in your view does that also prove that the SCOTUS was so definitely wrong in United States v. Windsor about the requirements of the Fifth Amendment, because the 104th Congress in the "Defense of Marriage Act" conferred on federal agencies the power to rule that "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."?

Where on earth did you get the notion that an ordinary act of Congress outranks Article Three of the Constitution?

No, that is the point. SCOTUS examined and came to exact opposite conclusion about constitutionality in those two, because like other rational people they did not make the absurd false equivalence between them that you just did.

You appear to be expressing some strange metaphor. What you say makes no sense as a matter of history. The SCOTUS that upheld summary trials in 1957 and 1964 most definitely did not do so because it saw a difference between summary trials and straight-only marriage. The SCOTUS that upheld summary trials in 1957 and 1964 would surely have upheld straight-only marriage too, if the latter legal question had somehow even arisen that early.

Both summary trials and straight-only marriage were accepted by the SCOTUS for a very long time, and for the same reason: respect for tradition. So why do you feel making that observation is an absurd false equivalence?

DOMA was about case of Congress saying 220 years after the Constitution that it should be applied completely differently to different people based upon how members of the current Congress personally feel about those people.
The Judiciary ACt was about clarifying laws that would apply equally to all.

I.e., one runs afoul of the 14th Amendment and the other runs afoul of Article 3. When I point out that upholding them is analogous, that does not mean I'm claiming the two laws are identical. Every analogy compares two things that are unlike in some way. Pointing out a difference is not enough to refute an analogy.

It was about the very First Congress (comprised of most of the same people who wrote Article III) as one of their first acts in their first year, prior to even passing the Amendments, passed the Judiciary Act to clarify that contempt of court was a special instance and that requiring a jury for such rulings would unduly hamper the court from being able to enforce any of its procedures or rulings.

In the first place, no, they passed the Judiciary Act to create the entire federal judiciary in the first place, along with the Attorney General and the U.S. Marshall Service. That law covered so many topics of so much importance that if 1789 legislators were anything like modern legislators, most of the congressmen who voted for that law probably gave no thought at all to the distinction between civil and criminal contempt, let alone imagined that they were voting for summary criminal trials. They would have focused on the controversial provisions about federal jurisdiction over states, and rubber-stamped minor provisions somebody else had thought about how to word. The theory that requiring a jury, not for coercing the subject of an injunction into prompt compliance, but rather for hurting him after the fact when the opportunity to enforce the ruling has already passed, would unduly hamper the court from being able to enforce its rulings, is ridiculous on its face. There is no basis for thinking the congressmen believed it. (Note that the current court took nine months to decide Arpaio was guilty of criminal contempt. It certainly had time to empanel a jury.) The part of the Act you quote, "to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same" doesn't say a word about not needing juries. The plain reading is that the court has the discretion to choose whether the penalty is a fine or a prison term. It takes a clever attorney to say "Hey, that also means they have the discretion to take away from juries the decision on the factual question of whether the defendant actually was in contempt." So the hypothesis that the First Congress consciously intended to authorize summary trials in order to avoid unduly hampering the court makes no sense as a matter of Congressional psychology.

And in the second place, hey, let's suppose you're right. Let's suppose this exact point was raised in Congressional debate. Let's suppose somebody said "Requiring a jury in order to punish somebody for having violated a court order nine months ago will unduly hamper the court from being able to enforce any of its procedures or rulings." Let's suppose the congressmen thought about that, and decided it sounded right, and then they voted that criminal contempt was a special instance that didn't require a jury. As you say, this all happened prior to even passing the Amendments. So are you proposing that one day later, on Sept. 25, those same congressmen enacted another law saying

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.​

and none of them thought to say, "wait a second, shouldn't that say: In all criminal prosecutions except contempt of court?"?

Even if the Judiciary Act meant what Justice Clark says it meant about summary trials, that provision was repealed by the Sixth Amendment.

SCOTUS rulings are a part of the rule of law. This judge acted in accord with that rule of law, while Trump showed pure disdain for it.

That's schizophrenic. By what possible contortion of logic can you argue that judges making up strained interpretations of words to decide the Constitution means the opposite of what it directly says in plain English is part of the rule of law, but Presidential pardons are somehow not also part of the rule of law?

"he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."​

Oh, wait, I get it. "Rule of law" means rule of whichever people get to decide what the law is. What the law says is irrelevant. So the Constitution granting the President the authority to pardon criminals means nothing. Sorry, my bad.

In Biddle v. Perovich, the SCOTUS said of the Presidential pardon: "It is a part of the Constitutional scheme. When granted it is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed."

The same authority that you're relying on, the authority that claims it's rule of law to deny Arpaio his right to a jury, also claims it's rule of law to have Trump pardon him. You can't have it both ways.

 

[Bomb#20]

Dissenting opinions are on the losing side, right?

Right. What's your point? Do you think the circumstance that more judges were persuaded to give judges more power by Justice Harlan than were persuaded to give judges less power by Justice Black implies that Justice Harlan made the better argument?

Since argument from authority seems to carry more weight than reasoning with many here, these are the Justices who endorsed summary trials:

Harold Burton, Tom Clark, Felix Frankfurter, John Harlan, Charles Whittaker​

These are the Justices who endorsed jury trials:

Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Earl Warren​

(William Brennan dissented on narrower grounds.)

 

[ksen]

tl;dr