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More Elite 11 Content on Jimmy Sullivan

Good stuff from national analyst @Greg Smith on 2025 Iowa commit Jimmy Sullivan.

Iowa quarterback recruiting has not been a bright spot under coach Kirk Ferentz. The program doesn’t really engage with top quarterback prospects and, truth be told, that philosophy has worked out fine given the amount of games the program has won under Ferentz.

That perception could be changed by Jimmy Sullivan. The Fort Wayne (Ind.) Carroll quarterback, who committed to the Hawkeyes in December, was a consistent performer all camp. He doesn’t have the biggest arm but threw it well on the run.

Casino buzzer-beater was an air ball in the Iowa Senate

While Iowa lawmakers were burning the midnight oil early Saturday in a push to adjourn the 2024 session, an extension of a moratorium on new gambling licenses went up in smoke.



So, what happened?


Well, in those late hours, the Legislature moves in mysterious ways. And, according to folks I’ve talked to who were there, it was likely a confluence of factors that scuttled a bill.




One big factor is Cedar Rapids casino backers were not blindsided as they had been in 2022 when the Legislature approved a two-year moratorium. This time, the Cedar Rapids Development Group had an eight-person lobbying firm at its disposal, watching for all signs of trouble.


One of those lobbyists is former Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, who left the Senate, um, abruptly in March of 2018. He still had enough juice with his former colleagues to help head the bill off at the pass.


“Relationships are always, that’s how the Legislature works,” Dix said in a brief interview. He said he was tempted to tell me what happened but declined. “I don’t think that’s my role.”


Lobbyists, as an unwritten rule, avoid talking to the press on the record.





On the other side, six lobbyists for Elite Casinos and Resorts lobbied for the amendment to Senate File 2427. Elite is led by Dan Kehl and owns five casino properties in Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois. That includes the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort, which would likely lose business to a Cedar Rapids casino.


Kehl was not content with just a five-year extension of the moratorium to 2029. He attempted to nuke Cedar Rapids’ casino dreams once and for all. The amendment extending the moratorium, sponsored by Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, also prohibited the future licensing of any casino that would “negatively impact” a casino in a “rural county” with a population of less than 30,000.


Consequently, if market studies show a Cedar Rapids facility would cannibalize revenues from Riverside, it would be illegal to grant them a license even after 2029.


With that, Kehl may have overplayed his hand, although the amendment passed easily in the House.


Then it was sent to the Senate.


But it wasn’t received until after 1 a.m. The Senate conducted some business and stood at ease at 2:42 a.m., according to the Senate Journal, and reconvened at 3:25 a.m. A few minutes later, the Senate passed a resolution adjourning for the year. Game over.


Sometimes, when you commence a legislative sneak attack under cover of darkness, the clock might run out. This buzzer-beater was an air ball.


So now Cedar Rapids is on its way to joining the casino cartel, right? Backers will receive green jackets, sort of like the Masters, but the color of money.


Well, not exactly. Now the tough part begins, convincing the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission to approve a license for a Cedar Rapids gambling parlor.


This will be the third attempt to win a license, with proposals voted down in 2013 and 2017. In both cases, the dreaded cannibalization of bucks from existing casinos proved decisive.


Will it happen again? Probably. Iowa’s gambling market is pretty well saturated. But I thought the moratorium would pass again. So, what do I know?


(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com
While Iowa lawmakers were burning the midnight oil early Saturday in a push to adjourn the 2024 session, an extension of a moratorium on new gambling licenses went up in smoke.



So, what happened?


Well, in those late hours, the Legislature moves in mysterious ways. And, according to folks I’ve talked to who were there, it was likely a confluence of factors that scuttled a bill.




One big factor is Cedar Rapids casino backers were not blindsided as they had been in 2022 when the Legislature approved a two-year moratorium. This time, the Cedar Rapids Development Group had an eight-person lobbying firm at its disposal, watching for all signs of trouble.


One of those lobbyists is former Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, who left the Senate, um, abruptly in March of 2018. He still had enough juice with his former colleagues to help head the bill off at the pass.


“Relationships are always, that’s how the Legislature works,” Dix said in a brief interview. He said he was tempted to tell me what happened but declined. “I don’t think that’s my role.”


Lobbyists, as an unwritten rule, avoid talking to the press on the record.





On the other side, six lobbyists for Elite Casinos and Resorts lobbied for the amendment to Senate File 2427. Elite is led by Dan Kehl and owns five casino properties in Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois. That includes the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort, which would likely lose business to a Cedar Rapids casino.


Kehl was not content with just a five-year extension of the moratorium to 2029. He attempted to nuke Cedar Rapids’ casino dreams once and for all. The amendment extending the moratorium, sponsored by Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, also prohibited the future licensing of any casino that would “negatively impact” a casino in a “rural county” with a population of less than 30,000.


Consequently, if market studies show a Cedar Rapids facility would cannibalize revenues from Riverside, it would be illegal to grant them a license even after 2029.


With that, Kehl may have overplayed his hand, although the amendment passed easily in the House.


Then it was sent to the Senate.


But it wasn’t received until after 1 a.m. The Senate conducted some business and stood at ease at 2:42 a.m., according to the Senate Journal, and reconvened at 3:25 a.m. A few minutes later, the Senate passed a resolution adjourning for the year. Game over.


Sometimes, when you commence a legislative sneak attack under cover of darkness, the clock might run out. This buzzer-beater was an air ball.


So now Cedar Rapids is on its way to joining the casino cartel, right? Backers will receive green jackets, sort of like the Masters, but the color of money.


Well, not exactly. Now the tough part begins, convincing the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission to approve a license for a Cedar Rapids gambling parlor.


This will be the third attempt to win a license, with proposals voted down in 2013 and 2017. In both cases, the dreaded cannibalization of bucks from existing casinos proved decisive.


Will it happen again? Probably. Iowa’s gambling market is pretty well saturated. But I thought the moratorium would pass again. So, what do I know?


(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com

How many doughnuts does it take to get a buzz from this alcoholic doughnut shop?

There’s no bouncer at this new spot in Oak Hill Jackson, but the person at the counter may still ask to see your ID.



Glazed and Infused, the only shop serving alcohol-infused doughnuts in the Corridor, opts to offer a hole in the dough rather than a “hole in the wall.”




The latest offering under the Epic Catering LLC umbrella from managing partner and budding restaurateur Brie McLaughlin probably won’t make the average person tipsy on a single serving. But the semi-rotating selection has just enough liquor to enhance the sugar buzz.


With about one-third of an ounce of liquor or alcohol in each doughnut, it takes half a dozen doughnuts to get the equivalent of a cocktail.


“My dad is a nuclear operator. He can’t have these before going to work,” McLaughlin said.


The idea, inspired by luxe, elaborate doughnut shops in Las Vegas made famous by social media, is a riff between a creative angle and a practical one. With a not-so-cheap liquor license in use at sister restaurant Oak Hill Tavern next door, McLaughlin wanted to find more use for it.


If you go:​


What: Glazed and Infused

Address: 804 Fifth St. SE, Cedar Rapids

Hours: 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily, or until sold out

Online: facebook.com/p/Glazed-and-Infused-61557890392938/

Details: Yeast-based doughnuts, frosted with or without liquors are served alongside a small menu of nonalcoholic energy drinks. Liquor-infused doughnuts are $3.25 each; non-alcoholic options start at $2.15.

And like the restaurant, with novelties like the blueberry brie grilled cheese sandwich, she wanted to bring something unique to the scene.


“I like to provide something you can’t find anywhere else,” she said. “There’s not a lot of options in terms of boozy doughnuts in America.”


The liquor isn’t in the filling or the dough of the pastries themselves. Rather, the liquor is infused into the icing on top to avoid the flavor or potency of the alcohol being cooked out.


“I prefer to put it in the icing because it is a quicker delivery,” McLaughlin said. “You’ll taste your alcohol.”






The selection of alcohol-infused options includes the popular margarita with tequila in the icing, mimosa infused with champagne, the chocolate mojito with creme de menthe or the cosmopolitan. If straight sugar is more your drink of choice, regular flavors include vanilla or chocolate frosting, sprinkles, strawberry, blueberry and cherry.


Special upcoming flavors will be rotated regularly, and may include ideas like Cinnamon Toast Crunch with Fireball, bourbon pecan with Grand Marnier, or apple pie with Crown Royal whiskey. Some, in conjunction with the tavern next door, will feature cocktails from the Oak Hill Tavern menu, like the triple berry mule with strawberry, blueberry, blackberry syrup and vodka.


The whipped butter and powdered sugar-based icing keeps the light, yeast-based doughnuts from floating away. The self-taught creator opted for yeast over cake-based doughnuts to ensure a fluffier product that isn’t too heavy on the stomach.


“I want to be able to finish my doughnut — I don’t want it to sit like a rock halfway through,” she said. “Yeast is a light, blank canvas we’re able to manipulate however we want.”


Boozy doughnuts are priced at $3.25 each. Non-alcoholic options start at $2.15.


Aspirations​


In the future, McLaughlin has a vision for a 24-hour doughnut shop that can be an alternative to the slim number of late-night restaurants — many of which cut back on late hours during the pandemic and never returned.


And with THC becoming an increasingly viable option in commercial food and drink production, you may soon have the option to cure your munchies with the cause of your munchies. The element that causes a high in THC drinks sold around Iowa is now available in a simple syrup that can be infused into icing the same way as liquor.

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Gaetz presence at cocaine-fueled party with 17-year-old girl seen by witness: report

I'm assuming he was just chaperoning.

"According to the statement provided to the committee, sources said the woman who made the statement... said she saw the then-minor naked at the party, which was also attended by adult men other than Gaetz, and that at the party there allegedly were bedrooms that were made available for sexual activities," reports ABC.

Link

2024 NFL Draft Preview and Projections

During his 25+ years as the head coach at Iowa, Kirk Ferentz has seen a lot of players selected in the NFL Draft -- 87 to be precise. 12 of those 87 were taken in the first round of the NFL Draft. Of those 87 players drafted, 18 were defensive backs. But he's never had a defensive back taken in the first round -- until now.

Cooper DeJean, a unanimous All-American and Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year in 2023, is widely projected to be selected sometime in the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday night (7 PM CT, ABC/ESPN/NFL Network). Assuming that projection is accurate, DeJean will become the first defensive back of the Ferentz Era to be taken in the first round.

Iowa has had many excellent defensive backs over the last quarter-century -- including Bob Sanders, Sean Considine, Bradley Fletcher, Tyler Sash, Desmond King, Amani Hooker, and Riley Moss, to name a handful -- but none of them heard their names called during the first round of the NFL Draft. In fact, no Iowa defensive back has been taken in the first round since Tom Knight was taken 9th overall by San Francisco in 1997. That looks poised to change this year with DeJean, the latest standout defender to emerge from Phil Parker's tutelage.

Assuming the first round projections for DeJean prove accurate he'll also continue Iowa's recent trend of success in the first round -- the Hawkeyes have had at least one player taken in the first round in two straight seasons and in four of the last five seasons. That's a remarkable track record of developing players into potential stars -- especially since only one of those players (Tristan Wirfs) was ranked higher than a three-star prospect entering Iowa.

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Most Underrated Bands of the ‘80s

Here’s my top 5. Four British bands that never gained more than cult status here, and one group of American punks:

1. Echo and the Bunnymen:
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2. The Teardrop Explodes
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3. Agent Orange
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4. The Au Pairs
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5. The Selector
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Is first grade too young to start with the pronoun business? Seems a school in Michigan doesn't think so...

An elementary school has canceled an optional lesson teaching students about gender-neutral pronouns.

Schavey Road Elementary School in DeWitt, a town outside Lansing, Michigan, planned the mini-lesson for first-graders in the next few weeks.

The class would have taught children about they/them pronouns, why they should use the ones a classmate preferred, and what to do if they made a mistake.

The session also included reading a book that said children could use whatever pronoun they wanted, or even make up their own like 'ze' or 'tree.'

'We realize this decision will please some and disappoint others in our school community, and I can assure you we did not reach this decision lightly,' she said.

Spickard earlier tried to quell concerns, stressing that the session was optional, not part of the curriculum, and prompted by 'concerns brought to our attention'.

'The purpose is to promote greater understanding, compassion, and kindness regarding gender identity and the use of pronouns,' she said.

'The mini-lesson is not designed to challenge, persuade, or alter family beliefs. Instead, it aims to promote a safe and respectful learning environment where all our students feel valued.

'Parents and guardians were informed in advance and given the opportunity to opt out.'

The April 11 letter sent to parents included an exemption form they could sign if they wanted their child excused from the class.

Students in the session would 'practice using pronouns they/them and what to do if we make a mistake with pronouns', it explained.

They would also 'learn that it is not OK to change someone's pronouns on purpose and to always try to use the pronouns that people want to be called'.

The class included reading the children's book They, She, He, Me: Free to Be! by Matthew Sg and Maya Christina Gonzalez, and discussing its themes.

Publisher Reflection Press described the book as 'a playful narrative about pronouns for kids' that 'shows many gender presentations under each pronoun and invites even more'.

'You can use your own name as a pronoun. You can change pronouns from he to she or she to he,' part of the book reads.


'You can use new ones like ze or create your own like tree! Some people use they, which is a perfect way. There are many more pronouns waiting to be discovered and used.'

Some parents complained about the class to local media and Michigan State Representative Steve Carra joked he should teach the class.

''Little Jack, you're a boy even if you pretend to be a girl. Other people shouldn't be forced to pretend along with you. Your pronouns are he/him.' Great, now back to reading, writing, and arithmetic,' he wrote.

Iowa Wrestling fundraiser to support Shelter House - Online auction now open until April 26







It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.

Go Hawks!

Name a player from a bygone era that would have been a good follow on social media

Who would have been entertaining, provided the hot takes, gotten themselves in trouble, etc.?

I'll start:

1. Ricky Henderson - just to see if he would have tweeted about himself in 3rd person
2. Lawrence Taylor - favorite player all time with the added bonus that you never know what a guy who routinely smokes crack with a bunch of hookers might put out there for everybody to see

The GOP’s new ‘election integrity’ push is off to a conspiratorial start

Lara Trump possesses the most important qualification for service as co-chair of the Republican Party in 2024: the last name “Trump.” As traditional power centers recede, the party machinery that Donald Trump exploited to win the party’s 2016 presidential nomination is now firmly under his control.


Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

That means a full embrace of the cause closest to the former president’s heart: boosting allegations that American elections are rife with fraud and illegality.
“We have the first-ever election integrity division at the [Republican National Committee],” Lara Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday evening. “That means massive resources going to this one thing. If people out there, Sean, don’t feel like their vote counts, they don’t trust the system we have, then we are no longer the country we once thought we were.”
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This argument that it’s worrisome if Americans don’t trust the electoral process is not a new one; it undergirded much of the effort to block Joe Biden’s victory in January 2021. It is also a bit like Russia lamenting that Ukrainians are concerned for their personal safety. The reason Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election results were somehow tainted is not that they were tainted but that people like Donald Trump insist that they were.


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People like Trump’s longtime attorney Rudy Giuliani. People like Christina Bobb, onetime host on the fringe-right cable channel One America News and, now, the RNC’s senior counsel for election integrity.
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Until this appointment, Bobb’s legacy from this era was likely to relate to her service as one of Trump’s enormous, evolving coterie of attorneys. Bobb signed the June 2022 document asserting that Trump had turned over to the government all material marked as classified in his possession. (He had not.) But now she has a chance to make her mark on Trump’s signature electoral issue.
She has a robust pedigree, at least as far as Trump is concerned. Soon after the 2020 election, she began working with Giuliani and others to elevate baseless or later-debunked claims about the results in various states having been tainted by fraud. She was involved in the “audit” of votes in Arizona, working with Trump campaign official (and Georgia co-defendant) Mike Roman. She wrote a book, published in January 2023, cataloguing familiar (and baseless or debunked) criticisms of the results. It’s all there, from Antrim County to State Farm Arena to True the Vote. (The book’s forward was written by Stephen K. Bannon; Jim Hoft of the conspiracy-promoting site Gateway Pundit wrote a blurb.)



Bobb’s book posits that the reason Republican Glenn Youngkin won his gubernatorial race in Virginia in 2021 wasn’t that there was a swing to the right in an off-year election during the first year of Biden’s presidency but, instead, that Republicans in the state finally figured out how to defeat fraud. (That Democrats in the state eventually gained control of both chambers of the legislature is not addressed.)
Virginians “worked as poll watchers, challengers, and volunteered where needed,” Bobb wrote, pointing to a Washington Post story about the effort. “Most importantly, Republicans worked as sworn election officers, a role that Republicans typically don’t bother to fill. Physically securing poll locations, meaning having volunteers watch and make sure the process is fair, was key to Youngkin’s win in Virginia.”
This is what Lara Trump told Hannity was coming to the national party.



“We will have trained poll watchers, poll observers, poll workers, people in tabulation centers all across this country,” she said. “If you want to volunteer as a poll watcher, poll worker or a volunteer lawyer because we want those as well.”
She noted that, for 40 years, the RNC had “a moratorium on doing this. It has recently been lifted, and now we are able to do it. And I will tell you, we want everybody out there.”
That moratorium was imposed on the party because, in 1981, Republicans stationed off-duty police officers at polling places in New Jersey and offered rewards for claims of voter fraud. The party agreed to refrain from “poll watching activity” until the agreement was lifted in 2018. You’ll notice that 2018 isn’t really “recently”; the Trump campaign tried to get poll watchers in place in 2020 and the party also did so in 2022.



The most important part of all of this, of course, is that in-person fraud of the sort that these efforts are meant to combat is vanishingly rare. The odds that someone “watching” a polling place and uncovering someone trying to vote illegally are near-zero. The odds that those poll-watchers will, instead, hassle someone trying to vote legally or scare off people uninterested in being similarly hassled are much, much higher.
This was the point in New Jersey in 1981: that Black and Hispanic voters were intimidated away from voting. Given how Trump has focused on cities as hotbeds of fraud, we can predict that polling places in those cities would be a focus of this effort. Research shows that an intimidating effect exists. In an era when cable news hosts are wildly speculating about the immigration status of random Hispanic people, what would we expect to happen if Trump- or RNC-allied “observers” linger at polling places?
Even things like requiring voter identification have been shown to disproportionately affect turnout among Black and younger voters, groups that vote more heavily Democratic. In the pre-Trump era, there was often an understanding on the right that the advantage of making it harder to vote wasn’t that it prevented fraud (given how rare it was) but that it offered a perceived advantage in suppressing Democratic votes. By all appearances, the new GOP actually thinks that fraud needs to be combated.
All of this may end up having no significant effect on the election. It may, instead, simply serve as a new benchmark in the evolution of the Republican Party into an organization completely in Trump’s sway. Not only has control of the party as an arm of the Trump family been formalized, so has Trump’s insistence that elections are unreliable.

All Elite Wrestling warned by Oklahoma commission about Trans wrestler

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — All Elite Wrestling has been warned by a little-known state commission not to have certain matches in the state again.

All Elite Wrestling, a professional wrestling company based in Jacksonville, Florida, held its first-ever show in the state of Oklahoma on December 20, 2023.

During that show, a famous transgender wrestler, Nyla Rose, had a match against a cisgender wrestler, Alejandra Lion. Rose defeated Lion.




AEW's first-ever show in the state of Oklahoma was held on Dec. 20th in Oklahoma City at the Paycom Center.

AEW's first-ever show in the state of Oklahoma was held on Dec. 20th in Oklahoma City at the Paycom Center.


Commissioners believe that was against the rules created by the Oklahoma State Athletic Commission (OSAC), which oversees wrestling, boxing and kickboxing in the state.

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There is a ban on intergender matches in Oklahoma, according to the OSAC's rules:

The Commission will not approve sanctioning permits between human participants and non-humans or between males and females. A male participant is a person of the heterogametic sex born with XY chromosomes. A female participant is a person born of the homogametic sex with XX chromosomes.
At the OSAC's January 3rd meeting, the Nyla Rose match was brought up for discussion.

According to minutes from the meeting, Joe Miller, the Administrator of the OSAC, said they had no idea about the match until they were notified by a local wrestling organization.

The local wrestling organization reached out to OSAC because they had previously held an intergender match. That organization later acknowledged what happened and told the OSAC they would "refrain from doing it again in the future."

Mike Bower, chairman of the commission, said that wrestling applications don't ask if someone has had gender reassignment surgery. Bower explained that OSAC boxing, kickboxing and MMA applications do ask that question.

Bower recommended they update wrestling applications to ask that question.

According to the minutes from the meeting, the commission ended up voting to warn AEW "not to do this again or there will be punitive action made against them".

Miller said he had spoken with AEW about the match and explained it violated OSAC rules.

The warning isn't sitting right with local wrestlers in the sooner state like Logan Knight.

"It's disgusting, honestly," Knight said. "I know this is more of a political stance. Professional wrestling is professional wrestling, but it's dumb. Transgender people should be able to wrestle whoever they want. In wrestling, you should truly be able to wrestle whoever you want."

Knight says he's among the group of wrestlers fighting off the OSAC.

"We're not voiceless. The people, they have a voice. Obviously you can only do so much with social media. As much as I keep barking on social media, it's bound to fall into the right person's lap and get in front of the right eyes. Maybe we can get some actual support to actually legally take the Commission down."

Nyla Rose tweeted about the warning from OSAC, saying in part:

Don’t worry Oklahoma, I’ll find the dastardly Transgender that *checks notes* entertained fans!!! HOW DARE THEY MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY?!!!
Rose's opponent in that match at the Paycom Center, Alejandra Lion, shared support for Rose on Twitter:

Truly at a loss of words, reading this breaks my heart! Nyla is seriously one of the SAFEST and SWEETEST wrestlers I have ever been in the ring with and she does not deserve this kind of hate!!!
FOX 25 reached out to AEW for comment. This article will be updated once a statement is received.





Opinion Trump’s immunity claims tell voters all they need to know about him

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Columnist|
April 14, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. EDT



When a nation allows the outlandish to become routine and accepts dangerous claims as normal, it loses its moral compass and its capacity to sustain liberty.
So do not shrug off how significant it is that the Supreme Court will soon hear Donald Trump’s claim that presidents should enjoy absolute immunity from prosecution for illegal acts performed in office. How the court handles this case involving the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — and how the country responds — is a test of the nation’s capacity for self-government under the rule of law.


One temptation to resist: denigrating the case as just another instance of Trump’s willingness to litigate anything to delay his various trials until after November’s election. This fails to take seriously what this case tells us about how he will govern if he returns to power.



Trump is saying something no other presidential candidate has ever said: that the only way to be an effective president is to be willing to break the law. “A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents,” his lawyers wrote in their brief. “That would be the end of the Presidency as we know it and would irreparably damage our Republic.”


Well. Let’s leave it to psychiatrists to determine what “post-office trauma” might be. The breathless subtext echoing throughout their brief is that it takes a criminal to be a good president. This has implications voters should take very seriously, including for national security.
In one of the most powerful amicus briefs filed with the court, a group of retired generals and admirals and former service secretaries warned that absolute immunity would “severely undermine the Commander-in-Chief’s legal and moral authority to lead the military forces, as it would signal that they but not he must obey the rule of law.” Think about that. “Under this theory, the President could, with impunity, direct his national security appointees to, in turn, direct members of the military to execute plainly unlawful orders.”



This would threaten the proper functioning of our military and also constitutional democracy. “Particularly in times like the present, when anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes are on the rise worldwide,” they write, “such a threat is intolerable and dangerous.”
Trump’s startling desire for presidential dictatorship has been partly obscured by seemingly sober legal arguments over whether any presidential acts should be shielded from prosecution.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...c_magnet-op2024elections_inline_collection_19

The Supreme Court signaled that this is the issue it wants to rule on when it explained why it took the case — as opposed to affirming, as it should have, a well-argued court of appeals decision denying Trump’s claims. It is seeking to determine “whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”



There are multiple problems with the Supreme Court’s decision-making so far. The justices could have accepted special counsel Jack Smith’s request in December to skip the appeals process and take the case immediately. This would have allowed plenty of time for the interference case to go to trial before this year’s election.
Instead, the court rejected Smith’s request, let the appeals process go forward and then, when it finally did take the case, scheduled its hearing on the last day of its term, April 25.
The court did not have to use this litigation to make a broad pronouncement on presidential immunity. My Post colleague Jason Willick recently argued that by including Trump’s effort to encourage the Justice Department to find nonexistent voter fraud as part of his indictment, Smith opened the way for the court to deal with the “official acts” question.



But a prosecutor should not have to resist charging a former president with abuse of power simply because he’s afraid the Supreme Court might delay his case.
Besides, as a group of historians of the founding period noted in a brief to the court, “the Framers never contemplated giving the President any role in the conduct of elections or transfer of power.” It’s a stretch to see Trump’s meddling as “official.”
And, as former officials from five past Republican administrations argued in another brief, “even if one could hypothesize a circumstance in which immunity for a former President might be warranted, no tenable formulation of immunity could reach defendant’s machinations alleged here.” In “appropriate” future cases, they argued, the court could prevent unjustified federal prosecutions of presidents by respecting “the constitutional limitations on Congress’s power.” Congress can’t criminalize presidential activities in areas where the Constitution gives clear authority to the executive branch.
Having pushed this case so late, the Supreme Court has an obligation to rule as quickly as it did in February in restoring Trump to the ballot after multiple states attempted to disqualify him. And voters, who will have the final say, would do well to be wary of a candidate who tells them he believes a president’s powers are limitless.

Get JB to coach

Do you think Jordan Burroughs will have enough of an axe to grind with PSU after OTT's to want to come to IOWA as a coach and beat PSU?
He and Mesenbrink had quite a few exchanges at the end of that match and Jordan will have Nolf next. PSU crowd Booing JB pretty hard.
MM was being a punk at the end of their match and JB gave him a good head shove/punch, then ALOT of words exchanged.
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