CAN AN INSURRECTIONIST EVER LEAD THE VERY GOVERNMENT HE TRIED OVERTHROW?? SHOULD HE BE ALLOWED TO?

THE "NO KINGS ACT, RECENTLY INTRODUCED IN THE U.S. SENATE WILL NEVER GET OUT OF COMMITTEE, BUT WE ALL SHOULD ASK:"

" CAN A MAN WHO ONCE LED AN INSURRECTION AGAINST A GOVERNMENT EVER BE ALLOWED TO SIT ATOP THAT VERY SAME GOVERNMENT? "

JUSTICE POTTER STEWART KNEW IT WHEN HE SAW IT AND SO DO WE

Roland Nicholson Jr.

Principal at Roland Nicholson, Jr. & Associates

December 25, 2023

THE WASHINGTON POST

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion

The Colorado ruling on Trump’s ballot access

December 24, 2023 at 4:09 a.m. EST

THE WASHINGTON POST

Regarding the Dec. 20 front-page article “Trump is off Colo. ballot”:

The decision on whether former president Donald Trump is eligible to be on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election is going to focus on whether the drafters of the Constitution believed the president to be an “officer.” It would be illogical to think a person holding the highest office in the land could undertake actions that could undermine the very government that individual was entrusted to lead.

The U.S. Supreme Court must examine whether what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, was an insurrection. An insurrection is an organized opposition to authority in which one faction tries to wrest control from another. The Constitution is very specific about the transition of power between a party that has lost an election for the presidency and the party that won the election. In seeking to determine whether Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were those of an insurrectionist, I think of another case the Supreme Court decided many years ago.

Schoolboys giggle about the case, which involved the showing of a pornographic movie in an Ohio art cinema. In his concurring opinion in 1964’s Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart delivered what has become the most well-known line related to the detection of “hardcore” pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

I think we should apply Stewart’s standard. We should also acknowledge that when we look at all the actions Mr. Trump took on Jan. 6, 2021, what we see looks an awful lot like someone who was engaging in the opposition to authority.

Roland Nicholson Jr., New York