How many divisions has the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York?

Enough, if this survives appeal, greatly to accelerate various House inquiries, and possibly to flip some of the many fellow-travelers who know that sooner or later there won't be anyone to pardon them.

Also, Charley, do I need to read all 75 pages?

My thought is that a Supreme Court opinion affirming this result might be enough to tip Trump into retirement, Pence pardon in hand. I think there actually are 5, probably 6, votes for the Burr/Nixon/Clinton holding here, and imo the rejection of the DOJ memos on presidential immunity is a bigger deal than whatever is in the asshole's tax returns. (I assume there's plenty of evasion and fraud, of one kind or another). I have no idea about the Younger holding: a ruling solely on Younger grounds might well not tip the President into retirement, since all it would really be is an instruction to take his "I'm the Fucking King!" argument to the state courts of New York.

3 Yes.

Really? It's in monospace.

This is also a lesson on how desperately important the power of staffing the federal bench is. Marrero's a Clinton appointee, and his CV makes it apparent that he came up through a least generally liberal politics. Unfortunately, he's 78.

I could totally be wrong though. Maybe Roberts and Gorsuch are worn out enough to embrace fascism . . .

6: No whining! We have high standards here!

We always read everything completely.

I appeared before Judge Marrero a few times. 75 pages is nothing for him. On anything complicated he would take six months and 200 pages. He also favored hiding the ball, where the first and last pages said something like "motion granted in part and denied in part," so you had to read the whole thing to figure out if you really won or lost.

Here, the official ruling in on page 8, and really pages 1-8 are all you have to read. Also, the ruling is barely more than a month after the case was filed, pretty quick.

This is very far from a split decision. The holdings are: The judge should abstain from the case, since it concerns a grand jury subpoena issued by a state court; but in case the Court of Appeals disagrees, he will also rule on the merits. The President does not have complete immunity, but he might have an argument if responding to the grand jury would impact his work as president. Since it's a subpoena of his accountant, the tax returns are completely unrelated to the duties of being president, and the contents will not be made public, it doesn't burden the President at all in any way, so he isn't entitled to an injunction.

For the rest of us, the result of a grand jury in New York getting access to Trump tax returns will NOT be to make them public, so it's not a very important case.

See, 11, that's a helpful answer. Am I right in assuming the executive privilege arguments DJT advanced here are the same ones in all the House subpoena cases?

What if the grand jury indicted him because of what was in the returns?

That wouldn't be covered by this opinion. This opinion says producing the documents won't interfere with his duties as president. Being on trial probably would, so you'd need another decision to say that was okay.

I was thinking more along the lines that it would be very good for politics if he was indicted.

11 -- It's not important in terms of getting bad information out to the public, I agree. I think it is important to have a rejection of executive overreach on the record. Trump is going to fight this all the way, presumably because the returns plus testimony from some witnesses will show money laundering for the Russian mob, or something like that.

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I just realized the 'moral foundations of left-right' stuff, in particular 'only conservatives care about loyalty, is just another way of saying 'There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.'
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Then you get groups like the IRGC, simultaneously out (with respect to sanctions) and in (with respect to ownership of Trump Tower Baku).

12: This cse is entirely about tax returns, so it has nothing to do with the job of being President of the United States. That makes the claim of exeutive privilege very tenuous. The claims of executive privilege are strunger in the cases concerned with actual presidenting, such as the decision to withold aid to Ukraine for a period of time.

For the rest of us, the result of a grand jury in New York getting access to Trump tax returns will NOT be to make them public, so it's not a very important case.

I've been assuming anyway that the leaked returns from the 90s, etc, have told us everything we're likely to learn already, and that the rest of the fight is just Trump's compulsive desire to WIN NO I WON'T RELEASE THEM WINNNIG.

I've been assuming anyway that the leaked returns from the 90s, etc, have told us everything we're likely to learn already,

I don't think so. I think the bombshell that hasn't been confirmed yet is that he's not and never was all that crazy rich, which people have speculated about but hasn't been proven I don't think.

Is there some other instance of an actual billionaire feeling the need to collect a reality show paycheck?

Regular rich folks do it, but only when they made their money in entertainment. Is there something I'm missing?

Is there something I'm missing?

That Trump's business has always been and is still - entertainment.

If you are a regular person, lying about your wealth to get a loan is a serious crime.

22: Well, his business traded on his media notoriety from the very beginning.

The big reveal is supposed to be that the large Trump Organization loans from Deutsche Bank, which were signed pre-presidency but are still outstanding, have co-signers who are Russian oligarchs. Unclear is whether this evidence woudl come from tax returns, or from some other part of the subpoena to DB (which isn't the case ruled on today).

Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC anchor, previewed this news last month, and the next night withdrew the preview and apologized to Trump because he couldn't get the story confirmed.

The tax returns also will show that Trump didn't pay much in taxes, but he's already bragged about that so no no one will care.

Is there some other instance of an actual billionaire feeling the need to collect a reality show paycheck?

I remember hearing about some late night talk show that mailed refund-looking checks to various celebrities for amounts like $2, to see who would bother to cash it. IIRC, Trump cashed the smallest amount of anyone, and it was some amount under a dollar.

OMG, here it is - he cashed a check for 13 cents.

It was Spy magazine, and it was in 1990, so someone had to physically go to a bank to cash this check.

Wearing an onion on their belt.

22: I assume those people on Shark Tank / Dragon's Den get paid for it right?

Trump blocks Sondland's testimony, and this is how the NYT spins it:

But in making the decision, hours before he was scheduled to sit for a deposition in the basement of the Capitol, the Trump administration appears to be calculating that it is better off risking the House's ire than letting Mr. Sondland show up and set a precedent for cooperation with an inquiry they have strenuously argued is illegitimate.

The NYT wants us to know how this "appears," and then gets it utterly wrong. In reality, it appears that Trump would like to protect himself from incriminating testimony.

And that he has no concern at all with what the Constitution actually says.

We used to wonder if he'd leave if he loses the election in 2020. Now we have to wonder if he'd leave if 70 senators voted for removal.

I'm more curious about the senators right now.

Is it time for a mass demonstration, descending on wherever Trump is? I'm really fucking pissed about the Kurds.

Matt Yglesias, of all people, says yes, now is the time to take to the streets! Mass political action! Maybe throw some eggs! I was listening to a podcast on my commute and was a little startled by the source.

Remember 2007-2008 when aggressive bloggers and commenters advocated Congress use its own officers (bailiffs?) to arrest WH officials for flagrant contempt of Congress, without going through the courts? Whatever happened to that idea?

They advocate it still. Possibly a different set of angry people.

Matthew Yglesias has been advocating for mass protests at the Trump hotels since week one of the administration.

He's been right about that for a long time.

I still advocate for it. I think the House should be looking into contracting some jail space in D.C.. If ICE can do it...

Trump said he didn't want impeachment on his resume. Someone should explain to him that there is an easy way to prevent it.

Apparently they actually had a jail in the Capitol basement, which is now a cafeteria.

That's why they serve "Freedom Fries."

In better news, Russia is having the utter shit kicked out of it in rugby.

Russians play rugby?

Of course! They're great big manly men who shoot bears! And have the shit kicked out of them by Japan. And Scotland. And Ireland. And Samoa.

They really do. I mean, no shame on losing to Samoa or Ireland, who are both really good, and Japan are on something of a roll these days, but they should have been able to take at least a few points off Scotland instead of losing 61-0.
This is the point where Murrayfield gets contaminated with CS-137 isn't it.