And now SCOTUS greenlights crimes by (Republican) presidents

There is no end of bad news in the Supreme Court's execrable declaration that, short version, Republican presidents are allowed to use the powers of their office to attempt a Constitution-defying coup so long as they do it with the powers of their office rather than as a little side project, but what's most astonishing is the Republican court's willingness to pre-immunize Donald Trump for the crimes he's vowing to commit if he returns to power.

Oh, all right then, one of the foundational premises we've all operated under, the one that says presidents aren't allowed to goad the Department of Justice into unwarranted "investigations" of his political enemies, is now null and void. Poof. If Trump wants former Rep. Liz Cheney to be put on trial for Making Him Sad, then the Roberts Six says yup, King Donald has that power now.

It's asinine. It's goofy. And it's not even a necessary addition to the case, except that Trump has done so many crooked things that the Fascism Six had to pepper their decision with these scattershot assertions that this and that and these three things over here are all immunized now, can't touch Trump for any of them. The assertion that a president can use pardon powers to nullify the prosecutions of his friends, that he can coordinate with Justice to ensure the prosecution of his enemies, the theory that he can pressure his vice president into declaring that his own election loss doesn't count—they cover the bases. Take your pick, Donnie Boy can do it so long as he says he's doing it as President.

And if Joe Biden uses any of this newly asserted power tomorrow to indict Trump, yank his passport away, and put him under 24-hour military guard then we'll find out in very short order that the power to punish political enemies for the sake of "protecting the Constitution" extends only to Republican presidents, because Alito and Thomas and the others will scoot themselves back into session about three minutes afterward to "clarify" that they meant Trump could do that but a Democrat can't.

Honestly, one of the worst aspects of this Supreme Court majority has long been their penchant for writing childish and half-assed "arguments" that frequently get major facts wrong or just pull some supposed new judicial theory out of their thin air, purely dime-store renditions of legal theory, even as the justices doling out the argument flutter around in their robes pretending they're the Socrates of our times. It's a court of Fox News simpletons who think—oh wait, it turns out I'm describing the entire current fascist movement—their willingness to discard the old rules in service to their own power is a demonstration of genius, rather than of banal and egotistical corruption.

To have all of this crookedness slathered on for the sake of Donald Damn Trump, who has been barely dodging criminal prosecutions for the better part of his life and who is little more than a New York summer trash pile turned sentient, is galling. You would think that raw shame would temper the court's decisions here and there, but no. They're Team Crimeguy all the way.