THE FURTHER CORRESPONDENCES OF MARC SUSSELMAN PART 35
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7 October 2025
MS said:
Can Trump really win a Nobel Peace Prize? Yes. Here’s how
"CNN..."
My world is collapsing.
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MS said:
Trump debates using the Insurrection Act if courts keep blocking troop deployments
This is very serious. Upon first reading the headline, I scoffed at the idea that a President could invoke the Insurrection Act in order to avoid decisions by federal courts.
I was wrong.
Purpose and content
The Act empowers the U.S. president to call into service the U.S. Armed Forces and the National Guard:
when requested by a state's legislature, or governor if the legislature cannot be convened, to address an insurrection against that state (§ 251),
to address an insurrection, in any state, which makes it impracticable to enforce the law (§ 252), or
to address an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy, in any state, which results in the deprivation of constitutionally secured rights, and where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect said rights (§ 253).
It would appear to be obvious that the above conditions are not satisfied by residents of Portland or Chicago protesting against actions by ICE, and that the President cannot override a federal court’s decision that the conditions have not been satisfied. However, there is only one Supreme Court decision on the issue, Martin v. Mott, 25 U.S. 19 (1827), and the Supreme Court ruled in that case that the President is the final arbiter of whether the conditions under the Insurrection Act had been satisfied.
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8 October 2025
MS said:
The Free Press
"FPcom..."
Greta Thunberg and Sweden’s Lost Children
My response:
This article is right-wing propagandist rubbish. I, too, am Jewish, but to state that the diminishing of religious faith in Europe is the cause of its alleged decline is nonsense. Was Europe so great when the Spanish Inquisition was torturing and burning Jews at the stake? Was it great when Catholics and Protestants fought a 30 Years War to determine which religion was the more legitimate?
The author decries the efforts to keep religion and state separate and contends that that Greta Thunberg, and her followers, without faith, fail “to stand for anything, and therefore fall[] for everything, time and time again.” Advocating for addressing the destructive effects of climate change caused by human conduct is a failure to stand for anything? It absolutely does stand for something, it is just not something that the author believes is worth standing for. The author is given to facile quips without any substance, stating, “Where there once was faith and purpose, there is now only posturing and projection.” Really? What purpose did faith instill, as Pope Pius XII bent a knee to Nazi aggression and turned a blind eye to the slaughter of millions of Jews?
Then the author turns her attention to Israel, and accuses Thunberg of being anti-Semitic by virtue of her opposition to Isarael’s aggression in Gaza. I have been a life-long supporter of Israel, but to disregard Israel’s crimes against humanity in recent months in Gaza, a desecration of Torah and of sacred Jewish values, and to accuse those who voice such views, as anti-Semitic is itself right-wing demagogy.
This is a result of Beri Weiss taking over the helm at CBS and the Free Press. It marks a decline in legitimate, honest journalism, and replacing it with right-wing conservative propaganda.
Marc Susselman, JD, MPH
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9 October 2025
MS said:
Letitia James, the New York attorney general who defeated Trump in court, indicted by Justice Department
Trump’s Reign of Terror has intensified.
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10 October 2025
MS said:
I was watching an interview of Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice regarding the 20-point plan which the Trump administration is pursuing in Gaza, and was impressed by their knowledge and clear-headedness. At one point, Clinton quoted Max Weber about the difficulty in diplomacy of “boring hard boards.” I was not familiar with the quote, so I looked it up. Here it is:
“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.”
―Max Weber
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11 October 2025
MS said:
I know virtually nothing about computer programming, or how my computer works. But I do know this. The invention of the atomic and hydrogen bombs could not result in an atomic or hydrogen bomb building another atomic or hydrogen bomb and launching it on the United States or Russia.
But it seems to me to be inevitable that creating a computer language to think like a human being, but exponentially faster than any human being, is eventually going to result in the AI technology teaching AI technology to other AI entities, and then asserting mastery over their human creators. It is inevitable.
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15 October 2025
MS said:
A Lesson in Defiance From Nazi Germany
"NYTimes..."
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MS said:
The sanctimonious voters who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, because they preferred what they regarded as the perfect over the good in their candidate, Bernie Sanders, do not appreciate what a disaster they have wrought, in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, the destruction of our democracy, and setting the groundwork for the ascendancy of the police state and the empire of Donald J. Trump.
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16 October 2025
MS said:
Today’s NYT has an interesting interview by Ross Douthat of S. Ct. Justice Barrett. It can be found at the link below, and I recommend it. It covers some very interesting topics regarding Constitutional interpretation and stare decisis.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Amy Coney Barrett Is Looking Beyond the Trump Era
There was a very interesting passage in which Justice Barrett answered a question about the meaning of the word “liberty” in the 14th Amendment, which was at the center of the debate over a constitutional right to an abortion, and the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Justice Barrett said the following:
“[T]he Dobbs decision was interpreting the 14th Amendment’s due process clause – which says that no person ‘shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law’ – because, to the extent one might argue that there is a right to an abortion in the Constitution, it’s located in that clause. That’s where Roe found it. ‘No person shall be deprived of liberty’ would be the relevant one there.
“And so the courts – the line of cases I known as substantive due process – and what those cases say is: Yes, this phrase, ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’ it sounds like: Well, if I’m going to take away your car, I have to give you fair procedures before doing so. But the court has long recognized that it also has a substantive component that inheres in the word 'liberty.’ So there are some things that a legislature cant’ take away, be it Congress or the 14th Amendment, which applies specifically to the states. …
“So yes, that word, ‘liberty,’ does protect some content above and beyond things that are expressly stated in the Constitution. But you see the problem. I might think a lot of things are in ‘liberty’ that you may not think are in ‘liberty’ that one would disagree with. And there’s a lot of risk – this has been a very contested area of constitutional law for a long time – in making judges the final arbiters of exactly what the content of that word, ‘liberty,’ is. …
“[A]s I said, these are rights that are so widely understood to be fundamental that they go without saying – the test is that, before the court will recognize such a right as an unenumerated constitutional guarantee, it has to be stated at a specific level. Because if you state something at a broad enough level, like ‘right to control one’s body,’ that could include a whole lot of things. Everything from assisted suicide to abortion … . So you have to state it at a specific level of generality, because it’s also only if something is identified precisely that you can really measure what the degree of buy-in among the American public is. And then it has to be deeply rooted in this country’s history and tradition. It can’t be a Johnny-come-lately. … For purposes of this test, it’s not an originalism thing. It’s not just frozen at the moment of the ratification of the 14th Amendment. This is actually looking more deeply at the history and traditions of the American people. And abortion failed that test. The right to an abortion failed that test because it’s been a deeply contested issue. It certainly was in 1973, when Roe was decided, and continued to be contested.” (Emphasis added.)
Dose this explanation of what rights are included within the scope of the word “liberty” make logical sense? One of the recognized main purposes of the 14th Amendment is to protect the rights of minorities segments the American public from infringement by the majority. This includes legislation passed by state legislatures, which, by definition, represent the preference of the majority. According to Justice Barrett’s explanation, the test of whether something qualifies as a right within the scope of the word “liberty,” it must be within the “history and traditions of the American people,” and if it is not, then it is not a liberty. What about the right not to be discriminated against based on race? Was this a right, given the history of slavery in the United States, within the “history and traditions of the American people”?
The test fails to address our notions of basic fairness regarding conduct not mentioned or specified in the Constitution. Consider for example the following hypothetical (hypotheticals are used by the S. Ct. all the time, particularly during oral arguments, and whether the hypothetical is a realistic possibility is irrelevant). Suppose a state enacted a law which stated that everyone has to have blue colored hair in order to vote. There is no provision in the Constitution which states that citizens have a constitutional right to decide what the color of their hair is. Is that a right protected by the concept of “liberty”? It has never come up as an issue in politics, so, is this a right within “the history and tradition of the American people’? One can think of a multitude of such hypotheticals: Suppose a state passes a law which requires that all individuals who drive a car in the state must be wearing red colored attire while driving; a law which states that in order to open a business in the state, the business owner must be at least 5 feet, 9 inches tall.
It should be obvious that the right to have whatever color hair one wants; the right to wear whatever colored attire in public one wants; the right to open a business in a state regardless how tall one is – should all be within our concept of “liberty” and be protected by substantive due process under the 14th Amendment. Yet, according to Justice Barrett’s test they would all fail, and there would be nothing the Supreme Court could do to prohibit a state from enacting such restrictive laws, like laws restricting the right to an abortion.
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19 October 2025
MS said:
"CNN..."
The President of the United States thinks it is humorous to depict himself dropping feces and sewerage on American citizens exercising their First Amendment freedom of speech. Never in our history has the Executive displayed such a degree of contempt for the American people. How do his supporters continue to justify their support of this despot?
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21 October 2025
MS said:
This President’s chutzpah knows no bounds. He has filed a notice of claim against the Justice Department for its investigation of his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. As Michael Cohen points out in the link below, he has a legal right to do so, but as the sitting President, he controls the department he is suing. Totally unprecedented.
"CNN..."
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22 October 2025
MS said:
Senator delivers marathon overnight speech
"CNN..."
Bravo!
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23 October 2025
MS said:
After practicing law for now 46 years, I have come to the following realization: The judicial appointment process favors individuals who are willing to make decisive, but superficial, decisions, over individuals who make contemplative thoughtful decisions. That’s why so many legal decisions are ####.
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25 October 2025
MS said:
$130M donation from anonymous Trump 'friend' to fund military
He’s privatizing the U.S. military.
The majority of the American electorate have no one to blame but themselves. They voted for this person.
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2 November 2025
MS said:
I’m an Israeli who lives in New York. Here’s why I’m voting for Mamdani
He’s shown up for my Jewish community in profoundly meaningful ways
"ZohraMamdani..."
“[D]espite what the right-wing Israeli government and media want us to believe, we — Jews, Israelis, people who still believe in equality — are not in danger from Zohran Mamdani because he is critical of Israel. We’re endangered, instead by the machinery of fear that tries to convince us that justice is a threat, that empathy is betrayal, that solidarity is naïve. …
“For me, as an Israeli-American who is committed enough to Israel to fight endlessly for it to be just and equal, that’s not frightening — it’s hopeful. Having mayors and public leaders who refuse to give Kahanists or corrupt war criminals a free pass is good for us. That’s our struggle too. …
“Mamdani isn’t anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish. He’s pro-justice. He’s a New Yorker who believes, as I do, that no one’s safety should come at the expense of someone else’s. His campaign has pledged a large increase in anti-hate crime programming — the opposite of neglecting our safety.”
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3 November 2025
MS said:
"CNN..."
Your thoughts regarding Fetterman’s criticism of the Democrats’ shutdown strategy.
Regarding Mamdani, is he confusing Communism with Socialism? If he is, isn’t that surprising, given that he has a post-graduate degree (public policy) from Harvard?
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4 November 2025
MS said:
"CNN2..."
When they go low, we can also go low.
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5 November 2025
MS said:
"CNN..."
Great speech.
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9 November 2025
MS said:
Below is a story that was on the CBS Sunday morning show, about a very impressive little girl.
An inspirational story about an amazingly precocious little girl.
"CBS..."
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The End.