I just saw an awesome panel discussion by the ABA

[scipan]

titled 2022: Democracy in Peril — How Can We Change the Course for America? panelists include Michael Luttig and Kathleen Jamison.

It's about an hour but the time flew by for me. Everyone was succinct and stated their points with so much intelligence and insight. I begin to think that lawyers can get us out of this mess.

Democracy in Peril — How Can We Change the Course for America?” was held on Aug. 8 at the House of Delegates two-day session during the American Bar Association Annual Meeting. Panelists included Nancy Rogers (moderator), former Ohio attorney general; Bakari Sellers, Strom Law Firm, LLC, in Columbia, S.C.; Kathleen Jamieson, professor, University of Pennsylvania; Steven Levitsky, professor, Harvard University; and J. Michael Luttig, retired judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The panel program was sponsored by the House of Delegates Committee on Issues of Concern to the Legal Profession.

https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2022/08/democracy-in-peril/

Well worth your time.

[hlthe2b]

1. any comments on recent decisions from one or more Trump judges, including one that actually

received the ABA "qualified" recommendation (even if only barely)?

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Kick for Democracy!

Judge Luttig told Pence: “No, using alternate electors would be illegal.”

Here’s some of what he told January 6 Committee:

These senseless wars are of our own making, and they are now being waged throughout the land, in our city centers and town squares, in our streets and in our schools, where we work and where we play, in our houses of worship -- even within our own families. These wars were conceived and instigated from our Nation’s Capital by our own political leaders collectively and they have been cynically prosecuted by them to fever pitch, now to the point that they have recklessly put America herself at stake.

America is now the stake in these unholy wars.

Serious thinkers about the American experiment who are not given to apocalyptic prophesying question whether America is on the verge of a literal civil war. But is even this figurative civil war to be our generation’s legacy to posterity?

These wars that we are waging against each other are immoral wars, not moral ones, being immorally waged over morality itself. We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society. Let alone do we agree on how we want to be governed or by whom, or where we go from here and with what shared national ideals, values, beliefs, purposes, goals, and objectives -- if any at all.

America is adrift. We pray that it is only for this fleeting moment that she has lost her way, until we Americans can once again come to our senses.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/16/politics/read-luttig-statement

Thank you, scipan! Will viddy the panel in full.