This is a symptom of a broader unhealthy trend that, with apologies to Key & Peele, I call "But Is It Against the Law Though?" where it's assumed that the only appropriate standard for any kind of judgment has to be borrowed from criminal law.
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Josh Chafetz
1/ This is true if you think that John Roberts's and Anthony Kennedy's understanding of corruption in the context of nonjudicial candidates and government officials *is* the meaning of corruption.
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The people conflating the standards are doing so knowingly and deliberately.
When laws are crafted and codified by mercenaries of the One Percent to disproportionately benefit the One Percent and/or disadvantage the other Ninety-Nine, then it's indeed the One Percent, their mercenaries, and those laws that are criminal i.e. harmful to society.
We […]
We used to evaluate Presidents on “is this good or bad?”
Trump then got “ok but is it technically Unconstitutional?”
Which became “ok but is it actually criminal?”
Which became “ok but is it criminal if the POTUS does it?”
Which became “ok but is it prosecutable?”
I like John T Noonan Jr on Bribes
And what Paul Ricoeur wrote about the Symbolism of Evil including the primary symbols of stain, pollution and defilement
NYT can treat Supreme Court rulings as binding law
But if they treat those rulings as precluding other explanations they're off base
Why not, say, theft statutes, or tax statutes?