We interrupt today’s regular entry to bring you this perspective on the big news of the morning, so far:
The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that Colorado cannot keep Donald Trump off its presidential primary ballot. All nine judges wrote separate opinions explaining why states cannot determine who will run in national elections based on Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Colorado and some other states had cited to kick Trump off the ballot for taking part in an insurrection.
The Supreme Court says the authority to enforce that section that bars those involved in insurrections from holding office rests with Congress, not the states.
Would Congress do that? Some of those disappointed in today’s ruling say a Congress that works the way a Congress is supposed to work would be far more likely to do it than today’s dysfunctional bunch.
Today’s ruling has a Missouri precedent, sort of.
In the early 1990s, when Missouri and 22 other states made the mistake of enacting term limits on members of their legislatures, an effort also was made to limit the amount of time members of Congress could serve. The Arkansas Supreme Court threw out the law in that state and U. S. Term Limits took the case to the Supremes, where justices voted 5-4 in 1995 that the requirements for service in the United States House and the United States Senate are established in the U. S. Constitution which trumps state laws or state constitutions.