"I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations... This is something that cannot be forgotten!..."

"I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use the Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions."

Wrote Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks/The president has grown increasingly angry at court rulings blocking parts of his agenda, including by judges he appointed" (NYT). 

The article is by Charlie Savage, who says:

While Mr. Trump was out of power, a schism emerged between traditional legal conservatives and MAGA-style lawyers.... During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump had essentially made a deal with the conservative legal movement. In exchange for its support, he would outsource his judicial selections....

The New York Times has its Trumpiest headline ever.

Here's the article: "Trump Asserts a Muscular Vision of Presidential Power on First Day Back/In a flurry of unilateral executive actions, Mr. Trump revived disputed claims of broad presidential authority from his first term — and made some new ones. Court battles seem likely."

That's by Charlie Savage. Excerpt:

The NYT expresses a belief that there's a "legal consensus" on constitutional law and that anyone who doesn't follow along is spouting "constitutional nonsense."

A headline (on a column by Charlie Savage) expresses that belief, but the NYT cannot really believe that. On so many issues, they love the dissenting voice and they laud the newly articulated interpretation.

But for this one particular issue — whether a crime is required for impeachment — the NYT headline writer adheres to the concept of "legal consensus" and characterizes divergence from the asserted (made up?) consensus as "constitutional nonsense."

What I'm trying to slog through is "'Constitutional Nonsense’': Trump’s Impeachment Defense Defies Legal Consensus/The president’s legal case would negate any need for witnesses. But constitutional scholars say that it’s wrong" (NYT).

Savage is looking at Trump's lawyers' argument that impeachment requires allegation of a crime and not just abuse of power.

Their argument... cuts against the consensus among scholars that impeachment exists to remove officials who abuse power. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” means a serious violation of public trust that need not also be an ordinary crime, said Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and the author of a recent book on the topic.

“This argument is constitutional nonsense,” Mr. Bowman said. “The almost universal consensus — in Great Britain, in the colonies, in the American states between 1776 and 1787, at the Constitutional Convention and since — has been that criminal conduct is not required for impeachment.”...

The evidence of a consensus among scholars (which scholars?) is that one scholar asserts that there is a consensus. We're given no reasoning at all on the notion that anything not in the "consensus" is "nonsense."

But in Trump's legal brief, Bowman's "consensus" is called a "newly invented... theory." So we've got lawyers on either side yelling at each other: Your interpretation is totally off! No one ever even heard of that before!

Mr. Bowman — whose scholarship on impeachment law is cited in a footnote in the Trump legal team brief — called the arguments in that brief “a well-crafted piece of sophistry that cherry-picks sources and ignores inconvenient history and precedent.”

In other words, it's a legal brief.

Savage quotes Alan Dershowitz, who concedes that "most" scholars say a crime is not necessary: "My argument will be very serious and very scholarly. The fact that other scholars disagree, that’s for the Senate to consider. There is a division — most of the scholars disagree with me. I think they’re wrong."

We'll see if Professor Dershowitz can win the hearts of the American people as he argues that there must be a crime alleged. Whether that works or not, it shines a strong light on the stark fact that Trump's aggressive opponents never accused him of committing a crime.

"The left keens that the president is destroying our sacred institutions and jeopardizing our national security. But..."

"... for many Americans, the events of the last week prove that Trump is right to be cynical about a rigged system and deep-state elites. The inspector general’s report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation offered a hideous Dorian Gray portrait of the once-vaunted law enforcement agency. As Charlie Savage wrote in The Times, the report uncovered “a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process.” The F.B.I. run by Comey and McCabe was sloppy, deceitful and cherry-picking — relying on nonsense spread by Christopher Steele.... Unfortunately, this climate of confusion and cynicism allows Trump to prosper. He did not come to Washington to clean up the tainted system; he came to bathe in it."

From Maureen Dowd's new column, "Trump’s Bad. Sadly, He’s Not Alone/Another wild week for the president, but does it lead to rejection or re-election?" (NYT).

Is it true that Trump "did not come to Washington to clean up the tainted system"? He was always saying "drain the swamp." You might argue that he's no good at cleaning things up or that he's messing things up in his own way, but I don't see the support for the notion that his intention in becoming President was "to bathe in" the swamp. Didn't he visualize himself as a hero who had observed things for decades and felt confident that he could apply his insight and business acumen to fixing everything?

"President Trump... pointed to nearly five dozen previous instances in which presidents of both parties have declared emergencies.... But there is no precedent for what he has just done."

Charlie Savage writes in the NYT.

None of the times emergency powers have been invoked since 1976, the year Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act, involved a president making an end run around lawmakers to spend money on a project they had decided against funding.

I don't think it's exactly true that Congress has decided against funding. They put some funding in the budget bill, there's been a lot of talk about deferring the issue of the wall, and there hasn't been any vote against the wall. So Savage is cheating right at the beginning of the argument. I think I can see that he wants to say that what Trump is doing is unlike all the other precedents, so he's characterizing it in a way that gets to that outcome.

Congress has... enacted a statute that gave presidents, in a declared emergency “that requires use of the armed forces,” the power to redirect military construction funds to build projects related to that use. It is that statute that Mr. Trump is relying upon, and his administration argues that this means he is exercising authority that lawmakers wanted the presidency to be able to wield.

But Elizabeth Goitein, who oversaw the Brennan Center study [of presidents' use of the emergency power, said]... “There is nothing approaching an ‘emergency’ in this situation, no matter how loose a definition you use.... And Congress has made it as clear as it can that it does not want the president to use funds for this purpose, so this is the president using emergency powers to thwart the will of Congress. That is very different from how emergency powers have been used in the past.”

She's relying to heavily on the notion that Congress has expressed its will and rejected the building of the wall. Where did that expression occur?

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, the White House identified only two previous instances in which presidents relied on emergency powers to spend funds on something different than what Congress had appropriated them for. Both involved military construction associated with wars: one under President George Bush’s Persian Gulf war emergency declaration, the other under President George W. Bush’s emergency declaration after the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither funded projects that Congress had previously weighed and rejected....

The budget bill contains $1.375 billion of funding for new border barriers, so where is the rejection? Is the simple failure to provide the full asked-for amount to count as a rejection of wall-building?

In the 1976 act, Congress turned off numerous old “emergencies” that had been lingering for many years and created a process presidents must follow when invoking such statutes. But the overhaul did not include defining limits on when a president could decide that a qualifying emergency existed, preserving White House flexibility.

Well, then, how do you stop Trump?

One check against abuse of that power eroded quickly: Congress had intended for lawmakers to have the power to overrule a president’s declaration by passing a resolution with a simple majority vote. After a 1983 Supreme Court ruling, however, presidents gained the power to veto such resolutions. That weakened Congress’s hand because it takes two-thirds of both chambers to override a veto....

They've had more than 30 years to repeal or rewrite the statute so that they're not giving so much away to the President. They tried to create a veto power for themselves, and that overstepped the Constitution. So the President has more power than Congress originally meant to give him, but he still has that power.

[S]everal legal experts said there was another possible long-term consequence that had received less discussion: by violating that norm of self-restraint, Mr. Trump may prompt Congress to eventually take back some of that power from the presidency — at least in a post-Trump era, when a succeeding president might be willing, or believe that it is politically necessary, to sign such a bill.

They're saying Presidents need to be careful using the power Congress gave them, or Congress might pass a new statute, taking back the power that they originally only meant to give while maintaining a veto power of their own. The Supreme Court told them they couldn't have the veto, and yet Congress hasn't revoked the never-intended presidential power. But it might, the legal experts said. It hasn't in 30+ years, but if Trump isn't careful, it might! So Trump should be careful. Okay, but he already chose to use the power, so it's too late for the wished-for self-restraint. And if you say that presidential self-restraint is the only limit, you concede that there isn't a legal ground to stop him.

Does Trump have "emergency powers" that he can use to build The Wall?

Charlie Savage examines the question in the NYT:

The president has the authority to declare a national emergency, which activates enhancements to his executive powers by essentially creating exceptions to rules that normally constrain him.... The National Emergencies Act...  requires [a president] to formally declare a national emergency and tell Congress which statutes are being activated....

One of the laws [Trump could point to] permits the secretary of the Army to halt Army civil works projects during a presidentially declared emergency and instead direct troops and other resources to help construct “authorized civil works, military construction and civil defense projects that are essential to the national defense.”

Another law permits the secretary of defense, in an emergency, to begin military construction projects “not otherwise authorized by law that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces,” using funds that Congress had appropriated for military construction purposes that have not yet been earmarked for specific projects....

If he invokes emergency powers to build a border wall, Mr. Trump is almost certain to invite a court battle.... Before a court could decide that Mr. Trump had cynically declared an emergency under false pretenses, the court would first have to decide that the law permits judges to substitute their own thinking for the president’s in such a matter....

ADDED: I've read a lot of the most-liked comments in the NYT and it's dismaying how little they've absorbed Savage's very clear legal discussion. They're off in their own world:

So much for the Constitution that I was taught in grade school was a marvel of governmental design. Turns out that a deranged executive can flail away with a machete, slashing everything in sight, while the other branches move in slo-mo to halt the damage. What a horror movie.