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The language also includes "any office."
Pretty inclusive if you ask me.
Seems pretty inclusive to me, too. I'm right there with you. But the judge didn't ask either of us, or apparently anybody who can read for their opinion, so we got this bullshit instead.
Edit: BTW - this isn't just my flawed interpretation of the judge's decision. It's basically a summary of paragraph 313 of her ruling:
But why specifically call out senators but not the president?
It doesn't logically make sense that they would bar you from being a senator, but not the POTUS...but the wording of it certainly makes the conclusion within reason.
If you're asking me to get into her head and figure out why she made possibly the dumbest judgment I have ever seen, well... I'm afraid I'm not capable of doing that. If you're asking me why the people who wrote the 14th amendment didn't specify the president in the list of job titles... my guess is that they never thought that a president would be a traitor. It was written to target the traitors in the Confederacy, after all.
I'm not asking you to do this. But this is a funny question to ask because courts don't just rule and keep their reasoning in a black box, they write out a whole document as to why they ruled the way they did; you don't need to get into her head as it's all written out as to why she ruled that way.
So then her ruling makes sense, because they fucked up the amendment when they passed it to not include the POTUS/VPOTUS and it should be amended. You're basically saying that it's a dumb ruling and that she should rule outside the law as it's written because the people who made it didn't think it through all the way. The latter being quite presumptuous. I'd be interested in reading about the passage of this amendment.
I agree that it should be amended to specifically include the position of president and vice president. And any other offices they failed to enumerate.
It's not asking her to rule outside the law. It's asking her to rule based on what the law says. Her ruling implies that the authors of the 14th amendment at one point said to themselves: "Should we write that we don't intend this amendment to apply to the president? Nahhh. Some judge at some point in the future is bound to read through our cryptic bullshit and figure out that we mean literally every other public office but this one."
But they explicitly call out senators and other important positions, why not specifically call out the POTUS? If it were just "officers of the state" with no specific positions called out, then I would 100% agree, but the fact that they call out some important positions but not the most important position makes it read like an intentional omission.
They addressed that point earlier, it was written after the civil war and they were calling out specific things with that in mind. They didn't explicitly call out the president because in the historical context that would have been inconceivable, the president was never a traitor so they wouldn't think to list the role explicitly. It seems nonsensical to claim that they would both want to exclude the president and not want to do so explicitly. If the president was meant to be excluded they could have said so.
This is a weak argument for 2 reasons.
First and foremost, our whole system is based on checks and balances, because they knew full well that any part of the government could become corrupt. The idea that they couldn't fathom that a president could also be a threat to the republic doesn't hold much water. It's literally arguing that they made a "whoopsie" when crafting the amendment and no one from the 38 states and none of the supermajority of both houses of congress was smart enough to say "hey, maybe we should considering the POTUS too." Hell, even during that time, Lincoln was called a traitor to the country when he was campaigning. I just can't buy it that people at the time thought the POTUS was some noble person that would never do wrong.
Second, this actually confirms the ruling. You're arguing that it was an oversight to not include the POTUS because they never thought it would happen, not that the POTUS is actually included. This is explicitly admitting that the POTUS is not part of it, thus making the ruling correct, and thus requiring us to go back and amend it to include the POTUS/VPOTUS.
And if the POTUS was meant to be included, they could have said so. This is why the ruling is well within reason and not the ridiculous rejection of logic that so many people are trying to paint it as.
So you're saying that their method of explicitly stating that they don't want "A" is to write that they want "B", "C", "D", "and others" rather than just writing: "We don't want A"? Sorry, but that's really fucking stupid.
Edit: We're both looking at the same thing. But where I see an oversight, you see an intentional omission. My question is... if they intended to omit something, wouldn't it have been better to write that that position is specifically excluded? It would certainly be less confusing, wouldn't it? If you were to write it right now, wouldn't you write that the president is specifically excluded from the above if that was your desire? Seems to argue pretty highly for oversight, doesn't it? Is it your contention that it was just the style at the time for people in the 1860s to be intentionally obtuse? Like Abe Simpson with the onion on his belt?
What I'm saying is that if you explicitly call out a bunch of important positions, but leave out the most important position, then it appears that the omission is intentional. Barring any explanation why it was not listed, but intended to be included, interpreting it as not part of the amendment is logically sound.
I mean, sure, if you're an alien who has never met a human person before.
One of the advantages of arguing from a position of logic and reason is that you don't have to rely on childish insults.
So just to be clear, here, your logic is that the people who wrote this amendment in the 1860s were being intentionally obtuse just to fuck with us? Is that really what you're arguing? Because, buddy... I've gotta tell you... if you think that's how people behave, you have no clue what people are like. And if you're just arguing that because you realize that your position is ridiculous but you feel entrenched in an argument you have to see through to the end, you deserve all of the childish insults I can hurl at you.
No, I believe that's closer to your argument. You are effectively arguing that "They explicitly called out Senators and Representatives, but then just included POTUS under a catch-all." Some positions were important enough to call out explicitly, but the POTUS is not. You literally edited a post to claim that the omission of POTUS was a whoopsie. That seems like "fucking with us" more than the opposite. I'm saying the omission makes interpreting it as intentional well within reason.
The funny thing is that in this thread, I've already admitted to being wrong. So accusing me of being unwilling to change my position is funny in light of that fact.
You've literally stopped making arguments, you've implied my position is "really fucking stupid" that only aliens would thing think this, and now that I don't understand how people behave. You've completely abandoned the point while focusing solely on attacking me, and even trying to justify insulting me.
As is so often the case here, an accusation is an admission.
I'd like for you to take a moment and truly take in just how insane this idea is. To set the scene, it's 1868, 3 years after the civil war ended. Among the traitors who attacked the nation are a number of people who held public office. The writers of this amendment wanted to make sure that those traitors never had a chance to hold public office again, and so wrote an amendment to specifically bar them. The reason they called out senators and congresspeople in the opening of the 3rd clause is because senators and congressional representatives were among the traitors. Your idea that they thought that it was important to bar traitors from those positions, but were like: "Well, but a traitor for a president is ok" is... well, I've already said insane. Is there a word that's more derogatory than insane? Use that.
The reason that they didn't list "the president" at the beginning of that clause is because the president was the guy who fought the traitors that they were trying to bar. The amendment was both punitive and preventative; they wanted to punish the traitors among them who fought against the US and prevent them from holding office again.
Now, I know that in the light of several years of living in the Post-Trump era, the idea of a president being a traitor has become all too normal, but put yourself back in the late 1860s, and think of how batshit insane that would be to them. They didn't mention the president because under no circumstance did they consider that the president could be a traitor.
Yes, but just because you admitted to being wrong doesn't mean that you've stopped being wrong. You're still wrong. Stupidly, laughably wrong.
Right, because it is. Sorry that I'm not coddling your feelings, but that's the bare truth. If someone is arguing with you that the earth is flat, do you keep showing them pictures from space even after they tell you that NASA faked them? Or do you just call them an idiot and go on with your day? Maybe you're a much more patient person than I am, but I 100% choose the latter.
I'm not sure what you're implying that I'm admitting to. That you're an idiot? Yes. I admit it. You've got me.
First good on you for trying to make an argument again instead of just insulting me. Could have dropped the insults altogether, but this is progress at least.
I'm mainly copy-pasting my post from elsewhere:
Our whole system is based on checks and balances, because they knew full well that any part of the government could become corrupt. Hell, even during that time, Lincoln was called a traitor to the country when he was campaigning. The idea that they couldn’t fathom that a president could also be a threat to the republic doesn’t hold much water. It’s literally arguing that they made a “whoopsie” when crafting the amendment and no one from the 38 states and none of the supermajority of both houses of congress was smart enough to say “hey, maybe we should consider the POTUS too.” I just can’t buy it that people at the time thought the POTUS was some purely noble person that would never do wrong.
Second, and probably more importantly in this case, this actually confirms the ruling. You’re arguing that it was an oversight to not include the POTUS because they never thought that someone who wants to be/was the POTUS would be the one to commit the crime; you're effectively admitting that the POTUS is not included. This is admitting that the POTUS is not part of it, thus making the ruling correct, and thus requiring us to go back and amend it to include the POTUS/VPOTUS.
You accused me of holding a position because I refuse to admit I am wrong. I'm the only one in this thread (between the two of us) that has done so. So the claim that I'm unwilling to rings particularly hollow.
I pointed out the attacks not because I particularly care about you respecting me (although it would be nice), but because you abandoned debating positions in favor of insulting. I know, from many years of debating, that the ad hominem is one of the first refuges of a failing argument. And you've made it clear you still need to rely on it heavily.
You may not realize it, but that "you’re just arguing that because you realize that your position is ridiculous but you feel entrenched in an argument you have to see through to the end."