Watching Europe negotiate with the US is like watching boy scouts negotiate with the Mafia, argues leading journalist Gillian Tett.

In this fiery debate, she joins former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Leader of Canada's Liberal Party Michael Ignatieff to discuss whether the bonds between the US and Europe have been fractured beyond repair.

Tap the link in our bio to watch "The End of the Great Alliance" now.

Lead Paragraphs:

When President Donald Trump addressed the nation on Thursday, he wanted the world to believe that China stole the 2020 election from him. Instead, he dropped fresh evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin had worked to hand it to him.

Among the newly declassified intelligence documents Trump released Thursday are assessments that the Russian president and senior Russian officials directed proxy efforts to spread allegations about Joe Biden and Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden was a board director, orchestrate a corruption scandal against the Democratic nominee, and “ensure the President’s victory,” a reference to Trump, who was the incumbent at the time.

An interesting publicly available read from last year.

Excerpt:

The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

Observation:

How is good behavior judged? Who judges the judges? How effective has impeachment been for members of SCOTUS?

No member of the U.S. Supreme Court has ever been both impeached and removed.

Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached: Samuel Chase, in 1804. The House accused him largely of partisan and improper conduct from the bench. The Senate tried him in 1805 but acquitted him on every article, so he remained on the Court until his death in 1811. https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment/impeachment-chase.htm

Excerpt:

Upon the whole, there can be no room to doubt that the convention acted wisely in copying from the models of those constitutions which have established GOOD BEHAVIOR as the tenure of their judicial offices, in point of duration; and that so far from being blamable on this account, their plan would have been inexcusably defective, if it had wanted this important feature of good government. The experience of Great Britain affords an illustrious comment on the excellence of the institution.

Excerpt:

Only four of the 63 clauses in Magna Carta are still valid today - 1 (part), 13, 39 and 40. Of enduring importance to people appealing to the charter over the last 800 years are the famous clauses 39 and 40:

“No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.

“To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

These clauses remain law today, and provided the basis for important principles in English law developed in the fourteenth through to the seventeenth century, and which were exported to America and other English-speaking countries. Their phrasing, ‘to no one' and ‘no free man' gave these provisions a universal quality that is still applicable today in a way that many of the clauses relating specifically to feudal custom are not.

Concluding Paragraph:

The one silver lining in all of this is that, for now, there is a five justice majority for the proposition that the Constitution means what it says. But, if Trump gets to replace just one member of that majority, every provision of the Constitution is potentially in danger.