Imagine:
Trump convicted of federal crimes by Jack Smith, sentenced to prison and imprisoned during 2024 election cycle, wins election and proceeds to pardon himself. The Supine Court upholds his self-pardon, Thomas writing for the majority.
Are you sufficiently scared? To forestall this, he must be convicted of serious felonies at the state level: a president's power to pardon only bears on federal crimes.
Hence my title: Godspeed, Fani Willis!!
I'm more and more convinced that the simplest way out of the debt-ceiling morass would be to start issuing perpetual bonds or consols (sometimes dubbed "Peter-Pan" bonds, since they never mature or grow up )which simply offer a fixed payment every year, with no face value. This would seem to be immune to court challenges -- unlike the constitutional gambit or the platinum coin. The Republicans in the House are manifestly crazy, so there's no hope there.
One question is how much bigger the term premium would be to borrow longer term in this way.
