If Congress must act to re instate a candidate but almost must act to bar a candidate, why was the amendment written the way it was? Pretty stupid they want Congress to make the determination.
The dissenting opinion puts that into the spotlight. It really is dumb that they’re saying even federal courts/administrative bodies can’t make that determination.
dissent
So I went to read it and found there’s no dissenting opinion, but a concurring one: but oddly, if you CTRL+F “dissent”, their concurrence lights up for me. Tried it on two PDF readers, but maybe I’m losing grip on reality.
Nah, it was a concurrence because they agreed that the case should be reversed. Their concurrence doesn’t agree with what they went beyond reversing it though. I just don’t have good legal language.
Sorry, I didn’t articulate my thoughts well: I meant that when I CTRL+F’ed the PDF searching for “dissent”, the second of three places in the PDF that it “finds” the word dissent is literally behind the word “concurring” in “SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and JACKSON, JJ., concurring in judgment” on page 15 of the PDF.
I also don’t have legal training to dissect most of what’s in there, but I find it interesting that dissent is embedded in the PDF behind the title to their opinion.
I’m kinda glad because I don’t think trump will win against Biden, but I think Nikki may have. Plus now the repubs are divided a bit between Nikki or Trump and less will probably show up to vote.
No matter what, the next election will suck and if Biden wins, Harris will probably take over as president after like the first year.
No one read beyond the insurrection clause, sec 5 of the 14th says only Congress can remove him
Yet the Court continues on to resolve questions not before us. In a case involving no federal action whatsoever, the Court opines on how federal enforcement of Section 3 must proceed. Congress, the majority says, must enact legislation under Section 5 prescribing the procedures to “ ‘ “ascertain[ ] what particular individuals” ’ ” should be disqualified. Ante, at 5 (quoting Griffin’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 7, 26 (No. 5,815) (CC Va. 1869) (Chase, Circuit Justice)). These musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.
To start, nothing in Section 3’s text supports the majority’s view of how federal disqualification efforts must operate. Section 3 states simply that “[n]o person shall” holdcertain positions and offices if they are oathbreaking insurectionists. Amdt. 14. Nothing in that unequivocal bar suggests that implementing legislation enacted under Section 5 is “critical” (or, for that matter, what that word means in this context). Ante, at 5. In fact, the text cuts the opposite way. Section 3 provides that when an oathbreaking insurrectionist is disqualified, “Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation. Even petitioner’s lawyer acknowledged the “tension” in Section 3 that the majority’s view creates. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. Similarly, nothing else in the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the majority’s view. Section 5 gives Congress the “power to enforce [the Amendment] by appropriate legislation.” Remedial legislation of any kind, however, is not required. All the Reconstruction Amendments (including the due process and equal protection guaranteesand prohibition of slavery) “are self-executing,” meaning that they do not depend on legislation. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 524 (1997); see Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20 (1883). Similarly, other constitutional rules of disqualification, like the two-term limit on the Presidency, do not require implementing legislation. See, e.g., Art. II, §1, cl. 5 (Presidential Qualifications); Amdt. 22 (Presidential Term Limits). Nor does the majority suggest otherwise.
The majority position doesn’t have to make sense, they just needed to be the majority. This is the legal phase of fascism, they won’t be held accountable. In the majority, 3 of them were appointed by Trump, 1 has an insurrectionist wife, this outcome was really never in doubt.
They couldn’t get Barret to sign on with the majority on this one, but they still managed to squeeze it through. Guess it left too much of a bad taste in her mouth.
Barrett’s concurring opinion is just “I agree with everything they said, and also I’m so glad we could all agree on this”. The concurring opinion from Sotomayor/Kagen/Jackson has actual substance to it.
Oh I read it. It was more like “I don’t agree with their reasoning, but can’t we all just get along.” As in, she wouldn’t even touch what she didn’t agree with even though it’s obvious. She writes incredibly shitty opinions.
She isn’t there on her merits.
It says only Congress can reinstate him. It says nothing about Congress removing anyone from candidacy, because the “shall” language is self-executing.
This is from the main opinion:
The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made. The relevant provi- sion is Section 5, which enables Congress, subject of course to judicial review, to pass “appropriate legislation” to “en- force” the Fourteenth Amendment. See City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 536 (1997). Or as Senator Howard put it at the time the Amendment was framed, Section 5 “casts upon Congress the responsibility of seeing to it, for the future, that all the sections of the amendment are car- ried out in good faith.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2768
So they say Congress needs to pass legislation to enforce this, and that is the only way to take Trump off the ballot.
The concurring opinion from Sotomayor/Kagen/Jackson does not like this at all:
Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amend- ment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other po- tential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnec- essarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.
Yep. I read section 5 for myself. It’s a twisted way to read it that Congress is supposed to be the executor of the “shall” language in section 3, specifically through legislation. It just says Congress shall have the power to legislate the 14th Amendment. It does not say Congress shall legislate 14th amendment issues.
But that’s kind of been their MO the whole time. “I don’t wanna rule, so I’ma hide behind Congress and say it’s their job.”
It seems pretty straightforward to argue congress needs to create a mechanism to label someone as having engaged in insurrection. All judges agreed a single state making that determination using their own rules isn’t sufficient.
I stand by what I said. They’re hiding behind Congress instead of making a decision. They didn’t seem to have a problem dusting off precedent from 150 years ago to make sweeping changes to how the country operates, before.
But now, when it comes to actually defending the self-executing portions of the Constitution, it’s suddenly too hard, and it’s Congress’s job. Bunch of fucking cowards.
Weird how “shall” means something totally different in the 2nd amendment than anywhere else in the document…those wacky founders!
No. It says -
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Which is a repeating of the Constitution in the case of section 3, which says states administer elections unless there’s a specific law from Congress. Section 5 uses no exclusionary language to say states cannot enforce the amendment.
Unanimous. Something we are missing?
They were probably all afraid that banning Trump on the ballot would tear so violently at the fabric of the country that it could end in a civil war with armed members of Trump’s base roaming the streets creating chaos.
This ruling is very unsurprising to me. I’d been very surprised if they had gone the other way.
The US is a very unhealthy country.
Edit: Spelling
I just hope that by tossing the Republicans this bone, that they will end up not ruling that the president has absolute immunity in the next case.
Losing this one is not a big deal, because he only would have been removed from states that he was almost certain to lose anyway. Republicans love their insurrectionists, after all.
I think with a ruling like this where the intent was so crystal clear that it couldn’t have possibly been misinterpreted by anybody yet the ruling was entirely backwards, that now is a good time for a constitutional convention and a total rewrite of the constitution. If it’s not clear, let’s make it clear.
I have a very strong feeling that they’re going to find that the President has immunity for his official acts. That’s the only question before the court in that case. However, what he was accused of doing clearly was not an official act as President but an act as a candidate in his capacity as a private citizen.
So it’ll get kicked down to the district court and they’ll decide that, and it will proceed. The terrible part is the timing which is partly on the Supreme Court but also largely on Merrick Garland for slow rolling everything for the first two years of the Biden administration.
I have a very strong feeling that they’re going to find that the President has immunity for his official acts.
That’s not really the argument that the Trump legal team is making, though. They are arguing that the President of the United States has absolute immunity from civil or criminal prosecution. Absolute being the key word here. According to Trump’s lawyers and Trump himself, no president would be able to do the job if they weren’t allowed to bend or break the law with impunity because they’d be so tied down in the courts that they would never get anything done.
Setting aside how ridiculous that assertion is, the historical basis for presidential immunity has always been that the President does have civil immunity, although that too has some limitations (The E. Jean Carroll case, for instance) but we have never had a situation quite like the one we are in right now where the president is accused of committing felonies while in office. Theoretically, we would have tested this with Nixon, but Ford pardoned him and that was that.
I do think that they will not find that his argument has any merit, but the slow-boating and stalling on behalf of Trump and his cronies is frustrating to watch. It’s almost like they want this court stuff to all coincide with the election so that they can claim they are being politically persecuted. I mean, they already are, but people are going to be sick of hearing about it by November and might be persuaded that Trump is the victim just by the inconvenient timing of the trial dates.
This is a very real possibility. There’s a lot of politicking that goes on in SCOTUS, and I’ve heard from other lawyers that they cut deals amongst themselves all the time (“I’ll go with you on this, if you go with me on the other”).
They do it less, due to having a conservative majority, but they don’t all always agree on everything in spite of that power imbalance.
Fat chance. The way they’re handling the immunity case almost certainly puts the trial in or after November. They’ve completely stopped all pre-trial movement while they take at least 3 months to return a decision on immunity.
So the immunity decision is scheduled for the end of April, and assuming the verdict is that Trump does not have immunity from prosecution, the trial should resume in June and be wrapping up by October. Very close to the election to be receiving potentially the worst news of Trump’s life and political career, but hopefully we get the decision before mail-in ballots are cast so that the American people can have the opportunity to make an informed decision.
Oh no. Arguments are scheduled for April. These arguments were just to see if the criminal trial would be stopped. Trump had appealed to stop the trial and the government asked the court to let the trial go forward or treat the appeal as a full thing that requires all the normal stuff. SCOTUS chose that last option.
So now we get arguments again in late April. Then we get a decision any time after that. Then they have at most 30 days to physically deliver the decision to the lower court. Who would then have to issue their own decision. (But that court isn’t playing for time so probably within 24 hours.) At that rate the trial can’t even resume pre-trial stuff until late May thru late June.
Then the trial judge said pre-trial stuff should take about 80 days. So we aren’t getting in front of a jury until after early voting starts. And if SCOTUS drags things out long enough, maybe not even before November.
Ah heck, I thought it was still on pace for earlier than that. Drat.
Yeah and we haven’t even gotten to the rest of the pre-trial delay tactics yet.
So they’ve traded almost-certain major civil unrest, and perhaps eventual civil war, as a direct result of their decision, for…
checks notes
…almost-certain major civil unrest, and perhaps eventual civil war, as an indirect result of their decision, and also get a fascist government.
Where they’ll surely be in the in-group of power. Right? Right…‽
/s
The problem is this is something that needs to be lanced earlier than later. In almost every historical case of a government in crisis like this, the earlier it is handled, the better the outcome.
Basically this is a test of our country and we can either weather it or not. By deferring it gets worse. For example if we had prosecuted Nixon there would be far less appetite for breaking the rules. And as we go forward extreme opinions will seep further into the intelligence and armed organizations of the government. Whereas a problem now might see the military mostly stay on their bases, in 8 years that could be completely different. Especially if conservatives purge officers not loyal to the president personally.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, it’s always just so weird to hear people say that they don’t just, you know… interpret the law.
Unaminous, but the 3 Liberal judges wrote their own opinion saying while they agreed with the ruling, they feel it should have been narrower, and that the ruling cuts off some legitimate avenues for punishing insurrectionists.
states cannot invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots. That power resides with Congress, the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.
States aren’t “invoking” anything.
Trump does not qualify as per the standards in the Constitution.Same as any 34 year old.
Stupid states following the words in the Constitution!
Shuffling this to congress means nobody will ever be excluded for insurrection, because obstructing any laws that would enforce the clause are easier to kill than pass.
I guess 34 year olds now must be on the ballot unless congress removes them… and Elon can run too. Heck my cat must be allowed on the ballot unless congress removes him.
Apparently the Supreme Court of The United States disagrees with you, DKarma.
Edit: Wow. I don’t know if this crowd is full of non-Americans or people who haven’t passed a sixth grade social studies class or just a bunch of emotional dummies. I would encourage people to spend more time reading about the things that upset them rather than wasting time whining about it on the internet. Someone posted a thoughtless comment to which I responded with a quote from the article which clearly explains the answer. I’m certainly not pleased with the court’s decision but I, without any degree in law at all, would never presume to know half as much as, let alone more than, the justices of the Supreme Court.
That’s the problem.
People deserve the right to an abortion, but the supreme court disagrees with that, too.
Fuck them.
Note that this is a 9-0 decision. Dobbs was not.
The entire court agrees that states do not have the right to remove federal candidates from the ballot. They can remove state candidates. Honestly, this is pretty obviously correct from the language of the 14th amendment. There’s nothing that empowers states to do that.
However, there is disagreement on the court on how this should be executed. The main opinion wants it to be solely up to Congress, but the liberal concurrence points out what a big ass problem that is.
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The Constitution is meant to be read in plain text. The hunting for extra definitions and meanings in and of itself destroys the legitimacy of this ruling.
That’s funny because you would have to hunt for extra definitions to find something other than what the court ruled. This was a pretty cut and dry case.
Regardless, to claim the constitution is meant to be read “in plain text” is laughable. And to presume you know more about the constitution than nine Supreme Court justices in agreement on this matter is just embarrassing for you.
Well considering they hold 15th century English church law to be above the Constitution I’m not so sure about their law degrees.
If the SCOTUS rules 9-0 that the fox is allowed to guard the henhouse, that still doesn’t make it a good ruling.
In this case, the SCOTUS says that the insurrectionists in congress must be the ones responsible for punishing the insurrectionist running for president again.
The Supreme Court doesn’t make up the rules.
Sec 5 of the 14th clearly says only Congress can remove him
I can see the argument from a certain perspective of the language, outside of context.
But remember when this amendment was passed. Right after the Civil War.
So, they wanted an amendment to bar traitors from federal office. Then they put in a section saying Congress has to actually make laws enforcing that rule, or it does nothing. And then, they didn’t make any such laws?!
So, what, they went through all the work to make a constitutional amendment, and then it does nothing?
No, they clearly felt that the rule was clear enough as it was, and section 5 is there to allow Congress to make supporting laws built upon that to help enforce that rule. But that rule should have teeth on its own.
The rule has been used before.
The craven corruption of the Roberts court is on full display here.
They actually did make such a law. But then there was an amnesty for many under President Grant and an expansion of the amnesty at the onset of the Spanish-American War. And then that law was largely repealed in 1948. And then in the 1970s Congress posthumously removed the disqualification from Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis for some reason.
Edit: Oh and they still have one, 18 U.S.C. § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection. Trump hasn’t been charged with it though.
for some reason.
Racism is the reason.
No, it says only Congress can re-instate, the removal is to be assumed.
"Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Bolding mine.
He was quoting Section 5, not Section 3. Which I also think he is wrong about.
That’s if he’s in office. He’s not in office.
Sec 5 is the means of enforcing sec 3
That makes no sense. Why would
But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
be included in section 3 if congress has the power to enforce (or not enforce) the clause by simple majority. It’s obviously a self-executing clause.
Nice new yacht for a certain member of the court?
He prefers motorcoaches.
Maybe Mr Oliver should offer a bigger one.
I can’t see him being able to match what the billionaires can give him.
Plus why needs a coach when they get all that power
I’m not sure what drives him, but money seems to be a part at least.
He’s a Black man who hates affirmative action, said that he wanted to make liberals pay, and also is only on SCOTUS because Republicans wanted the optics of replacing Thurgood Marshall with another Black man.
In other words, he’s a hateful, spiteful, bigoted asshole who is married to a hateful, spiteful, bigoted asshole insurrectionist.
*and he’s for sale
It was a unanimous decision by the court. States simply do not have this power. Why would someone need a yacht purchased?
When do we decide the social contract has been broken?
It has been. The question is when the left takes up arms against the armed and marching right
Oh look another illegal power grab by the supreme dipshits. 14th amendment section 3 states only Congress may remove an insurrectionist’s inability to hold office, not SCOTUS.
Unfortunately not a new power grab, they’ve long held that their judicial review is sacrosanct, and they get to pick and choose not just the cases they hear, but also what issues within that case they feel like
legislatingreviewing. Same again here, the RNC asked three questions and they left most of it wellll alone:The Questions Presented are:
- Whether the President falls within the list of officials subject to the disqualification provision of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment?
- Whether Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is self-executing to the extent of allowing states to remove candidates from the ballot in the absence of any Congressional action authorizing such process?
- Whether the denial to a political party of its ability to choose the candidate of its choice in a presidential primary and general election violates that party’s First Amendment Right of Association?
#1 & 3 were completely ignored because they’re only willing to craft big
legislationopinions on conservative/originalist topics, but “show respect for the lower courts” when it’s convenient for SCotUSThey focused in on the state w/o congress aspect of #2, because it’s the weakest part of the Colorado case unfortunately, and allowed this fig-leaf opt out on disqualification being kicked back to Congress
That’s not how the opinion works. The Supremes said states can’t remove candidates from the federal ballot under the insurrection clause. They can remove state candidates. It doesn’t rule on anything else.
So how do they remove someone who isn’t of age or a natural born citizen?
That’s a very good question, because I don’t think it’s ever been a real issue. Not among “serious” candidates (read: not some rando third party with zero chance).
Those factors are more mechanical. Being of age isn’t a judgement issue unless someone says there’s a mistake on their birth certificate or something. Natural born citizen is usually mechanical. Most candidates have been clearly born in the United States, and there’s no debate about it. There was a little question around McCain, who was born in Panama, but there was clearly an act of Congress that made kids born there to American service members into citizens. If we take all the claims of the Obama Birthers at face value (which are nonsense), then he’d still be a citizen due to his mother being a citizen.
However, I do think the Birthers uncovered a problem while they fumbled around like idiots. They tried to get Obama off the ballot using the courts, and repeatedly had them dismissed due to lack of standing. If there actually was a valid reason to challenge someone under those requirements, it’s not obvious who can enforce it.
I was under the impression that being a citizen wasn’t enough, you had to be a natural born citizen. I don’t think Obamas citizenship was ever in question, just his birthplace
There’s documented evidence of Obama being born in Hawaii, and no real evidence that he was born in Kenya or anywhere else. That resolves the issue right there.
That said, even if he was born in Kenya, his mother is a US citizen, and he therefore had citizenship automatically at birth under US law. There’s some SovCit-level bullshit about making a distinction between “natural born citizen” and “citizen at birth”, but it’s not taken seriously.
There’s documented evidence of Obama being born in Hawaii
I don’t disagree
There’s some SovCit-level bullshit about making a distinction between “natural born citizen” and “citizen at birth”
Did you read the link in my post? that distinction IS made on an official US Government websiteI misread your post
The rest of their reasoning was basically “Congress can’t do this shit, it’d be a mess, so we’ll step up and reverse that clause.”
They specifically said they will enforce the constitution as they see fit.
SCOTUS rules the Constitution unconstitutional.
Trump is never held accountable for his own actions and things will only get worse.
These.Mother.Fuckers…
amazing how quickly those states rights arguments evaporate when its not to the republicans benefits, huh
Where them “states’ rights” advocates at?
Not advantagous right now. It’ll rear it’s ugly head again once it becomes politically advantagous to do so.
“I would expect that a goodly number of states will say whoever the Democratic candidate is, you’re off the ballot, and others, for the Republican candidate, you’re off the ballot. It will come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election. That’s a pretty daunting consequence,” the chief justice, John Roberts, said during oral argument. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/04/trump-scotus-colorado-ruling)
Damn inconsistent of them, being concerned about consequences after the current court’s previous rulings.
“If we do the right thing now, Republicans will act in bad faith to do the wrong thing later” is such a bullshit cop-out but it happens all the fucking time.
Democracy is already broken, the popular vote winner doesn’t get to be president if they are Democrat, unless the margin is very large.
It comes down to just a handful of states anyway
They won’t, but Colorado should still keep him off the ballot. The ruling was clearly made in fear of chaos instead of what was correct, so they deserve chaos irregardless.
Or at least make a show about it, like all those states did when Texas was told to let the fed agents cut the razor wire.
Colorado should still keep him off the ballot.
The final vote is tomorrow. It’s far too late to put him back on the ballot.
Even then, I suspect he’ll win on write in alone. This contest is functionally over as soon as he’s got a majority of the primary delegates, and that’s likely to happen a few states after Super Tuesday, given current trends.
So the decision is moot from a “Will Trump be the nominee” perspective.
AFAIK they already had ballots with him on it.
Yeah our ballots had him on the list still, but I think with a mention of the pending court case.
That is admittedly why I also said “or make a show about it”…
I’m actually not sure if Texas actually did stop the Feds from cutting the razor wire. I actually checked and it seems like the entire story just disappeared from all news after they made a lot of noise on it.
The supreme court is anything but. They are traitors to the USA.
This should be a surprise to nobody; the courts have been largely bending over backwards to accommodate Trump.
The supreme court just ruled that either the 14th amendment requires an act of Congress, despite no such requirement listed in the constitution.
Then you have Cannon, who has gone out of her way to rule in Trump’s favor, up to and including the implication that Trump actually is above the law, and has shown she is hellbent on continuing to do so.
The supreme Court is also throwing Trump another bone by delaying his dc trial by 2 months, essentially giving Trump the win by running out the clock instead of ruling on presidential immunity.
The stormy Daniels case is of little legal and even less political consequence, as the case is weak already and Trump is not considered at significant risk.
The GA case is likely to get derailed because Willis couldn’t keep her personal and professional life separate, and her handling of the affair puts her credibility in doubt.
At least we have the civil judgement. At least, until Trump finds another judge willing to throw that out too.
The supreme court just ruled that either the 14th amendment somehow doesn’t apply to presidents, trump didn’t engage in insurrection, and/or Trump is just simply above the law.
That’s quite literally not what they argued, even if you try to read it that way. You really should read the opinion before you tell people what it says.
edit: LOL! OP deleted the stupid argument and replaced it with one that sounds less stupid. My quote was lifted verbatim, and the stealth edit speaks volumes.
I don’t like trump but if you read the wording it says Congress must act to remove him so that’s why he is allowed on the states are trying to remove him when only Congress has the authority so a act of Congress could remove him but unlikely to happen sadly.
It does not clearly say only Congress has the power to disqualify. It does clearly state that Congress can remove a disqualification of this type with a 2/3 vote.
The court here has ruled that because of that Congress must act in order to disqualify someone in the first place. Which makes sense to me, I suppose. It’s certainly better than the alternative argument that the presidency is not an officer of the United States. The court seems mostly concerned with the balance of power between the states and federal government in the ruling.
But most importantly, it’s making it clear that this is not self-executing or self-evident in the same way the constitutional qualifications for the office are (eg age).
It’s also worth noting that the Court here is saying states cannot impede the ability of the federal government to exist and function (pages 8-10). Consider that if a state were empowered to disqualify federal officers, then it could interfere with the ability of Congress to do its job on a fundamental level either by a) forcing Congress to remove the disqualification before state-run primaries and elections even began, or b) controlling the outcome of a federal election by tilting the Electoral College in their favor. McCulloch v. Maryland made clear that “States have no power…to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress”.
Imagine what Greg Abbott would do if we gave Texas the ability to dictate the outcome of federal elections. It would be absolute chaos.
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It was unanimous. Against constitutional precedent from the people who wrote the Amendment, btw.
So much for Originalism.
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Keg stands for everyone!
