Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

It appears that the Department of Justice had a good day on Tuesday before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel regarding the search and seizure at Mar-a-Lago. https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings Counsel for Donald Trump was challenged repeatedly to cite any federal precedent for a district court's exercise, prior to indictment, of equitable jurisdiction regarding execution of a search warrant without any showing that the warrant or the execution thereof was illegal; he was utterly unable to do so.

The appellate court appears to be on the right track that it must consider whether the exercise of equitable jurisdiction was erroneous at the outset before it considers the four factors governing issuance of a preliminary injunction. I would add that, as I have said before, the court should consider, before it reaches any other issue, whether Donald Trump's pleadings are sufficient to show Article III standing before the district court. The lawful issuance and execution of a search warrant cannot constitute an injury in fact.

[David Nieporent]

I listened to it, as well as reading other commentaries about it. The tone of questions to Trump's lawyer was basically, "Really? Do you really want to make that dumb argument? And maybe could you actually answer the question?" And the tone of questions to the DOJ's lawyer was, "How do you think we should write the opinion in your favor?"

Trump's lawyer had nothing beyond "An ex-president is special and should get better treatment." He did step in it by mistakenly thinking he was a guest on Fox and calling a valid search a "raid."

And the DOJ was basically like, "We're only limited by the time allotted to us in listing the number of ways their arguments are wrong."

Oh, and for the Trump fanboys: this panel is two Trump appointees and a GWB appointee. No "Democrat judges" leg to stand on.

[not guilty]

I surmise that the composition of the panel was chosen carefully by Chief Judge William Pryor, who named himself and two Trump appointees who previously participated in granting the partial stay of the injunction. Not a good sign for Trump.

[John F. Carr]

How does the 11th Circuit choose panels? In the circuit rules I found two references to the chief judge's power to choose a replacement if a panel loses a member (by lot in NLRB cases, by fiat otherwise). I did not see a rule about initial composition of a panel.

[John F. Carr]

A valid search can be a raid. Raid could be a bad word to describe this particular search to an appeals court. I heard nothing about handcuffs, much less bullets and grenades.

[Martinned]

Mostly The Raid is just an excellent action flick from Indonesia.

[Nige]

Great sequel, too.

[Martinned]

Nothing beats the clean simplicity of the first movie. 10 mins to set it all up followed by 1.5 hours of the characters fighting their way up to the top floor of the building.

[Nige]

Which is why I thought it was the right move to blow it up into a crime epic in the sequel rather than replicating it. On the other hand Dredd, which came out about the same time as the first with a similar set up, is also great.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Nieporent, an ex-President IS different and the whole world is watching this charade. It is inherently dangerous to prosecute a former President — for anything — for a whole bunch of reasons.

I recently saw an interview that Tom Clancey gave in the late ’90s and he warned that Impeaching Clinton would embolden terrorists — although he was thinking 30 dead and not 3,000….

And what really makes me laugh here is that (unlike Hillary) Trump never signed a security clearance agreement, never needed a security clearance because his access came from being President. Unlike the UK, we don’t have an “Official Secrets Act” in this country, nor do I think it would be Constitutional.

There is nothing preventing him from drawing from his memory and publishing our nation’s most closely guarded secrets. It’s the same thing as the NYT publishing the Pentagon Papers, and I seem to remember that while Nixon was rather p*ssed about that, they weren’t prosecuted. Nor Robert Novak for printing Valarie Plame’s name.

That’s why I laugh about the concerns about Trump having classified documents in his storage shed — he has far more classified stuff in his head.

But the worst thing about this is that it makes Biden look weak — even weaker than he does — and that could get us dragged into a nuclear war…

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Dear Doomsayer,

Perhaps your idiot idol should not have decided that the laws don't apply to himself.

Now he's squarely in the 'find out' phase of fucking around. Deservedly so.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Jason, you either didn't read or didn't comprehend -- prosecuting past Presidents harms FUTURE Presidents, including the current one.

I am being totally Machiavellian here -- it is for the greater good of the country not to prosecute former Presidents. For anything, regardless of how guilty they may or may not be, nor how creative the interpretation of the law is required for them to be guilty.

It's not good for the country and you need to put the good of the country ahead of your hatred of Orange Man.

A different but perhaps similar issue -- not always, but often all a rape victim wants is to have the perp serve time for *something* and (in the case of a college) to be off campus until she graduates, usually in 2-3 years. So it's plead down to some lesser included offense and the perp's removal from the IHE is included in the sentence -- or stipulated to by the IHE, often both.

In an ideal world he'd be convicted of rape -- but what is best for the victim?

Likewise, sometimes a shaky child molestation case is plead to an agreement for no jail time, but a conviction -- which means registration as a sex offender. What's the greater good -- prosecuting a case you may loose (and traumatizing the child) or getting the perp on the sex offender list and away from other potential victims?

Yes, if you have someone like a Lavrenty Beria -- they're still finding the skeletons of the young women he raped & murdered -- then a prosecution is necessary. (One theory is that Stalin had found out about Beria doing this and wanted to purge him.)

But for whatever Trump did -- assuming the wildest of the We Hate Orangeman mantra is both true and those are actually criminal offenses -- it's like cops chasing someone at 95 MPH for running a red light, it's not worth it.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I did not struggle with reading or comprehending your opinion.

The problem is that you're wrong. Nobody is above the law, and Trump thinks that he is.

Fuck him, and the horse he rode in on, and anyone else who thinks that he should just get a free pass.

Including you.

[myself]

I'd mostly agree that prosecuting past Presidents harms future President.

But I'd strenuously disagree that prosecuting past Presidents harms your country.

The US, more than other countries, tries do define itself as a country built on principals and ideals. And a critical principal in your country is that no one is above the law.

Your campus rape example actually covers this well. In some cases the victim may be best served by having the offender expelled and getting a fairly minimal sentence. But the principal of justice is not served and the consequence is not only the normalization of rape in general, but more potential assaults by that rapist.

The US spent centuries building up norms around the Presidency in order to constrain some of the more dangerous aspects of that power. Trump's Presidency was built on discarding those norms banning Muslims, declaring a fake emergency to circumvent congress to build his wall, attempting to rig the election (Ukraine extortion), and refusing to concede when he lost a fair election. And he wasn't punished because while those things broke norms they didn't necessarily break the law.

Well this time his violation of norms also clearly and flagrantly violated the law. And therefore by the principals of your nation he should be punished.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, let's not forget about Lyndon Johnson -- and it's an understatement to say that the Guardian leans left -- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/22/lyndon-johnson-anniversary-death-awful-man-my-political-hero

"... Then in the middle of the night I felt the presence of someone in my room. I was about to scream, when I heard a familiar voice say, 'Move over, honey; this is YORE president."

He routinely urinated in Capitol Hill parking lots and spent a *lot* of time in the nude. He was a boor who treated subordinates badly.

The late Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) once told a constituent that "if the people knew what was really going on in Washington, there'd be a revolution." This was Margaret Chase Smith saying this....

[Roberta]

I'd say if you know you have someone like a Beria, you'd better sweep it under the rug. Such a person has far too much leverage!

[not guilty]

"It is inherently dangerous to prosecute a former President — for anything — for a whole bunch of reasons."

The consequences of not prosecuting Donald Trump would be more dire. If Trump dies outside of a prison cell he will have gotten away with egregious crimes.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Unlike every other President, of course. And Biden's $400B treasury raid. And Hillary's email servers and corrupt foundation. And the two Bushes and their wars. And Reagan's Central America operations. And .... and ...

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You're babbling again. Check your dosage.

[Don Nico]

What a astoundingly stupid response, Jason. Are you actually denying that any of the "crimes" cited by Alphabet actually occurred?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I was not aware that his list was of 'crimes' committed by former Presidents.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And Obama sending pallets of cash to Iran, and the Clinton Foundation (not *just* the looted Haitian earthquake relief money), and Joe Biden's corrupt deals as VeeP, and Lyndon Johnson's *everything* -- Johnson was perhaps the most corrupt President in recent memory

[David Nieporent]

You're babbling again. You seem to confuse crimes with (a) policies you don't like and (b) things that happened entirely and only within your head.

[Brett Bellmore]

You and Jason should probably not be discussing this, if you're THAT ignorant of Presidential history.

Every President in my lifetime has done things that they could have reasonably been impeached over. SHOULD have been impeached over!

My complaint about the Trump impeachments is that they picked such BS stuff to impeach him over, instead of genuine abuses of power. Because they didn't want to set precedents that would get in the way of THEIR abuses of power...

[Sarcastr0]

I’m not surprised you think impeachable is a standard you personally get to set, another that you set it such that Trump is just normal bad, not extra bad.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, look into the Impeachment of Samuel Chase.

Gerald Ford put it best: An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House says it is…

[not guilty]

Gerald Ford said that in 1970, IIRC. In 1998, Newt Gingrich and Company proved him right.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett seems to think he is working from some objective standard.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bill Clinton was Impeached for (a) perjury and (b) obstruction of justice (witness tampering). Both are serious crimes in the real world, and I seem to remember that he lost his bar card as a result.

He wasn't Impeached for Monica's BJs, nor about lying about that, but lying under oath about it...

[Jason Cavanaugh]

My responses have been about prosecuting an ex-President.

Perhaps you'd like to stay on topic before claiming others are ignorant of history simply because they aren't talking about what you want to.

[David Nieporent]

Yes, to Brett, trying to overthrow the government is not a "genuine abuse of power." Trying to illegally extort a foreign country to sabotage one's opponent is not a "genuine abuse of power."

[Don Nico]

More of your usual whataboutism.

[not guilty]

As I have said before, whenever I get a tu quoque reply, I know I have struck an exposed nerve.

[SRG]

Your argument appears to be that we shouldn't prosecute Trump because he might threaten to leak classified info. The utterance of such a threat would instead require that he be held in solitary without bail until trial.

[Dr. Ed 2]

1: You got my argument backwards -- my point is that Trump has so much classified information in his head that a few trinkets really don't matter -- they aren't a threat to National Security.

2: As to Trump threatening to leak classified information (a) why leak -- he could legally publish it, and (b) if he wanted to, he already would have done so.

At 9AM on January 20th, Trump could have declassified *everything*, leaving Biden to scramble to individually reclassify each and every individual now-unclassified document. I was half expecting Trump to do something like this, and to his credit, he didn't.

3: I know the concept of "rule of law" has long left us, but can you imagine how badly your precedent of preventative detention could be abused by the next Republican President?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

1) Not true. Your opinion here demonstrates that you do not understand the law or the classification system.

2) I hate repeating myself, but this again demonstrates that you are ignorant of the law. He cannot 'legally' publish whatever he knows, no different than anyone else with classified knowledge cannot just go write books about it all.

2.5) Nope. The President's behavior has requirements, and here too, he cannot just decide to destroy the entire classification system and publish everything. To do so would be a direct violation of his Oath of Office.

[Dr. Ed 2]

We do not have an official secrets act and Trump never had a security clearance.

Applying for a clearance is a voluntary waiver of your 1st And rights. Trump never did that, QED...

[Sarcastr0]

You do know that the law at issue is not about clearance?

And also you really need to read up on the Pentagon Papers case. It did not hold that leaking any and all classified info is protected by the 1A.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What part of "Congress shall make no law" wouldn't apply?

There is no "National Security" exception to the First Amendment, and all the issues in the past (including Wikileaks) involved how the press came to acquire the classified information. Bradley Manning had signed a promise not to release classified info -- Donald Trump didn't.

And Donald Trump enjoys the protection of the First Amendment.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

One does not have a "First Amendment right" to publish classified information.

Is there a subject about which you are not an ignorant twit?

[Dr. Ed 2]

"One does not have a “First Amendment right” to publish classified information."

Please cite a case in which the court has upheld the conviction of a former President for publishing classified information which the President had personal knowledge of from his days as President.

The difference with Scepp, Snowdon, & Manning is that they all had to agree not to reveal the information -- they waived their 1st Amnd Rights. Trump didn't.

[Sarcastr0]

The espionage act applies to citizens, and ex Presidents are not excepted.

But the issue doesn’t seem to be classified material anyhow, it is national records.

[Voize]

Trump could have declassified *everything*, leaving Biden to scramble to individually reclassify each and every individual now-unclassified document.

By what feat of logic do you reconcile your belief that Trump could mass declassify, but Biden would be forced to individually re-classify?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Once something is declassified, there are copies and Biden would have to chase down each copy because it is the document that is classified.

[Brett Bellmore]

I pretty much have to agree with Voize here. Biden could have just, right at the inauguration podium, right after taking the oath of office, said, "And never mind what Trump said this morning about declassifying everything!", and been good. With regards to any documents that hadn't already gotten publicly disseminated, anyway. I don't think he could have snatched back anything that had already escaped the government's custody. Like, oh, boxes in some dude's basement in Florida.

[Dr. Ed 2]

OK, "Was classified on January 1st" would be an objective category.

What would be interesting is if something got onto the web in the interim, like when the State of Hawaii posted the classified homeland security estimate on vulnerability to terrorism.

[Voize]

it is the document that is classified

Quite wrong I'm afraid. It is information that is classified, and documents are marked to reflect the classification of the information they contain. See https://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/cnsi-eo.html

[myself]

4. What about Trump being issued a subpoena for those documents (classified or not) and responding by hiding the documents from the government (and his lawyers) and lying to the government?

People have been thrown in jail for far, far, far less.

[not guilty]

The Trump cult adamantly refuses to discuss Trump's noncompliance with the grand jury subpoena and the June 3 fraudulent certification that all responsive documents had been produced. That is the smoking gun in any prosecution under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1519 and 2071.

[Don Nico]

"he has far more classified stuff in his head."
So What???
The long absence from this blog has not improve the quality of your thinking.

[StellaLink_the dog]

What's in DilDon's head?
Tim O'brian:

“I’ve been asked a lot… what’s it like to be in Donald Trump’s head so much? What I’ve said to people is when you get inside Donald Trump’s head, all you’re going to discover that you find there is a putter, a cheeseburger, a porn video, and somebody else’s credit card.”

[ragebot]

Just so we are all on the same page about classified stuff I have to wonder about why the classified stuff about the JFK assassination was not unclassified by Trump and still remains classified.

The moment you think you got it figured, you're wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn60YWO218k

[David Nieporent]

Nieporent, an ex-President IS different

No. "President" isn't a title of nobility; "ex-president" even less so. An ex-president is an ordinary citizen subject to the same laws as everyone else.

That’s why I laugh about the concerns about Trump having classified documents in his storage shed — he has far more classified stuff in his head.

You realize we're talking about Donald Trump, right? There's nothing in his head beyond the attendance at his last rally and misplaced grievances about the way he has been treated.

But the worst thing about this is that it makes Biden look weak — even weaker than he does — and that could get us dragged into a nuclear war…

Concern troll is very concerned.

[ReaderY]

I wouldn’t see that standing is an issue. He claims some of his seized papers and effects are priveleged. If he wins,he gets them omitted from the prosecution inquiry and returned; if he loses, that doesn’t happen. That adequately aasserts injury in fact, causality, and redressability.

His claims may have no legal merit, and the district court’s orders below may have been improper. But I can’t see why he wouldn’t have Article III standing. It seems pretty clear a search and seizure constitutes an injury in fact, whether or not it was a lawful one, and whether or not the material he claims was priveleged or improperly seized actually was.

[ReaderY]

I think it’s important to distinguish actual injury for standing purposes from immediate harm justifying an injunction. There may be well be no immediate harm justifying an injunction, both because Trump hasn’t shown an immediate need to use the documents now and also has alternative remedies to prevent misuse of priveleged documents, such as a motion to suppress.

But the very fact that alternative remedies exist shows that standing exists. A party who didn’t have standing couldn’t invoke federal court jurisdiction to entertain a motion to suppress.

[David Nieporent]

He can't invoke federal court jurisdiction to entertain a motion to suppress. He could if he were being prosecuted. But the fact that someone would have standing if some contingent event occurred does not mean he has standing now.

He would have standing for a 41(g) motion, but — contrary to whatever the hell was going through Judge Cannon's head — he hasn't made such a motion. For obvious reasons: it wouldn't get him the relief he wants.

[ReaderY]

Perhaps a motion to suppress was a bad example. Suppose the police seize your papers but they never prosecute you, they just keep them.

There really isn’t any standing to sue to have them returned?

It seems to me the very act of seizure satisfies Article III standing from the moment it occurs. The police took something you claim is yours, and if the court decides in your favor, you get it back. That seems like a classic example of an injury meriting standing. The legal validity of the claim – whether the seizure was lawful, whether a suit to get it back is ripe – is a separate matter.

Perhaps, as a policy matter, the law should give the state a deadline to prosecute by and require the police to give the stuff back if the deadline wasn’t met. Perhaps there should be no legal right to get it back before. But that’s a policy and merits question, not a standing question. A person whose effects are seized has experienced an injury-in-fact from the moment of seizure.

As the United States’ lawyer conceded at oral argument, there could be cases justifying a court order to give things back prior to prosecution. The example given was if a search seized business records that a business needed to operate. In that hypothetical, there would be a showing of irreparable injury; in Trump’s case there isn’t. But that’s a failure to show the kind of “irreparable harm” injury with no other available remedy necessary to warrant an injunction, not a failure to show the very modest kind of injury necessary for Article III standing. The standard for an injunction is much higher than for Article III standing.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Suppose the police seize your papers but they never prosecute you, they just keep them.

There really isn’t any standing to sue to have them returned?

Of course there's a vehicle to have them returned: it's outlined in Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(g).

But, as David M. Nieporent observed in the very comment you're responding to, Trump hasn't actually made the requisite request under that rule.

[not guilty]

For purposes of Article III standing, an “injury in fact” is an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992). The lawful issuance and execution of a search warrant does not invade any legally protected interest. As for the notion of police seizing papers and keeping them despite no prosecution ensuing, that is not actual or imminent (and is not pleaded here by Trump).

Article III standing further requires a showing that it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Lujan, at 561. That necessarily presupposes that the district court has lawful authority to grant the relief requested. As the Court of Appeals has observed in granting a partial stay pending appeal of Judge Cannon’s injunction, courts of equity do not ordinarily restrain criminal prosecutions. Prospective defendants cannot, by bringing ancillary equitable proceedings, circumvent federal criminal procedure. https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/11th-circuit-stay-in-mal-search/47da7e465ec35ca1/full.pdf

Here Trump is seeking to enjoin review of the seized materials by the government in its criminal investigation of Trump’s conduct. His pleadings fail to show any extraordinary circumstances as would authorize the district court to grant this relief.

[AmosArch]

If its mandatory to always whine and moan about all the awful things yt allegedly did to the indians every thanksgiving….

And the two are inextricably tied to each other and must be crammed together conceptually at all times because…well because they both involve indians I guess.

and holidays are a time to find fault

Is MLK day an appropriate time to bring up the not too flattering things he did or pride month a time to rattle off factoids about how the authorities worsened the AIDs crisis by attempting to falsely portray it as a disease which affected all groups equally and how the LGBDFLEFDKLDF movement was allied with pedophiles in its early days before it became too politically inconvenient? Is women’s history month a time to focus exclusively on the bombings of the early suffragettes? These things are no less related to each other than Thanksgiving is to indian genocide.

[Nige]

It's a bit like saying the annual Kristallnach celebrations are not the right time to complain about the Holocaust, while the rest of your examples are like how the Passover should be the right time to point out all the wealthy Jews who really control banking.

[AmosArch]

Celebrating Thanksgiving is just like running around beating up and killing Jews in the middle of the night. You heard it here first from the galaxy brained progs of VC.

[Nige]

From the point of view of Native Americans, sure. Just think of the grateful Pilgrims as being like German glaziers the day after.

[AmosArch]

Don't weasel out of it by blaming it on the indians. This is a position you support. So you openly admit you think a family who has done nothing wrong sitting down for dinner celebrating with their family are just as bad as brutal murdering nazis who ran around killing jews. Thank you for showing the world how unhinged you guys are. Please continue.

[Nige]

Are you kidding? Nice people who just want to sit down to dinner make the best Nazis! Please ignore the sound of breaking glass and eat up!

[Ed Grinberg]

Two years ago, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, mobs of people were running around, breaking glass, stealing, setting things on fire. (Just about) uniformly, the "elite" of our society (including the people running it!) didn't just ignore it -- they expressed their support / approval!

[Nige]

Not a single 'elite' politician that I heard of supported anyone breaking glass, stealing or setting things on fire. On the other hand, there was a weird level of support for police violence and abuse of authority from some quarters.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Let me refresh your memory Nige -- let's start with one Kamalea Harris funding them...

[Nige]

She gave funding to a movement that was protesting police violence, not for looting. Just like the Russians gave funding to the NRA to promote guns, not mass shootings. Presumably. Though I suppose you never can tell.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The NRA does not have a bail fund for mass shooters.

[David Nieporent]

The comedy stylings of Dr "Bail is only for white people who try to overthrow the government" Ed, folks!

[Nige]

So you're saying the NRA throws its mass shooters under the bus?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Nige -- name one mass shooter who was released on bail money provided by the NRA.

[Nige]

Name one mass shooter that didn''t use a gun.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Tell that to the folks terrified of the Narragansetts....

[Don Nico]

They should be terrified. That beer is terrible.

[Dr. Ed 2]

First beer I ever drank. It washed ashore in a lobster trap (seriously).

[John F. Carr]

No complaining. Kristallnacht is the time to eat cheesy chicken! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63499057

[Dr. Ed 2]

"The message, heavily criticised for its insensitivity, was later blamed on "an error in our system"."

Have they no one working there with a scintilla of intelligence -- and who knows what Kristallnacht actually was.

I'm actually surprised that KFC didn't get prosecuted for this -- Germany prosecutes the expression of Nazi ideology, which I think is counterproductive because I'd rather *know* who to worry about than having to guess.

[Jett's Pop]

I think it would be more appropriate to say that we "observe" Kristallnacht rather than "celebrate" it.

[Ed Grinberg]

As AmosArch replied to him above: "Thank you for showing the world how unhinged you guys are."

[Nige]

I expect Native Americans do the same for Thanksgiving.

[Dr. Ed 2]

WHICH Native Americans, Nige?!?

Using the above example, some were Jews and some were Nazis, but all were Europeans. So imagine a Europe where the Nazis were not defeated, only subdued and living in their own semi-independent states in Germany.

A better example: The Pocmtucs were the Jews and the Mohawks were the Nazis, except the Mohawks massacred all 14 million Pocmtucs and not just 6 million of them. (I'm using the figures of 14 million Jews in Europe circa 1930.) And then the Nazis complaining about how we firebombed Dresden...

[Nige]

Everyone who hates war crimes complains about the firebombing of Dresden, so unless you're using the Mohawks to justify the genocide of native Americans, which would be a bit like using Israel's treatment of Palestine as a justification for the Holocaust, since both arguments would be retrospective at best, I'm really not sure Native Americans of any tribe are obliged to treat Thanksgiving as anything other than the prelude to a genocide.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The firebombing of Dresden was regrettable but necessary -- Dresden was a major transportation hub with supplies going to the (retreating) German army having to go through there.

And as to Hiroshima, people forget that half the people initially killed were military and that Hiroshima was a legitimate military target. (Now as to the radiation, we didn't know that much about it either...)

And you ignore the inter-tribal genocides which were far worse.

[Nige]

It was absolutely not necessary.

It's not that I'm ignoring them it's that I don't see how they justify the Native American genocide or makes Thanksgiving palatable for Native Americans.

[Dr. Ed 2]

WHICH Native Americans?

Remember that the tribes first split between the French and the English (with the tribes supporting the French becoming Catholic, and those supporting the English becoming Protestant) and then the latter group split further between the English and the Americans.

Ask the Acadians what happens when you back the loosing side of a war -- for those who don't know the story, after the British drove the French out of Quebec, they then rounded up the Acadians and deported them to Louisiana were they became the 'cagins. The British then created the colony of "New Scotland" which is now the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia.

Well, boy meets girl, and the tribes that were allied with the Americans were largely absorbed into the American culture, while those who were allied with the still-feared French wound up excluded and then confined to reservations. I'm not saying this was right, only that it happened.

So now, 400 years later, I have to ask which Native Americans???

[Dr. Ed 2]

One more thing -- my family was on the British side of the American Revolution. A full third of the Americans were, with a second third simply wanting to stay out of the whole mess.

So am I free to condemn Patriot's Day?

Should I condemn it?

[Nige]

Actually I don't think you have to ask at all and you should feel free to condemn any day you want, let 'er rip.

[Don Nico]

"Hiroshima was a legitimate military target."
Mr. Ed, your claim is obscene.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were preserved from attacks throughout 1944 and 1945, so that the US could have "virgin targets" for assessing the effects of nuclear explosives.
For years, the US nuclear weapons community only referred to those bombings as the Hiroshima and Nagaski "events."
Just like the Trinity event at White Sands NM.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Don is 100% correct here.

They were chosen for battle damage assessment of the new weapon technology.

As usual, Ed is ignorantly full of shit.

[Dr. Ed 2]

General LeMay had warning leaflets dropped on the cities. https://premierrelics.com/us-field-gear/very-rare-wwii-1st-edition-lemay-leaflet-atomic-bomb-hiroshima-nagasaki-mint-condition

Hiroshima WAS a legitimate military target.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You are a fucking idiot.

"*In August 1945, leaflets were dropped on several Japanese cities (including, supposedly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The first round, known as the "LeMay leaflets," were distributed before the bombing of Hiroshima. These leaflets did not directly reference the atomic bomb, and it is unclear whether they were used to warn citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki specifically."

That's the first paragraph from your own 'source.' It takes a special kind of dumb motherfucker to think that a store selling bullshit is somehow a reputable source.

You're too stupid to bother with anymore. Since you've made the mistake of coming back after whatever hiatus thankfully took you away from us, I'll just fix the problem on my end.

Good riddance, you fucking imbecile.

[Noscitur a sociis]

It takes a special kind of dumb motherfucker

I see you're unfamiliar with Dr. Ed.

[Don Nico]

Thank you for your confirmation, Jason.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Don,

The veracity of your comment would not have been diminished without my input, but (if you're being sincere here..) you're welcome.

[David Nieporent]

It’s a bit like saying the annual Kristallnach celebrations are not the right time to complain about the Holocaust,

It's not really remotely like that. Kristallnacht was an evil event. The events commemorated by Thanksgiving were not evil.

[Sarcastr0]

So here is the thing. Not many people in res life actually spend Thanksgiving complaining about white people.

They spend it with their families watching sports and fighting about current events.

It’s you who has whitey in the brain, I think.

[Ed Grinberg]

Your gaslighting is so fucking tiresome...

[Dr. Ed 2]

"res life" -- would that be Residential Life, as in Student Affairs?!?

Yes, I think that Sarcastr0 just outed his/her/its/them self.

[Dr. Ed 2]

THE FIRST THANKSGIVING WAS CELEBRATING A MILITARY ALLIANCE!!!!

The Narragansett Tribe lived in Rhode Island and they were a warlike & bellicose people whom the local Indian tribes feared. When the Narrigansetts threatened the Pilgrims by sending them arrows in a snakeskin, the Pilgrims sent the snakeskin back, filled with gunpowder and bullets.

It should not be surprising that the local Indians then sought to ally themselves with the Pilgrims -- whom they'd seen practicing military maneuvers and who had guns. Most of them also became Christians and absorbed into the White community, but that is another story.

The myth is that the Indians were a united and peaceful people -- and they were not. They practiced genocide, e.g. the Pocumtucks were exterminated by the Mohawks.

Inconvenient truths...

The local Indians had seen the Pilgrims practicing military maneuvers

[Nige]

Yes, the Thanksgiving story is riddled with myths.

'Most of them also became Christians and absorbed into the White community,'

I wonder how that came about.

'but that is another story.'

No, it's the same one.

[Kazinski]

Ok course it's the same story, all over the world:

Technically backward society comes in contact with more technically advanced society and wishes to adopt many of their more advanced tools and customs.

I'm sure the use of guns, swapping wool for buckskins in the winter, and even the rudimentary comforts of 17th century civilization didn't repulse the Indians.

[Sarcastr0]

It was not a gentle outcomepeting and progress, Kaz.

Come on.

[Kazinski]

Exactly. When has it ever been?

[Sarcastr0]

Doesn’t make it okay.

Doesn’t make America a demon cracker nation either.

[Nige]

It's more land-grabs, massacres and Pilgrims spreading enough diseases to depopulate an entire continent, actually.

[Dr. Ed 2]

1: It was the Spanish who introduced those diseases.

2: They didn't know they were doing it.

3: The Native Americans were nice enough to give us syphilis. Also some "new world" disease that everyone who arrived here got with a week or two of arriving here, with most surviving it.

[Nige]

I'm sure everybody brought over plenty of new diseases. Guess they shouldn't have raped all those Native American women.

[Sarcastr0]

Smallpox blankets were a thing. And not just Spanish.

[Kazinski]

Sure they were a thing.

But let’s not be as medically ignorant now as they were then. Smallpox “infected” blankets would be much more likely to confer immunity to smallpox than confer a fatal infection to someone: “ One of the first methods for controlling smallpox was variolation, a process named after the virus that causes smallpox (variola virus). During variolation, people who had never had smallpox were exposed to material from smallpox sores (pustules) by scratching the material into their arm or inhaling it through the nose. After variolation, people usually developed the symptoms associated with smallpox, such as fever and a rash. However, fewer people died from variolation than if they had acquired smallpox naturally.”
https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html

I will concede that was not the intent.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nah, it would be more likely to have that effect on Europeans, who had been winnowed by generations of exposure to smallpox and other plagues. Europe was plague central for like a thousand years, long enough to have evolutionary effects; People of European descent have kick-ass immune systems.

Hitting a naïve population, never before exposed, variolation was as likely to kill you as any other exposure route.

[Kazinski]

Got a cite for that?

I concede the CDC isn't "gold standard", but it's something.

There's also the example of the polio live virus vaccine.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As to smallpox blankets, one has to remember that the Germ Theory of Disease didn't arrive until the 19th Century. Back then they had a Miasma Theory -- basically that disease was caused by bad air.

[Absaroka]

Well, Col. Henry Bouquet seemed to think blankets might work.

[Kazinski]

I'm not sure why America has to take the rap for a Swiss mercenary in British service, whether he was totally ignorant about microbiology or disease vectors or not.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's not even that -- the Indians were a stone-age people still using stone tools, while the Pilgrims had iron. Sewing needles and knives enabled one to make far superior garments from hides than before.

For some reason, the Native cultures didn't develop stone fireplaces and chimines which removed much (by no means all) of the smoke from the residence -- it wasn't until the 19th Century that the Franklin Stove and other more efficient fireplaces were invented.

The pilgrims had both saws and metal axes -- both tools that make filling the woodshed a whole lot easier. Etc....

[AmosArch]

Elizabeth Holmes is about an average looking white girl

But she hypnotized a rich businessman to give her money to start up a company and to act as her hatchetman.

She then hypnotized a set of male professors to be her technical guide and help her set it up

She then hypnotized some of the top mostly male politicians, businessmen, generals, media, and tech CEOs from both sides of the political aisle to give her even more money and exposure.

After she screwed up she dumped her previous boyfriend like a pile of garbage, and still managed to hypnotize a younger handsome hotel heir to gallop to her rescue and bring two children into the world in a wild attempt to get some leniency. Oh and she also may have killed a dog too.

Does anyone still seriously think women and especially attractive women have it so much harder than men?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Let's see...how did it work out for Holmes?

[AmosArch]

That she was dumb/overconfident with how much she was able to do and didn't take one of tons of outs she had to still be rich and powerful doesn't change the point.

[Nige]

If attractiveness is such an essential asset in tech grifting, how to account for that schlub who just tanked cryptocurrencies?

[AmosArch]

Its one powerful strategy. Guys have to seek alternate paths. Which in SBFs case is virtue signaling like a times square christmas tree.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mCg6AVpi6do

[Nige]

The virtue signaling softened his image and made him a 'good guy' cryptobro for sure, it's amazing how many people fell for it, and I expect Holmes, being a rare woman in the tech field, stood out in a similar way, and she clearly exploited that ruthlessly. Mostly, though, those guys seem to thrive on being complete assholes. However, if being an attractive woman is such an unfair advantage in tech - grifting or honest - how come there aren't more of them?

[Brett Bellmore]

It probably isn't sufficient by itself.

[Nige]

Or just being a woman is a drawback given that men are obsessed by women's appearances rather than their skills. Being attractive draws one type of nasty behaviour and language, not being conventionally attractive another.

[Brett Bellmore]

Women have two X chromosomes. Men have one X and one Y.

As a result, although the averages for men and women on many (non-sex linked!) traits are about the same, men have a much larger variance than women on any trait influenced by a gene on the X chromosome.

This means more male geniuses, AND more male idiots. People don't generally talk about that end of the curve. They just go into denial about the genius end of it.

So men tend to get over-represented in any high end intellectual activity. Such as tech.

Women have an edge, in that men actively WANT women around. It's just not enough to bring them to parity.

[Nige]

This is a simple-minded just-so story to explain why women aren't in tech for reasons other than male toxicity and misogyny.

[Sarcastr0]

What? This is not how genetics works. Y chromosome actually has less info than X. But it’s also not a 1-1 relationship. Do you have a paper or something or did you just logic this out?

[Absaroka]

"Do you have a paper or something"

I don't grok Brett's X-Y thesis, but the notion that males have more variance is pretty common. A search for "intelligence variance by sex" turns up a lot of material. I haven't done a deep dive, or really a shallow one; one can find studies to support one's preferred narrative.

Anyway, from what I have seen, it's an interesting explanation that might or might not be true.

The math works, in the sense that small differences in mean or variance - two normal curves that look almost superimposed - can have large difference in the actual values when you go a few standard deviations out.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ummm, the statistics of more male geniuses and idiots (or whatever term we use today to be less insensitive than the term we used yesterday) is true.

[Kazinski]

Brett is right about greater male variance related to having an XY rather than XX.

But it's more likely that it's due to the additional stability of having a double X, which Sarcastro notes as being a large chromosome with about 900 genes. Having a pair of X's with one copy from each parent is much more likely to be the reason for less female variability.

Nige's simple-minded refutation about Women in tech is what drove Lawrence Summers from Harvard.

[Nige]

Not sure the widespread sexual harassment, misogyny and male toxicity making the tech industry hostile to women is as simple-minded as 'nah, it must be genetics,' to be honest, but telling women, and each other, they're not smart enough because genetics is almost certainly part of it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sarcastro, it's not exactly a new idea. Here's a study:

THE VARIABILITY IS IN THE SEX CHROMOSOMES

"Abstract

Sex differences in the mean trait expression are well documented, not only for traits that are directly associated with reproduction. Less is known about how the variability of traits differs between males and females. In species with sex chromosomes and dosage compensation, the heterogametic sex is expected to show larger trait variability (“sex-chromosome hypothesis”), yet this central prediction, based on fundamental genetic principles, has never been evaluated in detail. Here we show that in species with heterogametic males, male variability in body size is significantly larger than in females, whereas the opposite can be shown for species with heterogametic females. These results support the prediction of the sex-chromosome hypothesis that individuals of the heterogametic sex should be more variable. We argue that the pattern demonstrated here for sex-specific body size variability is likely to apply to any trait and needs to be considered when testing predictions about sex-specific variability and sexual selection."

[Stephen Lathrop]

So men tend to get over-represented in any high end intellectual activity. Such as tech.

As high end intellectual activity, about 98% of tech jobs rank somewhere between house painters and millwrights—and notably closer to the house painters. Intellectual qualifications to deal with certainties are generally pitched lower than those needed to deal with consequential uncertainties.

That’s why so many tech workers get laid off as soon as they get enough seniority to command more-than-minimum pay. They are easy to replace with beginners who do well enough.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Large engineering firms were doing that 60 years ago.

[AmosArch]

Thats like asking why sharks aren't overrepresented in swimming competitions. Women are less interested in tech than men overall. Are you seriously trying to argue that physical attractiveness imparts no advantage in society? lol.

[Nige]

'Women are less interested in tech than men overall'

That's what men in tech claim, anyway, while ignoring the sexual harassment and abuse and genral misogyny directed at women in the business, which some women may find offputting.

It's certainly an advantage for men, when they have it, usually referred to as 'charisma.'

[AmosArch]

women do what they want. If men had that much power feminism wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be having this talk. I the evil conservative understand and respect the power and intelligence of women. You the supposed prowoman leftist on the other hand insist on seeing them as weak helpless creatures constantly needing rescue.

[Nige]

Actual women's experiences suggest otherwise.

Feminism wouldn't exist if men didn't have that power.

I just see women as human beings, deserving the same rights, opportunities and respect as the rest of us. Extrapolating a universal argument about the supreme unfair efficacy of female attractiveness based on one outlier, and a criminal outlier at that, doesn't suggest much respect for women's power and intelligence at all.

[AmosArch]

>>Actual women’s experiences suggest otherwise.

nonanecdotal citation needed that women overall are worse off than men.

>>I just see women as human beings

You guys whine all the time about how victimized and bad women have it. No matter what the situation or what happens. Women lose out some way. War. Women hit hardest. Covid? Terrible for abortion access. Final girl trope in movies where all the men get killed but women survive. Obviously some sort of sexist denigration of women. You obviously don't see women on the same level as men.

[Nige]

You just exrtrapolated from a single crooked 'average looking' woman that all women have a supreme advantage in their attractiveness. You're obviously not interested in women's actual experiences.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"how to account for that schlub who just tanked cryptocurrencies?"

He spread his arms, handing out at least $260M, while she spread her legs. https://www.businessinsider.com/sbf-ftx-charity-politicians-bankruptcy-clawback-targets-fraudulent-transfer-2022-11

[Nige]

The misogyny is automatic.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And likely accurate.

Comes from seeing too much of young "ladies" advancing themselves.

[Nige]

Misogynists always think misogyny is accurate.

[Sarcastr0]

Wow, you have issues.

You assume it must have only been sex appeal behind her success. I hope you dint interact with professional women on a regular basis, because this is a pretty awful mindset.

[Mr. Bumble]

Define "professional women".

[Sarcastr0]

Women with professions.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Our current Vice President, who got where she is by sleeping with a married man???

[Mr. Bumble]

The oldest profession.

[Nige]

Yes, misogyny.

[Mr. Bumble]

No, whoring for personal gain.

[Nige]

'Whoring,' or sex work, is literally done for personal gain. Accusing succesful women of 'whoring' is misogyny.

[Mr. Bumble]

Pointing out the fact that that was how Kamala climbed the "professional" ladder isn't.

[Nige]

Lying about it is.

[Don Nico]

Lots of men do that also

[Nige]

Figuratively any form of labour for money is a kind of 'whoring.'

[David Nieporent]

As opposed, one assumes, to our former president, who got to where he was by choosing the right father.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Try Grandfather -- Prescott Bush was a US Senator from Connecticut.

[Kazinski]

There are lots of paths to gain the initial notice and backing needed to launch a political career, like war hero, astronaut, athlete, actor, author, protege to a powerful man. The fact Kamala got some advantage at the beginning of her career from sleeping with Willie Brown doesn't define her whole career.

The fact she is a mediocrity that should have topped out as a local official is more due to California politics. After all she replaced Barbara Boxer in the Senate who was another mediocrity who was there for decades without drawing much notice.

[Don Nico]

Okay, that is it for the talking horse's ass.
Bye, Mr Ed.

[AmosArch]

Its a large part. Theres a reason why she disproportionately targeted old crusty men to rope into her schtick.

[Sarcastr0]

Or maybe she was connected and charismatic.

[John F. Carr]

Maybe a man could have done it without sleeping his way to the top.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Childless unmarried women with a college degree and under age 40 now earn more than childless unmarried men with a college degree under age 40.

The "men earn more" statistic comes from the much larger earnings of those in their 60's.

[Nige]

That’s wage stagnation for you.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s Ed, so don’t believe it.

[Don Nico]

Sure, the man would have kissed ass to the top.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

1) Which Constitutional (or statutory) provision are you most thankful for?

2) Which Supreme Court decision?

[AmosArch]

It may be pat but some of the stuff that makes us not like Europe/or much of the rest of the world at least for the time being. For example the 1st and 2nd Amendment. Its kind of sobering how libertarianism/organized philosophical movements emphasizing individual liberty/autonomy in general in some ways is kind of unheard of outside of America where it is already sort of niche. Its mostly big government conservatives fighting with big government progs. You'd think the Left would value diversity but apparently they are as onboard as 19th century imperialists with imposing one system of values the world over.

[Martinned]

America wishes it was more like Europe.
(Or at least it would if it knew more about Europe.)

[AmosArch]

I don't. If you're not already there why not go permanently? Maybe we should both be where we want to be. Like Somin says vote with your feet.

[Mr. Bumble]

Not withstanding the time difference you must have been hitting the bottle early if you believe that.

[Sarcastr0]

Europe ain’t a paragon, Martinned.

I’m actually glad I live near not Europe. We are rich and secure and have good food and great science.

[Martinned]

Nobody said that it was. Western Europe is just less sh*t than the US by pretty much any metric that matters.* We are just as rich, more secure, have better food**, and the same science, for example.

* That is, metrics that matter to ordinary people, not ideologues who spend their holidays arging with random people on the internet.

** No country that thinks turkey is the height of culinary joy can brag about having "good food".

[Sarcastr0]

Fair put re: the Turkey. I see it as a challenge more than the height of cuisine.

I was actually thinking of the variety of food we have, thanks to nation of immigrants etc.

Statistically Europe has a lot going for it.
But I’m an upper middle class government worker in science. This is the country for me.

And also Europe has a ways to go in race to catch up to the US. We have been messily dealing with our dirty laundry. That puts us decades ahead of like France and then UK, not to mention Eastern Europe…

[Nige]

Look, the really important thing is that the US and Europe are two of the biggest net contributers to greenhouse gas emissions causing anthropogenic climate change, therefore they are like a pair of twin supervillains with an evil plan to destroy the world, rendering all the commonalities and differences moot at best.

[Dr. Ed 2]

WRONG: It's China and India....

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Brown people can't contribute to Global Warming.

Only white people.

[Nige]

China and India have only contributed a fraction of the overall net human greenhouse gas emissions compared to the US and Europe and Russia.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Nige,

Considering that people in India and China routinely end up wearing face masks just to avoid the pollution:

I don't believe you.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And Jason, that’s in addition to CO2 as well. Masks are particularly good with Fine Particulate Matter -- which is very bad and (unlike with CO2) the science is clear on that.

How about the fact that California occasionally fails air quality because of pollution that has drifted across the Pacific from China?

[Nige]

Nobody wears masks because of CO2 emissions, but that's certainly what happens when you don't regulate air pollution.

[Mr. Bumble]

Always stupid, never right=Nige.

[Roberta]

That just means we're helping share the bounty, climate-wise. The world is better when it's both warmer and has more carbon dioxide.

[Martinned]

Any British politician who is asked the question will say that curry is the best British food. And they won't even be embarrassed about it. Also a nation of immigrants, ahem.

As someone who has lived and eaten in Belgium and Italy as well, there is no chance that the US wins on food.

[Jmaie]

See, this is what is stupid about this discussion. America is too large and varied to compare with as example Belgium. Yes, there are rural areas where variety is not large. However, most of the population lives in places where a huge variety of very high-quality food is available.

And, I noticed you did not include the Netherlands as a stand out cuisine…

[Martinned]

I wasn't comparing the US with Belgium. I was comparing the US with Europe, which includes Belgium. And I fully agree, Dutch cuisine is terrible. (Although fortunately still high-fructose corn syrup-free.)

[AmosArch]

Theres a ton of relevant advantages the US has over Europe. For one thing many of the most cutting edge technical and scientific fields and industries prosper here far beyond what's available in Europe. Try to find a FAANG, ML, or HFT type job as easily in Europe as you can in America. Both academic and industrial science on a professional level is more dynamic and higher compensated that what you generally find in Europe. Lots of everyday things are cheaper and bigger homes are more easily obtainable in general. Not to mention having a contrary opinion is not quite as unfashionable in America as it is in Europe yet.

Now Europe does have a lot of pretty stuff too. Its a give and take. But saying there is absolutely not one thing people care about that America does better just because you and your circle of friends on r/ihateamerica can't think of anything says more about you than anything else.

[Martinned]

Try to find a FAANG, ML, or HFT type job as easily in Europe as you can in America.

Why would you want a job like that if some billionaire can just walk off the street with a literal sink in his hands and fire you with no notice?

[AmosArch]

Why would you want beautiful buildings and statures and paintings like Europe is famous for if they can just collapse or get eaten by moths? What a nonsequitur.

[Martinned]

Because one of those things happens all the time, and the other one doesn't.

[Brett Bellmore]

"We are just as rich"

Every chart of per capita disposable income I've seen, even adjusted for purchasing parity, says otherwise. For instance:

US GDP per Capita by State Vs. European Countries and Japan, Korea, Mexico and China and Some Lessons for The Donald

"As the chart demonstrates, most European countries (including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium) if they joined the US, would rank among the poorest one-third of US states on a per-capita GDP basis, and the UK, France, Japan and New Zealand would all rank among America’s very poorest states, below No. 47 West Virginia, and not too far above No. 50 Mississippi. Countries like Italy, S. Korea, Spain, Portugal and Greece would each rank below Mississippi as the poorest states in the country."

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, what you have found is like a chart which *proves* Mickey Tettleton was a greater player than Babe Ruth. Have you ever even stepped foot in West Virginia? What you can see when you look around really has to count for something if you pretend to be looking at reality.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What I don't understand is how people become entitled to pass judgement on how other people live, and their life choices -- as long as neither is physically harming them.

Let's take something known to be harmful -- sun exposure -- and people who want to go work on their tans. Or pay to lie in tanning booths in the winter. It's known to be harmful -- but I'm not going to tell them they can't do it.

I don't know what the exact objection to West Virginia is, but maybe they have a different priority on how they should spend their money.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Let’s take something known to be harmful — sun exposure — and people who want to go work on their tans."

That's very much a mixed bag: Sun exposure has advantages and disadvantages, generation of vitamin D in the skin is only the beginning of it. Avoiding SAD, for instance. Skin cancer mainly becomes an issue due to repeated acute exposure to UV. And if you carefully develop the tan without suffering any sunburns along the way, the protection against accidental sunburn is very useful.

And even sunburn is a mixed bag; I've got psoriasis, I've actually had my dermatologist prescribe a mild sunburn!

"Everything in moderation, including moderation" remains generally good advice.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Europe is absolutely not less shitty than the US in any category that matters. Not really worse either. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I like Europe and have enjoyed every time I’ve visited.

But your superiority complex is totally without justification and not based on reality. For example, if you really think protection of speech over there is as good as here, you’re dreaming.

Besides, I’m sure that any of our problems can be traced to our having been colonized by the European powers. That’s the way it seems to work for anywhere else. So whatever is wrong with us is your fault.

[Sarcastr0]

Lifespan, jailings per capita, violent crime, worker benefits, unemployed benefits, parental benefits…

They do a lot that’s pretty good when taken on a statistical basis.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Most of what you list involves money being taken from one group and given to another. This is not a criticism, just an observation. That's a choice that they make that they're free to do so, and I can't honestly say that they're wrong to do it. But to say that it makes there better than here is not really accurate.

It means that here we've got more economic freedom and lower taxes that allow us to keep more of what we earn. Arguably, that makes us better than them. But it doesn't really. It's a choice each country makes as to how resources get moved around, and I'm not sure how you conclude that one is better than the other. It's a matter of personal preference.

Agree that we've got way too many people in jail. I donate to a cause that tries to fix that at least a little. But overall, each side has its positives and negatives. No basis for Martin's arrogance, or for that matter the arrogance of Americans who tend to run down Europe.

[Sarcastr0]

No, the sole metric of low taxes is not a good standard to hold society to.

I pretty clearly didn’t agree with Martinned, but you maybe shouldn’t be talking about nationalist arrogance.

[bevis the lumberjack]

OK, jackass. Here you go again. What in the world about "six of one, half a dozen of the other" and "countries are free to choose their own systems" is nationalist arrogance? You're a fucking loony.

You think that aggressive redistribution of wealth is a "good standard to hold society to"? Why? How did that work out for the Soviets and the Venezuelans and so on. On your scale they would be the best countries in the world..........

[Sarcastr0]

We aren’t talking about freedom of choice, we are talking about outcomes.

Europe has some pretty strong quality of life compared to the US. But we have a lot of stuff not quite captured that makes us exceptional.

Anyone saying one or the other is utterly superior is being silly.

[bevis the lumberjack]

But that's my point, asshole. I didn't say that either one was utterly superior. I didn't say that either one was even a little superior.

I clearly said "I'm not sure how you conclude that one is better than the other". That's a quote pulled out of my post. Why the fuck do you have to claim that I said that ours was clearly better when I said exactly the opposite? Do you even read the posts you respond to or do you just like to pick fights?

[Sarcastr0]

You originally took issues with the statistical metrics I conceded to Martinned.

Now you are saying who is to say what is good or bad, it’s all national choice.

I disagree with both - US has a bunch of bad statistical outcomes. And also you can say some national choices are better than others, while not generalizing to say Europe or America is strictly superior.

[bevis the lumberjack]

America has decided it doesn’t want to be a state with high transfer payments like Europe because Americans don’t want to pay the tax rates required to maintain it. Even the youngs who say they want to be like that blanch at 50% marginal tax rates starting at $50k annual salary.

You act like that’s inhumane or something. It’s pretty basic self interest. It’s what people do. I’m saying personal choice, or national choice anyway and you act like that’s the attitude is a war criminal. I guess you’re smarter than us because you work in the government or something.

Europe does not have better outcomes than us because more money is moved around. Have you seen the poor in, say, places like Rome?

[Sarcastr0]

I disagree - Low taxes is not some meta metric that overcomes all others.

It’s not that you are inhumane, and I said nothing to imply that. But I do think your priorities are wrong.

[Martinned]

America has decided it doesn’t want to be a state with high transfer payments like Europe because Americans don’t want to pay the tax rates required to maintain it.

Well, the people who run America don't want to pay those taxes anyway.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The people that are running America aren’t making $50k per year.

[David Nieporent]

You're not just as rich; you're actually significantly poorer.

[Nige]

You're unlikely to point to any flaw in the US that doesn't have its counterpart or equivalent in Europe, but they also have those things plus socialised health care, and weird gun death-cultishness is a fringe at best.

[Don Nico]

Europe is also rich, has better food, and has great science also.

[Sarcastr0]

Not as rich, not as much science in as many areas, and not the variety of great foods we have here.

Europe does some great stuff, as I discuss. America disappoints in many ways. But it is still my favorite country!

[Brett Bellmore]

I've done business travel to Europe, mostly Germany, and I've traveled all over the US.

Economically, we're better off than Europe, with the proviso that this is largely due to us adopting low growth policies later than Europe did. Having higher growth rates for decades accumulated a substantial benefit to us that won't be swiftly erased even now that we're spiking our own economy, too.

We have a lot of non-policy advantages, too. Lower population density, a fairly comprehensive set of natural resources, enough size to capture pretty much the entire economy of scale that's available, relatively short land borders with only two countries reducing our exposure to military invasion.

That said, Europe can be nifty, too. They suffer less governmental dysfunction on account of having had a rather unpleasant 'reset' in living memory. Things have been in the same places for long enough to get a lot of growing pains out of the way. Population density DOES have some advantages, if not carried too far. And people who like that high regulation/taxes model better than the average American will find the way they're organized attractive, and be willing to pay the cost of being generally poorer. (Especially to the extent it falls on somebody else...)

[Don Nico]

"not the variety of great foods we have here."
Which we massacre more often than not. Give me food in Italy or France anytime.

[Sarcastr0]

Oh, American food isn’t authentic. But it is delicious and full of flavor variety.

[Don Nico]

Who said anything about authenticity.
What you call full of flavor is usually full of fats, excess sugar and salt. But name a few dishes.
Again, it cannot hold a candle to even the rustic foods of France and Italy.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yes, Martin, it would be delightful if our internal borders were violently changed every generation or so for forever like Europe’s are. Certainly something for us to aspire to.

We’d also just love being sent to prison for unapproved speech.

Perhaps you could spend a little less time on your high horse. We’re just fine without your issues.

[Martinned]

I'm not sure how long you think a generation is, but my home country has had the same borders since 1839, and most European countries have had pretty much the same borders since 1919. That's pretty much the same amount of time as it's been since the US stopped stealing other people's land.

Also, I don't know who is being sent to prison for unapproved speech, but the only examples I can think of are Chelsea Manning (in the US) and Julian Assange (because the US wants to extradite him). In Europe we have robust human rights protections that stop such nonsense happening.

[bevis the lumberjack]

You didn’t say your home country. You said “more like Europe”. Quit changing the subject.

And, no, most European countries have not had pretty much the same borders since 1919. Y’all are regularly shooting each other up over there over border locations. I think I’d like to visit Yugoslavia this year. Or East Germany. Which do you recommend? Should I vacation in Crimea?

Or would you like to discuss The Troubles?

Physician, heal thyself.

[Martinned]

Or would you like to discuss The Troubles?

Sure. The Troubles had a lower body count in 30 years than one single year of gun violence in the US. Beam in thine own eye, etc.

[Mr. Bumble]

So, to recap. You think that Americans (who fought a war to disassociate themselves from your adopted home and were warned by Washington to avoid foreign entanglements) would prefer Europe to the country they established?

That would be the Europe which has been engaged in almost constant warfare sine the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The Europe which colonized people all over the globe, including your native country.

The Europe which in the last century gave us WWI and WWII
and international communism as a bonus.

The Europe where governments change like the seasons.

The Europe that will be lucky to keep the lights and heat on this winter.

That Europe?

[Nige]

You think the US isn't an erstwhile European colonising power just because it succesfully became independant? An independant colonising power of European extraction is still a European colonising power.

[Mr. Bumble]

"An independant colonising power of European extraction is still a European colonising power."

Try that again in English.

[Nige]

That is English, your native language of European extraction.

[Mr. Bumble]

So Americans are trans European.

[David Nieporent]

I think the US isn't European, so it can't be a European anything. And "independent" and "colonizing" (note the spelling) are contradictory.

[Nige]

It was set up and run by Europeans, it cut political ties with Europe, it engaged in the colonization of the American continent. Hence 'erstwhile European coloniZing power.' Sorry I Euro-colonized the spelling.

[Martinned]

You think that Americans (who fought a war to disassociate themselves from your adopted home

A fair few Americans fought on the British side of the War of Independence too. They paid better, and promised freedom for slaves. Just because some rich white guys decided they didn't want to pay taxes to the British anymore and wanted to steal more land from indigenous peoples doesn't mean (the former) was the majority view of the inhabitants of the colonies.

[Don Nico]

Mr Bumble,
The US have not only not avoided foreign entanglements, it routinely trips over its own ropes.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Our underclass gets access to better weapons than yours does. It's a remnant of the circumstance of our founding, and arguably your country's fault for making our founders believe it to be necessary.

[Nige]

'Our underclass gets access to better weapons than yours does.'

Illegal immigrants?

What made it necessary was a fear of slave revolts.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Did you read that in the 1619 project? Why would the colonies that had already outlawed slavery be worried about slave revolts and agree to the 2A?

And illegal immigrants? At the founding? Seriously?

What made it necessary was a fear of tyrannical kings. Something that all of the colonists had experienced.

[David Nieporent]

Did you read that in the 1619 project? Why would the colonies that had already outlawed slavery be worried about slave revolts and agree to the 2A?

No state except Vermont had outlawed slavery at the time the 2A was adopted. To be more precise, a few states had passed emancipation laws, but they provided for gradual emancipation; there were slaves in every state except Vermont in 1791. (Vermont's status was unclear; it considered itself independent, but the U.S. did not recognize it as such, and it became a state in 1791.)

[Stephen Lathrop]

Why would the colonies that had already outlawed slavery be worried about slave revolts and agree to the 2A?

They were former colonies, just recently become states. They did it to get the assent of the slave states to ratify the new Constitution. Drafters of the Constitution prioritized a larger nation (or perhaps a nation on a continent with fewer local rivalries) over any principled concern about slavery.

The supposed necessity of defensive arms was two-fold. First, a fear of slave revolts which might require organized suppression. That fear the 2A with its militia clause addressed. Second, fear for the personal safety of white people who lived among a class of bondsmen whom many folks regarded as personally dangerous, or among Indians who were regarded likewise. Those fears were addressed separately by state constitutional provisions in some states, to authorize arms for personal self-defense.

Probably, the federal constitution avoided the issue of arms for personal self-defense because anti-slavery political organization was already ongoing among some folks, more in the North than in the South. It would not have been possible to federalize in the Constitution a right to arms for personal self-defense, and get the Constitution ratified. Among slave state residents already fearful of anti-slave politics, to do that in a national constitution would create a continuous threat of national pressure to arm blacks. So in the interest of achieving ratification, the federal constitution left personal self-defense questions to states, to be dealt with variously according to their circumstances. Doing it that way left an already-existing governance norm unchanged.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Maybe it’s a nit, maybe not but at the time 5 states/colonies has outlawed slavery or were in the process of doing so. 40% of the states had no concern about slave revolts.

That’s not an argument to what you said, it’s an addition. We basically agree.

I was responding to the contention that the 2A was passed because of fear of slave revolts. That’s an absurd assertion made by someone who apparently has to insert slavery into everything.

[Absaroka]

"I was responding to the contention that the 2A was passed because of fear of slave revolts. That’s an absurd assertion made by someone who apparently has to insert slavery into everything."

Indeed. Regardless of the legal status of slavery, it's hard to imagine that Maine or New York were worried about slave revolts. You'd have to have appreciable numbers of slaves to worry about revolts.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Population of Belfast: 345,418
Population of Chicago: 2,756,546

Does anyone see the issue of comparing raw numbers here?

[gormadoc]

“most European countries have had pretty much the same borders since 1919” I will add that Bosnia has had pretty much the same borders since ~1880, maybe even ~1350.

[bevis the lumberjack]

You mean the Bosnia where the Bosnian War was fought in the early '90s? That Bosnia?

[gormadoc]

That's my point. Bosnia ceased to exist in 1463, was ruled by the Ottomans for 400 years, then Austria for about 40, then was simply part of Yugoslavia. During WWII it was part of Nazi puppet-Croatia, and upon liberation was part of new Yugoslavia. Finally everything broke down and now Bosnia and Herzegovina is a broken state that will probably end up splitting up a bit. Comparing the borders of now to some point in the past and noticing "oh they look similar" obscures the very bloody history of the region. Of course they look similar - US/UK objectives in both WWI and WWII were largely to restore "normalcy" in Western Europe! France didn't agree and took a bit of Germany each time. Putting the date at 1919 instead of 1917 belies the fact that almost all of Eastern Europe was part of Russia - no Baltic states, no Poland, no Finland... The only other states in eastern Europe were Romania, the Hungarian lands, and Germany's Prussian bits.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Sorry, need to turn up my sarcasm detector.

[gormadoc]

It's okay, I understand the natural incredulity we all feel when Euros pipe up.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Putting the date at 1919 instead of 1917 belies the fact that almost all of Eastern Europe was part of Russia . . .

Doesn't that overlook a great deal of essentially medieval history in the eastern part of south-eastern Europe? I looked into it a while ago, and discovered the history of the western part of Ukraine, and the eastern parts of Rumania, Hungary, and Poland, to be a tangled tale indeed, abounding in kings, princes, and political entities I had never heard of.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Europe doesn't have 'unapproved speech' issues?

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-criminalize-denying-war-crimes-genocide/a-63834791

[Martinned]

O, you can definitely get punished for all sorts of things. But the claim was that you could go to prison.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Are you daft?

What do you think it means to criminalize something?
JFC.

"Section 130 of the German criminal code criminalizes certain types of hate speech.

The law bans incitement to hatred and insults that assault human dignity against people based on their racial, national, religious or ethnic background. In post-World War II Germany, it has been used to prosecute racist and antisemitic threats and slurs, and it carries a sentence of up to five years in prison."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/germanys-laws-antisemitic-hate-speech-nazi-propaganda-holocaust-denial/

[Stephen Lathrop]

Cavanaugh, I will not say you are incorrect. I do say that to point to legal texts as proof of what happens is generally unsound reasoning—and a particularly common source of historical errors. Bruen and Dobbs both fall victim to that kind of mistake. It is commonplace for enacted laws to be only partially enforced, fitfully enforced, erratically enforced, selectively enforced, or to go unenforced. That is one of the reasons legal history and academic history so often differ.

[Ed Grinberg]

"America wishes it was more like Europe."
Yes, I really want to be more like England, where cops will break down your door for an online comment they don't like.

[Nige]

Nowhere in Europe wants to be more like England, either.

[Martinned]

You're confused with America. In England the cops don't break your door down unless you're some kind of IRA terrorist. They just knock.

[Kazinski]

I think the biggest adjustment for Americans moving to Europe would be the reduced standard of living.

Even the richer EU countries GDP per capita like Germany, Sweden, Netherlands is clustered in the bottom 3rd of US states, and other supposedly prosperous EU countries like UK and France are clustered around the bottom 5 poorest states like West Virginia, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski — Which shows you what an inappropriate statistic GDP per capita is for evaluating standard of living. It actually works better as a measure of national economic mis-management. To understand why, simply explain what it is about North Dakota which makes it lead all U.S. states by that measure.

[Kazinski]

North Dakota comes out on top because it has a very small population, and a very large oil industry.

But it has nothing to do with economic mismanagement.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The question whether an economy is mismanaged is not one for a single self-appointed outsider to pronounce upon. A standard for judgment can't be chosen arbitrarily. The least arbitrary standard I can think of would the collective judgment of the people affected.

[Martinned]

What reduced standard of living? What is it that the average American has that the average European doesn't? Don't talk GDP, talk stuff (or services).

[Kazinski]

Well two examples are cars and food.

The US has 816 vehicles per 1000 people. Western Europe 590, that’s 28% less.

The US spends 6.6% of the household income on food. Germany it’s 10.9%, France13.2, Italy 14.2. That’s about twice as much. Sure no one is starving, but that is a significant difference that cuts into standard of living.

And if you look at gas prices, electricity prices (2018 0.21 EU v 0.14KWH US) then you can't help but see the impact in reducing the standard of living in Europe.

[Nige]

Ok, I hate this stupid stupid argument but – Europe has way better, way cheaper, public transport and the US has lots of cheaper, but very bad, food. Not having to drive everywhere, less air pollution and higher standards of food quality aren’t *reduced* standards of living by any metric. Different, yes, and for fuck's sake yes Europe does have bad food, too many cars and air pollution, it's just that the proportions are different.

[Kazinski]

Americans like to drive.

Being able to afford your preference, rather than forced to use an substitute reflects a higher standard of living.

[Nige]

Americans are OBLIGED to drive, like it or not. Which undercuts your point somewhat.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Dryers?

[Kazinski]

And don't forget GMO foods.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, you pretty obviously understand that the question whether GMO foods increase or decrease living standards is contentious, especially within a Europe vs. US frame of reference. So your comment is just trolling.

[Don Nico]

Somehow very seriously I doubt that especially this year.

[Sarcastr0]

1. Gotta be the APA.
2. Baker v, Carr. One person, one vote.

[Ed Grinberg]

I am eternally grateful to the Anti-Federalists for the Bill of Rights. All of it. Can you imagine what our enlightened rulers would do to us if it wasn't there to constrain them?!
And, correspondingly, I am grateful for the Supreme Court decisions that enforced the Bill of Rights. (The real Bill of Rights, not the invented crap like "right to abortion," "right to education," "right to healthcare," "my right to have you (or the government) bake me a cake," etc.)

[Nige]

As if the Bill Of Rights wasn't also an invention. A good one, but an invention nonetheless.

[not guilty]

The Department of Justice is reportedly seeking to question Mike Pence about Donald Trump's efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/us/politics/mike-pence-jan-6.html I wonder why this has taken so long.

[John F. Carr]

Pence may not have seen anything that was not out in the open.

If Trump is on trial in liberal D.C., do you call well known conservative Pence as a witness for the prosecution if you don't have to?

[not guilty]

On January 6, 2021, Pence reportedly had a telephone conversation with Trump at about 11:30 a.m. that no one else was privy to.

What Pence tells the investigating agents (if he agrees to a voluntary interview) or his grand jury testimony (if it becomes necessary to subpoena him) should inform a decision of whether to call him as a witness at any criminal trial. The events of January 4 whereby Trump and John Eastman importuned Pence to unilaterally reject valid electoral slates have likely been described to the grand jury by Pence's aides Marc Short and Greg Jacob.

[Mr. Bumble]

Blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Where do hearsay rules come in here?

[not guilty]

Hearsay rules come into play at trial. Why do you ask? At this point we are still at the investigative stage. Rules of evidence do not apply to grand jury testimony.

At trial if Trump is the accused, his statements when offered by the prosecution are non-hearsay according to Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2). The same is true of statements made by any coconspirator of Trump during and in furtherance of the conspiracy. Rule 801(d)(2)(E).

[not guilty]

If you are suggesting that the testimony of Short and/or Jacob about the events of January 4 is hearsay, it is not. Each was present and can testify from personal knowledge as to what took place.

[John F. Carr]

Here are two scenarios to explain the delay. Both assume that DoJ is not going to charge Trump and Eastman for conspiring to ask Pence to throw out electoral votes. (Otherwise Pence's testimony is clearly relevant, if perhaps not necessary due to the hearsay exception for defendants and their co-conspirators.)

1. The prosecutor wants to find out if Pence was offered anything of value, aside from Trump's eternal gratitude, for doing his job in a certain way. The evidence to date suggests no, so they haven't been pursuing that angle, but there's a chance...

2. The prosecutor wants to find out if anybody asked Pence to help submit false electoral votes. The substantive crime of submitting false votes is easy to prove, but evidence of the full scope of the surrounding conspiracy may be lacking.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I still don't see what would be "false" votes -- say, hypothetically, there was a slate of electors from the State Secretary of State and a second one from the State Legislature, while one may consider one or the other slate to be "false", I would argue that it is a power of Congress to determine which one counts.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You might argue that, but as usual, you'd be wrong.

One slate of Electors is a certified result from the State. The other is fraud.

[Kazinski]

Well I'm not quite sure about that Jason. After all the Independent State Legislator question is before the supreme court now. And the Supreme Court has ruled in a bygone era the State Legislature has "Plenipotentiary" power to choose electors based on the constitution:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.”

What would happen if a secretary of state certified one slate of electors, then the state legislature because of some irregularity met and certified an alternative slate of electors.

While the supreme court or Congress might rule 9-0 one side or the other you couldn't call it fraud. Its a legitimate dispute between 2 branches of government.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The other aspect to this is the extent to which presenting a politically unpopular legal opinion becomes criminalized.

I submit that is a very dangerous thing....

[Jason Cavanaugh]

The ISL theory is pure bullshit.

In this instance, the legislature already has a procedure in place for choosing Electors. That procedure is followed, the Secretary of State certifies the results and sends the requisite votes of the legal Electors to Congress.

At that point, the legislature has no authority whatsoever to decide otherwise.

[JasonT20]

Even if the ISL weren't bullshit, I would think that the legislature would have to pass a new law allowing it to just choose electors according to its whims rather than have officials follow the laws that existed when the election occurred. And most states, if not all of them, have legislatures that are only in session for part of the year (Texas is every other year), and the governor would have to call for a special session before they could meet to consider new laws. (That would then either have to be signed by the governor or have his veto overridden.) Or, if you really want the ISL theory to go to ludicrous speed, you could say that none of those constraints of the state constitutions on when they can meet in session or how they pass laws matter and they can just make shit up as they go.

And that is why all of this is so ridiculous. For the political side that most often cries about government tyranny, they sure are willing to go along with things that are the most likely to lead to that. And letting a majority of the moment make shit up on the spot to decide who gets to hold power is one of those things.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Of course they have to follow the laws currently in place. If the legislature wants a different method by which to appoint Electors, they need to pass a law.

The ISL theory is nothing more than an attempt to subvert the entire Republic. If, somehow, SCOTUS decides that State legislatures don't need to abide by the US Constitution, or their State Constitutions, or their own State laws, then there will absolutely be violent consequences.

It is no mistake that the authoritarian wanna-be party is the one attempting this bullshit. They should be cautious about the potential to actually get what they want.

[Brett Bellmore]

" If, somehow, SCOTUS decides that State legislatures don’t need to abide by the US Constitution, or their State Constitutions, or their own State laws, then there will absolutely be violent consequences."

Yeah, there would be, but that's not ISL theory.

ISL theory doesn't say that state legislatures don't need to abide by the US constitution. Quite the contrary. What it says, essentially, is that in promulgating (federal!) election rules, they are in effect functioning as part of the federal government, and consequently benefit from the Supremacy clause, and can't be over-ruled by other state actors.

Even the strongest version of ISL still leaves them subject to the US constitution and federal judicial review.

[ReaderY]

But the “alternative slates” weren’t actually certified by the state legislatures. They were certified solely by the purported Electors.

[Brett Bellmore]

There IS a precedent from the Nixon/Kennedy race, IIRC, that probably shelters any alternative slate of electors who actually WERE electors, whether or not certified, for submitting their votes to Congress.

A lot of the 'alternative slates' were never actually elector candidates, and lack that shelter. But some of them have it.

[not guilty]

Your hypothetical bears no resemblance to what in fact happened following the 2020 election. No state submitted more than one slate of electors.

FWIW, though, the procedures to resolve your hypothetical are prescribed by statute. The pertinent language of 3 U.S.C. § 15 states:

If more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State shall have been received by the President of the Senate, those votes, and those only, shall be counted which shall have been regularly given by the electors who are shown by the determination mentioned in section 5 of this title to have been appointed, if the determination in said section provided for shall have been made, or by such successors or substitutes, in case of a vacancy in the board of electors so ascertained, as have been appointed to fill such vacancy in the mode provided by the laws of the State; but in case there shall arise the question which of two or more of such State authorities determining what electors have been appointed, as mentioned in section 5 of this title, is the lawful tribunal of such State, the votes regularly given of those electors, and those only, of such State shall be counted whose title as electors the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide is supported by the decision of such State so authorized by its law; and in such case of more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State, if there shall have been no such determination of the question in the State aforesaid, then those votes, and those only, shall be counted which the two Houses shall concurrently decide were cast by lawful electors appointed in accordance with the laws of the State, unless the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide such votes not to be the lawful votes of the legally appointed electors of such State. But if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted.

The role of the Vice-president is purely ministerial.

[John F. Carr]

A group of people from Michigan submitted a set of electoral votes for Trump claiming they were the "duly elected and qualified Electors". They were not. And as relevant to criminal intent, they did not have any plausible basis for believing this statement. Nobody had declared them the winners. Even if they had convicing proof that Democrats had committed election fraud, nobody had declared them the winners.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017e-3677-d41e-afff-fe7f35620000

One might imagine a situation, which did not happen in 2020, where the governor says "team blue wins" and the secretary of state says "team red wins" and each signs papers to that effect. Then perhaps the losing claim would not be fraudulent. To prevent this from happening in the future the electoral vote reform bill in Congress would make it clearer ahead of time which state official has the final word (subject to judicial review, if allowed).

Two states' fake electors were smart enough to explicitly qualify their votes as being contingent on the election results being reversed. I expect this to keep them out of prison. They merely wasted federal officials' time. The other five states' electors just claimed they were legit.

[Brett Bellmore]

That group of people are properly screwed, and rightfully so.

" To prevent this from happening in the future the electoral vote reform bill in Congress would make it clearer ahead of time which state official has the final word "

Even under the very weakest version of ISL, that would be Congress usurping the state legislature's authority to make that decision.

[Kazinski]

I wasn't aware of this before, but the Eastman theory wasn't original to Eastman. It was proposed during the disputed 1876 presidential election, and was not definitively rejected or resolved. And no charges were filed or even proposed:
"Electors cast their ballots in state capitals on December 6, 1876. Generally, the process went smoothly but in four capitals—Salem, Oregon; Columbia, South Carolina; Tallahassee, Florida; and New Orleans, Louisiana—two sets of conflicting electors met and voted so that the US Congress received two sets of conflicting electoral votes. At this point, Tilden had 184 electoral votes while Hayes had 165 with 20 votes still disputed.

The Constitution stipulates that the electoral votes be directed to the President of the Senate who was Republican Thomas W. Ferry. Although Republicans argued that he had the right to decide which votes to count, Democrats disagreed and argued that the Democratic majority in Congress should decide. A compromise was reached, and on January 29, 1877, the Electoral Commission Act established a commission of five senators (three Republicans, two Democrats), five representatives (three Democrats, two Republicans), and five Supreme Court justices (two Republicans, two Democrats, and one independent) to decide which votes to count and resolve the dispute."

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/disputed-election-1876

[Josh R]

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 requires certification of the electors, and thus precludes Eastman’s theory unless more than one set of electors was certified. The act of representing electors as certified when they were not could very well be a crime.

Moreover even when two sets of certified electors are presented to Congress, the Act gives Congress – not the VP – the power to determine which set is accepted.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I'm reminded of what happened in Maine in 1879 -- which is even worse than described here. There literally were two state legislatures, both meeting concurrently and various factions pointing cannons at the state capitol. Seriously.
https://www.sunjournal.com/2020/12/06/the-count-out-of-79-almost-brought-civil-war-to-maine/

[Kazinski]

Well we should note that both the 1876 theory, and Eastman's theory relies on the text of the 12th amendment, which does not have a clause giving Congress the ability to implement it with appropriate legislation.

If the statute conflicts with the 12th Amendment the 12th amendment of course is controlling.

[not guilty]

Nothing in the text of the Twelfth Amendment supports the theory that John Eastman propounded, which Eastman admitted would lose 9-0 before SCOTUS. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/eastman-admitted-bid-to-reject-electors-would-lose-9-0-in-supreme-court-pence-counsel-testifies/ No wonder Eastman asked to be added to the pardon list.

[Josh R]

My opinion of that argument matches Eric Herschmann’s opinion:

[...] John [Eastman]. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life. Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, how do you propose to deal with the fact that Congress, not state legislatures, fixes the Election Day. Seems like what happens with electoral votes post-election day either has to faithfully reflect the processes agreed upon prior to Election Day, or be regarded as illegitimate. Thus, if the agreed upon process for the election is voters choosing electors pledged to particular candidates, and that happens on Election Day, where is the room for rogue state legislatures to come in afterwards (which is to say not on Election Day) and set up some other system, follow it, and claim to have held an election?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If you're an Election official in a key county in a key swing state that started a Democrat funded PAC to oust one of the contenders in an election you're overseeing, and on election day an extreme amount of irregularities disenfranchising the voters for the contender you're PAC is targeting, should you be under any scrutiny?

https://arizonasuntimes.com/2022/11/23/maricopa-county-recorder-stephen-richers-founding-of-partisan-pac-raises-ethical-and-legal-questions-of-possible-misconduct/

Please Sarcastr0, Nige, Queenie and the other sad bootlickers, spare me any gaslighting about how trusty worthy Democrat government officials are.

[AmosArch]

the same suspects would probably swear up and down that places like Twitter were fairly moderated preMusk despite the plethora of evidence to the contrary including all the weird cultish material being unearthed at the headquarters.

[Nige]

Nobody ever swore anywhere Twitter was *fairly* moderated. The 'woke' got targeted for, often dumb, moderation just as much as anyone else. Some guy got banned for posting a picture of the sky because it 'contained nudity.'

[AmosArch]

"The ‘woke’ got targeted for, often dumb, moderation just as much as anyone else"

Nope

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/elon-musk-dinesh-dsouza-one-way-twitter-censorship

[David Nieporent]

Yep.

https://whatkindofidiotciteselonmuskforanythingrelatedtofacts.com

[Nige]

So if one guy who is busily and expensively demonstrating in a massively public way that he doesn't know how twitter works, and an ex-felon and serial liar say so, it must be true. If we don't hear about a certain cohort of users being 'let back on' twitter, perhaps it's because they're NOT being let back on? Or perhaps that cohort didn't violate twitter's tos quite as publicly and loudly as other cohorts? Or perhaps you don't hear about it because it's occuring outside your bubble, and theirs?

[AmosArch]

The twitter employees basically brag how woke and sjw they are everywhere except official boilerplate and you think people here are stupid enough to buy into your gaslighting that they're as centrist as the undriven snow? would you guys be as incurious if fundamentalist christians had a monopoly on reproductive services?

In this post alone you also basically claim beauty has no effect on success.

Celebrating thanksgiving makes you as bad as nazis.

Wow I'm not sure I want to travel to whatever alternate dimension you are on. lmao

[Nige]

Wow, everything you just said is wrong.

[Kazinski]

To be fair, for the most part they never claimed Twitter and Facebook were fairly moderated.

They said that they were privately owned and if you didn't like how they were moderated then get your own platform.

That position seems to have changed to assert Twitter is a public utility, and should have to conform to government content moderation standards.

[Nige]

Scrutinise away, if you find anything get back to us.

[David Nieporent]

The "Arizona Sun Times" is a deceptively titled astroturf political organization, not a newspaper; it's part of a series of fake news outlets (the "Star News Network") established on the Internet to sound like the names of actual legitimate publications but are actually just right wing fan fiction.

Setting that aside, setting aside your bad writing (you can't "oust" a "contender"), setting aside the Trumpian notion that if a Democrat is involved in something that automatically makes it improper (see the arguments that judges appointed by Democrats should not be allowed to hear cases involving MAGA; the arguments that anyone who supports Democrats should not be allowed to investigate or prosecute MAGA figures; the arguments that jurors who support Democrats should not be allowed to sit on cases involving MAGA figures); setting aside that nobody was "disenfranchised;"¹ setting aside that there were no "extreme amount of irregularities"; Richer is a Republican and also had no role in any of this.

So the answer to your stupid question is "No."

¹It takes extreme chutzpah to try to claim that, given that the GOP always pooh-poohs those arguments when Democrats complain about lines at the polls, and given that the lines were entirely the fault of Donald Trump and his goons telling his mindless acolytes not to vote by mail.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why does the Election Integrity unit of the State AG disagree with you?

Weird

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1594138026925756416/photo/1

[David Nieporent]

Weird. I don't see any mention of Richer's PAC anywhere in that letter.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why would there be?

[Noorondoor]

Nothing the left does it is in good faith. Once you accept that, the rest of their behavior makes a lot more sense.

[Ed Grinberg]

Yes.
I would posit that there is some connection between their ends and their willingness to use dishonest / illegal / violent means to achieve them.

[David Nieporent]

Like the 1/6 insurrection!

[Noorondoor]

Calling it an insurrection exposes you as a leftist partisan hack. "A mild protest" = "insurrection." "A gay man inserting his penis into another man's rectum" = "marital love."

Calling something something else doesn't make it so.

[David Nieporent]

Everyone knows I'm leftist!

[SRG]

The world's largest motes well in evidence.

[Mr. Bumble]

Well, here we are; Thanksgiving 2022, the official start of the holiday season and a traditional time to give thanks for the blessings we enjoy. I suppose that those of us that are here to celebrate should be thankful for that fact alone, after two years of the pandemic from hell (read China), the botched response to it including illegal actions by government at all levels in the name of "safety", riots and rampant violence and killer inflation with shortages (medicines, baby formula, fuel) and more on the horizon.

I suppose many are thankful for the entertainment of the Negro Felons League, but I'll pass. Lost interest about the time when John (8 drumsticks) Madden and Pat Summerall (the best play by play and color team ever) left the scene. Maybe I'll watch "Trains, Planes and Automobiles" with the grandkids.

Meanwhile, off in Whitelandia (Martha's Vineyard), with the illegals gone (well except for those doing the jobs Americans won't do and still masking) President? ZHOU BI DEN will be celebrating the holiday at the $20-$30 million home (Daily Mail can't decide on the value of the estate) of an average American billionaire. This Biden Appalachia will include the extended Biden family (of course excluding the bastard grand daughter whose name is never spoken) who will trade stories about how they (some of the dumbest people on the planet) managed to acquire so much wealth with so little effort and how lucky they are that this isn't 18th century France.

Now that I got that out of my system: Happy Thanksgiving!

[David Nieporent]

I wonder why MAGA types always get accused of racism.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What exactly is racist about what he wrote?

[David Nieporent]

The fact that either you don't think "Negro Felon League" is racist, or that you're so used to rhetoric like that that you passed right by it without even noticing it, speaks volumes about you.

[Nige]

I suppose it's better vomited out here than at the dinner table.

[Estragon]

“Negro felon league”… I have to admit that’s a new one for me. As far as I’m aware the most recently Minted NLFelon (innocent until proven guilty but still) is a white guy:

https://nypost.com/2022/11/23/titans-offensive-coordinator-todd-downing-speaks-out-after-devastating-dui-arrest/amp/

[Mr. Bumble]

Guess you don't count wife and girlfriend beating as anything serious.

[Mr. Bumble]

...a few more:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/795744-the-top-troublemakers-in-the-nfl

[Kazinski]

The Arizona Cardinals OL Coach and running game coordinator who was summarily fired after their Mexico City game on Monday for groping a woman the night before the game was white too.

[Noscitur a sociis]

...and I think that answers the question of whether I'll be reading another comment of yours again.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Q: How do you make a mass shooting vanish from the consciousness of a million Democrats?

A: Tell them they were committed by a black or a non-binary weirdo.

[Nige]

Democrats will be haunted by this, and other, mass shootings - you'll be claming endlessly that it vanished from their consciousness all the while propagating your lgbtq = groomer smear. It was nice of the shooter to leave you that 'non-binary' angle, wasn't it? I hope you're suitably grateful.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The only reason the Democrats might still remember this is because they’re sad they can’t use it to take away rights from conservatives and they're mulling over "what-if" gun-free utopias like Chicago or Detroit.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, no way anyone is legit unhappy about a mass shooting.

It is telling how many on the right posit a purely transactional worldview in their opponents. Says a lot about their pinched and narrow lives.

Also: liberals have guns too.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and use them to commit mass shootings.

[Nige]

Gun control!

[Mr. Bumble]

Felon control!

[Nige]

Imprison people to keep them free!

[Ed Grinberg]

No: imprison criminals to keep the rest of us free!

[Nige]

Yay for the private for-profit carceral system and it's fantastically effective reduction of mass shootings!

[Mr. Bumble]

As my late Grandmother would say; Nige your like horseshit, all over the place.

[Nige]

Not wrong though, am I.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you trolling right now about the club shooter?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

They are a non-binary identified individual.

Hilariously some tranny was on MSNBC and he said they could tell by looking at him he's a male and not an enby.

A standard, of course, that would be a hate crime if applied to that same ugly tranny.

https://twitter.com/chrisplanteshow/status/1595462738318327808?s=46&t=a50N-Rzzxunaz5JERkxKCQ

[Nige]

Right wing homophoioc edglords 'identify' as things all the time. It's their One Joke. A right-wing homophobic edgelord about to go shoot some lgtbq people does it, and you believe him? Of course you do. That's why he did it.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Are you telling me that the mere proclamation of a particular identity is not enough?

That is, if someone asserts they identify as a woman, that's not enough for the rest of us to have to treat them as such?

[Nige]

Right-wing homophobic mass murderers don't get the benefit of the doubt, oddly enough. But it's great that you got the opportunity in relation to a mass murder of LGTBQ people to use the One Joke.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"They" is schizophrenic -- any person (singular individual) who is under a delusion that the individual is actually multiple persons (i.e. "they") is schizophrenic by definition...

[Sarcastr0]

They has been used as a singular pronoun for hundreds of years.

[Don Nico]

That does not prove anything. People have been making many errors for hundreds of years. But you're free to use substandard English in the US.

[Sarcastr0]

Common usage over time is how languages change and work.

Substandard to your persnickety ass is pretty normal to most and has been for a whole.

In fact if you do pick that fight, some folks might draw conclusions. Because that ship has long sailed and you are the one behind.

[Josh R]

It’s common and doesn’t strike me as an error to say “they went to the store” when you don’t know the person’s gender. The alternative, “he or she went to the store,” seems wordy to me.

[Nige]

It’s not an error. It’s quite standard. It only became an ‘error’ when weirdos became aware of non-binary people using it and so, naturally, they declared War on Pronouns.

[Mr. Bumble]

No, about the Bernie Bro who shot up the Republican baseball practice.

[Sarcastr0]

Shooting after shooting, the right just keeps citing that one. Getting pretty raggedy as a deflection from recent events.

[Mr. Bumble]

Gaby Gifford’s shooter or even worse the uni-bomber.

[Sarcastr0]

Gabby Giffords shooter was unhappy about the use of evil numbers. Quite a stretch to make him a liberal.

[Noorondoor]

I don't think leftists are unhappy at all. I think mass shootings, especially of schoolchildren, makes them giddy thinking about how they can use it as a springboard to enact their tyrannical schemes.

They see dead people as collateral damage. I also think they got off on the fake story about the raped 10 year old who couldn't get an abortion.

[Nige]

I think you see people getting mad about mass shootings as insincere because to you mass shootings are an inconvenience you'd prefer to see ignored.

[Noorondoor]

No, I think they're insincere because they're insincere.

I know the solution to mass shootings. Liberals don't want to enact them because it'll require locking up our crazies and actually punishing our black criminals, both of which are important Democrat Party voting blocs.

[Nige]

Well no wonder, if you want to take away their rights while allowing mass shootings to continue.

[Noorondoor]

It's telling that you think locking up schizophrenics and violent black criminals is "taking away their rights."

[Nige]

It’s definitely taking away the schizophrenics rights, as for the criminals, it depends on the crime, I'm not sure locking someone up for buying a tiny amount of weed is going to prevent a mass shooting, and why black criminals in particular you racist freak.

[Don Nico]

'you think locking up schizophrenics "
Better to lock up people who have such primitive ideas as you have.

[Nige]

The only reason Democrats, or any decent person, might not remember this mass shooting is because there’s so many of them.

[Noorondoor]

With nearly all of them committed by your people.

[Nige]

Cis white men? Yep.

[Noorondoor]

No, your people being black men, the people your party panders to.

[Nige]

The people the Democrats treat as full citizens with the same rights to have their voices represented politically? No, my 'people' are cis white men, like yourself, it’s just I think that’s the right way to treat black people, and everyone else.

[Noorondoor]

When they exclusively use their "voices" to transfer free stuff from whites to themselves, then yes, they are showing themselves unfit with that responsibility.

[Nige]

Yeah, all that free stuff belongs to white billionaires by right. Black people pay taxes too, Charlie Brown.

[Noorondoor]

What a stupid response.

[Nige]

Oh no Noorondoor thinks I made a stupid response.

[Sarcastr0]

Please stop telling the white supremecist he’s bad; he clearly gets off on it.

[not guilty]

What mass shootings have been committed by black men?

[Ed Grinberg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Chesapeake_shooting
I guess you've been too busy tracking Trump's legal troubles... Gotta keep after the really dangerous people!

[not guilty]

You are apparently correct that the shooter there was black (although that is not indicated by the Wikipedia article you linked).

[Noorondoor]

Navy Yard? The Connecticut beer distributor factory?

Not to mention the playground mass shootings which are usually done by your garden variety thugs.

[Mr. Bumble]

DC sniper.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A "mass shooting" is defined by three or more people hit by a bullet -- not killed -- in a single incident.

That includes a LOT of the gang stuff in our cities...

[Mr. Bumble]

No POC friends?

[Noorondoor]

POC? Yes. Black? No. And I prefer to keep it that way. Associating with them is like being chained to a rabid dog. You never know when he's going to be go off.

[David Nieporent]

Fortunately, Jenna "Fired from traffic court" Ellis has reminded us that the victims weren't Christians and are in hell right now.

[StellaLink_the dog]

And not so long ago she outed Pa governor to be Shapiro as being insufficiently Jewish. Joe Biden, also, as being insufficiently Catholic. Note that Ellis is not a Jew and likely not Catholic either.

[dwb68]

I feel like his claim of being non binary is after the fact, as part of a defense. Yes, i know he claims to use they/them. He shot people, so being offended is hopefully the least of his problems.

[Martinned]

Meanwhile, obviously the biggest legal news of the day is that the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Burnett of Maldon, has announced his retirement.

https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/burnett-to-stand-down

[Brett Bellmore]

If you want more 'election denial', this is how you get more election denial. By persuading courts to permit election laws to be violated.

At this point I think either Democrats WANT Republicans convinced our elections are rigged, or just don't care anymore if anyone believes the results. Because they're sure not acting like having people accept election results is important.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It really isn't important to tryants like Democrats.

Seriously.

[Sarcastr0]

You know what courts should not take into account? Idiots who can’t handle losing an election might use this to complain more.

MAGA assholes will attack our democracy regardless, and deserve no special treatment,

Courts should rule in the law as they understand the law. Bretts should disagree with the law as they see it, but not go in to make stupid threats nor to declare the court broke the law by not agreeing with his non lawyer ass.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If you're a Democrat election official, and you know MAGA assholes are attacking our Democracy and you know you won't be held accountable for any malfeasance, would you manipulate election outcomes?

[Sarcastr0]

No.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Too bad these other civil servants aren't you.

[Nige]

Too bad you made them up in your brain.

[Nige]

Republicans want Republicans convinced elections are rigged - they're working REALLY hard at it. As with demonising mail-in ballots, I can see an obvious downside for Republicans with this strategy, but they really seem committed to it.

[Noorondoor]

The fact remains that mail in ballots make it much easier to cheat. It doesn't matter if cheating actually happens. Since you can't prove a negative, allowing mail in voting on a large scale will make people think you're cheating, especially when they almost always favor Democrats.

[Nige]

The fact is there's no proof for that claim. That claim, however, is being used to turn Republicans off mail-in voting, and voting in general. It's a race to whether Republicans can take over electoral systems and dismantle them before Republican voters get too disillusioned to vote at all.

[Moderation4ever]

You are talking to people who have no idea how the election process works. They believe that cheating is easy and have no idea just how hard it would actually be to do so.

[Noorondoor]

I think it stems from the fact that you and we have different ideas of cheating.

For example, I think the fat pig Stacy Abrams going door to door to register people, and encouraging them to fill out an application for a mail in ballot, promising them free stuff, and then returning in a few weeks to help them fill it out and mail it in, to be "cheating."

It benefits you and your parasitic party, so you don't.

[Moderation4ever]

I think your response says it all.

[David Nieporent]

KKKman thinks that allowing black people to vote is cheating, so he's not really worth talking to on the subject.

[David Nieporent]

Yes, it is easier to commit malfeasance with mail in ballots than in person ballots. But it still is not easy nor reasonable to think it happens (other than the occasional guy-turns-in-ballot-for-his-wife-who-died-a-few-weeks-ago sort of thing). It's easier to win the lottery if you buy two tickets rather than one — it doubles your chances! — but that doesn't mean it's reasonable to assume you're going to win if you do that.

And, of course, they don't "almost always favor Democrats." Indeed, until 2020, the conventional wisdom was that it benefitted Republicans. But then in 2020, as part of the pretend-covid-doesn't-exist MAGA movement, Trumpkins made a conscious choice to refuse to vote by mail, so it began to favor Democrats.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

All true, and also anti mail-in vote commenters here still haven't explained how they would have active duty military personnel vote.

[Noorondoor]

Limit mail in voting to people who have a legitimate need. Not wanting to get off your couch in your Section 8 apartment because you're too high or drunk (typical Democrap) to go vote isn't a legitimate need.

[David Nieporent]

Pretending that this was something other than a racist comment, what is the reason for limiting mail in voting to "legitimate need"? What benefits does that provide?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

If the objection is due to the alleged fact that mail-in voting is too easy to game, I don't see how that solution addresses that problem. For some reason I was hoping for something more substantive when I temporarily unmuted you.

[Noorondoor]

It's very much like Obama with his birth certificate. He sure acted like someone who had something to hide.

[Moderation4ever]

Or he was black and you know deep in your heart that they cannot be trusted. The fact that the first black President had to show his birth certificate when the previous 43 white Presidents did not should tell you that we still have a ways to go for equality.

[Noorondoor]

All of the others were born to two U.S. citizens (or colonists), so it was irrelevant.

[David Nieporent]

You mean that he had dark skin. He didn't act like he had anything to hide in any other respect.

[Dr. Ed 2]

“Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.”

If someone wrote that about me, if my agent wrote that on the dust cover of a book I'd written, I’d be requesting a formal retraction and correction…

[David Nieporent]

That was not written on any dust jacket of anything. You can't get anything right, can you?

[StellaLink_the dog]

Nor was the writer his "agent." Nor is there any evidence, or even credible claim, that Obama was even aware of it. Everything indicates that Obama was born in Hawaii, and very early on, Obama released a certified document from that state indicating that their records indicated that. There was never any non-crazy reason to believe Obama was born anywhere but Hawaii and there was no reason to believe he was hiding anything about his place of birth.

[Don Nico]

"You mean that he had dark skin. " but was reared with white privilege.

[Sarcastr0]

Dude, this is the birther thread.

[Don Nico]

But he did have white privilege, regardless.

[Sarcastr0]

Weird thing to try and divert the birther idiots thread to.

You either don’t understand privilege or are trying to be cute. Either way, not biting.

[Don Nico]

You check out the "white privilege" test that is distributed by the state of RI.
If anyone does not understand what privilege actually is, you can pin that charge on the usual woke crowd who consider those who grew up dirt poor in Appalachia (or honorary whites such as Chinese and Japanese) to have white privilege.

[David Nieporent]

Once again:

(1) No law is being violated. Know how I know? Because the people who actually have the authority to determine what the election law is said so. I mean, really, a unanimous Georgia Supreme Court, made up entirely of Republican justices, reject your argument, and rather than concluding that you don't know what the law is, you conclude that somehow they were tricked into permitting the law to be violated.

(2) Even if the law were unambiguous, and said, "Absolutely no voting is permitted on this particular Saturday under penalty of death, no exceptions," it would have absolutely nothing to do with "rigging" anything. You still autistically can't comprehend the difference between a substantive election law and a procedural one. Every single person casting a ballot on Saturday is required to fulfill the same requirements for eligibility (age, residency, registration, not being on parole or probation, etc.) as everyone voting every other day. Their votes are just as valid.

[Randal]

You’re correct that a major problem affecting this country is the extreme stupidity of the right. They’ve proven themselves to be massively susceptible to manipulation and brainwashing by charismatic con men and a propaganda-driven media bubble. So now they think elections are under attack by Democrats (among other retarded beliefs).

The correct response is not to coddle their delusions! That’s adding fuel to the fire.

The left just needs to get better at telling its story. Even though many of the left’s policies are broadly popular — including easy, convenient, fair voting with competent administration — we tend to craft messages that assume some intelligence on the part of the audience, and (relatedly) we aren’t afraid to debate amongst ourselves in public (which is confusing to the dumdums). There are practically zero Democrats I would trust with a national microphone anymore. Oh Obama(s), I miss thy oratory! But even he had a tendency to speak only to the elite. We really need to find like our next JFK to solve this problem.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

#DiedSuddenly

If you're a Pure Blood, your blood will boil.
If you're a GMO'd Vaxxie, well, your blood is probably already clotting.

[Moderation4ever]

Saturday was the start of Wisconsin gun deer hunting season. This is an annual tradition in Wisconsin and many families participate. As with any large hunting event there are some tragedies including gun accidents. The occasional hunter shooting another. This happened twice this year. Interesting to note that in both cases reported the shooter and the injured were in the same party. So best to keep eye open for your own members as well as others. One person shot themselves in the foot. They caught their hand on the gun and fired it trying to free their hand.

But the saddest was a 13-year-old shot by a hunter unloading his gun while in the car. The second amendment grants all citizens the right to own a gun, it does not tell you if you should have a gun. If you don't have the temperament or the wisdom to handle a gun properly maybe you should not have one.

[dwb68]

Why highlight guns? The #1 and #2 causes of injury/death during hunting season is hypothermia and falls from tree stands. Quite a few heart attacks too from overexertion. Dragging a deer through the woods is hard work!

So yeah be safe- wear your harness, bundle up, and get the teenager to drag the deer.

[Moderation4ever]

I am not highlighting guns, but rather that people are not as careful with guns as they should be. Handling a gun requires that you are at the top of your game, if you can't handle that go fishing instead.

[dwb68]

People are not as careful with cold weather, their health, and heights as they should be either!

Yet, you only mention guns. hmmmm.

I feel like youve never been hunting. Then you might know dragging a deer a few hundred yards is physically exhausting. Maybe its something you read about on The Trace.

[Moderation4ever]

I mention guns because it was not some middle-aged person that died of a heart attack, it was a 13-year-old boy who died from a gun shot. A young person with a life ahead of them now gone. I am not telling anyone they cannot have a gun. I am asking people to think and make sure they can handle the responsibility of a gun. No one should be afraid to ask that question.

[Life of Brian]

Dozens of innocent children die every year after their parents leave them in the car in hot weather. Stupid people make stupid choices. No reason to single out the gun-related ones other than cheap virtue signaling.

[Moderation4ever]

So, we are not allowed to talk about gun related deaths or that considered virtue signaling? What surprises me is that no one wants to say that some people should not have guns. That somehow saying that is taboo. Well, let me shock you by saying that people have a constitutional right to have firearms, but that doesn't mean all who can have them should have them.

[Life of Brian]

So, we are not allowed to talk about gun related deaths or that considered virtue signaling?

Not at all. Just don't pretend gun-related deaths are particularly the fault of the tool rather than the actor. This is not complicated.

[Nige]

Gun deaths are the results if the interaction of people with guns. Until guns become fully autonomous, they're not divisible.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Moderation4ever is encouraging people to be good actors, by asking them to handle their potentially dangerous tools responsibly.

I'd put my strident and reflexive hoplophilia next to anyone's, and I'm baffled why you think attacking someone for encouraging people to not inadvertently shoot themselves or their family members is going to be good for gun rights or gun owners.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Some people shouldn't have guns."

As a general proposition this is obviously true. The real controversy is about how we identify them, and what we do after identifying them.

If the process for identifying them is comparable to a felony trial in terms of due process, right to representation, trial by jury, presumption of innocence, and what we do after isn't unreasonably dangerous or destructive, (No knock searches for instance.) sure, why not?

But who's pushing such an approach? The whole point of "some people shouldn't have guns" seems to be to find some way to avoid all those protections.

[ragebot]

How many 13 year olds die in auto accidents?

[StellaLink_the dog]

In the US, more children (age 1-19) die of gunshot sounds than in traffic accidents. Don't know about those younger than one nor do I know why 19 yo are included.

[Brett Bellmore]

They include 19 year olds because limiting it to actual children wouldn't produce statistics that were useful for ginning up hysteria.

[StellaLink_the dog]

Glad to see you perform up to expectations, Bell End.

[David Nieporent]

Who cares about their health? It's them shooting other people that's the concern.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The issue with gun safety is that we used to teach it in the schools. Like fire safety and safety crossing railroad tracks (in communities that have them), it was something that we thought we ought to teach our children in elementary school — and reinforce in high school PE classes where they were taught how to shoot .22 rifles. Seriously — even the girls…

There is a lot to be said for teaching it — and while I despise paperwork, a requirement that one pass a basic hunter safety course before getting ones first hunting license.

Although hunter safety also covers things like hypothemia and drowning and other stuff…

[Roberta]

You can't conclude anything about temperament or wisdom from rare events.

[dwb68]

Happy Thanksgiving!
Pickled brined turkey stuffed with venison oatmeal stuffing. Roasted broccoli. broccoli casserole. mashed potatoes. cranberry orange relish. caramel apple pie (made from scratch).

[Sarcastr0]

https://www.npr.org/2006/11/23/4176014/mama-stambergs-cranberry-relish-recipe

The other off the beaten path recipe I use is a rice and sausage stuffing my Grandma invented because Gramps had ciliac.

[Dr. Ed 2]

By making it damn near impossible for the average person to assert his legal rights, the legal profession will provoke a revolution -- it's what provoked the French revolution.

[not guilty]

What on earth are you talking about?

[David Nieporent]

The trucker's strike he's sure is coming any day now.

[ragebot]

Probably the cost of retaining a lawyer.

[StellaLink_the dog]

I think he's talking about Darrell Brooks who was denied the right to demand that his lunacy about subject matter jurisdiction be considered. And, also his inability to address the jury about nullification.

[princess jasmine]

The revolution has already started
https://twitter.com/amazingmap/status/1595894117170647043

[DaveM]

Thanksgiving is our national holiday of family and friends. If you know someone who is alone today, call them up right now and invite them over. Nothing makes one more thankful than being generous and kind.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Outstanding comment.

[Ed Grinberg]

Yes, Art, "generous & kind" -- that's you all over!

[StellaLink_the dog]

One can be forgiven for lapses in generosity and kindness when in a nest of vicious vipers.

[Noorondoor]

Unless they're a liberal, in which case you can offer to lend them one of your guns so that they can shoot themselves and better the world.

[Estragon]

Happy thanksgiving to the conspirators! Quite a community we’ve cultivated over the years here

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It sure would make for one hilarious Thanksgiving dinner.

[StellaLink_the dog]

Leave your guns at the door.

[Krayt]

Avatar does not need to “gross $2,000,000,000 just to break even!”

As long as it doesn’t suck, the toy profits will be there. They are a magnitude larger than ticket sales and have wagged the dog on blockbusters for decades.

[Nige]

I don't have high hopes for this, the first one bored me senseless, which never happened in a James Cameron film before. Titanic was better. Hell Piranha II was better.

[Brett Bellmore]

I found it moderately entertaining. Not the most exciting movie I'd ever seen, numerous plot holes, (Like, they've got interstellar travel, but have forgotten "horizontal drilling"?) but I didn't come out of the theater thinking I'd wasted my time.

I mean, as an excuse to consume salty buttered popcorn and a frozen cherry coke, it wasn't the worst I've found.

[gormadoc]

I don't think Avatar did that well with toys. Maybe it will be different this time, but unlike Marvel or Star Wars where you see them everywhere, I don't remember anything from Avatar.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Which world is better:

MAGA 1992 or Democrat 2022

https://media.patriots.win/post/GeNe5z956IQE.png

[Nige]

I think most regular people are closer in appearance to the second picture rather than the first, including MAGAs, and that's ok.

[Krayt]

Yeah, that's more Hollywood vs. Reality.

Moreover, what idiot advertisers (or Hollywood) think we wanna look at the latter. That's getting up in the morning and looking in the mirror, if one wants to see that.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Wasn't that girl underaged? I seem to remember something along those lines. And what's with tramp stamps -- 20 years ago they were illegal...

[Sarcastr0]

Lower back tattoos were not actually illegal on 2002.

[Don Nico]

Did you mean tramps stamps?
I can't be bothered reading what Mr. Ed wrote.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, you got the picture.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Are you paid to write dumb shit, or is this a service you provide for free?

[Shamie Ervin iv]

In a small village somewhere in Middle America the men and women would gather at a grave site and say nice words about the deceased.

Then came the time when they were interring the carcass of a dirty old sheep thief, Joseph "Stanky" Knight, who was the scourge of the community. No one stepped forward to say anything comforting about him. Then a prominent citizen of the village stepped forward and clasped his hands together and delivered the following:

"I don't have any words devoted to the deceased. But I would like to say a few words of praise for the great gladiator of our freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and in particular, the endangered First Amendment. His name -- may it ring out like a clarion across this great country -- is Professor Eugene Volokh."

[MoreCurious]

Not surprisingly, according to an article in the NYT this morning, "The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns."

The article concludes by quoting a British journalist who, referring to the massacre of 20 children in 2012, said, "In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. . . . Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

[Brett Bellmore]

Not surprising in the sense that it's the NYT, and they'd never let statistical innumeracy get in the way of a politically determined conclusion.

[ReaderY]

A number of people have been fired in recent years for claiming black identity and engaging in blackish behavior after it was discovered that their birth race white.

Does the Civil Rights Act, as interpreted by Bostock, protect people with transracial identity or who engage in transracial behavior from employment discrimination “because of” their race?

This would appear at least on its face to be the case. Since black people who claim to be black or engage in behavior traditionally associated with black people would obviously not be harassed or fired, only non-black people would, the logic of Bostock would suggest that all firing and harassment behavior is “because” of race, using the same textual approach that Bostock used to determine that firing or harassing an employee for transexual identity or behavior is “because of” sex.

Why or why not?

[ReaderY]

For example

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/29/unmasking-another-white-professor-allegedly-posing-person-color

[gormadoc]

"Latines Unides" hurts.

[Bored Lawyer]

Because it's the fraud, not the racial identity, that's the reason for firing. I don't want a bald-faced liar working for me.

How you square that with Bostock, I leave to others.

[Dr. Ed 2]

But then I'd argue that transgendered are also fraudulent -- and it's far easier to prove that based on merely looking at body parts.

[Nige]

Yes but you also think lower back tattoos used to be illegal.

[Shamie Ervin iv]

Not illegal but ugly and a real turn-off for a doggie.

[ReaderY]

Exactly. Under Bostock, while the First Anendment protects the right of discriminatory bigots to claim tranracial people are frauds as an abstract matter, acting on such a claim or expessing it in a workplace setting constitutes discriminatory harassment, exactly the same as with transgender discrimination.

[Randal]

Chemerinsky — David Bernstein’s favorite Berkeley Law Dean — just clarified / walked back his denunciation of the Berkeley student groups’ ban on pro-Zionist speakers by analogizing it to a women’s group effectively barring Catholics by disallowing anti-abortion speakers. His new talking point is

Of course, student groups can decide what speakers to include based on their views.

and he decries the “outside agitators” who “demanded that the law school adopt a position that student groups cannot exclude speakers based on their viewpoint.” That’s you, David! And he downgraded the student groups’ bylaw from “antisemitic” to merely “upsetting” to explain his previous, harsher denunciation.

Oh and, he just published a book on originalism called Worse than Nothing. You can guess which side he’s on.

Not your favorite dean anymore, eh David?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-11-20/berkeley-law-student-group-israel-zionism-free-speech

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Ah, yes, those "outside agitators" again.

[gormadoc]

You may have forgotten who was who in that whole thing: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/14/chemerinsky-and-marcus-go-another-round-re-antisemitism-at-berkeley-law/

[Randal]

You're interrupting my trolling of David! He's constantly dropping references to Chemerinsky's original claim of being targetted himself as evidence of his charge of antisemitism, like this from just a week or two ago:

Effectlively boycotting 90+% of Jews, including those with far left views on Israel such as Dean Chemerinsky, is what’s clearly antisemitic, and what I criticized them for.

Chemerinsky has now explicitly refuted that charge by endorsing a hypothetical 100% boycott on Catholics.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I’m glad to see a school which rejects “disparate impact” ideas.

[Krayt]

and he decries the “outside agitators” who “demanded that the law school

That's the lawyer's stock in trade, outside agitation.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Started reading a book on CIA covert operations, possibly only covering assassinations, not sure yet. Surprise, Kill, Vanish, by Annie Jacobsen.

There's some discussion early on about assassination of national leaders being a Geneva war crime, but apparently only by civilians. The OSS turned a bunch of German POWs into an American army detachment led by a few OSS officers, trained them to attack Hitler's Eagles Nest, and this was considered legal whereas parachuting in a single civilian sniper would have been a war crime. Somehow I doubt the SS and Gestapo would have shown much Geneva-style POW leniency to these ex-German POWs.

What really surprised me was mention of the CIA founding laws making a distinction between Title 10 military operations and Title 50 CIA operations and blithely accepting it as legal for the CIA to kill American citizens without anything other than the President's OK. Makes a big deal out of the CIA plausible deniability firewall somehow making it all OK.

And that reminded of something I read long ago, that because Marines are ship's company, they can invade foreign countries to rescue diplomats, tourists, business people, missionaries, and other civilians, without it being considered an act of war; whereas landing an army is an act of war. I can understand this in the days of sail, where no fleet could just float around with an army "just in case". But nowadays, the US has 10 amphibious warships with several thousand Marines "just in case"; it's the entire purpose of these amphibious warfare groups.

So, two questions:

1. Is this Title 10/50 distinction one of those things no court will ever touch because "national security is above our paygrade"?

2. How much is there to this Marine/Army distinction when rescuing embassy staff and civilians trapped by civil war?

[John F. Carr]

The 10/50 distinction reminds me of the Boland Amendment. Congress said no intelligence agency could help the Contras. The Reagan administration interpreted that to mean the military could, and specifically Admiral Poindexter and Lieutenant Colonel North could. Some critics claimed later that the attempt to avoid the Boland Amendment was not legal. Even if the public had understood in time, nobody had standing to sue. The scheme came crashing down in part because the military was not that good at spy games. Would James Bond have made a typo in a wire transfer?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I seem to remember that Iran Contra crashed along with an airplane and one Eugene Hasenfus talking.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I would argue that either is an act of war -- although I also vaguely remember something about the right to go rescue your nationals if the country is unwilling/unable to protect them or enable them to leave, and diplomats are a special category in themselves.

The real test case on this was the 1983 Grenada invasion to rescue some 200 American medical students and Reagan sent in both the Marines and the Army, although he also had a coalition of other countries involved.

And the Army uses boats -- they didn't swim ashore on Normady Beach -- so I don't know what the difference is when you are invading by beachhead. Now as to going over land, ummm????

[Dr. Ed 2]

And the Marines have F-18s so if they bomb some place from the air, ummm....

[Roberta]

What's the difference? This country's obviously never going to let any other country convict an American of war crimes if the country doesn't want them convicted. They would never have entered into an agreement like that if they thought they could be held to it, and everybody knows that.

[Ben_]

Leftist's anti-American Thanksgiving message: https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1595748565569064960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1595748565569064960%7Ctwgr%5Ef8fb346e87940025172ee19322646f78aac6e393%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fdougp-3137%2F2022%2F11%2F24%2Fmsnbcs-joy-reid-reminds-us-why-we-should-feel-guilty-and-miserable-this-thanksgiving%2F

[Nige]

Oooh, anti-American, are you trying to bring that back? Do you think it's been long enough since it was used to attack critics of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, black sites, secret renditions, FISA warrants, Homeland Security and torture?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

America's biggest exports today are anal sex and child grooming.

[Nige]

It's all being exported directly to your brain.

[Roberta]

Child grooming my way?
http://users.bestweb.net/~robgood/small1.jpg
http://users.bestweb.net/~robgood/small2.jpg

[Sarcastr0]

Joy Ried is not exactly a fam of liberals or Democrats.

[Bill Poser]

Charlie Adelson, the brother of law professor Dan Markel’s ex-wife, was arrested a while back and charged with soliciting Markel’s murder. These are state charges. The murder and the alleged solicitation took place in Florida. The hit men and the intermediary are all Florida residents. Adelson was arrested at his home in Florida. Why is it, then, that according to news reports he was arrested by FBI agents and transported to a Florida jail by US Marshals? I’m puzzled by the federal involvement in what appears to be a purely state matter.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ever since the days of AOL, any internet message has been considered to be interstate due to the nature of how it is transmitted. And with phones increasingly VOIP, it means that an intrastate call may well have had packets routed interstate.

There is also the possibility of a not-yet-mentioned Federal nexis -- I always wondered what it was in the Varsity Blues case that included a Boston nexis, but I digress. Post 911 there are some funky Federal statutes for things which always used to be state crimes and maybe that is coming to play here.

And call me cynical, but maybe Florida officials refused to prosecute this.

[Bill Poser]

I thought of that, but if the communications were the basis for federal jurisdiction, why have no federal charges been filed? And in fact Florida officials have indicted Charlie Adelson, and they previously prosecuted both hitmen and the go-between.

[Noorondoor]

He was an idiot for getting involved with a woman with a lot of low class Hispanic associates.

Violence comes naturally to these savages.

[Estragon]

Uhhhhh, wut? These are your people Eugene!

[Longtobefree]

Well, with the FBI, these minor legal technicalities like laws just don't matter anymore.

[Estragon]

Informal poll:

Which do you like better “leakin’ sammy” or “Associate Justice Samuel A-leako”?

Wrong answers only

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don't think he did it.

[Estragon]

This is a good take but it needs an anecdote about umass Dartmouth and something someone told you in an Applebees in Dover-Foxcroft

[Estragon]

So, wait— there was a leak but it wasn’t alito? Or there wasn’t a leak? Trying to assess your grip on reality

[myself]

Since Alito is the most likely leaker they don't care about leakers anymore.

[Martinned]

Glad to see that this week there are a lot fewer comments than usual. My American friends should be doing something else on Thanksgiving than arguing with strangers on the internet.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I spent several hours yesterday turning a pig spit over an open wood fire in the backyard. My wife wanted a proper Philippine Thanksgiving meal.

Then we had a bunch of friends over for the actual meal, with a dozen kids running around, friends to socialize with, leftovers to pack for guests...

Fell into bed, and managed to hit my stretch goal of sleeping in until 7!

[Mr. Bumble]

Not sure if you'll find this but I'm curious as to whether Thanksgiving is formally celebrated in the Philippines?

[Brett Bellmore]

It was a formal holiday until '86, but still widely celebrated.

I mean, any excuse for a party in the Philippines.

[Noorondoor]

"Number two, the idea — the idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers."

This is what Biden and the rest of the left means when they say "reasonable common sense gun regulation." A ban on nearly every modern firearm out there.

When we sensibly stated that there was no technical difference between an "assault weapon" and any other semi-automatic rifle or handgun, we were told to "stop gunsplaining."

Now, the mask has come off, and Biden said what the left has intended all along.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Trudeu Castro is trying to do the same in Canada. Now he wants all firearms banned, not just the scary looking ones.

[Brett Bellmore]

If the very concept of citizens being armed scares you, there's no such thing as a non-scary gun in a civilian hand. They're working from an ideological stance that just flatly rejects the idea of private citizens being able to effectively defend themselves.

The idea that the gun control movement didn't want to ban every last one has always been a fraud. They admit as much occasionally, and then arrogantly demand that we forget.

[Sarcastr0]

This requires a well tuned definition of movement.

Yes, advocates are going to be for as. I have as they can get. No, that does not mean every Democrat in office agrees with that position.

[Noorondoor]

At one point, you were right. There were pro-gun right conservative Democrats. For the most part, there aren't anymore.

[Mr. Bumble]

When does everyone ever agree on anything? You're obscuring the fact that most Democrat politicians support that position.

[Sarcastr0]

You know this how?

Seems to me Dems federal, state, and local, are all over the map on guns.

The GOP is the group largely in agreement.

[Mr. Bumble]

“Seems to me Dems federal, state, and local, are all over the map on guns.”

Point to those Dems who oppose the gun control proposals put forth by the Biden administration and Congressional Dem leadership.

I'll wait.

[Sarcastr0]

These are dumb goalposts.

It’s not enough to have the position on your website, you gotta buck the party or else you favor confiscation of all guns?

No. This is dumb. You don’t care about what Dems really believe, you want to conjour a partisan demon to slay.

Fuck off and go stroke your gun. I agree with you substantively but you all can’t stop being crazy/wrong/lying about stuff.

[Nige]

What single US politician supports a full ban?

[Noorondoor]

Biden.

[Nige]

And he won the election? Must be a popular policy.

[Noorondoor]

He wouldn't have won if we limited voting to productive people, like the founders envisioned.

In any case, we don't infringe upon constitutional rights just because it's "popular."

Isn't that what you homos said when people were voting to deny "marriage" licenses to you to bless the sodomy you and your "husband" engage in?

[Nige]

I didn't say it was good or bad, I just said it was clearly popular. Y'know, if that was his policy. Which it wasn't.

[Nige]

'They’re working from an ideological stance that just flatly rejects the idea of private citizens being able to effectively defend themselves'

No, they're not. I know you have to pretend they do in order to justify your extremist position and refuse to take actions that might, for example, prevent school massacres, but you know they don't reject the idea of self defence.

[Noorondoor]

Yes, they are.

When you talk about "needing to do more" when a shooting is committed by a person with no criminal history using an ordinary handgun, you expose yourself for supporting a full ban.

[Nige]

'Needing to do more' about people getting shot? I know you'd prefer to do nothing, all those people getting shot is cool, actually.

[Noorondoor]

"Needing to do more" without any concrete proposals means you're just asking for a full ban.

[Nige]

Sure, Jan.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Can you give a quick sketch of what access to guns you do feel a private citizen should be able to have?

[Nige]

I don't know about private citizens but I'm not sure Noory up there should have access to so much as a pop-gun.

[Noorondoor]

You do more damage to society with your HIV infected cock than every gun every made has ever done.

[Nige]

Yes, I'm sorry about that, ever since it escaped it's been rampaging across the Midwest for weeks now, flattening small towns like a penis-shaped hurricane, God help us all if it reaches a metropolitan area.

[Nige]

'there’s no such thing as a non-scary gun in a civilian hand'

There's no such thing as a non-scary gun in anyone's hand, that's just common sense.

[StellaLink_the dog]

A short while later in the same comments he mentioned assault weapons. It's clear he made a mistake in his reference to semi-auto weapons in general.

[Noorondoor]

Not a mistake. A Freudian slip. As proof, he said it in reference to the Walmart shooting, which was done with a 9mm pistol. Not an "assault weapon" and not even a rifle of any kind.

Functionally, what makes an "assault weapon" dangerous and effective is that it can fire many rounds very rapidly. It's NOT dangerous because it has a collapsible stock or a pistol grip, but because it can fire many rounds as fast as the shooter can pull the trigger.

Well, guess what? That EXACT same characteristic applies to any ordinary S&W M&P or Glock 19.

When leftists say they want to ban "assault weapons," they always actually mean all semi-automatics.

[StellaLink_the dog]

"When leftists say they want to ban “assault weapons,” they always actually mean all semi-automatics."

That's a lie. Consider that in the entire history of the United States no assault weapons ban has included most varieties of semi-autos.

[Noorondoor]

Yes, and the bans that did exist were lambasted by liberals because manufacturers "used loopholes to avoid the laws."

[StellaLink_the dog]

Yes, and the bans that did exist were lambasted by liberals because manufacturers “used loopholes to avoid the laws.”

Which has nothing to do with the question at hand.

[Nige]

He's right about those guns, though. It's cos-play at the cost of making it easier for people to mow down children.

[Noorondoor]

Right, so you're supporting a full ban. Just what you claimed up above you're not. Don't you leftists ever stop lying?

[StellaLink_the dog]

Why don't you go back to discussing anal sex -- something you seem to know so much more about. You clearly don't understand the positions of the vast majority of people on the other side of the gun control debate from you.

[Mr. Bumble]

Enlighten us.

[Nige]

Those types of guns are ridiculous and embarrasing, it's for your own good.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Q: If Ukraine can repel Russia by itself why does the USA need all those troops in Europe?

[Longtobefree]

To keep an eye on the French?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The vaxxed now account for a majority of COVID deaths.

#REDDEER

[Mr. Bumble]

An inconvenient truth?

[Nige]

Mask up.

[Mr. Bumble]

I'm sure you've never stopped; dipwad.

[Sarcastr0]

BCD is a dumb as hell, but you are smart enough to realize how many vaccinated people there are versus unvaccinated. Assuming BCDs number isn’t some bullshit he pulled from rightwingmadeupcovidparanoia.com.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinated-people-now-make-up-majority-covid-deaths/

Bezos' billionaire elite mouthpiece will also tell you how to feel about that fact and give you some cognitive comfort.

Meanwhile don't forget the elites want you VAXXED TO THE MAXX and BOOSTED^5

P.S. why are you Leftards always so freaking ignorant?

[Sarcastr0]

Yep, you didn’t get it. You dumb as hell.

[Mr. Bumble]

Is that reply in code or is you dumb as hell?

[Sarcastr0]

It’s an ATHF reference.

But I have faith you see the flaw in BCDs dumb ads reasoning.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Using math and real data, can you explain it?

[Nige]

It hasn't gone away, you know.

[Sarcastr0]

Above he posts about Purebloods. He’s into some Harry Potter nonsense.

[David Nieporent]

Pureblood is a weird white supremacist word for people who haven't been vaccinated.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

lol everythings White Supremacist nowadays

Can you guys get a new script? I liked Ultra Mega MAGA. That was pretty cool.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What are the vaxx's supposed to be doing?

[StellaLink_the dog]

First, your claim that "[t]he vaxxed now account for a majority of COVID deaths," is patently false. US covid deaths total about 1.1 million of which many more than half were among the unvaccinated.

"What are the vaxx’s supposed to be doing?"
The vaccinated are less likely to contract the disease. Of those who get infected, the vaccinated are less likely to become seriously ill and less likely to die.

From the WaPo article:

Unvaccinated people 50 and up had 12 times the risk of dying from covid-19 than adults the same age with two or more booster doses.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

"Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation."

Is that a false statement?

[Nige]

Seems odd, I thought the vaxx was supposed to have killed everybody it was given to by now.

[Sarcastr0]

Lol a majority in august is not the same as a majority generally.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

My original statement:

The vaxxed now account for a majority of COVID deaths.

What claim am I making and what claim are you debunking? Are they the same?

[Josh R]

What claim am I making and what claim are you debunking?

He is likely debunking your implied claim that vaccines don't work or are harmful.

[Sarcastr0]

A majority implies a sum total, not like just this month,

Also your metric is dumb because there are a small number of unvaxxed these days. Sand 50% of a small number will be smaller than 2% of a much larger one. So your big significant stat was. Misleadingly presented and also just dumb.

[Nige]

Keep boosted, wear masks, ignore weird cranks like yourself.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

VAXXX TO THE MAXXX!

BOOOST!

lmao

[Nige]

Please do.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

An International Election Observation Mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki people) have recently reported on U. S. election laws and procedures.

Pages 14-16 are about “Candidate Registration” and include the following:

“Ballot access requirements and deadlines may disproportionately hinder access to the ballot for smaller parties or independent candidates. This may limit opportunities for smaller parties and independent candidates to participate, which is at odds with OSCE commitments and international standards.”

https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/f/e/530671.pdf

Some duopolists (you know who you are) are all about international brotherhood and human rights. What say you to this?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Anyone? Bueller?

[Mr. Bumble]

That lonely end of thread on the second day feeling.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

🙁

[Roberta]

It's one of those things the USA would never have agreed to had they thought it could be applied against them. And which they'll never submit to.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I myself am not necessarily impressed by all those European-based human rights organizations and NGOs. They still do good work, I imagine, but on many issues they've mutated their view of human rights into something which is virtually the opposite. But they get some things right, and this is an example.

For those commenters who swoon over "OMG international human rights," this report should be of interest.

[Roberta]

Why are there polities in the USA now (and for all I know in other countries too) where at the same time that the laws regarding cannabis are being liberalized, the laws on vaping, either generally or only of nicotine-containing products, are being tightened? I don’t mean cases where one level of government is doing one thing and another is doing the other, I mean where the same political unit is moving so schizophrenically.

I’ve been asking the same question on Quora.

Do these movements collide head-on when it comes to vaping of cannabinoids? Like, vaping bad, cannabis good, what if it’s both?