Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[Kazinski]

As the Twitter files get released I keep hearing they are a big nothing, but now we've heard that the FBI was paying Twitter (and almost certainly also paying Facebook, Google, etc.) to remove posts that were clearly protected by the 1st Amendment.

The courts have held before that voluntary compliance with government requests do not implicate the first amendment. But the fact the FBI was paying Twitter means that Twitter was not acting voluntarily, the were government agents under direct government control when they were censoring speech on their platform.

[jb]

Just so people just showing up don't have to try to scroll down and read between various messages to see:

This is incorrect. Twitter was paid to comply with 2703(d) demands for information by the government, which the law allows for. These are legal demands to produce information that are authorized by a judge. They have nothing to do with censorship.

Separately, the FBI referred some TOS violations to Twitter just as everyone else in the world is able to do. Twitter often chose not to heed these referrals, and pushed back on many requests/demands from the FBI in this and other realms.

A good, actually factual discussion of the topic can be found here: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-paying-twitter-to-censor/

[Armchair Lawyer]

Separately, it's pretty clear that Twitter felt pressured by many of the requests that the FBI was making.

Everybody else in the world doesn't have private meetings with the people in charge of censoring information at Twitter once a month or more often. It also is notable that everybody else in the world isn't paying Twitter $3 Million plus, and only after the ex-FBI head lawyer just happens to come over and be hired by Twitter.

[jb]

No, that's not at all clear. What is clear from Twitter's transparency report that they're much more resistant to demands from the government than most of the other big tech platforms (e.g., Twitter complied with 40% of requests for user information whereas Google and Facebook comply with ~75% and Apple is more like 80%).

The ~$3M or whatever the government was paying Twitter was pure cost-recovery and represents less than a tenth of a percent of their total revenue, so there are plenty of other people paying them lots more money that actually has margins attached to it. And I would imagine the FBI has regular meetings with not only each of the major tech platforms, but phone companies, ISPs, utility companies and other major infrastructure providers as well.

You're looking for a conspiracy where what you're actually seeing is the normal day-to-day operations of any large company, and one that is considerably more skeptical of the government than most tbh.

[Armchair Lawyer]

When the FBI is having monthly meetings with you. And Justice. And Homeland Security. When your legal executive is having "soon to be weekly" meetings with DHS, DOJ, and FBI...

That's pressure.

Most large companies don't have their legal executives meeting weekly with the the FBI, DOJ, and DHS....

[jb]

I mean, most large companies aren't constant conduits for online crime and illegal election misinformation. But similarly situated infrastructure providers and platforms absolutely have regular engagement with law enforcement.

It took me a single Google search to find this person as the top result for someone senior at Facebook who's whole job is to manage response to law enforcement:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/keyla-maggessy-b7a60ba/

[Kazinski]

"illegal election misinformation."

There really isn't much that is illegal misinformation in America except fraud and perjury.

And Twitter is not the platform of choice for either.

In terms of plain vanilla misinformation, which is almost universally non-criminal, Washington DC is its preeminent hub, not Silicon Valley.

[Randal]

Most large companies don’t have their legal executives meeting weekly with the the FBI, DOJ, and DHS….

Sure they do! What do you think the FBI actually does? Research aliens and then not tell anybody?

These are all the sorts of dangers of concentrated corporate power that Democrats have been pointing out for literally centuries. The problem isn't government pressure, it's coziness! For the most part, industry and government get along great and are only too happy to scratch each others' backs, including lax oversight and the revolving door of lucrative job offers.

Until like, last year, the Republican argument was that a cozy relationship between government and industry was a good and patriotic thing, strengthening both the market and policymaking apparatus.

So what changed? All this time, all we needed to do to get you on board was to spin up a conspiracy theory where conservatives end up butt hurt? Ok...

Guess what! Twitter hates conservatives! So does Disney, not to mention the automobile industry and the military industrial complex! They've all got too much power, yeah? Let's take them down!

[Gandydancer]

"The ~$3M or whatever the government was paying Twitter was pure cost-recovery..."

You know this how? As far as I have seen the amount is, excerpt in the case of court orders (when the court determines the amount) the amount is determined by mutual agreement and no substantiation of the implied calculations have been released.

I don't think Twitter etc needed to be paid to engage in politically inspired censorship but the opportunity to supply spiffs to compliant entities were there. It doesn't have to be a lot of money as long as it goes to the right lever-holder.

[Kazinski]

According to the Harvard Harris poll 74% of Americans think if Twitter employees were working with the government to censor peoples.tweets in violation of the 1st amendment, then they should be prosecuted.

64% think Twitter employees were engaging in.political censorship.

https://harvardharrispoll.com/key-results-december/

[not guilty]

The House January 6 investigating committee has made a referral for prosecution to the Department of Justice of Donald Trump and others for, among other offenses, corruptly obstructing, impeding or influencing an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to make a false statement 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1001, and inciting, assisting or aiding and comforting an insurrection in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2383. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23466415/introductory-material-to-the-final-report-of-the-select-committee.pdf

The first three of these are simple and straightforward. I am a bit skeptical, though, of charging Trump with a standalone crime, the gravamen of which is his address to the crowd outside the White House on January 6. I am wary of giving the current, result oriented majority of the Supreme Court an opportunity to opine that Trump's speech is First Amendment protected under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

The more useful application of Trump's remarks to the crowd (and his subsequent inaction while the riot occurred) is that they are probative of corrupt intent under § 1512(c)(2).

[David Nieporent]

Of course, the House referral (like all such "referrals") is purely performative. The DOJ prosecutes based on its own judgment, not based on "referrals." It will decide whether it thinks it has a good enough case and whether it thinks the political blowback will justify it. What the House J6 committee thinks is irrelevant.

[Sarcastr0]

I would imagine a Congressional referral would lead to some political cover that could effect the calculation.

I didn’t know too much about these referrals, so I looked it up:

In the U.S. federal government, regulatory and law enforcement agencies that investigate crimes must typically refer cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution at its discretion. These referrals may not require formal documentation, but may include a case report. In a direct referral, agencies refer cases to the U.S. Attorney in the district where the crime occurred.The United States Congress and its members, in their investigative role, issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department as well. State attorneys general often refer federal crimes to the Justice Department. Investigative bodies under the Justice Department itself may also issue referrals to U.S. Attorneys, such as the case against Michael Cohen in the Southern District of New York, which was referred by the Mueller investigation.

Private counsel may also make criminal referrals on behalf of clients who have been victims of both civil and criminal wrongdoing.

[David Nieporent]

I would imagine a Congressional referral would lead to some political cover that could effect the calculation.

In some instances, perhaps. Not in a prosecution of Donald Trump. "Well, I would've assumed this prosecution was unjustified and political, but since Congress suggested it, I'll withdraw that objection," said no one ever.

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/01/13/fdr-roosevelt-coup-business-plot/

500,000 armed (by Remington) veterans versus man with spear?

[not guilty]

Kazinsky, what is your evidence that the FBI was paying Twitter?

[Gandydancer]

You know how to highlight "the FBI was paying Twitter", right click, and choose "search for"?

[Kazinski]

An admittedly obscure and fringe site, Reason.

https://reason.com/2022/12/19/the-fbi-paid-twitter-3-4-million-for-processing-requests/

[Kazinski]

Test, are replies working?

[Kazinski]

Nope. Replies aren't working, this should be fun.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Even worse, mute user isn't working!

[Noscitur a sociis]

Kazinski wrote:

As the Twitter files get released I keep hearing they are a big nothing, but now we’ve heard that the FBI was paying Twitter (and almost certainly also paying Facebook, Google, etc.) to remove posts that were clearly protected by the 1st Amendment.

This seemed to be the impression that the “Twitter Files” reporters were trying to create, and certainly seems to have been the takeaway for many.

But it seems pretty obvious to me that the payments referenced were the compensation for Twitter responding to legal process (i.e. search warrants, grand jury subpoenas, 2703(d) orders, and so forth).

Am I missing something?

[Gandydancer]

Apparently you're missing the difference between purported purpose and actual purpose.

Though in this case it's chump change and an anyway eagerly compliant government agent.

[Kazinski]

Noscitur a sociis:
"Am I missing something?"

I think so. I think you would know better than I, is it routine for someone to be compensated for responding to a subpoena?

When a bank or a phone company gets a subpoena, do the send a bill with the records? I've never heard of that, I thought it was a legal requirement that's part of doing business.

[santamonica811]

How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump's tax returns?

On one hand, I don't love having someone's private records released to the public. On the other hand, since the United States President IS treated differently in so many ways (Just to give one example, even the most overwhelming lawsuit can't proceed against a sitting president--absent her or his consent, of course-- while that person is still in office.), I don't really see a slippery slope concern. Also, in the particular case of Trump; this is a guy who swore and promised that he'd release his taxes, and then lied repeatedly about doing it. So, it seems like the House can merely frame it as, “Hey, we're helping Donald Trump not be a liar. We're simply accomplishing what Trump told us he was eager to do.”

Over the past few days, I've seen commentators on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN observe that the public having access to the past tax returns is of minimal value, since Trump is no longer president. This is weirdly myopic to me, and not a single person, on any network, pointed out that TRUMP IS AGAIN RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!!! How on Earth are the tax returns for current presidential candidates not beneficial, for Republican primary voters, and, after the primary, all voters in the general election)?

If I were a Dem politician, I would loudly push for legislation mandating the IRS release of tax returns for any announced candidate for president (and, for every person named as VP running mate for all parties). Going back some period of time. Say, 3 years. Or 5 or 7 years. But it would be done automatically. You want to run for the most powerful office in the world? Fine, but one trade-off is that America will see your recent tax returns. This new law should require IRS release within, say, one month. That would give the agency plenty of time to redact things like Soc. Sec numbers, etc.. I would hope that my fellow Republicans would get behind this—the immediate target of this law would be Democrats, after all, since Biden and Harris are currently in office.

Trump's norm-breaking was usually a horrible thing. And sometimes dangerous. But we can turn his dissembling and dishonesty into a real positive. Just imagine the national outrage if Biden had had Trump's lack of character and integrity, had similarly refused to release past tax records . . . and we therefore had no idea if his tax returns showed craploads of money coming in from China that related to his son's sleazy business dealings. Whatever we think of the Bidens; at least we already know that, in the years where Prez Biden released his tax records, Joe Biden had no such income that made it into his tax records.

Some information is miles better than no information.

[Kazinski]

"How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump’s tax returns?"

I am eager to see the evidence of illegality and fraud everyone insisted would be exposed.

Not to mention the clear evidence of Russian subsidies propping up Trump's shaky business empire.

[bernard11]

The Ways and Means report lists a number of items the agent examining the 2015 returns thinks need to followed up:

The designated agents found that the following issues, among others, warranted examination by the IRS:

• Charitable contributions—whether the 2015 conservation easement deduction of $21 million and other large donations reported on the Schedule A were supported by required substantiation.

• Verification of Net Operating Loss Carryover Schedule—whether the amount of net operating loss carryover in 2015 of $105,157,825 and future years was proper.

• Unreimbursed partnership/S corporation expenses—whether the terms of the partnership agreements supported unreimbursed expense deductions totaling $27 million over six years.

• Related party loans—whether loans made to the former President’s children are loans or disguised gifts that could trigger gift tax.

• Cost of goods sold deductions by DJT Holdings—whether these deductions of about $126.5 million over five years is appropriate when it is not clear what DJT Holdings is selling from the face of the return.

• LFB Acquisition LLC—whether there is any support for changes in the management fees and general and administrative expenses of LFB Acquisition that were significantly higher in 2017 ($1.9 million and $2.8 million, respectively) than 2016 ($750,000 and $549,000, respectively) and 2018 ($707,000 and $570,000, respectively).

The thing is, contra Brett, you don't just skim through a return and immediately find all kinds of fraudulent stuff. You have to investigate matters, get documentation, etc.

[Gandydancer]

How long has the Committee to Get Trump already had to do that?

And the legitimate reason to do the release before doing that is?

[not guilty]

CNN reports that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did. Trump’s Save America political action committee funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/politics/trump-ethics-lawyer-passantino-cassidy-hutchinson-misleading-testimony-jan-6/index.html

[bernard11]

He also told her she might get a very well-paid job, which possibility disappeared after her testimony.

Is an offer like that attempted bribery? If not, why not?

[not guilty]

I think it would be. 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(3) provides that whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, or offers or promises such person to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence the testimony under oath or affirmation of such first-mentioned person as a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding, before any court, any committee of either House or both Houses of Congress is subject to up to fifteen years imprisonment.

Ms. Hutchinson fired Mr. Passantino and obtained other counsel before testifying.

[not guilty]

Payment to Twitter appears to be not only authorized, but required by 18 U.S.C. § 2706(a):

Except as otherwise provided in subsection (c), a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information under section 2702, 2703, or 2704 of this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information. Such reimbursable costs shall include any costs due to necessary disruption of normal operations of any electronic communication service or remote computing service in which such information may be stored.

[Frank Drackman]

Trumps tax returns confirm what he told Hillary Rodman in 0-16 (He should be added to Mount Rushmore solely for saving Amurica from that Bee-Otch)
"He's Smart"
Paul Pelosi's Credit Card records would be more interesting, he strikes me as the kind of guy who pays for his Prostitutes with his Mastercard.

Frank "Pays Cash"

[Mr. Bumble]

If the reply feature stays down all day today, this should be a fun thread.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Not guilty, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s a duck.

The media is trying to make this a big nothingburger because of their precious fucking narrative, but take the money out if it. Why is the FBI telling Twitter which posts to remove at all? Why is the FBI asking Twitter for information on its customers with no warrant or probable cause? Why are people on the left so eager to dismiss such egregiously inappropriate (and potentially unconstitutional) behavior?

They whine about Trump being a DANGER TO DEMOCRACY!!!! but the simple truth is that our forever perpetually corrupt and politicized FBI is a much bigger danger to us and our rights than a hundred Trumps would be.

Trump is awful, but it’s mortifying that y’all are letting the FBI and the DHS get away with the crap they’ve been doing just out of your distaste for Trump. If social media companies are going to snoop on us like they do for themselves while acting as arms of the government, then they should be shut down. This is just more of the shit that creates distrust in our incompetent “elites” and gives us Trumps in the first place.

[Nige]

‘Why is the FBI telling Twitter which posts to remove at all?’

It isn’t, and wasn’t.

‘y’all are letting the FBI and the DHS get away with the crap they’ve been doing just out of your distaste for Trump’

I’d rather the FBI and DHS not be allowed to get away with stuff it’s actually doing, not stuff it’s not doing. It’s mortifying that you believe the shit that Trump and his supporters say, despite your protestations that you claim to know how awful they are.

[Randal]

Why is the FBI asking Twitter for information on its customers with no warrant or probable cause?

Good fucking question! Geez guys, can we repeal the PATRIOT act already? And reform the FISA court? Glad to see the right finally wising up to the dangers of intrusive government surveillance.

[apedad]

Last Thursday, the National Archives released @ 13,0000 documents about the JFK assassination.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release2022

[Don Nico]

Apedad,
And the answer is? Please tell us.
I don't have time (or even the desire) to look over 13000 documents

[Mr. Bumble]

"Last Thursday, the National Archives released @ 13,0000 documents about the JFK assassination."

Nothing like waiting for sixty years to release it. Government transparency at work.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The concept of law in America is breaking down.

Now that we have the Dems making political referrals for criminal prosecution, the new House GOP majority can do likewise. Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Lynn Cheney -- why not just do it because you don't like people? The Dems did.

Initially, both the President and Congress had access to tax returns. Nixon abused it, and now Congress has abused it, and Congress should lose that access too.

But why no demand to see Biden's tax returns -- we'd love to see all that CCP money....

And what will the anti-tax nut cases be able to do with Trump's taxes being public? Could it strengthen their refusal to file?

[bernard11]

IANAL, but a referral is not an indictment. If there is no backup it is pointless.

I could call the FBI and say that Dr. Ed is committing bank fraud. I don't know if that counts as a "referral," but absent any support for the accusation I suppose it would carry as much weight as the Republicans "referring" Schiff or Cheney.

But why no demand to see Biden’s tax returns — we’d love to see all that CCP money

You're a moron. Biden's returns are public and have been for years. Knock yourself out looking for the CCP money.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Mr. Bumble, it's what the National Archives didn't release....

[bernard11]

How do you know what they didn't release?

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.newsweek.com/letter-biden-explains-why-cia-wants-withhold-parts-jfk-files-1767555

[OtisAH]

Here’s something for the usual idiots to ignore, misunderstand, and lie about.

“No, the FBI is NOT ‘paying Twitter to censor.’”

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-paying-twitter-to-censor/

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

On my mind: all the fuss about fusion seems to be eclipsing the much more exciting, much more likely to produce benefits and profit sooner, discovery of a simple method for synthesizing tetrataenite in bulk-quantities in the lab, using a phosphorus catalyst.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I'm assuming your thinking fixed field magnets for electric motors.

I found MIT's research on superconductors -- part of the fusion -- to be more significant. MIT claimed a 90% reduction on loss.

[Brett Bellmore]

"How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump’s tax returns?"

Two things.

First, Congress swore they had a legislative purpose for obtaining the returns. That IS, after all, their only legitimate basis for getting them, they don't have criminal investigatory powers.

They lied. And they don't even mind people knowing they lied. Releasing somebody's legally private returns serves no legislative purpose. Well, fair enough: Everybody knew they were lying at the time.

Second? No sensible person should think for even an instant that their tax records are private, even if that's what the law says. Anything you divulge to the government is subject to being used to political ends. And, again, they don't care anymore if you know that.

That's what really concerns me, at this point: They no longer care if you know. You can say that about so many things now, that it's becoming somewhat concerning.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Last Thursday, the National Archives released @ 13,0000 documents about the JFK assassination."

But not all of them, of course. Never all of them. The freaking assassination took place over a half a century ago, and they're STILL keeping stuff about it secret.

[apedad]

N.Y. Appeals Court Rules Yeshiva University Must Recognize LGBTQ Student Group, Finding the State’s Human Rights Law ‘Neutral’

A New York appellate court ruled that Yeshiva University must recognize its students’ LGBTQ pride group, rejecting the school’s First Amendment arguments of religious freedom and the right to associate.

In the lower court, Judge Lynn R. Kotler noted that Yeshiva University took a decidedly secular turn since its initial founding to promote the study of the Talmud. The university amended its charter to allow secular degrees and clarify its corporate status as a “non-denominational institution of higher learning.”

In light of that trajectory, Yeshiva no longer met the definition of a religious corporation, the lower court and the appellate court agreed.

“The record demonstrates that Yeshiva already recognizes LGBTQ+ student organizations at three of its graduate schools, which are legally part of Yeshiva’s corporation, has done so for over 25 years, and made clear as early as 1995 that this recognition did not mean Yeshiva endorsed or accepted the views of those student groups,” the appellate court noted. “As such, and in light of Yeshiva’s corporate purpose as an institution of higher education, we find that denial of recognition for the Pride Alliance is not ‘essential’ to Yeshiva’s ‘central mission.'”

https://lawandcrime.com/lgbtq/n-y-appeals-court-rules-yeshiva-university-must-recognize-lgbtq-student-group-finding-the-states-human-rights-law-neutral/?utm_source=mostpopular

Did I miss Prof. Blackman’s follow up on this (from his 9/23 blog), where he wrote, “Third, YU Pride Alliance, you are going to lose, so settle this case to avoid a landmark First Amendment ruling.”

[elnurmamedrafiev]

It's not over yet. The federal courts still haven't heard it, and the New York appellate court that heard it is full of Democraps.

[apedad]

It’s been a while since we’ve highlighted America’s favorite lawyer.

Alex Murdaugh faces more financial-related charges after a state grand jury indicted the former South Carolina lawyer on nine counts of tax evasion, the state Attorney General’s office announced Friday. The attorney general’s office said Murdaugh was indicted on nine counts of will attempt to evade or defeat a tax. The indictment, filed in Hampton County, alleges that between 2011 and 2019 Murdaugh failed to report nearly $7 million of income “earned through illegal acts,” causing state taxable income to be under reported to the state.

Here's a good timeline of the trail of death (including his fake "attempted" suicide): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/alex-murdaugh-indicted-murder-charges-summary-timeline-rcna38026

[apedad]

Looks like he'll get to live though.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/disbarred-attorney-alex-murdaugh-avoids-death-penalty-as-prosecutors-seek-life-without-parole-in-double-murder-case/

[apedad]

RE: Kazinski's (first) post "that the FBI was paying Twitter (and almost certainly also paying Facebook, Google, etc.) to remove posts that were clearly protected by the 1st Amendment."

Even Fox News is reporting that's NOT the case.

The FBI merely asked Twitter to review certain posts to determine whether they were in violation of Twitter's terms.

The FBI DID NOT ask/task Twitter to take any action against any posts, e.g., removal.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-responds-twitter-files-disclosures-says-didnt-request-any-action-specific-tweets

[Gandydancer]

Sure. "We're expecting "Russian disinformation", Now, look at there tweets. Btw, it would be a shame if something happened to Sec. 230 because you didn't take down tweets like the ones we think these are."

Better safe than sorry, said Twitter.

Or, "Thank you so much for helping us identify tweets that might hurt Democrat chances to win!"

[Mr. Bumble]

"The FBI merely asked Twitter to review certain posts to determine whether they were in violation of Twitter’s terms."

When did that become the role of the FBI?

[Randal]

When Russia determined the outcome of the 2016 election.

Patriotic Americans don't like it when that happens.

[Life of Brian]

Wow, how spoiled we've become with the concept of threading. This feels like we're back in the 80s on a BBS message board. Rock and roll!

[Gandydancer]

That's not "threading". That's just a tree structure. And many, many versions of commenting software don't have it. And many versions of BBS software did.

[Michael P]

apedad, you could at least be honest enough to admit that Fox News reports that those supposedly mitigating facts are what the FBI claims -- Fox didn't endorse them as true.

[Dan Schiavetta]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgFo9STa70E

[bevis the lumberjack]

Apedad - payment or not, how the fuck is Twitter’s enforcement of its TOS any of the FBI’s business?

“Merely asking Twitter to check certain posts” means signaling to Twitter which posts should be removed. That’s merely government suggested censorship, which I guess you’re ok with.

[Dan Schiavetta]

P.S. The Edit function doesn't work, either.

[OtisAH]

Whatever you do Bevis, don’t learn anything at all about it so you can keep asking questions and voicing your ignorant (but so perfectly nonpartisan) anger.

You know, be you.

[bevis the lumberjack]

And speaking of Fox News, I saw where Dominion finally got Hannity under oath related to their defamation lawsuit against Fox and when asked about pushing the stolen election crap on the air for more than a year Hannity said “I never believed it for one second”.

There’s our modern narrative oriented news in one sentence. Just pushing bullshit to attract clicks and eyeballs. And our media, of all sizes and flavors, is completely ate up with it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I don't watch Fox. I caught on pretty quick that their people, like Hannity, were basically just actors, playing the role of conservatives, as understood by left wingers. Not actual conservatives.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Now that we have the Dems making political referrals for criminal prosecution, the new House GOP majority can do likewise."

Yeah, so? Why? So that the DOJ can have a stress relieving belly laugh? Congressional criminal referrals don't mean squat when the DOJ is controlled by the other party.

The GOP establishment are known for this sort of theater: Empty gestures when out of power, and doing squat when in power. I don't know why anybody pretends to take it seriously.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"“How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump’s tax returns?”"

In an action that surprises no one, after months, years, of solemnly swearing they needed Trump's tax returns for legitimate legislative purposes of reviewing the IRS action, and didn't just want to release them publically for political gain...Democrats turned around, didn't do the legislative purpose, and just released them for political gain.

And what did we learn? Like other rich people, (Bezos, Soros, etc), Trump manages to structure his income to avoid paying federal income taxes some years. Whoop....

But I look forward to the full weaponization of the IRS in the future, as the House GOP can now access and release people's tax returns for "oversight" purposes. We can start with Biden's returns....his full returns, including his unreleased S-Corp returns, where he funneled most of his income through to avoid self employment taxes and hide actual income sources.. We can follow that up with Hunter Biden's tax returns, figuring out where all his income was coming from, and what foreign nationals were paying him. Then we can get Kevin Morris's tax returns (That being the Hollywood Lawyer who paid off Hunter's $2 Million tax bill). We want to know, was that a gift? 0% Loan? Business expense? Maybe next we can see James Baker's tax returns...

But this of course is just for oversight of the IRS. A purely legislative purpose.

[apedad]

Brett B:

"I caught on pretty quick that their people, like Hannity, were basically just actors, playing the role of conservatives, as understood by left wingers. Not actual conservatives."

"The GOP establishment are known for this sort of theater: Empty gestures when out of power, and doing squat when in power. I don’t know why anybody pretends to take it seriously."

Just a man without a political party. . . .

Can anyone spare a tissue for Brett?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Brett says:

"First, Congress swore they had a legislative purpose for obtaining the returns. That IS, after all, their only legitimate basis for getting them, they don’t have criminal investigatory powers.

They lied. And they don’t even mind people knowing they lied. Releasing somebody’s legally private returns serves no legislative purpose. Well, fair enough: Everybody knew they were lying at the time."

The facts show, that despite it being mandatory, the IRS somehow failed to audit Trump while President until THE VERY DAY that his tax returns were requested.

The facts also show that his returns are highly suspicious, which the mandatory audit would have revealed had the Treasury Department and IRS done their jobs, like they've routinely done while Obama was in office, as well as Biden.

So your claim of 'no legitimate legislative purpose' is clearly bullshit, seeing as how the request has exposed political bias, and a failure to follow mandatory procedures. Now those procedures will be addressed with legislation.

Never expect Brett to announce an honest conclusion.

RE: Armchair Lawyer

Same shit, different day. You, like Brett, are ignoring the truth in favor of your partisan scoreboard. Notably, a scoreboard you claim to not participate in, yet here you are complaining again about Democrats while ignoring the evidence revealed.

You are exactly the partisan asshat you claim to not be.

[Don Nico]

"The facts also show that his returns are highly suspicious, which the mandatory audit would have revealed had the Treasury Department and IRS done their jobs, like they’ve routinely done while Obama was in office, as well as Biden."
But the House also did nothing except to make the confidential documents public.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

That is flatly untrue Don, and you know it.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Hell, I’m without a political party and quite content about it. Neither of the extreme, absolutist, dishonest, and unprincipled parties that we have come close to eliciting anything from me beyond scorn.

[Life of Brian]

MSN here (purporting to report on the NYT story, interestingly enough) has at least one shred of context around the Hannity soundbite:

with respect to the idea that Democrats were silencing whistleblowers claiming that Dominion had flipped or rigged votes, “I did not believe it for one second.”

In the spirit of the other big story swirling around here, I say let's see the entire transcript. Quoting just a few words of damning-sounding language plucked out of context from a sealed deposition is a pretty chickenshit move.

[not guilty]

"I say let’s see the entire transcript. Quoting just a few words of damning-sounding language plucked out of context from a sealed deposition is a pretty chickenshit move."

Can you hypothesize any "context" that could take the sting out of Hannity's admission, “I did not believe it for one second”? Just this once, go ahead and speculate.

[Commenter_XY]

I also want to say....bring back the reply functionality, please!

[Don Nico]

On this one, I disagree C_XY.

[Mr. Bumble]

FTX founder SBF is back in the US and in FBI custody. Let me be the first to say that SBF did not kill himself.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I saw out on bail.

[Mr. Bumble]

"I also want to say….bring back the reply functionality, please!"

Dominion is working on it.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The facts show, that despite it being mandatory, the IRS somehow failed to audit Trump while President until THE VERY DAY that his tax returns were requested."

I will be interested to see if that's actually true. I mean, meaningfully true, not some technicality BS like the IRS routinely auditing Trump every year, and not having seen the point of doing it twice to check a "Mandatory Presidential Audit" box.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Can you hypothesize any “context” that could take the sting out of Hannity’s admission, “I did not believe it for one second”? Just this once, go ahead and speculate."

Well, the most obvious context would be the "it" being some minor detail. Maybe he didn't believe the Democrats were actually silencing whistleblowers.

I mean, it's easy to dismiss the potential of context to change meanings, but it's not for yucks that the MSM normally omit context. It's because context gets in the way of dictating the narrative.

[Michael P]

not guilty: Easy. "Did Biden legitimately win the election? I did not believe it for one second."

You never try hard to think outside of your box, but this is a new low even for you.

[elnurmamedrafiev]

Why are all comments showing at the bottom? Embedded replies no longer work.

[elnurmamedrafiev]

The left continues to act in bad faith, actively resisting Bruen. The lower courts have no intention of complying, because there's no penalty for their refusal to do so.

[Randal]

Bruen is impossible to comply with without a research department.

This "history and tradition" bullshit will be the death knell of originalism, and will undermine Heller as well. It's a stupid idea, and originalism didn't need to go there if only it had remained rooted in textualism rather than deciding to divorce constitutional interpretation from the text entirely. (See Heller's treatment of "militia.")

[Life of Brian]

Can you hypothesize any “context” that could take the sting out of Hannity’s admission, “I did not believe it for one second”?

Um, yes. Let's start with the one I quoted in the MSN article, which you either didn't bother reading or are choosing to ignore. Even that suggests the "it" in the soundbite refers to one specific claim, not all of them.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Another interesting January 6th Report came out.

It details the massive security failures, the inadequate preparation of the Capitol Police, and how Nancy Pelosi's office was intimately involved in the security planning, and deliberately avoided any of the sensible precautions which could have avoided January 6th, in favor of "optics".

https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2022-12/FINAL%20Report%20of%20Investigation.pdf

[David Nieporent]

Weirdly, this "report," which is really just something a handful of members of Congress cooked up on their own, somehow forgets that Nancy Pelosi did not actually have anything to do with it, and that the Capitol Police are not controlled by the House of Representatives.

[Mr. Bumble]

Not true!

[David Nieporent]

No, it's entirely true. The Capitol Police report to the Capitol Police Board. The Capitol Police Board has three members: the House Sergeant at Arms, the Senate Sergeant at Arms, and the Architect. Even if you assume that the Capitol Police Board manages the Capitol Police on a day-to-day basis, and that Pelosi manages the House Sergeant at Arms on a day-to-day basis, simple math tells you that Pelosi cannot control the Capitol Police.

[BrotherMovesOn]

DMN, stop, you're breaking Bumbles brain!

[Armchair Lawyer]

Read the report, and how things actually operated. It makes it clear.

[David Nieporent]

It "makes clear" by simply pretending that the inconvenient math I described worked differently, by essentially ignoring Mitch McConnell and the Senate Sergeant at Arms.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The House Sgt at Arms serves at her pleasure.
QED, she controlled...

[David Nieporent]

QED, she controlled nothing. I know that math is tough for education majors, but once again: the House Sergeant At Arms is one-third of the body that oversees the Capitol Police.

[Michael P]

How dumb do you need to be to think that the IRS failing to audit some tax return justifies releasing that tax return to the public? Democrat dumb.

[Nige]

They're only doing what he promised to do. Don't you like it when politicians are held to their promises?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"I will be interested to see if that’s actually true. I mean, meaningfully true, not some technicality BS like the IRS routinely auditing Trump every year, and not having seen the point of doing it twice to check a “Mandatory Presidential Audit” box."

So what you're saying Brett, is that you
1) Haven't read the report.
2) Are still here complaining about it regardless.

Which part of "The IRS was not in the process of auditing Trump until the very day that his tax returns were requested, despite it being mandatory for sitting Presidents and Vice Presidents" are you not understanding and/or rejecting out of ignorance?

Which part of "They audited Obama and Biden without issue, but somehow failed to initiate one of Trump" are you not understanding and/or rejecting out of ignorance?

How many excuses do you have on standby before you'll bother reading the report for yourself and facing the facts?

[elnurmamedrafiev]

Michael P, it didn't justify it. The whole point was to try to embarrass him. The left has been acting in bad faith since at least 1965, when they lied and claimed that the Immigration and Nationality Act wouldn't change the makeup of American cities.

[Michael P]

From the Senate minority report on J6 failures:

Sources who cooperated with this
investigation described retaliation by USCP leadership for their participation in this investigation and other investigations into the events of January 6, 2021. Additionally, the Staff Director for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, David Buckley, has a track record of acting in a retaliatory manner against whistleblowers.

Hannity should have believed that Democrats were pushing hard to silence whistleblowers.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Re: Jason Cavanaugh..

Oh, the IRS didn't audit Trump's tax returns some years? Interesting... But, you know what would've been more informative? If the IRS had audited (or hadn't audited) other President's tax returns, like Obama and Biden. Then, there would be a meaningful review of the program.

But...Huh...for some reason THOSE tax returns weren't requested by the panel. I suppose we'll never know if this was a Trump-specific problem, that failure to audit, or an issue that was more widespread. It's almost like the oversight was a sham, designed just against Trump, and not actual oversight in general.

And of course it was absolutely necessary to publically release all of the tax returns once it was understood that some weren't audited.

I do enjoy how pointing out extreme partisan behavior and lying by members of Congress, as well as destroying common norms (like not releasing private tax information for political purposes) is somehow "partisan".

But as we've learned, once one party destroys common norms for political purposes, we should expect the other party to follow. Otherwise, they'd be disarming themselves.

[bernard11]

Since both Biden and Obama released their returns I don’t see how the possibility of the committee doing that is some kind of deadly threat.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Mmm. Biden didn't release "all" his returns. His S-Corp returns somehow didn't make it out.

[apedad]

Armchair Lawyer: Another interesting January 6th Report came out (about security failures).

Good and yup, mistakes in judgement, miscalculations, and plain bad decisions were made.

And now that we've been warned, a breach will never happen again.

So please tell your fellow mouthbreathers to go fuck themselves, I mean go to the ballot box.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Armchair,

We both know that you have no interest in any facts which might upset your partisan apple cart, but the report you obviously refused to read detailed how Obama and Biden both were in fact audited by the IRS repeatedly while in office, as required.

Trump was not audited at all, until the very day his returns were requested.

I'd also like to point out that you are lying when you claim they publicly "...release[d} all of the tax returns." They did no such thing. Something else you would've known if you bothered to actually read the report.

Everyone knows why you won't.

[Brett Bellmore]

On a more holiday note: Finally tried chestnuts roasted over an open fire, and they're really good. So I went out and bought some more, and this year the Christmas turkey will feature traditional chestnut stuffing.

[Don Nico]

Brett,
The biggest problem with chestnuts in the US is that they are seldom very fresh and a large fraction are spoiled and another large fractions are very difficult to peel.
However, chestnuts pan roaster as one finds in almost every town and city in Italy (and I expect in France) are simply wonderful

[Moderation4ever]

Christmas is coming a snowstorm as well. Maybe the reply malfunction is the gods' way of saying we have better things to do. Like wrapping, cooking and shoveling.

A safe and Merry Christmas to all.

[Michael P]

apedad, the report is interesting in part because it documents how much Nancy Pelosi's office, and other Democrat staffers, directed the US Capitol Police and kept Republicans out of the loop on security issues. It reveals that leftist talking points about how Pelosi wasn't actually in charge and that Republicans shared control of the USCP were just so many lies.

[David Nieporent]

It reveals that leftist talking points about how Pelosi wasn’t actually in charge and that Republicans shared control of the USCP were just so many lies.

No, actually, it does no such thing. The fact that the report fails to mention the Senate's equal role in overseeing the USCP does not mean that the Senate did not have an equal role in overseeing the USCP.

[Life of Brian]

“The IRS was not in the process of auditing Trump until the very day that his tax returns were requested, despite it being mandatory for sitting Presidents and Vice Presidents”

The IRS claims it's currently so poorly staffed that it can only answer about 20% of taxpayer phone calls. I strongly suspect this is not the only "mandatory" thing in their purview that is not getting done on time.

[Mr. Bumble]

"How dumb do you have to be to think any President of the world’s mightiest nation shouldn’t have their tax returns made public? MAGA dumb."

When did that become the law?
How about the VP and the Speaker of the House?
How about all of Congress?

[Armchair Lawyer]

Jason,

"Trump was not audited at all, until the very day his returns were requested."

That's a lie. Trump was audited for his 2010 taxes. It was still ongoing when he was elected.

Moreover, we don't KNOW that Obama and Biden were fully Audited, unless we have the oversight to prove it. Personally, I'd like to see the full details of Biden's S-Corp being audited, from when he was bringing in the big bucks. I've seen no evidence of that being audited or any of the information being released.

[bernard11]

Income from his S-Corp would show up on his personal return, you idiot.

Google "pass-through entities."

[apedad]

Michael P: "apedad, the report is interesting in part because. . . ."

Again, GOOD that the report highlighted bad decisions and bad decision-makers, and also provided recommendations to prevent future attacks.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Don’t deflect Bumble. Should/shouldn’t doesn’t have to have a legal aspect."
Bullshit.

[Michael P]

Mr. Bumble, it’s not law, it’s just an IRS policy going back to 1977. It was instituted because of a debate about whether Richard Nixon donated certain papers early enough to claim a deduction that was later reduced greatly (the IRS and Congress eventually both estimated he owed a lot of back taxes). As a result, the IRS mandates annual audits of the president’s tax returns.

The VP and Congressional leaders are not included because they aren’t in the chain of command for the IRS, so there’s (in theory) less conflict of interest over auditing them.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bibi Netanyahu is back in power!!!

After having been driven from power by the radical left, Netanyahu is now back with a coalition government that includes Israel's radical right. After all the grief the left gave him, IMHO he is perfectly within his rights to do this -- and instead of compromising with the left, now ignoring the left and compromising with the right.

Machavelli warned about the consequences of attempting to kill the king and failing -- and IMHO, left of center Israelis will now get what they deserve. I don't think Netanyahu will engage in a genocide of Palestinians -- he's not that kind of man and his own party wouldn't tolerate that. But I can see the gloves coming off on the issue of Israeli safety.

Which comes to the Evil Orange Man. IMHO, Trump got enough grief from the radical left here to justify doing exactly what Netanyahu did -- build a coalition of p*ssed-off White men. We have a different system of government, but our elections are based on turnout.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/netanyahu-announces-new-government-with-sweeping-powers-to-far-right-allies/ar-AA15xIIP

[David Nieporent]

Machavelli warned about the consequences of attempting to kill the king and failing

No, that was David Simon.

[bevis the lumberjack]

apedad, given that you and your fellow mouthbreathers are perfectly content with the FBI telling private entities what they should and shouldn't publish (paid or unpaid, I don't care), thereby showing contempt for our civil rights as it relates to interference from the government, perhaps you should hop down off of that high horse.

The FBI is much more of a threat to our liberty than an idiot like Trump will ever be.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

With the reply broken this is nothing but a mean-girl group SMS chat.

lol

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"Jason,

“Trump was not audited at all, until the very day his returns were requested.”

That’s a lie. Trump was audited for his 2010 taxes. It was still ongoing when he was elected."

I'm sorry, was he President in 2010? No.
Does his 2010 audit include every year after that? No.
Were his 2016 and 2017 audits done as required? No.
Was it clear that I was speaking about the requirement that he be audited while in office? Yes.
Did you intentionally mischaracterize my statement because you have no meritorious response? Yes.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Jason,

I don't know what you mean.

You claim you were only speaking about the requirement he be audited while in office. Then you also claim you were speaking about the 2016 tax returns when Trump wasn't in office.

So which is it? Both? Neither? Whichever is convenient?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Have you considered that it was a typo which would've been fixed had the comment system been functioning properly?

Try 2017 and 2018. Now your obviously genuine concern can be satisfied.

[Don Nico]

So what? Really, so what except that voyeurs wanted to see them.
One does not need to see a single tax return to know that Trump is a scammer of the highest order

[Dr. Ed 2]

They were Chinese Chestnuts -- see: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/smallfarms/what-chinese-chestnut

[Krayt]

“How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump’s tax returns?”

Two things.

First, Congress swore they had a legislative purpose for obtaining the returns. That IS, after all, their only legitimate basis for getting them, they don’t have criminal investigatory powers.

They lied. And they don’t even mind people knowing they lied. Releasing somebody’s legally private returns serves no legislative purpose. Well, fair enough: Everybody knew they were lying at the time.

Second? No sensible person should think for even an instant that their tax records are private, even if that’s what the law says. Anything you divulge to the government is subject to being used to political ends. And, again, they don’t care anymore if you know that.

That’s what really concerns me, at this point: They no longer care if you know. You can say that about so many things now, that it’s becoming somewhat concerning.

This sums up the situation so well. They lie for a living, so the weasel mind thinks, "All we have to do is misuse a plausible idea. We have sufficient lying lacky talking heads and True Believers, heh heh, to bald-facedly assert the lie tongue in cheek."

"But we need to leak it. This is the whole purpose!"

"Were you not paying attention? Just release it and lie it's transparency of our investigation for legislative purposes, and not to embarrass a political opponent, as everyone knows it has been all along."

"Oh come on, nobody will beli..."

"Lying Lackies and True Believers, remember! Though I'm not sure the latter actually exists."

"Oh, right."

[Dr. Ed 2]

As to the American Chestnut, there is hope: http://www.hardwooddistributors.org/postings/the-return-of-the-american-chestnut

[Sarcastr0]

Reading the comments like this really shows how many on the right here just read something on rightwingtakes.com and slam it into the comments here. The tax thing has been engaged with and debunked a bunch of times, but the same take keeps showing up! Great jerb, bumble, AL, Brett. You all can't read!

And bevis, you need to read more than one source for your interpretations of news if you're going to call yourself nonpartisan. As it is, you're partisan, just in a cattiwampus way that depends on what you last read. Or if it has anything to do with global warming or the energy sector.

[Don Nico]

"Or if it has anything to do with global warming or the energy sector."
In other words he should be still if he has an expert professional opinion, which is what I think that he claims.

[Sarcastr0]

Someone exercising expertise would engage, and talk about the issue. bevis just says 'I'm an expert, and you're wrong and Biden sucks.'

If he's an expert, he's not deploying it.

[Don Nico]

My impression is that he does try, with more or less success, to describe the issues. Yes, he does like to quote his experience, but I am not offended by that.
Neither does both reading the NYT and listening to Fox News confer much substantive understanding. I see plenty of that especially concerning SARS-CoV-2

[John F. Carr]

On payment for responding to a subpoena:

I was told in the 2000s that a surveillance feature on Cisco routers was an extra cost feature as a favor to business customers. As a line item expense it could be billed to the federal government as part of the cost of complying with a request.

That might have been used for espionage rather than ordinary police work.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Maybe the reply malfunction is the gods’ way of saying we have better things to do. Like wrapping, cooking and shoveling."

Well, wrapping is done. No thanks to Amazon, which literally dropped our big family gift, (Each year we get one big thing for the family, in addition to little stuff for each other.) a digital piano. And then, instead of replacing it, just canceled the order. And took long enough about issuing a refund that we couldn't order it again in time to get it before Christmas. Not to mention we bought it on a sale that's over...

Getting very strong "We're the phone company, we don't NEED to care!" vibes from Amazon these days.

No shoveling, white Christmas in the SC Piedmont aren't that frequent.

The turkey is thawing now, goes in the brine Friday night.

[Sarcastr0]

Stanford IT department's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.

Yeah, I think a lot of their judgements are bad. But I do like the project in principle. Language changes, and connotations rise and fall.
Paying attention to that is not a bad idea.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Dictionaries do an OK job at documenting the changing connotations of language.

Stanford IT department’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative isn't an attempt to pay attention to changing connotations of language, it's an attempt to normalize what most people view as a fringe viewpoint of the connotations of many innocuous words.

People have made a good case that it's what bureaucrats hired to solve DEI issues do when there are no real DEI issues for them to solve.

[David Nieporent]

Paying attention to that is not a bad idea.

Language changes organically, from below. This is a top-down attempt to impose new language, based on nothing other than the whims of a few activists and bureaucrats.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think language always needs to change organically, from below, though.

Nothing wrong with a group thinking about it practically.

Again, I think there's no shortage of full on dumbness. But other countries do intentional language stuff, nothing in principle wrong with it.
I'd just hope for a lighter touch.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Nobody's claiming that there's anything wrong with such a thing in principle. The criticism of the Stanford group is that they did a very poor job.

[Nige]

If that was the criticism no-one would care.

[Sarcastr0]

Read the comment I was replying to.

[Don Nico]

By the way Latinx is a "White wannabe woke" microagression to many of Hispanic origin regardless of what the Stanford ideologues say.

[Nige]

Even if this were true, luckily it's completely non-binding to literally everyone.

[Bored Lawyer]

How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump’s tax returns?

On one hand, I don’t love having someone’s private records released to the public. On the other hand, since the United States President IS treated differently in so many ways (Just to give one example, even the most overwhelming lawsuit can’t proceed against a sitting president–absent her or his consent, of course– while that person is still in office.), I don’t really see a slippery slope concern. Also, in the particular case of Trump; this is a guy who swore and promised that he’d release his taxes, and then lied repeatedly about doing it. So, it seems like the House can merely frame it as, “Hey, we’re helping Donald Trump not be a liar. We’re simply accomplishing what Trump told us he was eager to do.”

The stated justification for subpoenaing Trump's tax returns was neither that he was a former president, presidential candidate, nor someone who had promised to release his returns and then didn't. I doubt any of those justifications would have sufficed to convince the court where Trump challenged the subpoena. The stated justification was Congress' investigatory powers.

The precedent here is that anyone whom Congress is investigating, and a Congressional committee has a colorable argument to subpoena his returns, can now do so and release them. So long as a majority on the committee agrees.

That's a terrible predecent, one which Democrats will end up regretting. They perpetually forget that what goes around comes around, and "but that was Trump" is not an excuse.

[John F. Carr]

Dr. Ed 2 -- the return of the American chestnut is like fusion power, long predicted, always a subject of research, but somehow not yet imminent. The announcement of fusion breakeven (which happens about as often as Voyager 1 leaves the solar system, https://xkcd.com/1189/) came with a warning that it would still take decades of work to generate power on a useful scale.

[Don Nico]

John,
Just to clarify the LLNL achievement.
It took more than 15 years to do what LLNL expected to do very soon after the full operation of NIF.
What did this achievement demonstrate? That LLNL could take the energy of 300 sticks od dynamite to generate the energy content of a dozen donuts. NIF might do this 4 times per day. A power plant needs to do it 400K times per day.

[Sarcastr0]

Prof. Kerr, resident Berkeley Conspirator with a characteristically level-headed take on the 'no Jews allowed' thing at Berkeley:

"This strikes me as a tempest in a tea pot — whatever your views on the substance, it’s more a symbolic issue than something with a lot of practical relevance — but culture wars will culture war.

In a pre-Internet world, both points could be worked out on campus, or within whatever community is facing them. But with the Internet, it's easy for it to become a subject for national commentary, which I would guess makes that working out harder, not easier.

And given that accuracy about the facts doesn't draw eyeballs — "jew free zones" was a good line, I admit, but c'mon — it all gets swept up in broader currents rather than treated for what it is."

Prof. Bernstein, over to you.

[Bored Lawyer]

Is your name a dog name or a people name?

Wait, Rover is not a people name? Okay, guess I'll change mine to Spot.

[bernard11]

Just be careful not use any spot remover around the house.

[Bored Lawyer]

BTW, the italics function is messed up, too. I italicized two paragraphs that I was quoting, only one got italicized.

[bernard11]

You have to italicize each paragraph separately. The "system" forgets about it when you start a new one.

[John F. Carr]

I thought Congress was entitled to a presumption of good faith when requesting Trump's tax returns. If they say they will use them to breed rainbows and unicorns, give them a chance to do so. But the motive was public shaming, as many suspected but could not prove. Next time a similar situation comes up the courts should not presume good faith.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Sarcastro, if only the regular media would report on stuff like that but it hurts their team so that's a no go. It's hard to find more than one source. And I saw it here on Reason, which I know to a hyperzealot like you seems like a right wing rag, but in reality they're reasonably balanced.

And a jerkoff like you calling me partisan after defending the Abrams artificial sonogram noise nonsense (did you ever figure out who inserted that noise?) and after parroting the ridiculous Hunter dick pic talking point shows a galling lack of self- awareness.

I don't like it when your side diminishes our rights. I don't like it when the other side diminishes our rights. You're fine as long as your team is diminishing someone else's rights, which makes you a selfish hypocrite.

And STFU on energy and climate. I don't need to be influenced by reading political crap on that subject because I'm an expert in it, at least as it comes to mathematical modeling of complex systems and the benefits, negatives, and costs of our energy alternatives. Since all of your knowledge comes from one-sided sources you can't comprehend how some people don't need that input, so you can only assume that we source our knowledge like you do.

[John F. Carr]

The summary of the January 6 report had little new to say. I look forward to the full report to find out more about communications between Eastman and Trump.

[Sarcastr0]

bevis, I didn't say only read the 'regular media' however you define it. I said read other sources than one. When you read a story, find out what more than one source says. Especially for the really partisan stories.

I don't claim to be at all nonpartisan or free from bias, bevis. All I can do is call 'em like I see 'em. But I do check for other takes on the stories of the day, at least.
Your forever claiming to be the objective one above the fray is it's own kind of closed bubble.

I don’t need to be influenced by reading political crap on that subject because I’m an expert in it.
Here's the thing: no, you're not. It's quite clear you don't know or care to know about the science here. Nor the intricacies of the economics. That's not because I disagree with you - I'm no more expert than you - it's noting the level of engagement you care to have on such things.
Having a horse in the race is not the same as expertise.

Real expertise comes with a bit of humility.

[Don Nico]

"I don’t need to be influenced by reading political crap on that subject because I’m an expert in it.
Here’s the thing: no, you’re not. It’s quite clear you don’t know or care to know about the science here. Nor the intricacies of the economics. That’s not because I disagree with you – I’m no more expert than you – it’s noting the level of engagement you care to have on such things.
Having a horse in the race is not the same as expertise.

Real expertise comes with a bit of humility."

That comment reeks of arrogance. I don't that either you or either know the degree of bevis' expertise in those topics. I do know experts in those areas, even some who were senior advisors to the Sec. of Energy, who make extremely similar judgements. I would not be so quick to criticize his skepticsm over clearly political commentary.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, "Real expertise comes with a bit of humility" is full of arrogance.

Says more about you than I, what you see there.

I work with experts. bevis is claiming expertise, but not using it.

Oh hay, you're doing the same thing, only by proxy! Is this where I say there are lots of other experts who disagree with you and bevis?

You know better than to lean into a battle of credentialism.

[Don Nico]

"Oh hay, you’re doing the same thing, only by proxy!"
Not really.
But what is the point of insulting bevis. Just respond with the facts as you know them.
I also work with closely with energy experts all the time.
I've published two recent peer reviewed papers on SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology in a moderately high impact medical journal as opposed to dividing two numbers found in an NYT article.
And as much as Brett, draws your ad hominem criticism, he does try to bring evidence to the discussion.
I'll back off, but I am asking you to do likewise.
Happy holidays.

[Sarcastr0]

Take this twitter files thing. I certainly have my biases. But I at least read the files, and the right-wing narratives on what they mean, in addition to the 'nothingburger' takes.

I find the latter more convincing, whether through bias or sober judgement, or whatever. But the important thing is that I am not utterly ignorant of the arguments and evidence the other side cites.

That's important not to neglect, if you want your opinion to carry any kind of argumentative weight.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Sarcastro and Queenie - I'm not going to argue with you nitwits about this any more.

Sarcastro, I literally spent four decades making economic decisions on risk investments in energy. To say I don't understand the intricacies of the economics of this stuff is laughable. You say you have the same knowledge of this as I do and then call me arrogant? I'm speechless.....

And there's no arrogance at all. I'm really pretty low key, but the fact is I know what I know and that's just that. When you call the plumber to come out and he tells you from his experience that he knows how to fix it, do you call him an arrogant SOB? People know what they know.

If my experience led me to conclude that Biden was on the right path, y'all would be all for it. Your judgement of people is dependent on what they believe, because that's how broken political brains think.

Queenie, you don't seem to know jack shit about anything. And Sarcastro, I'm really really waiting for you to say who put those artificial noises on those sonograms.

[Nige]

'Your judgement of people is dependent on what they believe, because that’s how broken political brains think. '

As far as I can tell, your premise here suggests YOU'RE the one that can't cope with disagreement - people agree with things they think are right and disagree with things they think are wrong - that's quite normal, not the sign of a broken brain.

[Jonathan Affleck]

@Noscitur a sociis

Merely receiving payments from the government does not make one a state actor. My company has worked on a government contract without becoming a state actor. There has to be some element of proxying for the government in some sort of act Constitutionally or legally impermissible by the government.

Arguendo, let's time travel back to 1961 before the enactment of the 1964 CRA.

1. Suppose a government office building hosts a government cafeteria.
2. Suppose the government official in charge of the building does not like the mingling of white women with black men in the cafeteria but he knows he can't segregate the cafeteria because of the 14th Amendment.
3. Suppose the government official decides to shut down the government cafeteria and to hire or to lease space so that a private contractor can run his own private cafeteria, which would segregate seating.

The private cafeteria proxies for the government and becomes a state actor by doing something

1. that the government could not do and
2. where the government could not do it.

Current broken Section 230 caselaw does not take cognizance that Twitter is discriminating among Twitter users in government networks and equipment (government facilities) and is proxying for government websites in these networks. Twitter violates both the 14th Amendment according to State Action Doctrine also the 1964 CRA.

See “Why Isn’t the Supreme Court on Twitter".

An enterprising lawyer should represent on contingency the class of abused users in a class action lawsuit against Twitter, the US government, and the federal government.

Some of the penalties of associated violations have become astronomical.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Yeah, I think a lot of their judgements are bad. But I do like the project in principle. Language changes, and connotations rise and fall.
Paying attention to that is not a bad idea."

No, it's a really bad idea, because the important part is the denotation

It's also a bad idea because they're not responding to changes in connotations. They're trying to drive them.

Basically, it's the NewSpeak project: Control what people think by controlling the language they can use to express their thoughts.

[Nige]

They're making suggestions for appropriate language to use with people from different parts of the world, different walks of life, while stressing the importance of deferring to their preferences over the suggestions. I'd suggest the two-minute-hate over this is more Orwellian than this is Newspeak.

[Jonathan Affleck]

I meant the following.

"In enterprising lawyer should represent on contingency the class of abused users in a class action lawsuit against Twitter, the US government, and the state governments."

[bevis the lumberjack]

Sarcastro, let's change the civil right and see how it looks, since the speech was being suppressed was speech you don't like so you don't care.

Let's say instead that the FBI was going to the American leaders of the Catholics, and the Muslims, and the Jews, and the Protestant churches and giving those leaders lists of names of people that shouldn't be allowed to attend and participate in services. And furthermore they were asking the churches for information on those people's donation history and any sins they may have received counseling for. You'd be cool with that, right? The answer has to be yes or you're being inconsistent.

[apedad]

Jeez beev, you're making up crap and absolutely NOTHING like that happened.

[bernard11]

I will be interested to see if that’s actually true. I mean, meaningfully true, not some technicality BS like the IRS routinely auditing Trump every year, and not having seen the point of doing it twice to check a “Mandatory Presidential Audit” box.

Oh fuck you, Brett. More made up bullshit.

Remember when you claimed that Trump couldn't have been cheating on his taxes - despite the fact that he seems always to cheat when money is involved - because the IRS would hav caught it?

No. I bet you don't.

And did you notice that when they finally got around to it, they assigned one agent. Sure, that's going to be thorough.

[bernard11]

Can I just say that it would be nice if Reason, or someone, acknowledged the problems with Reply and Edit, and offered some idea when, if ever, they will be fixed.

[Krayt]

JFC, Presidents should have transparent financial records. Hell that should apply to all federal elected officials and many non-elected ones. Anyone who complains about corruption and the ‘swamp’ and opposes this basic anti-corruption measure is full of malarkey.

I heartily agree! That isn't the question. The question is applying it in a political context to embarrass an opponent, and only them.

Personally, I'd have everyone in Congress wired and recorded 24/7 for public disclosure, to prevent the "sausage making" aspect of legislation.

I guess this would increase the number of spouse investment geniuses, though, through completely unconnected reasons.

[Brett Bellmore]

"An enterprising lawyer should represent on contingency the class of abused users in a class action lawsuit against Twitter, the US government, and the federal government."

Affleck, you remind me at times of the gold fringe people. Treating the law like it's some logical system with locked down rules that you can manipulate. Like you're dealing with some supernatural demon who can be tamed with the right spell, you just need to get the words exactly right. Or you're Kirk, blowing up the world computer with a logic puzzle.

The law is an exercise of power by humans, not computers or demons. The important thing to remember about the law is that it pretends to be rule bound. But only pretends. On important issues it doesn't matter what the rules are, the outcomes are dictated by factors outside the rules.

The rules only dominate where the powers to be don't care about the outcome.

[bevis the lumberjack]

geez, ape, what are you talking about? The FBI/Twitter thing?

The FBI wasn't advising Twitter as to some people that should be denied access to Twitter's platform? What were they doing, then? Exchanging recipes?

[not guilty]

"The summary of the January 6 report had little new to say. I look forward to the full report to find out more about communications between Eastman and Trump."

I don't think novelty is necessary to show the criminal culpability of Donald Trump and John Eastman. Even if it plows old ground, the Committee's description at page 24 (an Oval Office meeting at which Trump was present) is damning:

But as January 6th approached, President Trump nevertheless embraced the new Eastman theories, and attempted to implement them. In a series of meetings and calls, President Trump attempted to pressure Pence to intervene on January 6th to prevent Congress from counting multiple States’ electoral votes for Joe Biden. At several points in the days before January 6th, President Trump was told directly that Vice President Pence could not legally do what Trump was asking. For example, at a January 4th meeting in the Oval Office, Dr. Eastman acknowledged that any variation of his proposal – whether rejecting electoral
votes outright or delaying certification to send them back to the States – would violate several provisions of the Electoral Count Act. According to Greg Jacob:

In the conversation in the Oval Office on the 4th, I had raised the fact that . . . [Dr. Eastman’s] preferred course had issues with the Electoral Count Act, which he had acknowledged was the case, that there would be an inconsistency with the Electoral Count Act[.]

Jacob recorded Eastman’s admission in an internal memo he drafted for Vice President Pence on the evening of January 4th: “Professor Eastman acknowledges that his proposal violates several provisions of statutory law.”

[Footnotes omitted.] The perfidy described by Mr. Jacob continued on January 5:

And, during a phone call with President Trump and Dr. Eastman on the evening of January 5, 2021, Dr. Eastman again acknowledged that his proposal also would violate several provisions of the Electoral Count Act.

[W]e did have an in-depth discussion about [the Electoral Count Act] in the subsequent phone calls as I walked him through provision after provision on the recess and on the fact that . . . Congressmen and Senators are supposed to get to object and debate. And he acknowledged, one after another, that those
provisions would -- in order for us to send it back to the States, we couldn’t do those things as well. We can’t do a 10-day, send it back to the States, and honor an Electoral Count Act provision that says you can’t recess for more than one day and, once you get to the 5th, you have to stay continuously in session.

The Committee report continued on page 25:

Contemporaneous written correspondence also confirms both that: (1) Eastman himself recognized Pence could not lawfully refuse to count electoral votes, and (2) President
Trump also knew this. While sheltering in a loading dock with the Vice President during the violent January 6th attack, Greg Jacob asked Dr. Eastman in an email, “Did you advise the President that in your professional judgment the Vice President DOES NOT have the power to decide things unilaterally?” Dr. Eastman’s response stated that the President had “been so advised,” but then indicated that President Trump continued to pressure the Vice President to act illegally: “But you know him – once he gets something in his head, it is hard to get him to change course.”

[Footnote omitted.]
Trump's likely defense strategy vis-a-vis any charge under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) will be to place the blame entirely on Eastman. Professor Eastman would do well to seek a cooperation agreement with the DOJ in hope of serving a shorter prison sentence rather than a longer one.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Remember when you claimed that Trump couldn’t have been cheating on his taxes – despite the fact that he seems always to cheat when money is involved – because the IRS would hav caught it?

No. I bet you don’t."

No, I remember that quite clearly, and stand by it.

[bernard11]

No, I remember that quite clearly, and stand by it.

Despite the fact that he wasn't audited for a few years, and when he was it was by one guy.

Don't ever deny you're a cultist.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"No, I remember that quite clearly, and stand by it."

Brett's never met a fact he wasn't willing to ignore in favor of his predetermined beliefs.

It is hardly a coincidence that you can't be bothered to even read the report. Why bother having an educated opinion on the subject when you could instead just have an ignorant one?

[Ed Grinberg]

"N.Y. Appeals Court Rules Yeshiva University Must Recognize LGBTQ Student Group"
A private religious school (or, for that matter, a private non-religious school!) should be free to run its own affairs. Our laws are so messed-up...

[Life of Brian]

Despite the fact that he wasn’t audited for a few years, and when he was it was by one guy.

How many people do you think the IRS typically assign to a complex corporate audit? Looks like 1, according to the horse's mouth. There are only ~6500 total.

[Ed Grinberg]

elnurmamedrafiev 2 hours ago

The left continues to act in bad faith, actively resisting Bruen. The lower courts have no intention of complying, because there’s no penalty for their refusal to do so.

Dr. Ed 2 5 hours ago

The concept of law in America is breaking down.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Anyone find it quite troubling how easy it is for the State to manufacture consensus among the Democrat populace?

These brain dead people went from getting Drumpf tattoos to getting Pfizer tattoos to now Slava Ukraini tattoos in a span of a few years.

[Nige]

So Democrats don't like Trump, aren't anti-vaxx, and support Ukraine. Wow! All Trump did was persuade Republicans he really won the election, and he was so effective a whole bunch of them literally ruined their lives over it! One even DIED for it!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Weird how incurious you people came on that police shooting.

[Sarcastr0]

It was caught on camera. There don't seem to be any facts in dispute. Quit special pleading; there is nothing to be curious about.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You think the camera absolves the shooter? You can't be serious.

Oh it's you, Gaslightr0 Federal Bootlicker Supreme. Of course you're serious.

[Sarcastr0]

Fuck yeah, I made it to Supreme!

Weird, you don't seem curious either...

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'm not curious, I know what happened. A Democrat who hates white people and Patriots shot and killed a vet unnecessarily.

Democrats have been killing vets forever and getting away with it (see the VA scandal), why not one more time?

[Nige]

I assume you've got it handled since she's from the class of people who oughtn't to get shot by police, not the class of people for whom getting shot by police is to be expected.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

By the end of 2023 the Democrat males are going to be sucking on female penises amd offering up their children to mature homosexuals as of that's what's always been the norm.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If the Intelligence Community routinely interferes in foreign elections when facing a result they do not want, why wouldn't they also interfere in ours?

No one in the IC had ever been held accountable for any election interference in the US.

Bootlickers and Gaslighters will say that's because they have never done so.

Empiricists will say that's because we don't have any Rule of Law that gets applied to the Federal Class.

[Ed Grinberg]

re: BCD's two comments above
Dennis Prager talks about an appearance he made on Bill Maher's show. On the show, Prager was talking about how the left lies about everything. One of the examples (of the left's lies) he gave was "Men menstruate." And everyone laughed at him. Now, he says, it's a commonly-accepted "fact" ("among the Democrat populace").

[ReaderY]

Justice Roberts’ compromise proposal in the Moore “independent legislature theory” case could be a far-reaching bomb. Roberts’ proposal was that state constitutions could regulate elections, but would have to impose specific requirements rather than use vague phrases. “No gerrymandering” could be enforced, but “free and fair elections” is too vague and gwneral to be be interpreted to mean “no gerrymandering.”

The difficulty, of course, is that state legislatures have all power not specifically limited bythe federal constitution. Under Riberts’ theory, by what right could federal courts interpret vague phrases like “due process of law” to mean “no abortion restrictions,” “no sodomy laws,” etc.? Federal courts have been doing nothing if not interpreting phrases every bit as vague and general as state courts.

And under Roberts’ theory, states never delegated to the Federal government the power to restrict them in vague ways.

Thus, Roberts opens a back-door route to a sharp restriction of the Due Process Clause.

It seems to me that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Frankly, interpreting “Free and fair elections” as meaning “no getrymandering” is a much easier sell than many things the Supreme Court had done. After all, gerrymandering is an attempt to fix election outcomes. It’s much closer to a traditional understanding of the stated subject matter of the phrase “free and fait elections” than many of the Supreme Court’s due process cases have been to any traditional understanding of what “due process” means.

[Brett Bellmore]

Bernard, I'm wondering if you've read the report. It doesn't say Trump wasn't audited, it says the audits weren't designated as Mandatory Presidential audits.

" Under the prior Administration, there was a negligible, if any, difference between a regular field audit and a mandatory audit of the President. The Manual states that the returns are subject to mandatory examination. However, no special rules are provided for the scope and timing of the examination. "

He was subject to regular field audits, and the IRS cut corners by not doing it twice and calling one a "Mandatory Presidential audit".

[Sarcastr0]

I very much doubt that Presidential audits are the same as regular audits, either in terms of scope nor timeline nor manpower dedicated thereto.

[Bob from Ohio]

"How do people here feel about the House voting to release Trump’s tax returns?"

Ask Hunter. His returns are probably getting released. Hopefully Paul Pelosi's and others too.

[LawTalkingGuy]

K. Who gives a shit lol.

[Commenter_XY]

When it happens LTG, you will find out who gives a shit. 🙂

I wish this had not happened; no good will come of it.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also it is extremely telling that you think this will be devastating for the Bidens and Pelosi specifically when:

Some of Hunter’s most intimate and fraught moments of his personal life are already public knowledge.

The Pelosis recently were the victims of a home invasion and attack and she’s stepping down from leadership.

They won’t be devastated or damaged by leaked tax returns compared to what has already happened.

[bernard11]

And Pelosi not only got assaulted with a hammer, RW liars are gleefully spreading all kinds of crap about him.

No decency at all.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Federal employees are not noted for their work ethic -- and I suspect this extends to the IRS.

So lets consider the following -- who had the far more complicated tax return -- Obama or Trump? Not who had the higher income, but the most sheets of paper in the return? Which would you prefer to audit? And which would you hope that someone else got stuck with auditing?

Let's get real here -- weren't they still trying to figure out Trumps 2010 tax return? Why go looking for trouble???

Maybe someone else will do Trump's return...

BTW -- you can manually enter the hypertext commands -- start with an "i" between and end with "/i" between the same -- and do NOT use the quotes, just the i or /i. Remember that the command starts with the and bad things happen if you use them otherwise.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I very much doubt that Presidential audits are the same as regular audits, either in terms of scope nor timeline nor manpower dedicated thereto."

The report literally says that there are no guidelines in that regard, and that they in fact seem to be the same.

[Bob from Ohio]

"by my environment’s standards I’m quite conservative"

LOL

By his environment’s standards Stalin was quite conservative

[Don Nico]

By Lenin's standards, Stalin was a right-wing opportunist and Trotsky was an infantile leftist.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Brett, did you make it to the bottom of page 1 of the Ways and Means report? I don't think you did, or you wouldn't have said "He was subject to regular field audits, and the IRS cut corners by not doing it twice and calling one a “Mandatory Presidential audit”."

Why? Because at the bottom of page one, buried deep inside the report, is the following:

"The former President’s individual income tax returns filed in 2018, 2019, and 2020 were not selected for examination until after he left office and only the 2016 tax return was subject to a mandatory examination."

There is also a helpful table right below that, showing the Tax Year, Date Return Filed, Date Selected for Examination, and Designated by IRS as Mandatory Audit.

"Notably, the IRS sent a letter to the former President notifying him that his tax year 2015 return was selected for examination on April 3, 2019, which is the date the Chairman sent the initial request to the IRS for the former President’s return information and related tax returns."

Seriously dude. If you can't even read the first page, you shouldn't be accusing others of not reading it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Really bad things.

Start with a capitol , and end with a capitol . -- i.e. the bent arrows that are on those keys.

i.e. -- without the quotes --
"[i] what you want in italics [/i]" except use the bent arrow keys.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I've seen people giving Zelensky crap for not wearing a suit to the White House.

But no one with an ounce of common sense would bring any expensive luggage anywhere near members of the Biden administration.

[Sarcastr0]

No guidelines Brett. Well, I am owned.

Now do border enforcement.

Also, of course, this very discussion puts the lie to your point about no legislative purpose on getting these records, eh? Seems a system that needs tightening up! In fact, I hear there is a bill being drafted.

[Sarcastr0]

TiP, you trying out for talk radio hack? Come in with better jokes than that rewarmed anti-Clinton weak tea.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Biden Official Sam Brinton’s 2nd Alleged Theft Included $1,700 In Jewelry"
Brian Bushard Forbes Staff Dec 10, 2022

"The Biden Administration has come under fire after Energy Department official Sam Brinton, who identifies as nonbinary, was charged in two separate instances of stealing suitcases at U.S. airports—with one bag reportedly containing $3,670 in jewelry"

[Sarcastr0]

Holy fuck, they've got Sam Brinton!

[Bob from Ohio]

Just explaining that the luggage joke was not "rewarmed anti-Clinton"

[Sarcastr0]

Another Biden joke made possible by Sam Brinton.

[David Nieporent]

Reason really has to fix their commenting system. Non-threaded discussions do not work on a blog like this.

[David Nieporent]

As the Twitter files get released I keep hearing they are a big nothing, but now we’ve heard that the FBI was paying Twitter (and almost certainly also paying Facebook, Google, etc.) to remove posts that were clearly protected by the 1st Amendment.

The courts have held before that voluntary compliance with government requests do not implicate the first amendment. But the fact the FBI was paying Twitter means that Twitter was not acting voluntarily, the were government agents under direct government control when they were censoring speech on their platform.

God, you people are gullible. And Musk and his chosen hacks are dishonest. We did not "hear that that the FBI was paying Twitter (and almost certainly also paying Facebook, Google, etc.) to remove posts that were clearly protected by the 1st Amendment."

Or, rather, we did hear that, but only from stupid and dishonest people — not from Twitter itself. If you look at the actual documents rather than the right wing noise machine spin on them, they show absolutely no such thing.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sarcastro, yo mama.

[David Nieporent]

I think so. I think you would know better than I, is it routine for someone to be compensated for responding to a subpoena?

In this context, yes! There's a specific statute passed by Congress authorizing that!

18 U.S. Code § 2706 - Cost reimbursement

(a) Payment.—
Except as otherwise provided in subsection (c), a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information under section 2702, 2703, or 2704 of this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information. Such reimbursable costs shall include any costs due to necessary disruption of normal operations of any electronic communication service or remote computing service in which such information may be stored.

[bernard11]

Brett,

Do you have to be totally dishonest?

The paragraph you quote is under "findings" supporting proposed legislation. It is a general description of the process. It does not say, at all, that Trump underwent an ordinary audit prior to April 3, 2019, the exact date Ways and Means requested his returns from the IRS.

You can't even lie plausibly.

[David Nieporent]

The media is trying to make this a big nothingburger because of their precious fucking narrative, but take the money out if it. Why is the FBI telling Twitter which posts to remove at all?

The FBI isn't telling Twitter which posts to remove. The FBI is flagging — just as every single individual in the country is able and allowed to do — posts and users for Twitter to look at. Twitter is free with each and every one of those requests, from any person — FBI or otherwise — to do whatever it wants with those flags.

Why is the FBI asking Twitter for information on its customers with no warrant or probable cause? Why are people on the left so eager to dismiss such egregiously inappropriate (and potentially unconstitutional) behavior?

Maybe because people on the right have their facts completely wrong?

I mean, JFC, every time there's some sort of mass shooting or terrorist incident we get a "Why didn't the FBI do anything? There was stuff all over social media." And then when the FBI does scrutinize social media, we get "How dare they do that?"

[bevis the lumberjack]

David they can scrutinize social media without working with Twitter to get personal info with no probable cause. And you and everyone else is ignoring the part about them suggesting which posts should come down.

The FBI has no business in Twitter’s files. None.

You can voluntarily give up your civil rights if you want, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t applaud diminishing mine.

[Bob from Ohio]

Amusing that SuperLibertarian David likes the FBI so much he excuses everything they do.

Local cop does pretextual stop and catches mass murderer, David says hang the cop. FBI flags accounts with 10 followers making an ancient joke about Dems voting on Wed., nothing to see, just the internal security agency doing routine stuff.

[Nige]

Ah, the ancient joke - Republicans being trying to sabotage elections a long time.

[Nige]

If Twitter gave out personal info without a warrant that is bad. Did that actually happen? Because if it did, that’s a lede that’s been oddly buried by Musk’s mouthpieces.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"And you and everyone else is ignoring the part about them suggesting which posts should come down."

Because they didn't fucking do that.

You can go read some of the emails if you'd like, instead of bitching here like an ignorant fool.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-paying-twitter-to-censor/

What the files show is that the FBI would occasionally (not very often, frankly) use reporting tools to alert Twitter to accounts that potentially violated Twitter’s rules. When the FBI did so, it was pretty clear that it was just flagging these accounts for Twitter to review, and had no expectation that the company would or would not do anything about it. In fact, they are explicit in their email that the accounts “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service” and that Twitter can take “any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”

[bevis the lumberjack]

“That never happened, and here’s evidence that it did, but maybe not as much as some are saying”. And that assumes that Masnick is interpreting it correctly and honestly, because he’s one of those guys (like Radley Balko and Ken White) who used to be fabulous on civil rights until Trump came along and broke them.

And even besides that, even it was only once, how the fuck is it the business of the FBI to tell Twitter about disfavored posts. And if you think it was only a little once the FBI discovered that they could dictate their will to Twitter, you actually believe that there was any limit on it? Gullible much? Nope, just partisan.

The Democratic Party has become the party of the surveillance state.

[Sarcastr0]

These are factual claims, bevis. Your imputations of bias don’t really address the facts of what happened, and how they disagree with what you say happened. Is there in a lie in what was posted above?

You’ve decided on your take, and are now as outcome-oriented as any party apparatchik.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I’ll never ever ever be 10% as outcome oriented as you.

Or as partisan. Hell, I started the discussion about Hannity’s bullshit today. I sure that somehow you see that as me favoring the right as well, because that’s the box I’m in.

Still waiting for an explanation of the sonogram noises.

[bevis the lumberjack]

And you didn’t answer the point, instead choosing to personally attack. Why is it any business of the FBI to make even one suggestion to Twitter. I guess if they only violate civil rights a little it’s ok, as long as it not yours of course.

[Nige]

I expect it's their business if it's related to something that comes within their sphere of interest and, all things considered, it's hardly surprising that there are things on the internet that come within their sphere of interest.

[David Nieporent]

I guess if they only violate civil rights a little it’s ok, as long as it not yours of course.

What civil right does it violate for an FBI agent to say to Twitter — again, just like anyone else can — "I think that these particular tweets may violate your TOS"?

[Sarcastr0]

I’m Jose to point out you are still wrong about stuff.

[Nige]

'once the FBI discovered that they could dictate their will to Twitter'

Another thing that didn't happen. You're very outraged by things that didn't happen.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Evidently I have to repeat myself:

"“may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service” and that Twitter can take “any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”

Absolutely none of that is a demand that anything be taken down, or a dictation of the FBI's will to Twitter.

You're an idiot.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I’m smart enough to see that you totally dodged the question I asked.

Why is the FBI involved in making suggestions to social media companies at all? Why do they spend a penny of our resources on doing so? How do we, the taxpayers, benefit from paying employees to do that?

Do you understand the question this time?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I understood your question just fine the first time. I did not, and do not choose to respond to it because it's a dumb question by someone who did not bother to adequately understand the basic facts of the situation before asking it.

When you stop mischaracterizing the situation, you'll find that your question has no basis in fact.

[David Nieporent]

The Democratic Party has become the party of the surveillance state.

Reading publicly posted things on social media is "the surveillance state"?

[Don Nico]

"Reading publicly posted things on social media is “the surveillance state”?"
Actually it is a commonly used and assigned function within the intelligence community. In other words is can be an aspect of the surveillance state and it can be a great opportunity for time wasting for those with nothing better to do.

[Sarcastr0]

Seeing stuff can also be an aspect of the surveillance state, as well.

[Don Nico]

That too and the frequently seen posters in train and subway stations
"If you see something, say something."
The posters could have been designed by the Stasi

[David Nieporent]

And if you think it was only a little once the FBI discovered that they could dictate their will to Twitter,

Why are you inventing facts? Again, all the FBI did was flag some posts. Twitter was under no obligation to, and did not, take any specific action in relation to those reports. The FBI at no point "dictated their will" to Twitter.

[Life of Brian]

The FBI is flagging — just as every single individual in the country is able and allowed to do

Oh, LOL. Groups of Twitter employees were tasked with running down the tweets/accounts the FBI flagged and making calls on them one by one. The idea that Twitter treated those requests exactly the same as that of any Internet rando doesn't even remotely past the red-face test, and the math just doesn't work to boot.

[Nige]

I expect a missive from the FBI would be treated seriously, but Twitter can't stop the FBI from making reports and the FBI aren't doing anything particularly wrong by making the same reports everybody else can make. If they were issuing edicts about accounts being shut down or demanding personal info, then without warrants Twitter can and should tell them to go hang, but that has not been shown to have happened. Other stuff WAS happening, but it falls outside the conservative grievance narrative so really has been buried.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How gullible, stupid, disaffected, easily manipulated, and deplorable are Trump's low-character fans?

For starters . . .

Carry on, clingers. But, as Trump is learning, only so far and so long as better Americans permit.

[David Nieporent]

You can’t even lie plausibly.

You are being unfair to Brett. There are many egregious liars here, but Brett isn't one of them. It's just that Brett already knows the facts and knows he's right regardless of what anyone else says, so he searches until he finds some statement — often nothing more than a headline — that he engages in motivated reasoning to think proves what he already knew before he had any evidence, and then stops immediately.

[not guilty]

Intellectual dishonesty is just as dishonest as purposeful lying.

A maxim often attributed to Mark Twain holds that “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

[David Nieporent]

Did I miss Prof. Blackman’s follow up on this (from his 9/23 blog), where he wrote, “Third, YU Pride Alliance, you are going to lose, so settle this case to avoid a landmark First Amendment ruling.”

I suspect he was thinking more of SCOTUS than the Second Circuit when he said that.

[David Nieporent]

Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I don’t watch Fox. I caught on pretty quick that their people, like Hannity, were basically just actors, playing the role of conservatives, as understood by left wingers. Not actual conservatives.

Right, but then you also think the GOP are just actors, playing the role of conservatives, as understood by left wingers. Because you're a conspiracy-minded loon. The No True Scotsman fallacy is called the No True Scotsman fallacy because it's a fallacy.

[JasonT20]

Reason really has to fix their commenting system. Non-threaded discussions do not work on a blog like this.

At first, I was hopeful that it had something to do with fixing the work from home spam, but I see lots of that still in the main articles. Less of it shows up on Volokh posts. The bots seem to focus on threads with lots of comments.

I think the take away is that Reason simply doesn't care much about how usable the comments are.

[Sarcastr0]

One of the Conspirators did say that the number of views his posts get vastly outstrips the number of commenters.

Way back in the pre-Post days, there was no threading. I thought it was fine back then. Little did I know...

[Don Nico]

"Trump’s norm-breaking was usually a horrible thing. And sometimes dangerous. But we can turn his dissembling and dishonesty into a real positive."
As the House was also dishonest, I do not see any good coming out of it at all. It is difficult to believe that during the past 2 years the House leadership had any interest in Trumps taxes except to embarrass and politically damage a thoroughly corrupt person.

[Don Nico]

Incidentally, I find the absence of threading a net positive as it seems to disembowel the snarks and crude insults.

[jb]

This lack of threading does indeed suck. I think it's confusing BravoCharlieDelta's handlers, though. There are days when it does a good job of pretending to be a kind of normal Republican commentator, and then there are days like today when it's pretty obviously just a Russian bot/troll.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'm sorry for hurting your feelings by banging on your sacred cows.

[jb]

No one says bots can't be entertaining. Just look at all the fun people are having with ChatGPT!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'm glad to hear that ChatGPT and other chatbots can be entertaining! Chatbots can be a lot of fun to interact with, and they can be programmed to have a variety of personalities and responses. Some chatbots are designed to be humorous or to engage in witty banter, while others are more serious and focused on providing information or helping with tasks. There are many different ways to use chatbots, and they can be a great source of entertainment and enjoyment for users.

[David Nieporent]

Way back in the pre-Post days, there was no threading. I thought it was fine back then. Little did I know…

That's really far back, because the time just before they went to the Post they were using Disqus, which was threaded.

[Mr. Bumble]

Reply is back! Edit, too. Have at it.

[Nige]

Didn't Disqus threads sort of end up falling apart if they went on too long? Also, the upvotes and downvotes were fun.

[Sarcastr0]

That's right! It was:

no-frills locally hosted VC (for quite a while) -> Disqus -> Post -> Reason.

[Sarcastr0]

Disqus was still locally hosted, from what I could tell.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Disqus would be far better than this unthreaded commenting system.

Some plug-and-play commenting systems are easy to integrate into an existing web page.

[ReaderY]

Test to see if reply is back.

Yes, reply is back. And I just edited this comment, so edit is back. Looks like they fixed it.

[jb]

I've been thinking about the release of Trump's tax records. Procedurally, it is not great. It does make it feel like they were obtained under false pretenses and also shatters yet another norm that it's clear the Republicans will seize on gleefully in the next Congress to up the ante and release all sorts of tangentially political figures' taxes.

On the other hand, the handwringing from the other side is silly. "The committee lied!" they say, completely ignoring the fact that Trump took the lead in lying on this topic by repeatedly declaring that he himself would release these same returns. The dude is just constantly trolling America, and people from both sides of the political divide constantly fall for it. It's also amusing how the response is not "we'll do the same thing to your President" since thats a hollow threat with every other Presidential candidate routinely releasing all of their returns. Instead the retaliation will be, apparently, to release the tax returns of Paul Pelosi or the right's favorite whipping boy, Hunter Biden, despite the fact that neither of these people hold or are running for political office.

But taken to the extreme, maybe this is a good thing? Maybe we should just require that significant public figures release their tax returns or go farther as countries like Sweden do and basically just make the data public for everyone. It's not great for America that we don't have a good understanding of the financial interests of key decision-makers in government, especially when outside income regularly dwarfs their government salary. So I'd argue that more transparency across the board is probably the right direction, but ideally let's do it some other way than weaponizing the subpoena power.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Instead the retaliation will be, apparently, to release the tax returns of Paul Pelosi or the right’s favorite whipping boy, Hunter Biden, despite the fact that neither of these people hold or are running for political office."

Oh well, Dems should have thought of that first.

Just an illustration of the maxim: "They come after you with a knife, you go after them with a gun"

[jb]

Perhaps this is the Dems reaction to Trump lying about releasing his tax returns in the first place?

Like I said, I don't like the decision, but let's not pretend that the norm-breaking started with the committee. If we were talking about literally any other President or candidate, none of this would have been necessary in the first place.

[David Nieporent]

If we were talking about literally any other President or candidate, none of this would have been necessary in the first place.

My favorite is the right-wing "Just wait until we release Biden's returns," from people not smart enough to realize that Biden's returns are already public because he voluntarily released them as every president for 40 years has done.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Biden's returns include Hunters....

[David Nieporent]

I am pretty sure that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden are, in fact, two different people, and that they do not file a joint return.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Perhaps this is the Dems reaction to Trump lying about releasing his tax returns in the first place?"

Its still an escalation, use of law for political means. So, GOP will up the ante, as it should.

Let's see who blinks first.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You know, you could just leave America if you're such an assclown as to wish for it's political destruction because all you care about is perceived injustice and vengeance.

[Bob from Ohio]

Nah, I think I'll stay.

[Sarcastr0]

Up to you.

But you do seem to hate it here.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Odd that you didn't bother to refute anything. First bit of honesty you've ever demonstrated on these boards.

[Nige]

What's political about it? We already know he's a tax fraud.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I don’t think the democratic base will give a shit if Pelosi’s tax returns or Hunter Biden’s are made public.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I don’t think the democratic base will give a shit"

No, but politicians in DC will.

[LawTalkingGuy]

And again. Who gives a shit? Lol. They probably don’t either. Or at least not that much.

[LawTalkingGuy]

It specifically mattered to trump because of his rich guy persona. Most DC Dems don’t have that. What’s it going to show that we don’t already generally know? Maybe AOC has a share of General Electric or something?

[Nige]

'Oh no! The Republicans might go after Hunter Biden!'

[Frank Drackman]

Hunter Biden will "Go after" Hunter Biden, he'll pull a Jim Morrison before the next erection, Senescent J will wear his bloody shirt through the Primary.

[elnurmamedrafiev]

Or, better yet, "They come after you with a knife, you go after them with a gun, then you rape and torture their wives and daughters, while making them watch, to send a message to any other potential aggressor not to come at you with a knife in the first place."

[Nige]

'They come after you with tax returns you go after them with a laptop that has already proven completely ineffective two elections straight!'

[Nige]

'Oh well, Dems should have thought of that first.'

What makes you think they didn't? There can't be many left with any illusions about Republicans.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Just an illustration of the maxim: “They come after you with a knife, you go after them with a gun”

The problem for you in that context is that you, and all other clingers, are outgunned in the forum that matters -- the modern American marketplace of ideas.

Conservatives' backwardness, racism, gay-bashing, old-timey religion, misogyny, resentment, dogma, insularity, sacred ignorance, and xenophobia are no match for the mainstream's reason, education, modernity, science, progress, and inclusiveness. The liberal-libertarian mainstream has been winning the culture war for more than a half-century, shaping national progress against essentially every preference conservatives have. And that trajectory is positioned to continue, as our electorate and population become increasingly less rural, less religious, less white, less backward, and less bigoted (cranky old right-wingers are replaced by better and younger Americans in the natural course).

Many Republicans recognize this, which is why they have become so disaffected, desperate, and often QAnon-Trump delusional. The best the Republican Party, the Federalist Society, the Volokh Conspiracy, and their fans can hope for is to delay progress a bit, and perhaps carve a few safe spaces (privileges, exemptions) for stale and ugly thinking that might survive the settled-but-not-quite-finished culture war.

Happy holidays, everyone!

[Frank Drackman]

Long Post Jerry, you got the run of the Prison Li-berry during X-mas week?? Keep on Klinging!!!!!!

[Sarcastr0]

jb - already a VC post about it. The comments are...about as overstated as you'd think.

[Mr. Bumble]

You're such a douche.

[Sarcastr0]

Wow, you are touchy.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Look, it’s the effeminate Mr. Bumble, the Mickey Rivers of the VC, coming in hot with a vulgar one-sentence insult post, his specialty. Duck Sarcastr0!

[Frank Drackman]

Whats your problem with the Mick (Lefty BTW) and author of one of the best insults in MLB history, when he told Reggie Martinez Jackson (also a Southpaw) he was so messed up because he had a "White First Name, Mexican Middle Name, and Black Last Name"
still cracks me up,

Frank

[F.D. Wolf]

Wait, are the threads properly nesting again?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Just as I was getting used to productive activities, too. /sarc

UPDATE: Testing the edit function.

[Nige]

'except to embarrass and politically damage a thoroughly corrupt person.'

Everybody complains that politicians aren't held to account. Everybody then either goes ballistic over or dismisses as cynical any and all efforts to hold one of the most venal examples in recent years to any account whatsoever.

All I want for Christmas is the reply function back.

[Nige]

THANK YOU SANTA

[Mr. Bumble]

While John Roberts was busy searching for the Dobb’s leaker, Clarence Thomas was busy helping the volunteers place wreaths on the graves at Arlington.

https://pjmedia.com/culture/chris-queen/2022/12/22/clarence-thomas-serves-with-humility-and-joy-this-christmas-season-n1655633

[Mr. Bumble]

Hey, you know those million plus new jobs the Biden administration was touting before the election? Well according to the Philly Fed it was actually about 10,500.

https://bongino.com/philly-fed-u-s-economy-added-over-one-million-fewer-jobs-than-government-statistics-claim

[jb]

LOL. Always be suspicious when the "summary" doesn't have the link to the source material. In this case it's here:

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/surveys-and-data/benchmark-revisions/early-benchmark-2022-q2-report.pdf

While it's true that the Philly Fed says that job growth was lower than the estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the second quarter of 2022, that's mostly because in the previous two quarters the BLS estimates were way too low and job growth was actually more robust than they were estimating. Across the entire three quarter period, both methods show very similar growth in jobs.

As Sarcastr0 suggests above, it's good to do a bit more digging before regurgitating whatever echo chamber "news" you've come across most recently.

[Mr. Bumble]

Not sure I agree with your take. Part of the problem is that the BLS numbers do not account for an individual having more than one job, with each one being treated as a separate "new job".

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/12/whats-happening-with-the-job-numbers.php

[Michael P]

Brandon is proud to have created a million new part-time jobs! (From the wreckage of hundreds of thousands of full-time jobs he destroyed!)

[jb]

I linked directly to the Philly Fed report. You can look at the graphs yourself. They clearly show that the BLS numbers were undercounting the number of jobs created in the previous two quarters.

[ragebot]

Gotta say this is the first Reason thread I can recall with no SPAM posts. Of course the reply mess does need to go.

[Mr. Bumble]

It's fixed and now everyone is starting back at the top and adding replies.

[Nige]

As nature intended.

[Nige]

We're all reply guys and gals again.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

News came out that the CIA killed JFK. Not a single bootlicker cares or thinks they have misbehaved since.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The CIA or a rogue wing of it?

[Frank Drackman]

My fillings didn't get that story.

[David Nieporent]

Meanwhile, I see that the cuckoo right wing is having a tantrum about the fact that Putin is losing his war in Ukraine, with Donald Trump Jr. (! - a person who has never worked an honest day in his entire life - !) attacking Zelensky for asking for more U.S. help.

[Mr. Bumble]

Funny how Putin attacks Ukraine when Dems are in the White House.

[Nige]

He shouldn’t have believed all the right wing bullshit about Biden, I guess.

[bernard11]

Because Trump would have destroyed the Russians with his super-duper magical powers. Right?

I mean, WTF is this all about? If Putin only invaded because Biden won, which I doubt, it would be because he expected Trump, had he won, to deliver Ukraine without a fight.

Of course Putin might have had to do Trump a favor or two, involving Swiss bank accounts or hotels in Moscow or something, but he could manage that.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The man has laser beam eyes!

And he's more ripped than The Rock!

And his followers are worthless, deplorable, stupid, obsolete losers!

[Frank Drackman]

the "Rock"???
couldn't come up with a more relevant wrestler like Sergeant Slaughter or the Iron Shiek??
With your "Proclivities" I'm guessing you're more a "Gorgeous George" fan,

Frank "loves Mankind, the Wrestler, not Mankind in general"

[Frank Drackman]

And Saddam invaded Kuwait when Repubiclowns were there, your point? (besides the one on your head)

[Frank Drackman]

"Losing"??? they were "Losing" to the Germans in 1942, Roosh-uns play the long game, my money's still on Pooty-Poot

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Other than the Black's, has their been a mass shooter who didn't have some nexus to the Democrats in the FBI?

[Brett Bellmore]

Remember how I remarked around election time that economic stats are subject to being revised downward after elections?

Oh, yeah, that's quite a large revision. 2nd quarter job growth got revised down from the 1,121K announced just before the election, to a slightly lower 10.5K.

What the heck, they were only off by a factor of 100.

[Michael P]

An order of magnitude here, two orders of magnitude there, and pretty soon you're talking about real differences. (I would apologize to Everett Dirksen, but he sadly seems to have never said the "real money" part of that quote.)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Remember how the Census Bureau "accidentally" granted Blue States about five extra House members and no one did anything about it?

[Frank Drackman]

depends on where they "Added" them. Even NY and CA are pretty Repubiclown once you get out of the city.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why shouldn't a disparate impact analysis be applied to the Election Day happenings in Maricopa County?

[Moderation4ever]

I don't think a disparate impact analysis is what you are looking for, what are you trying to prove?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

One group was more adversely affected than another by the election day whatevers.

Is that not what disparate impact is?

[Moderation4ever]

First it has not been established that any group was denied the right to vote. The State of Arizona said everyone who wanted to vote could and their votes were counted. So, there is no indication of an injury to be addressed.

Second those most affected were people voting on election day and that is not an assigned group but rather those who chose to wait to vote. That is a voluntary choice. Those people could have chosen to vote earlier and avoid the problem.

So, I don't see a disparate impact analysis being a responsible tool to use here.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It's the voters fault for voting on election day?

You sound like that dude who testified today.

It isn't a secret Republicans vote on ED. That's why Maricopa sent around those techs to mess with the settings in those heavy R precincts.

[Moderation4ever]

I am not saying voters are at fault. What am saying is that no group was affected. People were not forced to vote on election day they made that choice. And therefore, a disparate impact analysis would not be appropriate.

[Mr. Bumble]

Election days, weeks, months is the problem.

[Sarcastr0]

What is the problem?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Republicans can't stand voting by anyone other than rural, downscale, half-educated, Christian whites.

Literally. In several respects.

[Frank Drackman]

I'm an Urban/Upscale/Well Ed-Jew-ma-cated (OK, M.D.'s pretty much a Trade) /Jew
OK, I'm "White"
Where do I fit in to your philosophical (wet) dreams, Horatio?
Played 1 year of HS football, receiver, (5'6 130, what else could I play?) Receivers coach seemed a little too interested in patting our fannies (Et Tu, Jerry?) Football had too many rules, owies, and Jerry's, did much better in baseball and tennis,

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

are you that stupid, easier to cheat, you'll find out in 0-24

[awildseaking]

It will be interesting to see what happens with the election challenges that the judge agreed to hear. I would love for Volokh to examine the following because I honestly don’t know what could happen if:

1. If election officials are proven in court to have violated laws regarding election practices, what is the remedy?
2. The basic theory accuses Gates and co of gross negligence, but there is increasing evidence that there may have been nefarious intent based on political motivations. If that is the case, do courts offer a remedy?
3. Are courts the best remedy to election challenges? The subject is so politically charged that any action seems impossible. Charlie Kirk has covered Maricopa extensively since he and his team are based in Maricopa County and even they’re saying there is almost zero chance that anything will change regardless of what is proven in court.
4. What are the implications for society at large if election corruption cannot be addressed civilly?
5. No matter the outcome, experts have said everyone involved will try to appeal these cases all the way to SCOTUS. If SCOTUS ends up hearing any of these cases and agrees with Kari Lake on the merits, does SCOTUS have the authority to demand AZ re-run the election? I see a major states’ rights issue here.
6. Is there any precedent for anything going on in this process? Everything feels like a first with lots of unknowns. That’s why I’m asking all these questions.
7. In a hypothetical repeat of the election, can Katie Hobbs, Bill Gates, and others be forcibly recused from involvement? One of the controversies of this race is that Hobbs did not resign as Secretary of State and administered the same election she ran in.
8. If the courts punt on the issue like they did with Trump’s challenges in 2020, what remedy can they offer if any at all? I am very scared of the possibility that legal remedies are impossible. Failure to remedy will not eliminate underlying issues and punting to the same legislators whose own elections were suspect is futile. Can the courts sleep at night knowing that they’re effectively asking the citizens to beg their corrupt officials to fight against their own corruption? This is the inflection point where hypothetical threats of political violence and civil war become real. After all, what can you do if you can’t solve problems legally and civilly?

[David Nieporent]

There cannot be "increasing evidence" of "nefarious intent" since there's no evidence of it.

To answer your questions in general: the only relevant questions for post-election challenges are (a) whether eligible people were able to cast their votes, and whether all those legal votes were counted; and (b) whether ineligible votes were counted.

If eligible voted and ineligible people didn't, there is no "remedy" because there's no wrong. Whether administrative procedures were otherwise perfectly followed is not the proper subject of a lawsuit. You don't get to disenfranchise everyone who voted for the winner because you found that someone didn't — as is inevitable — dot an I or cross a T. That's why the judge immediately tossed out all of Lake's arguments except the claims that

1) Someone deliberately tampered with the ballot printing machines and that this cost Lake sufficient votes to change the election outcome; and
2) Someone stuffed the ballot boxes with illegal ballots, in sufficient numbers to change the election outcome.

To be clear, the judge did not find either of those things to be true; the judge only said that if they were true, then Lake would have a legitimate gripe. Every other complaint of hers was illegitimate.

Of course election corruption can be addressed civilly. But election corruption means deliberate action intended to illicitly change the outcome. It does not mean equipment malfunctions or the fact that an election official used a blue pen when he was supposed to use a black pen.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

They testified today that techs went around and switched the print settings to a setting that would hose the ballots. The whole 20" 19" thing.

[David Nieporent]

That's not exactly what they testified, but even if it was, so what? It didn't prevent the votes from being counted; it only required that they be tabulated later rather than at the polling place.

[Michael P]

They also testified that the chain of custody for those "counted later" ballots was broken, and the county had no idea how many ballots were collected at each precinct, so they have no way to reconcile the counts.

As usual, the election seems to have been run in a way that makes outright fraud almost impossible to detect, piling violations of law on top of incompetent misconfigurations and fragile systems.

[David Nieporent]

It's really weird how those Republicans who run Maricopa County tried to screw GOP voters there. And how it only affected the crazy ones, while allowing all the Republicans running for Congress to win their elections.

[Frank Drackman]

The Repubiclowns won??? the way the DemoKKKrat's been celebrating I thought Nancy P had been re-coronated,

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why do bootlickers think that if we just give the Federals a few more billion dollars they can solve AGW, when they can't solve a damn thing with the other $4,000B they spend each year?

[Frank Drackman]

In Watertown NY on "Assignment"
got several feet of "AGW" on my car
Flight out tomorrow, shouldn't be a tough drive to Syracuse, don't see any cars on the Interstate,

Frank "Brrrrr"

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Katie Hobb's second in command, the lady who was shaking down Arizona counties to get them to certify her boss as Governor, is an FBI Agent from their Cyber Division

https://twitter.com/KariLakeWarRoom/status/1606029236690489344?cxt=HHwWgMCg_ZzF4cksAAAA

[David Nieporent]

Liar.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Click the link doofus.

[David Nieporent]

I did. I didn't say that you were the only liar; I just said you were a liar. Of course Lake, being a Trumpkin, is too.

Look at the actual supporting document: "She previously worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division then went on to receive her J.D. from Stanford Law School."

What does the word "previously" mean, doofus? Does it mean currently, doofus?

[Brett Bellmore]

The question is, what does "previously" mean, here. Like agents 'retiring' from the FBI to provide deniability, while continuing to actually work for the agency, isn't a thing. If there's one thing we've learned from the Twitter files, it's that social media companies are just lousy with "retired" federal agents in important positions.

It's a great way to have state run media while pretending you don't.

[Michael P]

Relevant jargon that has recent become more widely known: sheep dipping.

[apedad]

Good ol' Brett.

He never misses an opportunity to highlight a conspiracy.

First there's FBI agents doing nefarious stuff.

Now there's retired FBI agents doing nefarious stuff.

Where's the conspiracy about grooming future FBI agents to do nefarious stuff?

[Michael P]

Good ol' apedad, writing apologia for government's anti-democratic conspiracies.

[Brett Bellmore]

You'll just happily accept the US adopting all the practices of a police state, so long as they don't admit to doing it. Mass surveillance, censorship, social credit scores dictating whether you get access to financial services. It's all fine with you so long as they nominally deny doing it.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, federal retirees getting jobs elsewhere is pretty normal.

You thought campaign finance reform was censorship. There is no social credit score shit going on.

You WANT a police state, and you're wishcasting it.

You don't live in a political thriller.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Brett is trying his best.

If you were an obsolete, superstitious, downscale, on-the-spectrum, antisocial, backwater, gullible, right-wing culture war casualty, you'd be cranky, too.

[Frank Drackman]

Jerry, I think you're Cranky because Stuttering John Fetterman denied your commutation,
but hey (man!) it's tough out here, you're better off buggering new meat on Cell Block C, at https://www.cor.pa.gov/Facilities/StatePrisons/Pages/Greene.aspx

do you guys get anything "special" on X-mas?? I know it's for Klingers, but hey, I'll Kling for some cellblock Egg Nog

Frank

[David Nieporent]

The question is, what does “previously” mean, here.

It means she used to work there but doesn't anymore, and hasn't in more than a decade, you conspiracy-minded loon.

Like agents ‘retiring’ from the FBI to provide deniability, while continuing to actually work for the agency, isn’t a thing.

That's correct. It is not, in fact, a thing.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Twitter files, it’s that social media companies are just lousy with “retired” federal agents in important positions.

Yes, of the seven thousand five hundred people who worked at Twitter until Musk tried to destroy it, at least 3 or 4 of them used to work for the federal government, which makes the company "lousy with" them.

[PaulS]

I recently discovered that I could change the language in my car's navigation. Since I don't speak other languages well - not useful - but one option was British English. Lousy accent but now I am told to "PLEASE turn left".

[David Nieporent]

My iPhone uses Australian — my kids once changed that to mess with me — so it keeps telling me to "turn into the carpark" and things like that.

[Ridgeway]

..and then, take the motorway!

[John F. Carr]

One model I heard has a "squirrel" language with various squirrelly interjections thrown in.

[elnurmamedrafiev]

A district judge in Rhode Island held that it was acceptable to ban >10 magazines because of "mass shootings" and that the legislature acted with "fealty" to the Constitution. Lie enough, and you start to believe your own lie.

[Jmaie]

Just saw a McDonalds add referring to their quarter-pounder with cheese as QPC. They should probably stop there…

[Dr. Ed 2]

Putin reportedly believes something similar.