Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

One theory is that Tucker Carlson was fired to prevent him from airing any more of the Jan 6th videos, he apparently has a lot more that haven't been aired.

IF they show that this truly was an insurrection, what's the harm? But if they instead show uniformed police officers directing people to enter the Capitol, isn't that something we should see?

And isn't it interesting that Dementia Joe announced that he's running for re-election the day after Carlson was fired. And the Dems will have no debates -- RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard would be interesting candidates...

[Noscitur a sociis]

Granting atrue do your dubious premise that Rupert Murdoch(?) doesn’t want these putative videos being aired, how would firing Tucker Carlson help accomplish that?

[santamonica811]

Of all Ed's batshit-crazy conspiracy theories over the years; this one is up there with the best of them. When you mix ChatBots and RussianTrollBots, you occasionally get these gems, and they are to be savored.

You can't make up this stuff. Except . . . well, Ed can. And can do so an impressively large amount of the time.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ed didn't make it up, it was mentioned on talk radio.

Ed does admit that it is an interesting thesis though, and must ask "what's wrong with releasing all of this?"

[santamonica811]

Ah, talk radio. From the sober folks who brought you PizzaGate. Sorry you weren't around back then, to give us your "Some people are saying Democrats are running a kiddie sex slave ring out of a fast food restaurant. Why is the liberal media covering this up?!???" drivel.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As opposed to known germophobe Donald Trump having Russian Prostitutes urinate on his bed.

[Nige]

And aren't we all glad that some massive cult with elaborate beliefs didn't spring up around THAT.

[Kazinski]

It certainly seemed like a cult did spring up around that, it included the former FBI, CIA, DNI, MSNBC devoted 2 years of programming to it, as well as NYT, and WAPO front pages.

[Nige]

No, it didn't. The Pee Tape became a running joke.

[Kazinski]

Part and parcel of the same document, you can't claim the Steele Dossier had any crediblity when it included the pee pee tape, and the claim that the Kremlin was running it's election interference campaign out of its non-existent Miami consulate, or Michael Cohen went to Prague to meet with his Kremlin go between.

Just because the cult included other sub-cults than the pee pee tape, they were all reading from the same bible.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, all documents are either all true or all false. No other possibility exists.

[Nige]

I don't give a shit about your butthurt over the Steele Dossier, nothing compares to Qanon.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Nige -- sadly, there *are* child sex slave rings in this country -- or at least a lot of government officials (on both sides of the political divide) seem to think it is. See: https://www.npr.org/2016/07/13/484801054/truckers-take-the-wheel-in-effort-to-halt-sex-trafficking

[Nige]

Yeah, but it's not the real ones where real children are being abused that Qanon are interested in. Bit like mianstream Republicans focusing on drag queens and transgenderism as a threat to children while ignoring real threats.

[Randal]

Catholics!

[Sarcastr0]

Oh no, urine is sterile….I’m gonna have to become a peegater now!

Thanks a lot, Ed!

[Life of Brian]

Friendly Thursday morning fact check, since this one could actually matter:

It’s a fact frequently shared at parties and across social media: urine is sterile, so you should drink it if you find yourself in a waterless pinch. But like so many cocktail party factoids, this one is absolutely not true. Urine ain’t sterile, friends, and neither is any part of you.

[Brett Bellmore]

"urine is sterile, so you should drink it if you find yourself in a waterless pinch."

That's pretty stupid, and I've honestly never heard that; It IS, after all, a way of getting rid of wastes, you don't want to reintroduce them into your body.

The only use I've heard for urine was for flushing wounds...

[Life of Brian]

I've heard it here and there as far back as I can remember. I suspect it had some sort of pop culture origin, but nothing is readily surfacing. The Army Field Service Manual felt the need to specifically caution against it (page 6-5).

[Mr. Bumble]

"The only use I’ve heard for urine was for flushing wounds…"
And to lessen the pain of jellyfish stings.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Urine is filtered out of your blood by your kidneys, so it's not sterile, particularly if you have a kidney, bladder, or urinary tract infection.

It's relatively clean so flushing wounds is acceptable in the absence of something better, but you would NEVER want to drink it because it is full of waste products you need to get rid of, notably uric acid from the breakdown of proteins. Now if you remove this stuff it would be OK to drink, but it would be easier to remove the salt from salt water.

[Absaroka]

"I suspect it had some sort of pop culture origin, but nothing is readily surfacing."

One of my many strange kinks is for lifeboat sagas ( and polar expeditions gone wrong, and ...). People drinking urine is a pretty common thing ... thirst is a powerful thing. And when someone in the lifeboat gets that desperate, the survivors report it doesn't go well for the drinker.

Obligatory life raft saga; just got the book after seeing this (he collected rainwater, so no urine drinking).

[OtisAH]

Germaphobes do not hear “pandemic” and think “hoax.” Germaphobes don’t “just start kissing them.” Germaphobes don’t do large crowds (certainly not maskless). Turnip is not a germaphobe. He just thinks other people are gross and dirty.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Did you read how the Steele Dossier came into the public domain? John McStain and the people Trump appointed to deal with Ukraine feature prominently. Trump is such an assclown.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Volokh Conspiracy: The Afternoon AM Radio of Legal Blogs.

[Brett Bellmore]

Reportedly, the problem is that releasing it would expose too many covert federal agents who were present that day.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Are some people saying that?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Alot, but definitely not the Feds whom had a hundred or so agents there instigating and entrapping Granny and Grampy.

[ThanksForTheFish]

Yes, this seems logical and reasonable. It is known, because some people talked to other some people that heard about it.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's literally one of the FBI's justification for not releasing the video.

Remember, roughly half the "Proud Boys" that day were government assets, and even given the video that has been released, people have identified multiple figures visibly doing worse than the charged defendants, who the government inexplicably has no interest in going after.

[Sarcastr0]

The FBI isn’t blocking the video.

Actually there isn’t a singular the video at all.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Video" is a mass noun, you dweeb. I swear, your nit picking gets worse by the day.

[Sarcastr0]

What video then?

Though the FBI not wanting their informants killed by violent insurgent right wingers seems fine by me.

Not like they could convince you of anything no matter what they did.

[Absaroka]

"Though the FBI not wanting their informants killed by violent insurgent right wingers seems fine by me."

I'm not sure it's kosher to keep informants under wraps once you start prosecuting people. Despite it being inconvenient for the government.

IIRC you have said your parents were active in the Vietnam anti war movement. Let's get in the time machine and ask what your reaction is to "the FBI not wanting their informants killed by violent communist left wingers seems fine by me" spoken by, say, 1968 J. Edgar Hoover, in the context of suppressing evidence you think, rightly or wrongly, paints the government in a bad light.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Sarcastr0 you bootlicking douche. The FBI and the Capitol Police were the only ones killing people on J6

[Sarcastr0]

Abrasoka - I’m not sure it’s kosher to keep informants under wraps once you start prosecuting people. Despite it being inconvenient for the government.

Um, that'd be pretty dangerous to said informants. So long as said informant's testimony is not being used as evidence, but rather an investigatory aid, I don't see why you'd need to reveal this.

Remember, despite Brett's political thriller bullshit, these were not agents, nor did they push anyone into Jan 06, they were just informants.

[Bob from Ohio]

"spoken by, say, 1968 J. Edgar Hoover"

That was different!

[Brett Bellmore]

"Remember, despite Brett’s political thriller bullshit, these were not agents, nor did they push anyone into Jan 06, they were just informants."

You have a really naive understanding of how FBI informants operate in conspiracy cases, you know that?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Brett “Everything’s a Conspiracy” Bellmore calling someone else naive?

Lol.

[Absaroka]

"Um, that’d be pretty dangerous to said informants. So long as said informant’s testimony is not being used as evidence, but rather an investigatory aid, I don’t see why you’d need to reveal this.

Remember, despite Brett’s political thriller bullshit, these were not agents, nor did they push anyone into Jan 06, they were just informants."

Wait a sec. I'm going with Brett's hypothesis here, for the sake of argument. These agents/informants/whatever were in a public place. IIUC, Brett thinks people will go 'There! The guy with the red hair! He's the one who suggested we break into the capital!' while someone else says 'I know him! He is Agent Smuthers from the Omaha office!'.

If Brett's theory is correct - and I'm not saying it is - then I don't have too much sympathy for the FBI or Agent Smuthers.

If Brett's theory is wrong, then all people can say is "Yep, that's Fred, I know him, great guy".

The FBI has a reputation of being pretty ... aggressive... with informants. The old joke is that when you're at the mosque, you'll know who the FBI guys are because they are the ones suggesting y'all go blow up some infidels. And my sense is there is some truth to that. I mean, I've read bios of informants who talk about how many other informants there were.

But reasonable minds can disagree. Just remember to be consistent when those informants are in Antifa or the SDS or AIM or the Black Panthers or Earth First! or the Weather Underground or ... , Because some people - not you, I'm sure - get upset about FBI penetrations in those organizations.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, dunno where you get your info, but I do know that we don't live in a political thriller.

[Nige]

It would not in the least surprise me if there turned out to be an FBI fuck-up associated with Jan 6th, but I suspect it's more like Bush ignoring warnings of a terrorist attack on US soil - they knew something was going to go down and did nothing to stop it.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't like the FBI targeting nonviolent groups, though I allow that's not always a bright line.

All the groups you mention are violent, or at least the ones I know about.

[Brett Bellmore]

" while someone else says ‘I know him! He is Agent Smuthers from the Omaha office!’. "

More like, "Who the hell is that guy, anyway? Let's see if we can find out!"

But, yeah: We have at least one guy so far, Epps, identified, who did really 'insurrectiony' things at the Capitol, and it's just massively conspicuous that the feds have absolutely no interest in going after him.

Video might identify other such curious figures.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Why didn’t Trump do a blanket pardon then?? Do you think he wanted this issue just like he wanted the dude with penis beating Riley Gaines??

[Dr. Ed 2]

The CIA often doesn't prosecute espionage (or offers a sweet plea deal) so as to avoid having to have stuff come out in court that they'd really prefer to keep secret.

This would be the point to offer everyone a really sweet plea deal (time already served comes to instant mind) or if the FBI wants to play hardball, they can blow the cover of all their CIs and everyone else...

Stupid....

[Sarcastr0]

The CIA doesn't prosecute much, actually, not being in the judiciary.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm pretty sure it's the executive branch that does the prosecuting; Maybe you want to at least find real nits to pick, if you're so intent on doing that?

[Sarcastr0]

Shoulda said DoJ; got me there.

But no, the CIA doesn't prosecute. It's not a nit; it's basically Ed's whole post.

[Dr. Ed 2]

OK, the DoJ defers to the CIA's request -- although it would be damn hard to prosecute if the CIA refused to cooperate.

[Jerry B.]

Quite possible that Mr. Murdoch got a "Dear Media Mogul" letter similar to the ones New York banks did, suggesting doing business with the NRA might be deleterious to their governmental oversight requirements.

[Frank Drackman]

"Theory"?? is that something "People are saying..."??

[BrianL.]

When Trump ran for re-election, not only was there no primary debates, but some states didn't even have primaries.

[Gandydancer]

Carlson’s studio is in his home, and his producer and some other staff operate from there. I think we can take it that his access to the J6 videos is unaffected and he will soon have a different platform than Fox. So, no, firing him will do nothing to hide anything.

But the murder of Ashli Babbitt is plain for all to see, so what difference does the availability of evidence make?

[David Nieporent]

I mean, I suppose he might have made a copy, but I don't see why his physical location is relevant. He obtained it in the scope of his duties as a Fox employee; it's theirs, not his.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Knock, knock

Who's there?

Not Ashlii Babbitt. Not anymore.

(no murder was involved in the making of this joke)

[Frank Drackman]

I like the Rodney King/Floyd George/Travon Martin versions

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Most worthless racists do.

[Theendoftheleft]

Knock knock.

Who's there?

AIDS. Dying of AIDS.

[Dr. Ed 2]

His studio is actually in the barn behind the town grange hall -- the town sold it to him as cars, unlike horses, can be parked outdoors in the snow. His home is elsewhere in town.

[hobie]

If you look 15ft behind the back of the officer who bravely shot Babbitt you will see actual congressmen running for their lives. That officer was the only thing standing between them and an enraged servicewoman who had ten years of combat training. But keep telling yourself it was murder if it makes you happy.

[Nelson]

"But the murder of Ashli Babbitt is plain for all to see"

When you smash your way into a building defended by armed law enforcement, getting killed is called a "bad life (ending) decision", not "murder".

[shawn_dude]

Another theory is that Fox's insurance company balked at paying out such a high settlement if the main pyromaniac was still there to burn it all down again.

And/or, the multiple lawsuits involving Tucker along with the pending Smartmatic lawsuit was too much for Rupert to stomach, especially as Tucker's contract was up and being renegotiated.

And/or Tucker could have demanded more than $20M/year (his current salary) to keep pulling Fox into more lawsuits it could ill afford. See also: insurance company balking above.

[bernard11]

Do you think Biden runs Fox News?

Do you think there are no other outlets that would run the videos?

Are you insane?

[not guilty]

A good number of Republican state legislators are going batshit crazy.

In Montana the House of Representatives has blocked Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker, from the House floor for the remainder of the legislative session, apparently because of her remarks in House debate on a bill that would prohibit hormone treatments and surgical care for transgender minors. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/us/zooey-zephyr-transgender-montana-house.html

The Tennessee House of Representatives recently expelled two young black members for the heinous offense of speaking in the well of the House in favor of gun safety measures without having been recognized. (Each has since been selected by his county legislative body to fill the vacancy pending a special election.)

Republicans in Oklahoma have censured a nonbinary, transgender Democratic representative, removing the member from all committee assignments.

The First Amendment constrains a state legislature´s authority to discipline its members. In Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116 (1966), the Georgia House of Representatives refused to seat an elected representative because of his having criticized the policy of the Federal Government in Vietnam and the operation of the Selective Service laws. A unanimous SCOTUS held that this refusal violated the First Amendment.

Here´s hoping Rep. Zephyr sues in federal court for reinstatement of her legislative privileges in Montana.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The Tennessee House of Representatives recently expelled two young black members for the heinous offense of" Shouting using a megaphone while it was somebody else's turn to speak.

[Armchair Lawyer]

And using that megaphone to encourage the crowd of protestors to chant as well, shutting down legislative business.

This is what NG would normally call an insurrection.

[Nige]

No, it's what's normally called a protest or a demonstration.

[Commenter_XY]

It crosses the line when you obstruct official legislative business. That's the law on the books.

[Nige]

Is it? Then a fire alarm going off mid-session is an insurrection.

[Davy C]

Pulling a fire alarm when there's no fire is unquestionably illegal.

[Nige]

But is it an insurrection?

[Gandydancer]

Your attempt at distraction is being laughed at, contemptuously.

I have no idea why the trannys are being disciplined, but ng LIED about what happened in TN.

[Nige]

She's being 'disciplined' because those Republicans are hateful anti-democratic bigots, same as the Republicans in Tennessee.

[not guilty]

Being called a liar by Gandydancer is akin to being called ugly by a frog.

[hobie]

Be careful with kind of talk XY. It gives plausible criminality to the peaceful discourse of J6

[Mr. Bumble]

Not an obstruction of an official proceeding?

[Nige]

An interruption, more like.

[Mr. Bumble]

How long before an interruption becomes obstruction?

[Brett Bellmore]

Depends on whether Nige approves of what the legislature was doing...

[Nige]

I'm sorry that details matter. It must make things very difficult for you.

[Brett Bellmore]

See, he agrees: Only when you're obstructing something he approves of.

[Nige]

The stuff I approve of just tends to be better than the stuff you do.

[Nige]

More than a few minutes, at any rate.

[Gandydancer]

The rules of the TN legislature do not allow the kind of misbehavior engaged in by the two scofflaws to go on for any limited number of minutes before they can be disciplined. Nor should they.

[David Nieporent]

Right; they should've been censured. But expelling them was way beyond the pale.

[Nige]

They over-reacted, deliberately, because they saw the chance to silence some Democrats.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Right; they should’ve been censured. But expelling them was way beyond the pale."

How so? What harm did it do?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Republican racists in the Tennessee legislature got to signal their lack of virtue to the knuckle-dragging, drawling, obsolete Tennessee bigots who vote for Republicans.

The racists this blog cultivates as a target audience applaud the conduct of the racists who tried to silence those legislators, the bigots who are trying to silence a Montana legislator, and all of the other bigots (in Florida, in Ohio, etc.) trying to censor modern, reasoning, educated Americans whose opinions are disliked by Republicans.

[David Nieporent]

How so? What harm did it do?

It deprived their constituents of representation.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It deprived their constituents of representation.

Huh? I thought they were in the legislature representing their constituents right now.

You guys are making expulsion out to be this big penalty, but it practice it looks pretty toothless.

[David Nieporent]

Huh? I thought they were in the legislature representing their constituents right now.

Because they were reappointed in defiance of the legislature's threats if they were.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Again, expelling someone where they can be immediately reinstated hardly seems a "beyond the pale" punishment for anything.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"No, it’s what’s normally called a protest or a demonstration."

Calling a breach of decorum a demonstration doesn't excuse it. If they wanted to they could demonstrate outside.

[Nige]

It was a demonstration, and there was a breach of decorum. How horrified you are at this breach probably depends on how much you've been trying to downplay Jan 6th.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I would certainly support the expulsion from Congress of any member who breached decorum on the chamber floor on Jan 6th, whether it was a protest or not.

[ThanksForTheFish]

You can't have it both ways. There is no comparison to the mostly peaceful protest in January 6. But legislators shouldn't be encouraging protestors to shut down the business of state government through a hecklers veto either.

[hoppy025]

But it's an insurrection when people gather outside the Capitol on 1/6? You people are disgusting traitors.

[not guilty]

No, there was no insurrection in the Tennessee Capitol. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/04/04/tennessee-capitol-protest-heres-what-did-and-did-not-happen/70075823007/

No demonstrators broke into the Capitol, no one was arrested or injured, and no property was damaged. No one entered without going through security. No members of the public stormed the House chamber floor.

[Nige]

Also, nobody wanted to overthrow elected officials and replace them with their preferred candidates. In fact, what the Republicans did in response is closer to that.

[Gandydancer]

Pathetic attempt to change the subject. No insurrection took place on J6 either. What happened in TN was egregious behavior by three legislators, two of whom were appropriately disciplined. (The same discipline of the third failed by one vote.)

[Davedave]

"No insurrection took place on J6"
Is an attempted coup an insurrection? Does it involve insurrection? If your focus is on semantic quibbling rather than the fact that the man who lost an election attempted to violently seize power anyway, you are a traitor.

[Mr. Bumble]

Says the man? with two names.

[Theendoftheleft]

What insurrection? A bunch of guys went into the Congress and had a bit of a temper tantrum. Far cry from trying to overthrow the government.

Now, by the standards of any other civilized, Western democracy, those folks had good reason to be suspicious and pissed off based on how the American federal election of 2020 was run: decreased ID requirements, ballot harvesting, 11th-hour judicial decisions about late ballots being counted, ballot rolls in quite a few states not being up to date, several states ceasing to count for a period of time (for seemingly the same period of time too).

What’s so amusing is that American blue team fuckwits insist that they are defenders of democracy, election integrity, and the rule of law when, in terms of election law (amongst other things), literally no other Western liberal democracy would do what you did in 2020. The SECOND one asks them about a comparative law perspective on these matters, the American blue teamers change the subject. You have discredited yourselves.

[Davedave]

Go on, if you think your co-conspirators did nothing wrong, give us your name and address. Then we can add you to the list of traitors.

[Theendoftheleft]

I’m sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can’t do that…

And you have it backwards: your lot conspired against the legitimate government… in 1776. Insurrectionists and traitors.

[Davedave]

My lot? I think you have that almost as backwards as you are.

[Theendoftheleft]

God, that's a dumb reply...

[Sarcastr0]

The legislators did not shut down legislative business.

And censure is right there.

And they didn’t expel the white lady.

It’s pretty clear; your spin is crap.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Republican racists have a friend in the Volokh Conspiracy.

Time to publish yet another vile racial slur, Conspirators!

[Theendoftheleft]

What are you talking about, AIDS? Are you harping on again about how you're going to try to destroy Islam and how you hate the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I am talking about this blog's habitual publication of vile racial slurs (10 different occasions during the first four months of this year, at least); the rampant bigotry that animates this blog; and my sense that this blog targets gay-bashers, racists, misogynists, Islamophobes, antisemites, and immigrant-haters as a cultivated, coveted, comfortable audience.

[Theendoftheleft]

AIDS, AIDS, AIDS…

YOU are an Islamophobe. Indeed, YOU are bigoted against all religious people. YOU are also bigoted against half of your countrymen. YOU are furthermore bigoted against the poor. YOU are additionally a racist, American blue team imperialist who foists your cultural-legal bullshit down the Global South’s throat. YOU also support the systematic, racist exploitation of millions of illegals ALL WHILST claiming to provide them with ‘The American Dream’. (By the way, no one in the rest of the West, let alone the world, believes for even one second that you would treat the illegals thus if they were white, or would even let them in across your southern border en masse if they were black. You use illegal Hispanics as a neo-serf class in every blue city and state… because YOU are racist, AIDS.)

AIDS, you are a mindless, hypocritical American fuckwit. You’re a disease upon the entire world. Fortunately, your values are an evolutionarily inferior meme and will die out in the next couple of generations — especially as your country wanes in power.

You’re not equal, AIDS. So stop bemoaning the fact that you don’t deserve to be treated as such.

[Mr. Bumble]

Feel better now?

[hobie]

aaand another bigot loses the plot. Your Brittish knickers are starting to show Theend. I don't know why the politics of a country you don't even live in matters so much to you

[Theendoftheleft]

Because yours is ruining in the world, you bigoted moron.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your sadness will end, Theendoftheleft.

Upon replacement.

Until then, your sadness is another sign of progress.

[Theendoftheleft]

AIDS, it is you who is literally being replaced. The world rejects your values, and the system you foisted upon it, as garbage. All of Asia, Africa, the Muslim world, and much of South America rejects it. There will be no gay rights, multiculturalism, DEI, etc, in fifty years hence. All of that shit will be tossed into the garbage bin of history, just like you. Capeesh?

Your time is over, AIDS. At least one can take solace in knowing that the American right will Anders Breivik you, your family, and everyone you love before your country crashes and burns.

Now, stop pretending that you have the right to speak as an equal. You’re just a lowly, parochial, little evolutionary dud.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

One of Prof. Volokh's fans claims I am Jerry Sandusky.

Another says I am AIDS.

This is the audience you develop when habitually publishing vile racial slurs is the signature element of your white, male, right-wing blog.

Carry on, clingers. So far as people like me permit.

[Theendoftheleft]

You don’t have the power to permit or deny anything, AIDS. You’re just a disease upon the world. Evolutionarily inferior memes, and evolutionary duds, don’t constitute progress either.

You furthermore seem to have lived and breathed the VC for years. What do you think that tells the world about your psychology? YOU are the paradigmatic clinger. (That, in addition to the fact that you like to regularly accuse folks here of being bigoted racists when you regularly demonstrate that you’re one yourself. You not only lack self-understanding but also any awareness of how you’re perceived by others, AIDS.)

Moreover, your Dem establishment, not the GOP establishment or the Trumpians, have now alienated most of your allies. Even Macron has spoken out publicly against your ‘leadership’. No one else is going to fight a new cold war, let alone a hot one, to perpetuate the American Democrat agenda for the globe. (Notice, furthermore, how your presidents like to claim that you’re the leader of the FREE world even though there was never a vote?) If America loses this new cold war, then the future of the world belongs to east and central Asia, in which case ALL of your ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ values will die with the loss of most of your power. You are finished, AIDS.

[Bob from Ohio]

"they didn’t expel the white lady"

Veteran legislator who has relationships versus two freshmen. Also, apparently has health issues so compassion not to strip her insurance. Still 65 votes to expel, only one short.

But when all you have is a race card ...

[Gandydancer]

…and she didn’t wield the bullhorn.

Still, I agree with the ones who DID vote to expel her. Insinuating that they are racists because they fell one vote short is bizarre.

But Gaslightr0 is shameless.

[Dr. Ed 2]

AND she apologized, they didn't. Shouldn't matter but always does.

[Nelson]

I believe this is not true. She hasn't apologized.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, Bob, that's what it was. The GOP just didn't think to mention that at the time...

[Mr. Bumble]

Does your employer condone you commenting here on company time?

[Sarcastr0]

I get my work done; don't be a dick.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I thought he was asking Bob from Ohio

[Mr. Bumble]

Objection. Not what I asked.

[BrotherMovesOn]

The effeminate Bumble has no employer. Still, why, upon retiring from AutoZone, does he feel the need to join a message board for a profession of which he is not a member, and proceed to hurl one-sentence, dainty insults at actual practitioners?
It's a free country, I guess.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Bumble: "Objection."
LOL.
What a femme.

[Mr. Bumble]

Your screen name promises, but you never do.

[Mr. Bumble]

Congratulations on your promotion to chairman of the membership board at the VC.

[BrotherMovesOn]

You are of course free to join, read and even comment.
What I don't get is why you feel free and informed enough to throw stones at actual practitioners?
Commenter XY posts a lot.
He readily admits he's not an attorney, but instead comes here to learn. He's civil.
Why can't you do likewise?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"And they didn’t expel the white lady."

The white lady didn't use a megaphone.

[hobie]

When MTG cupped her hands around her mouth to scream at the president, that was kind of a megaphone

[TwelveInchPianist]

I suspect people would be more outraged if she used an actual megaphone.

[hobie]

Actual/pretend...who cares. Did she actually disrupt a proceeding of Congress per your definition?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"And censure is right there."

What difference does it make? What harm was done by the expulsion that would have been spared with a censure?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

My understanding is that they have been temporarily reinstated, but they will have to defend their seats through special election, rather than getting to serve out their terms.

[TwelveInchPianist]

So the voters get to decide whether or not these guys lose their seats for these shenanigans. Hard to see how this is beyond the pale.

[bernard11]

The defenses of the TN legislature we se here are just astonishing, just amazing.

The comment section continues to be infested by RW idiots.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I see you've run out of arguments.

[bernard11]

No.

It's just that arguing with dedicated, moronic, RW ideologues is pointless.

The infestation here is rapidly becoming intolerable.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It wouldn't be pointless if you had better arguments.

[bernard11]

It wouldn't be pointless if you had any arguments at all, and didn't just spew the latest lies and outrage.

<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tennessee-expulsion-house-democrats-expelled-what-happens-now/"Still,

In Tennessee, just eight lawmakers have been expelled from the house in the past. Six of those were Confederates who were expelled in the 19th century for refusing to affirm the citizenship of formerly enslaved Black people. In the 20th century, a legislator was expelled after being convicted of bribery, and in 2016, a member was expelled for sexual misconduct.

Before his vote, Jones listed other lawmakers who have acted unprofessionally or been investigated for misconduct but not been expelled from the legislature, calling the votes an "extreme measure" that is an "attempt to silence and undo the will of over 200,000 Tennesseans" represented by the trio.

You need to understand that the TN legislature hates both Nashville and Memphis, where these guys were from. They especially hate Nashville because the city declined to try to host the Republican National Convention in 2024. Even went so far as to try to rename a section of John Lewis Way Donald Trump Boulevard.

They also reduced the size of the Metro council by half, and gerrymandered Nashville, the biggest city in the state, out of its Congressional seat.

Tell me again how Republicans favor local control.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Before his vote, Jones listed other lawmakers who have acted unprofessionally or been investigated for misconduct but not been expelled from the legislature, calling the votes an “extreme measure” that is an “attempt to silence and undo the will of over 200,000 Tennesseans” represented by the trio."

It hardly seems like an extreme measure if they can be immediately reinstated.

[bernard11]

It hardly seems like an extreme measure if they can be immediately reinstated.

First, they can't necessarily be immediately reinstated. It took action by Memphis and Nashville to do that. Easy in this case, but not always automatic. Suppose Republicans controlled those councils.

Second, even if you assume reinstatement is automatic, punishments have symbolic importance. To get expelled shoudl call for something worse than censure, for example.

So yeah. It is extreme.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

TIP wrote:
"So the voters get to decide whether or not these guys lose their seats for these shenanigans. Hard to see how this is beyond the pale."

Perhaps, but you asked what harm was done by the expulsion (presumably to the people being expelled) that would have been spared by censure. My answer was to that specific question.

[Frank Drackman]

I'm open to letting them back in, not like their "Constituents" are gonna erect anyone better, and it reminds peoples why everyone hates (OK, hate's too strong, lets just say "Doesn't like to live near one") N-words.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

As I'm sure you know, SCOTUS has approved content-neutral restrictions on speech relative to time, place, and manner. In other words, you can't scream *anything* out your window at 4AM.

It's "it", not "she", but I'm sure that Rep Zephyr deserved to be booted and that a member of the Westboro Baptist Church -- doing the exact same thing -- would also have been booted. As to the two Black state reps, Ann Coulter put it best -- go to the videotape.

And just because they got re-elected doesn't mean the legislature has to seat them.

It's about time for the right to start fighting back.

[not guilty]

Yes, the Tennessee legislature does have to seat them (and it has). House rules prohibit expulsion more than once for the same conduct.

[Brett Bellmore]

Don't worry: Having gotten away with it once, they'll likely do it again.

[apedad]

What exactly have they "gotten away with?"

They were expelled.

They were re-elected (or re-instated, not sure of the exact designation).

They were seated.

[not guilty]

There will be a special election to fill the vacancies created by the expulsions. In the meantime, the Metropolitan Council in Nashville has selected Rep. Justin Jones to serve in the interim, and the Shelby County Commission in Memphis has selected Rep. Justin Pearson. Each has been seated in the General Assembly, and House rules prohibit a second expulsion for the same conduct.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that's what I meant: They did it, and probably no lasting consequences. That's "getting away with it".

The House rules DO permit a second expulsion for a second instance of the same conduct, though. So they can be kicked out a second time if they do it again.

[Sarcastr0]

This was a huge black eye for the GOP nationally.

You can blame the Dems all you want, and speculate that the camps are coming, but this isn’t their problem.

[Brett Bellmore]

Democratic legislator resorts to a megaphone to stop the legislature from conducting business, gets sanctioned. And in your world this is a black mark for the legislature, not the idiot with the megaphone.

Well, at least his protest wasn't 'fiery'.

[Sarcastr0]

Holy shit, Brett, the protest was not lead by the legislators; they didn't halt business, they joined in after the protest happened.

You're blind to the political valiance if you think this ended looking good for TN GOP to any but the rabid anti-libs.

[Brett Bellmore]

Holy shit, Sarcastro: You think legislators should be able to shut down debate using a megaphone!

[Sarcastr0]

You're acting like they're the but-for cause of any disruption. That is untrue.

Was this conduct unbecoming? Sure, one can argue that. But not an expelling offense. This was an out and open right-wing tantrum, and your after the fact editing of reality is not going to change that.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The fact that other people were doing it too isn't an excuse.

[Sarcastr0]

It is enough to out the lie to the idea that they shut anything down.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sigh. Just because they were acting in concert with others doesn't excuse their behavior.

[Sarcastr0]

I’m not saying they behaved well. No new goalposts.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I’m not saying they behaved well. No new goalposts."

What goalposts? You pulled this nutty idea out of your ass that being disruptive only counts if you're the first guy to be disruptive. That's complete bullshit.

[not guilty]

In fact, the actor who shut down legislative proceedings was the GOP House Speaker, Cameron Sutton.

[not guilty]

Excuse me. That should be Cameron Sexton.

[Bob from Ohio]

"huge black eye for the GOP nationally"

Nobody in the Tenn. legislature cares. Two nuts as the face of the Tenn. Dems is a win.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, that's kind of the issue, innit? Deep red GOP no longer cares about what national damage they cause doing red meat nonsense.

[Bob from Ohio]

No "damage" was done. Story replaced by a dozen more since then.

Guarantee that one or both of the two Tenn. will run for governor [or Senate when old enough], get $30 million from libs and lose by 15 points.

See Jamie Harrison, Alison Lundergan Grimes, Amy McGrath

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, Republicans are starting to get over caring what Democrats think, anyway, and about time.

[Sarcastr0]

You two political gurus not caring about the reputation of the national GOP in the public at large.

Good luck with that.

[Absaroka]

"Well, Republicans are starting to get over caring what Democrats think, anyway, and about time."

You might want to care a little bit about what the swing voters in the middle think.

[Bob from Ohio]

"You might want to care a little bit about what the swing voters in the middle think."

People vote on basic beliefs and fundamentals not long forgotten inside baseball trivia.

People have been calling the GOP racist since Goldwater, its noise now.

[Frank Drackman]

Well that's one thing the expelled TN legislators don't have to worry about.
"Black Eyes"
get it? Old race-ist joke, if I remember it right, it was
"What are 3 things you can't give an N-word//'
that was one of the "Punch" lines (get it?)
I don't remember the other 2, because I was so offended every time I heard it I walked away (OK, more like laughing so hard....)

Frank

[TwelveInchPianist]

"This was a huge black eye for the GOP nationally."

At least among people who thing legislators should be able to disrupt the people's business with bullhorns.

[Sarcastr0]

Not what happened, but you gotta defend this shit I guess.

The disruption was well before any of them did anything; the didn’t cause this and pretending they did is unconvincing to all but these who are into these antidemocratic own the libs antics.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"The disruption was well before any of them did anything;"

Wow that's dishonest. They were part of the disruption. The fact that other people were being disruptive doesn't excuse them being disruptive.

[Sarcastr0]

Wow, you can’t see, to get it. They didn’t start it, they joined it,

Worthy of censure but expelling for that is utter bullshit.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"They didn’t start it, they joined it,"

So what?

[Sarcastr0]

It changes the offense.

And adds this to a series of expulsions, some for no offense at all. All by the GOP in red states targeting minority Dems.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"It changes the offense."

No it doesn't.

"And adds this to a series of expulsions, some for no offense at all. All by the GOP in red states targeting minority Dems."

Who was expelled for no offense at all?

[Sarcastr0]

Weird people are kinda pretending they kicked stuff off with bullhorns, eh? No these things are not the same.

This year, there have been the moves in Tennessee and Montana. In Florida, two Democratic lawmakers were arrested protesting new abortion restrictions. And in Oklahoma, a nonbinary lawmaker was kicked off committees.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/26/1172055318/legislatures-decorum-gerogia-tennessee-gop-expulsions-montana-tensions

[not guilty]

Republicans' current approach to punishing obstreperous minority state legislators calls to mind then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's 1998 retort to White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles's query: Why were the Republicans intent on impeaching Bill Clinton? Gingrich replied, “Because we can.”

As I recall that didn't work out too well for Gingrich and Company.

[Absaroka]

"In Florida, two Democratic lawmakers were arrested protesting new abortion restrictions."

I had to look that one up.

I'm not seeing the problem. They protested for a while, then:

"The Tallahassee police department said protesters were told they would have to leave after sunset, but 11 people refused to go and were arrested for trespassing."

Heck, I donated $50 a month to Planned Parenthood for some such for decades. But if they close an area at sunset and you don't leave, you get arrested for trespass.

Also FWIW, I would have censured but not expelled the folks in TN, and if I understand the one in MT, I wouldn't even have censured her. I disagree with what she said, but the voters she represents get a say in that, not the other legislators.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Weird people are kinda pretending they kicked stuff off with bullhorns, eh?"

Who's pretending that?

[Sarcastr0]

Is this the next step to the caps you keep clai,king are about to happen?

[Michael Ejercito]

Who would enforce these gun safety measures?

[Frank Drackman]

Guys with guns usually

[Michael Ejercito]

The same ones accused of habitually hunting down and gunning down unarmed Black men?

[Frank Drackman]

Almost every Black man I see has arms.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Some Republicans had to physically restrain another Republican who tried to assault yet another Republican during the McCarthy Speakers R Us Show.

[Gandydancer]

This tiny shoving offends Artie’s sensibilities in a way activists pretending to be lawmakers leading demonstrations with bullhorns from the legislature’s floor does not. Or so he pretends.

[Gasman]

Would not each of this representative's constituents have standing to sue, on the basis of denial of representation?

Whether we like, or dislike, the chosen representative, aren't the People deserving of the representation they have chosen?
No taxation without representation, a founding principle of this country, should at least then forgive their debts to the state.

[Gandydancer]

No.

[Kazinski]

Looks like Hunter Biden is going to have to confirm in open court that the documents on his laptop are indeed his.

“From now on … I want both of your clients at every hearing I conduct,” Meyer said. “I will no longer allow us to excuse clients … because it is interfering with the progress of litigation, which is taking way too long to get over simple points.”

Meyer made the comments after Brent Langdon, who represents Biden in the paternity case, mentioned a laptop computer that Biden reportedly left at a repair shop.”

It happened after Hunter’s Baby Momma’s Lawyer tried to introduce financial documents from the laptop. And Hunter’s Lawyer said they had never been authenticated.

“There has never been, to my knowledge, an acknowledgment that this so-called laptop — he continuously calls it Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop …” Langdon began.

“Well, let’s clear that issue up right now,” said Meyer. “Is it your client’s laptop or not?”

“Your honor, I’m not involved in all of that stuff,” said Langdon. “It’s not my client’s laptop as far as I know.”

Meyer said she holds clients to what their attorneys say in court.

“Is it your client’s position, you’re representing to this court, that it is not his laptop?” the judge asked.

“Your honor, I am not in a position to even begin to answer that question,” Langdon said.”

So the judge said Hunter needs to show up next week, and testify about it.

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/apr/24/judge-orders-hunter-biden-to-appear-in-arkansas-paternity-court-hearings/

I suppose Hunter could refuse to show up and the judge issues a default judgement. Or a hail Mary settlement.

Whatever happens it’ll be interesting. I know some of the bitter enders here claiming it's never been authenticated are breathing a sigh of relief that the uncertainty may finally be over.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I find it interesting that this is because Hunter just can't be bothered to pay his child support, so he's hiding out in the White House to avoid a subpoena.

[Frank Drackman]

wonder if anyones smoked Crack in the Whitehouse before

[Bob from Ohio]

Roger Clinton was a convicted cocaine dealer so probably.

[Nige]

How is that going to work? Will they have the laptop there for him to examine? The documents? Proof the documents came from the laptop? Access to the data in the laptop in order to see if the documents are in fact on the laptop? Some sort of proof that no-one else has had access to the laptop to place or remove data on the hard drive?

[Gandydancer]

Why would they need proof to get him to admit what he knows? Sit him down and go through every document one-by-one and let he say what he knows about it. If he lies it will be time to. Introduce proofs to get him charged with perjury.

[Nige]

Knows about what? What documents?

[Super Scary]

"What documents?"

The ones on the laptop. You know, the subject of this thread? Are you simple?

[Nige]

The FBI has the laptop and its contents. Are they going to be produced in court?

[Commenter_XY]

Kazinski, I really hate family law cases. The child custody ones are the truly awful ones. They are the worst. When I read this stuff, the crap family law judges are dealing with, it just strengthens my resolve to stay married! 🙂

[Sarcastr0]

Hunter Biden’s political career is over!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

His political career is over? Time for him to become a Republican!

[Moderation4ever]

I am not sure I understand what is going on in the case you cited. I can understand in a custody and support case that the defendant's financial records would be evidence, but why would you take them from a laptop and not just subpoena then from the financial institutes of the defendant? This would suggest that the plaintiff is trying to tie the defendant to the laptop for an alternative reason.

[Brett Bellmore]

I would assume that the laptop is being introduced as evidence that the defendant is falsifying their financial status.

[bernard11]

Why would you assume anything on the laptop was legitimate, when it has been out of Biden's possession for however long?

The place to get the records is, as M4e says, from the various financial institutions.

[Mr. Bumble]

The FBI has had the computer since Dec. 2019.

[bernard11]

And who had it before then?

[Gandydancer]

No one is assuming anything. They’re asking Biden. If he says it’s accurate contrary to interest that has implications. If he says it’s not that can be pursued.

[David Nieporent]

I don't assume that anything on (what purports to be) the laptop was legitimate, but I tentatively conclude that it is, because the whole story turned out to be a big nothingburger. If the Russians (or GOP dirty tricksters) had fabricated the laptop or (more likely) planted false content on it, they would have put some juicy stuff in there, somethings showing Joe Biden engaging in a bunch of wrongdoing. But there have been no such revelations. 2½ years after the story came out, the GOP hasn't found anything it can use.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nah, it turned out to be a "nothingburger" because there's basically nothing that could have been on it that would have upset Democrats, short of Hunter confessing that he secretly votes Republican. Probably the biggest thing it revealed is that Hunter's dad was getting a cut of the take.

[Nige]

That's speculation, because.... there was nothing on it, except one mention of someone they referred to as 'the Big Guy.' You can imagine all sorts of horrible things that could have been on it that wouldn't have upset the Democrats, but that's still just you imagining stuff.

[Brett Bellmore]

And testimony by one of Hunter's business partners that Joe was "the big guy".

[David Nieporent]

Sigh. Once more, the message with the reference to "big guy" may or may not have been referring to Joe, but:

1) It did not say that the big guy was getting any money; there was a question mark next to that entry.
2) The proposed deal never took place, so the big guy didn't get a penny.
3) Joe Biden was a private citizen, no longer in office, when this deal was proposed.

[Nige]

Oh sure, sure, what a slam dunk. Dave Nieperont is right - Russians would have put something that actually seemed incriminating on there.

[Super Scary]

"Russians would have put something that actually seemed incriminating on there."

Haha, I'm convinced you are a parody account now. Great stuff.

[Nige]

Yeah, well, the same people who spun this into proof the Bidens are a Crime Family are currently giving Thomas a pass and pretending Trump's daughter and son-in-law never existed. That's beyond parody.

[Super Scary]

Brett, they only listen to anonymous sources or people "familiar with [X]'s thinking." Bringing up a specific person's testimony is pointless.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The no evidence conspiracy crap you guys roll out here is always weak sauce. But this one is the weakest sauce of all. Do better. It shouldn't be that hard to smear Joe Biden, he does dumb shit all the time.

[Kazinski]

Opposing counsel was presenting the documents to show that Hunter was not disclosing all his assets and income.

Hunter’s Lawyer objected, and the judge asked him if they were Hunter’s documents, the Lawyer said he had no idea.

The Judge said well let’s get your client in court and ask him.

It’s not that complicated.

Remember, in divorce court, the parties are expected to provide true copies of all income and assets when required to by the judge, the opposing counsel isn't supposed to have to track down and subpoena records, and don't have subpoena power anyway.

[not guilty]

Really? In what jurisdiction does opposing counsel in a civil case not have subpoena power?

[Kazinski]

How many financial institutions does Hunter have funds in in Arkansas?

How likely are NY, Delaware, DC courts be to cooperate in enforcing suck a subpoena?

And how much resources is a single mother supposed to expend tracking down hidden assets that should have already been disclosed?

They did track down these documents, and it looks like the judge expects Hunter to explain them on Monday.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I would like to hear the arguments – including legal arguments, but policy arguments too – in favor of restrictive ballot-access and write-in laws. Why should third parties be hobbled with such laws?

Also, were these laws passed with truly pure motives?

[santamonica811]

What do you mean by "pure motives?" If you define it as: "We will lose some or many of these future elections if more legitimate voters are allowed to cast ballots, so we're gonna make it as difficult as possible for 'those people' to vote, and we will therefore win more elections." . . . then yes, I believe these bottom-feeding mouth-breathers from my own Republican party are acting with pure motives.

All a matter of definitions.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Fascinating, but back to my question…what do you think?

Of course it's disenfranchisement to throw away votes for qualified candidates simply because they're not duopoly, and it's election misinformation to list only duopoly party candidates, and a couple other parties which surmounted unreasonable hoops, in the name of not confusing the voters by telling the truth of who's running for office.

[Gandydancer]

[misunderstood subject]

[Kazinski]

The argument for more restrictive ballot access is that having a large number of candidates on the ballot is confusing to the voters.

Don’t forget get it was the fact there were 10 candidates on the Florida November ballot in 2000 causing the Palm Beach county clerk to craft the Butterfly ballot that cost Gore the election.

Also there were 46 candidates on the ballot for governor in the Newsome recall election. He wasn’t recalled, but I can imagine it would be a little difficult to find the guy you wanted to vote for in a list that long.

2 candidates is too few, more than 5 is probably too many.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It’s not for the government to decide how many candidates is too many, the only reasonable question is whether the candidates/parties pay a nondiscriminatory “advertising fee” for ballot access and organizes a campaign committee with a treasurer, and certify who won their party convention.

Then there’s the campaign-finance laws after you qualify for the ballot.

Parties/candidates who compy with all these laws should be listed, no matter how inconvenient it may for the duopoly for the voters to know that there are other choices.

Sure, 23 years ago (and it's telling that you have to go back that far) some incompetent official of the same party as Gore put out an *illegal* ballot which confused people into not voting for Gore.

So based on a quarter-century old incident, we're to disenfranchise people in the here and now?

[Kazinski]

You seem to be confused. It is the legislators business to decide how elections are conducted and reasonable rule that don't discriminate based on forbidden factors like race and religion.

It's in the constitution and there is a large body of law fleshing it out.

And there are some states, like California, Washington, and Louisiana that don't really recognize parties.

In California you only need 2000 signatures to run for Congress, or pay a filing fee equal to 2% of the first years salary. Or 7000 to run for statewide office.

That hardly seems too onerous.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If the Supreme Court said it was constitutional for you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Independent candidates have the same problems as third parties, of course.

Following Supreme Court rules is the minimum. But wisdom does not end with them. And remind me which two parties appoint the Justices?

There *might* be some issues with ballot-signature laws in this social media age, now that party operatives have shown themselves willing to obtain information about petition signatories and harass them. Internet searches can cast a wide net for people’s political preferences. Maybe a worker wouldn’t want their duopoly boss to learn who they want on the ballot. An as-applied challenge might uncover some interesting things.

But assuming these laws are constitutional, they’re still examples of self-dealing from the duopoly.

[Absaroka]

"The argument for more restrictive ballot access is that having a large number of candidates on the ballot is confusing to the voters."

FWIW, when we lived in Seattle it we'd have ballots with, I dunno, 20 plus candidates? There would be a D, an R, a Green, and then a long list that came right out of the Monty Python sketch - the Socialist Worker's Party, the People's Socialist Worker's Party, the Socialist Worker's People's party, and so on.

I didn't see any particular confusion ensue.

n.b. this was in the primary - WA has a top two system (which, alas, has generated far too few D vs D or R vs R elections).

[Martinned]

In the last Dutch parliamentary elections there were 37 parties on the ballot, with a total number of candidates that must have run north of 500. We survived.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_Kamerverkiezingen_2021#/media/Bestand:Briefstembiljet_2021_met_enveloppen.jpg

[Mr. Bumble]

Good for you but the US doesn’t have a parliamentary system yet.
Like with your "gun violence " post below; apples and oranges.

[Martinned]

If you click on the link you'll see the ballot. Which lists each of the candidates by name. They are sorted by political party, but a voter is free to vote for any of the individuals on the ballot. So parliamentary system doesn't have anything to do with anything here.

(And for good reason, because the Dutch constitution doesn't mention political parties. So elections have to uphold the principle that legislators are elected individually, even if in practice their party affiliations are very important. That should sound familiar from the US, no?)

[Mr. Bumble]

The US Constitution also doesn't mention political parties and the rise of "factions" was a concern of the founders. For better or worse it is what we now have.

[Martinned]

It's long been my view that we (meaning the Netherlands here) need something like art. 21 of the German constitution, which acknowledges political parties, explains why they are important, but also sets limits on them. (Most importantly: they can't seek the abolition of democracy, etc., and must be run internally based on democratic principles.)

In the US the law requires the Democrats and the Republicans to hold primaries, which serves much of the same function. (Although I would think that's probably technically a violation of the freedom of association under the first amendment.)

[Michael P]

Which US laws require the Republican and Democratic parties to hold primaries?

[Mr. Bumble]

This confused me, also.
Each state has different access laws and different primaries (such as open primaries and jungle primaries).

[Martinned]

Sorry, by “US law” I meant law that is geographically in the US. I am well aware that this is a state law issue.

(People often get really annoyed about the phrase “British law” or “UK law” as well, since each of England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland has its own jurisdiction, courts, and laws, but I think that’s ridiculous too. There is plainly such a thing as UK law, which is the combined total of English, Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish law.)

P.S. I'm also well aware that some states have caususes instead of primaries. But again that wasn't a detail worth getting into for the point I was making.

[Michael P]

By "US laws" I did not mean federal laws. Please cite state laws that require those parties to hold primaries.

[Martinned]

Here is New York (excerpting only a little bit because this thread will get long enough as it is).

§ 2–122–b. Presidential primary
1. Applicability. The selection of delegates and alternate
delegates from New York state to the national convention of
the Republican party in each year in which electors of president and vice-president of the United States are to be elected
shall be conducted pursuant to the provisions of this section.
The state committee of any other political party may, by rule or
resolution, opt to conduct the selection of delegates and alternate delegates in any such year in accordance with the provisions of this section.

https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/download/law/2022ElectionLaw.pdf

[Michael P]

Thanks. I waan't aware any states had laws like that -- the ones I have seen were like the last clause, where parties may opt in to the state-run primaries but are not compelled to use them. That law seems like a violation of the Republican party's rights.

If I have time later, I'll try to find whether that NY law provision is unique or uncommon or something common that I had never seen.

[Brett Bellmore]

You do wonder about the history of that requirement; It's only the Republican party, the Democratic party is still free to do as it pleases.

[Martinned]

There is subsequent legislation that amends that New York law, but I can’t get the pdf to load off the legislature’s website.

But the summary says this:

Section 2 provides that the state committees of each political party can choose to elect presidential delegates for nomination of the parties’ respective presidential candidates by choosing the plan as provided in either § 3 or § 4 of this bill.

Section 3 and section 4 of this bill would amend the Election Law by adding new sections 2-122-a and 2-122-b, respectively, that would provide for two different nomination processes involving the election of delegates and alternate delegates and the rules attendant to such election.

That sounds as if they’re no longer singling out the Republican party, but the word “respective” still sounds like they’re thinking of two parties only. (And it looks like this still requires some form of primary or caucus, even if the Republicans and the Democrats can choose between two options.)

[Gandydancer]

To have a GOP-only law in NY is exceedingly strange, particularly since, iirc, there is a Conservative Party in NY which also nominates the GOP’s. Candidates as its own without, as I understand it, affecting the totalling of their vote.

Anyway, the (D)’s pulled the plug on both caucuses and primary’s in cutting to the chase to select Biden so, no, the US does not require primary’s by any definition.

[ducksalad]

Michael P – just to cite one, Texas not only requires major parties (over 20% of the vote in the last election) to nominate by primary, but also specifies the date of the primary and all the filing dates, specifies the exact forms that must be used to file, specifies in extreme detail who can be on the party’s ballot and how they get ballot access, specifies exact days when various party committees must meet, specifies what officers the party will have and how the party will elect those officers, and the state collects the filing fees from the candidates prior to forwarding them back to the party. Virtually nothing of significance is at the discretion of the party.

How did it get this way? Prior to the mid 70s the Democratic primary was the only real (seriously contested) election for state offices, the winner of the primary was the winner of the office and acted accordingly, and the Democratic party was essentially the government. They were simply regulating how the de facto government and its elections would work.

[Voize]

The pdf Martinned linked to notes under the heading for 2-122-b that it

[Expires and deemed repealed Dec. 31, 2020,pursuant to L.2019, c. 290, § 8.]

[Michael P]

ducksalad- That "20% of the vote" threshold was the kind of distinction I was making in my original question. Those could be different parties next cycle, it's not automatically the Democrat and Republican parties (but not the Libertarian or Green or ... parties).

[Martinned]

@Voize: Yes, see my subsequent comment. As far as I can tell the new law (still) requires both Democrats and Republicans to hold primaries of some sort. I just can't get to the actual statute.

[Michael P]

https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/download/law/2023ElectionLaw.pdf seems to be the current NY state statutes on elections, and it does not specifically call out either of the major parties, or (from a quick skim) make party-specific rules about primary elections.

[Martinned]

@Michael P: Thanks for tracking that one down. But the current law still seems to set special rules for the “major parties”, meaning the top two.

Backing up a bit, the original point was of course not about specifically calling out parties by name (though that’s interesting and outrageous in its own right), but that the law in many states requires (major) political parties to follow a process for choosing nominees that is in some sense democratic.

So New York law still has things like this, which I read as a mixture between setting certain standards and deferring to party rules:

§ 2–122. National party conventions; delegates, election
Delegates and alternates to a national convention of a party shall be elected from congressional districts, or partly from the state at large and partly from congressional districts, as the rules of the state committee may provide. Such delegates and alternates from the state at large shall be elected by the state committee or by a state convention of the party, as the rules of the state committee shall prescribe. If the rules of a national party provide for representation by gender among delegates elected from districts, such district delegates shall be elected separately by gender. District delegates and alternates to national party conventions and delegates, and alternates, if any, to such a state convention shall be elected at a primary. All delegates and alternates to a national party convention shall be enrolled members of such party. When any such rule provides for representation by gender, the designating petitions and primary ballots shall list candidates for such party positions separately by gender marker. In providing for such representation, the party shall establish rules that provide for the ability of individuals who do not exclusively identify as a binary gender to serve as delegates and which respect individuals’ gender identity.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Remember that the Wiemar Republic was the only prior German experience with democracy...

[Bob from Ohio]

"need something like art. 21 of the German constitution"

No one should use Germany as a model, for anything.

[Nige]

Pity, when at one point Germany was pretty keen on adopting some US practices.

[Frank Drackman]

I don't know, the Interstate idea works pretty well, and IUD's are still pretty useful, Automobiles, Zeppelins (OK, still waiting for them to come back, D's get their wish they may be the only "Green" Air Travel allowed) Zyklon B,
OK, last one gets bad press, but it's what was used in California's Gas Chamber as recently as 1967

[Martinned]

After the War the Germans thought long and hard about how to avoid something like the Third Reich again, and basically came up with the best single constitution I've seen anywhere in the world. The US could do much, much worse than copy the German constitution wholesale.

[Kazinski]

Right, former Washington voter here too.

I think Washington's top 2 jungle primary system regardless of party is a good system for winnowing candidates, although I thing changing it to any candidate over 10% makes the general election would be better.

Washington doesn't recognize parties, allthough they do allow candidates to self identify there party, so the parties themselves have no role in choosing candidates other than by endorsement, and providing money and organization.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Margrave, one downside of open access to the ballot: opportunities to game the election, by either of at least two methods, both with deep roots in Massachusetts politics:

1. Running a Straw. That method recruits a candidate A partisan to run as a candidate B look-alike. Physical resemblance is not required; policy similarity to candidate B is what’s wanted. Partly-informed voters then get to choose between two candidates who both seem to support the policies those voters prefer, splitting the candidate B vote, making the election a shoo-in for previous-long-shot, candidate A.

2. A similar dynamic occurs when an opportunity arises to play the, Name’s the Same Game. In that one, candidate A is Michael Murphy, opposed, as it happens, by two guys both named Jimmy Doyle. Similar result.

I do not know if this is still true. In the mid-20th century it was commonplace in Democratic Party politics for candidates contesting primaries to go into battle advised by Massachusetts-based political consultants. Many of those races were in states remote from New England.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If each duopoly party plays that game it will not only cancel out but provide extra reasons to avoid duopoly politics.

Calling third-party candidates cats-paws for duopolists is too pat. And when was the last time they deliberately confused names?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I remember a Boston politician named Kennedy -- no relation to THE Kennedys but he kept winning races...

[David Nieporent]

https://apnews.com/article/florida-5343b101e96d5c7f42d1ee54da7cc0ce

[The Margrave of Azilia]

So the duopolists pass restrictive ballot-access laws, and then they run fraudulent candidates, and then say that *their own bad behavior* justifies the restrictive laws they passed?

[ducksalad]

“That method recruits a candidate A partisan to run as a candidate B look-alike. Physical resemblance is not required; policy similarity to candidate B is what’s wanted. Partly-informed voters then get to choose between two candidates who both seem to support the policies those voters prefer”

Sorry. I’m sure you’re sincere in this believing this argument but I can assure you the Democratic Party is not. They’ve gone all out in multiple states to get the Green Party kicked off the ballot, but the Green Party candidates are not faking their positions.

Likewise for Republican attempts to deny Libertarians ballot access. For you Republicans here who support such crap, let me assure you that if you succeed in taking my candidate off the ballot, then making sure your attempt to engineer my vote backfires badly becomes top priority. And no, I won’t stay home.

[shawn_dude]

Here is a semi-recent example from Florida.

"Prosecutors charged Artiles in March with felony campaign fraud charges, saying he secretly gave more than $44,000 to Rodriguez so that he could run in the 2020 election to confuse voters and siphon ballots from then-Democratic incumbent, Sen. Jose Javier Rodríguez. The funds allegedly came from a dark money source. Artiles has pleaded not guilty."

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not the parties that are hobbled. It's the voters. At the time the country was founded, and close to a century after, the right to vote, if you had it, was the right to vote for anyone you pleased. If you picked somebody who lost, or didn't want the position, or didn't qualify to take the office, you wasted your vote, but you got to cast it for who you wanted, and it would count.

Right around the time of the Civil war, the idea of the government itself providing pre-printed ballots as a convenience caught on, and it was shortly after that it occurred to somebody in government that you could leverage that to limit the right to vote. But even then, until recently, the right to cast a write-in vote was always respected. Denying that is a pretty recent innovation.

And a voting rights violation, I think, because it's still the right it was in the beginning: The right to vote for whoever you damned well please. NOT for whoever the government deigns to let you vote for.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, note that a power to write in whomever you please is consistent with a pre-printed ballot naming only candidates who pass pre-selected criteria. All it takes is: "Other:____________," added to the ballot.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Why not list one caididate (Republican or Democrat) and relegate all other candidates to an "Other" write-in line?

[Stephen Lathrop]

I thought you meant it when you wrote this:

I would like to hear the arguments – including legal arguments, but policy arguments too – in favor of restrictive ballot-access and write-in laws. Why should third parties be hobbled with such laws?

Now you are into nonsense.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It's called a reductio ad absurdum, and it's the logical consequence of your principles.

[Stephen Lathrop]

They call it, "absurdum," for a reason.

Also? Lots of useful principles have sketchy logical consequences in the imaginations of crazy people, who somehow missed learning that custom, practice, and reason constrain real possibilities more narrowly than reason does.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Now apply that insight to the "3500 candidates" nonsense.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I'm aware of that. I noted that it was only recently that they have taken the step from making voting for unapproved candidates inconvenient, to making it impossible.

[mse326]

I've always had difficulty reconciling my feelings regarding write in votes. On one hand, I completely agree from a theoretical stand point that one should be able to vote for whomever they want and the government doesn't get to restrict that by ballott access. On the other hand, the practical, especially in bigger elections, questions how we can possibly know who someone is voting for purely by name. So many people have the same name, and that increases when we include different spellings. I don't know of a way we can actually verify a vote as for a specific John Smith.

[Michael P]

It only matters when the candidate wins, right?

If there are "a lot" of voters in a district, it's hard to imagine a write-in candidate winning without some kind of campaign before the election, which means there is only a problem if two John Smiths campaign before John Smith wins the election. If there are few voters, random sampling should give a robust idea of which John Smith they meant.

In either case, if a challenger asserts that he is the real write-in John Smith, a court could decide (assuming each John Smith provides some number of affidavits from voters asserting that they wrote him in).

[Martinned]

And what if there are 10 John Smiths, and each of them gets about 6% of the vote? Which one should the court rule for? How is the court going to decide, based on affidavits or otherwise, whether each of the 10 got about 6%, or whether one of them got 51%?

[Michael P]

How would a court decide which John Smith committed wire fraud if ten of them each committed a distinct element of the crime?

I can't determine whether your question is about how courts decide any fact, or how to handle an absolutely incredible hypothetical. (Ten John Smiths running as write-in candidates in a single district, and no two of them are aware enough of the others' campaigns to distinguish themselves for the campaign?)

[Martinned]

Ten was just to amp up the hypothetical a bit. The issue can arise with just two. How they distinguish themselves in the campaign is irrelevant. The question is how you (= the court) interpret what voters write on the ballot.

[Michael P]

You can't handwave your way into plausibility here. Describe the situation you think would be problematic.

How they distinguish themselves during the campaign is important, because it would likely reflect how people write them in. "John Q. Smith" or "John Smith the Fat" are probably going to be unambiguous during the count.

[Martinned]

I don't know about you, but if I'm going to write someone's name on a ballot, I'd probably use their actual name, not "that fat guy that was on TV last night".

[Michael P]

It’s a thing in the US to put a nickname on ballots, for example Rafael “Ted” Cruz (R). He’s not required to only list his legal name (Rafael Edward Cruz). And “that fat guy that was on TV last night” would presumably not be counted as a vote for John Smith.

Also, I don’t know about you, but if I knew another Michael P was running in the same election as me, I would ask my supporters to write my name differently than his.

[Brett Bellmore]

Perhaps we could return to the former practice of candidates providing stickers with their name for supporters to apply to the ballot.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Describe the situation you think would be problematic.

Any situation where some identifiable faction's members figure it suits their purpose to screw up the election.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The dirty tricks you describe could be used in party primaries, so perhaps that would be a reason to have only two candidates in each primary (the two who have the most political connections)?

Again, the duopoly parties can’t run fraudulent candidates and then cite their own bad behavior to jusify limiting ballot access for legitimate third parties.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Margrave, because you repeat your point, maybe it is worth mentioning that your critique misses the mark on this argument, but is right on target on a more important one.

Elections are not government functions. They are sovereign functions. They are a means by which this nation's collective popular sovereign exercises its constitutive power. Almost all the election procedure debates which come up on this blog tend to ignore that. They assume, usually without saying so, that election policy belongs to the government.

That misunderstands what is going on, and causes a lot of trouble. It is because the need for direct sovereign control of elections is getting ignored that your concern about the duopoly might be justified—and is justified to the extent of your membership in the joint sovereignty.

But note that your concern is not justified from the point of view of candidates for office, including third party candidates. There is no right to candidacy, and no right to office. Office is a gift of the sovereign, made at pleasure.

On the same principle, the sovereign can also do as it pleases with regard to election procedures. In principle, the government cannot do as it pleases about elections, but must instead do whatever the sovereign commands. Anything which government does with an eye to affecting an election outcome—instead of merely facilitating its completion—is improper.

Thus, if you think you are talking about principles, those are the ones which properly guide your complaint.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The sovereign people have specified the qualifications of the various offices and specified that certain officers are to be chosen by voters (a major exception is the President of the U. S., of course, but AFAIK this is an exception to an otherwise-general principle).

So the sovereign people have delegated the power to voters to judge among qualified candidates. The government can’t step in and reject votes for qualified candidates or mislead the voters as to who’s running. But – if a party can’t formally nominate a candidate, or pay a nondiscrimionatory “advertising fee” to get on the ballot, then that party’s candidates can legitimately be relegated to the write-in line of the ballot.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The duopologists think they have me coming and going. If I say a party should actually be organized and pay a filing fee to get on the ballot, they say I'm not *really* for fair ballot access. But if I give in and drop my advocacy for minimal access standards, they say I want 3,500 candidates.

[bernard11]

How about adopting the rule that you can't vote for anyone who hasn't agreed to actually take office if elected?

Then anyone who is interested can register with the elections office, and be assigned an identifier, which supporters can put on the write-in line along with the name.

Make the identifiers different enough that they won't be confused. Maybe use colors or something.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Like Orange & Green? Worked so well in Ireland...

[Sarcastr0]

Are your motives pure?

It’s the logistics challenge plus the way our system already mathematically favors 2 parties.

There is some cost, and despite your beliefs, little benefit. Unless we change our first past the post districts system…

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It has nothing to do with logistics and everything to do with the duopoly parties keeping out competition.

"the way our system already mathematically favors 2 parties"

Then you have nothing to fear from more parties.

[Sarcastr0]

Except for, you know, logistics.

You think you have a silver bullet. You’re wrong. It would change nothing and be costly and confusing.

If you somehow carry the day, yeah, I won’t be super unhappy, because silly choices are not really threatening to me, even if I'll argue against them.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The duopologists (not you, of course, you’re a nonpartisan straight shooter) pretend that they’re concerned about logistics – though without explaining what would be wrong with parties who meet the requirements I’ve mentioned getting on the ballot, or what kind of logistic problems it would present.

But the duopologists (not nonpartisan straight-shooters like yourself, of course) are actually not interested in logistics, but in keeping down competition. When they say that their anticompetitive behavior won’t make a difference anyway, the only proper response is to ask why they’re so intent on suppressing competition if it “means nothing.”

“You think you have a silver bullet.”

Are you capable of arguing without using straw men? At least try not to.

[Sarcastr0]

duopologists

This is extremely lame.

And I've never said I'm nonpartisan. I have my issues with the Dems, but they are who I support, if not vote for until I moved out of DC.

How is it a strawman - you think that an open parties option would solve some political problems, right? Otherwise why is this your hobby-horse?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

A silver bullet solves the problem completely (e. g., kills the werewolf). I think you knew that when you erroneously imputed to me a belief in a silver bullet.

It’s a standard straw man, along with “panacea” and so on.

It's as if I were to say you see Democratic policies as a silver bullet or panacea.

[Sarcastr0]

Quit being cagey; it makes for tedious argumentation.

If you think it'll solve some issue - and you very much seem to believe that - then in my analogy that issue is the werewolf.

It's also an extremely collateral issue.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Again, projection. You’re being cagey. You’re dancing around your party’s vote-suppression efforts.

Your party used Trumpian election-fraud theories in an attempt to get the Greens off the ballot.

Your people wouldn’t have done that if they thought the issue “means nothing.”

You can’t defend vote suppression on the merits, so instead you

-Refute the straw man that it’s a silver bullet

-Disavow not only reality, but your own party’s actions, without acknowledging that you’re going against your own party, not just against me.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

And to anticipate an objection, I doubt very much the Republicans want the Constitution Party on the ballot, thus it's a bipartisan phenomenon.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I may be wrong, but I read his comments as saying that at this point removing all restrictions to ballot access isn't going to solve the problem of two party domination. Your reply seems to be "if so, why do the two parties continue to restrict?" He then gave you some other possible motives.

For the record, I happen to agree with you, but his position isn't cagey or a straw man. He just disagrees with you.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"He just disagrees with you."

He also straw-manned me and called me "cagey" as if I were hiding something. So I fought back by showing how he was hiding the vote-suppression activities of his own party. If he doesn't want me to fight him he shouldn't attack me.

“at this point removing all restrictions to ballot access isn’t going to solve the problem of two party domination”

To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, some people think in terms of “solutions” while others think, more realistically, of tradeoffs.

Simply eliminating *one* of the built-in advantages of the duopoly isn’t going to stop their domination. But it would be an improvement. They might even try to “steal” 3rd parties’ issues.

The tradeoff is that we may have longer ballots and have to figure out what happens if the public is divided among 3 or more candidates. That may be a complication, but it’s a complication that we should be so lucky as to have.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

[response moved]

[OtisAH]

Third parties continue to fail because they attempt to build their party from the top on down, rather than bottom to the top. Until a third party builds locally then throughout the states then nationally our system will still “favor” two parties.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The Green Party wanted to nominate a statewide candidate in North Carolina - the Democratic party unsuccessfully concocted Trumpian election-fraud theories, and before they were finished they'd harassed Green supporters and subjected the Greens to extra expenses.

If the Green Party is to expire on its own, there's no need for the duopolists to hasten the natural process.

[OtisAH]

I don’t know what incident you’re speaking of but my guess is it’s one wherein a candidate was run specifically to ratfuck the dem candidate.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Nope.

https://reason.com/2022/08/05/north-carolina-green-party-scores-major-win-in-ballot-access-dispute/

The Dems and Reps wrote the rules about ballot access and the procedures for challenging access. The Dems lost according to their own rules. If they lost a fight they deliberately rigged in their own favor, how bad must their position be?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Though I’d like to see one of the duopoly parties make some version of your argument in court: “Your honor, you can’t recognize that party – they’re deliberately trying to take votes away from us!”

[Brett Bellmore]

I was a member of the LP from '78 through the late 90's. I'll tell you straight out: After third parties started to pick up steam in the early 80's, the major parties MASSIVELY 'fortified' the election system. Raised ballot access requirements enormously, replacing non-partisan debate organizers with bipartisan commissions, altering campaign finance laws to be more hostile to growing parties, pressuring polling companies to stop reporting numbers for third party candidates, getting the media to adopt a centralized system for election night tallies which omitted third party votes...

They didn't do all that crap because they thought it wasn't necessary!

[David Nieporent]

Are you still going with the "there should be 3,500 names on each ballot" shtick?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Have you stopped beating your wife?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

It is an issue which a number of people have mentioned to you, and which you haven't really addressed. Is it workable to have a ballot with 80 or 100 candidates for one seat? If not, then how is that problem addressed, other than ballot access restrictions?

[Absaroka]

As mentioned above, I have never seen more than a dozen or two. I was curious what kind of gatekeeping is done here, and my short google suggests you have to either cough up some money or get some signatures (the number of sigs must be >= the dollar amount of the fee). The signature bit is on a different SecState page (try searching for "Candidates without sufficient assets or income may submit a filing fee petition to pay the filing fee.").

It doesn't seem to be a huge impediment in practice; I've seen unemployed candidates before, and a few who were fairly obviously non compos mentis^H^H^H^H^H eccentric.

[1] I have no clue how they set the filing fees - hunting around I see fees from $60 to $2k

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"which you haven’t really addressed"

I addressed it by suggesting a nondiscriminatory filing fee, and a party sufficiently organized to have a convention to nominate candidates.

Do you seriously believe that 3,500 parties will meet those criteria?

As for independent candidates, a fee plus having a campaign committee with a treasurer should also keep the number below 3,500.

You don't agree? Fine. But I have addressed it.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

OR…if the concern is *solely* with the length of the ballot, not with the presence of competitors of the duopoly, how about setting a maximum number of candidates who can be on the ballot (5? 10?) and if the number of candidates who file exceeds the maximum, then draw the candidates by lot to see who gets the ballot slots.

The catch? The duopoly candidates would be in the lottery with the other candidates, and run just as much risk as being excluded from the ballot. I mean, if they don’t make the ballot they can always solicit write-in votes.

For some mysterious reason, I suspect this idea won’t catch on. But it would fully solve the problem you presented.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Ha ha true, I agree. But those measures are all ballot access limiting measures, which I thought you disagreed with on principle. I guess I misunderstood your position.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It's half joke, half "let's test the duopoly's commitment to avoiding ballot clutter."

[David Nieporent]

I addressed it by suggesting a nondiscriminatory filing fee,

"It's terrible to keep candidates who can't get anybody to sign petitions supporting them off the ballot… but it's fine to keep them off if they don't have money" seems hard to justify.

and a party sufficiently organized to have a convention to nominate candidates.

"It's terrible to keep a candidate off the ballot if he isn't a member of the duopoly, but it's great to keep a candidate off if he's independent rather than a member of a party" also seems hard to justify.

Either your criteria (fee and/or party convention) are low enough barriers that they don't actually keep anyone off and therefore don't actually address the concern we're discussing, or they're high enough to screen most candidates out, in which case what problem have you solved?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Your either/or is mistaken. The requirements I mentioned don’t “screen most candidates out,” nor do they allow just anyone to walk in and be a candidate. Goldilocks would love it.

"A fee is unfair, but imposing expensive petition gathering requirements is OK" is hard to justify. The duopolists impose much greater costs on candidates than the system I suggest.

And if not, my lottery idea is still available for those whose real concern is ballot length, not duopoly preservation.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

And you'll need to reread what I said above to see that you've misunderstood my position on independents.

[David Nieporent]

Requiring signatures serves a legit purpose: making the putative candidate show that he or she actually has public support for his candidacy. If s/he doesn't, then that's a good reason to screen him/her from the ballot. Requiring payment of a fee does not have such a legitimate purpose; it just shows that the putative candidate isn't poor.

(To be clear, there are many absurd signature gathering rules that require jumping through hoops for no reason except to make it harder to get valid petitions; I wouldn't support those. But just the fact of having to gather signatures seems reasonable.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

But wouldn't the place to seek support be the ballot box?

In the modern social-media environment, and with political operators, bosses, activists, etc. willing to retaliate against people with the "wrong" politics, signing petitions is going to get riskier and riskier. Thus smart people will be less and less likely to do it, even with parties they support.

Bring back the secret ballot!

[bernard11]

You could change it from a filing fee to a bond of some sort. You forfeit the bond if you don't run, or if you do run and win, and then refuse to take office.

Surely anyone with a few serious supporters could raise enough for the bond.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

That sounds interesting.

[Kazinski]

The news that Anthony Blinkin was involved in organizing the "Intelligence Officials Letter" during the 2020 campaign should mean that Blinkin resigns or is impeached.

The clear rationale for impeaching Blinkin, if he doesn't resign is there is no way you can serve as Secretary of State if you are willing to spread lies and falsely accuse other countries of election dirty tricks.

Sure we're in a new cold war with Russia, but it might have been possible to have better relations, or at least not so contentious if you aren't actively spreading known lies about the country.

Were all the lies about Russia a factor in their invasion of Ukraine to stop NATO expansion? Putin certainly didn't invade while Trump was president, maybe because Trump wasn't constantly telling lies about him.

And let me be clear, Putin is a bad guy, so is Xi, but telling lies about them for domestic political advantage is despicable, harms our country and international relations, and no one involved should serve in any administration.

[Michael Ejercito]

Hillary Clinton was truly an ethics corrupter.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Typically that sort of thing is viewed as an "in kind" donations in terms of campaign finance laws. Of quite a large value, as well.

[David Nieporent]

In Armchairia, maybe.

[Commenter_XY]

Kazinski, a legal question. Some of the leaked documents from Teixeira indicate that US special operations forces are operating inside UKR. We have troops in UKR.

Q: When does the War Powers Act (WPA) come into play, if at all?

Bonus: Is the WPA constitutional?

[Davedave]

"US special operations forces are operating inside UKR"

There's a difference between operating and fighting. This really isn't hard to understand. Lots of friendly countries have sent military personnel to Ukraine, but not to the front lines to fight. The USA even sent the head of its armed forces, at one point.

[ducksalad]

Yeah, sure.

"In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.”

- John F. Kennedy, 9/2/1963

[Davedave]

Funny. The same people who think Biden is a senile and physically decrepit geriatric think he was actually fighting on the front lines when he visited Ukraine? I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

[ducksalad]

Mr. Dave, what is your personal policy preference on presence of military Ukraine. Would you like to see more or fewer military personnel there? How closely should they work with the Ukrainian military - not at all, advising officers at a base, advising troops in the field? Not asking whether those things are happening, I'd like to know what you'd do.

Or do you take the Britney position: " “I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that and be faithful in what happens.”

[Absaroka]

1)I'd have observers. There are a lot of new wrinkles to warfare surfacing, and we very much want to be up to speed on those. N.b. this is nothing new - many countries sent observers to the Spanish Civil War prior to WWII, for example. I would want them close enough to the action to get a good feel for the facts, with out giving Russia the PR benefit of a capture.

2)I have no objections to advisors, if desired by the Ukrainians, at some distance from actual combat. Albeit my sense is that at this point the Ukrainians may be able to teach us more than we can teach them. A couple of years ago I read of some Ukrainians visiting US training maneuvers in Germany and saying "your camouflage discipline is nowhere good enough for a drone rich battlefield", for example.

Generally speaking, we aren't trying to maintain any fiction of neutrality in this war. While I wouldn't send the 82nd Airborne to fight in the front lines, I don't object to quite a bit of other involvement.

[ducksalad]

What you describe is about my limit also…..if we could have trust that what we’re told is what’s really happening, and confidence that it would stay at that level.

On matters of war I feel like we can’t trust anyone on the HRC Obama Biden Harris spectrum, nor anyone on the Haley Bolton Cotton Rubio Pompeo spectrum. In 2016 I thought Trump would be the worst of them all, but it turned out he had an instinct for cutting off conflicts before they went too far, even if he had to unilaterally let the other side have the symbolic last shot, e.g. the Soleimani incident.

[Commenter_XY]

All I will simply say: If we are in, then we are in. All the way.

UKR is not a vital US national interest. The Congress can and must speak to troop deployments to UKR, and our troops are there. Russia is not Iraq, or Syria.

[Martinned]

Ukraine is a vital US national interest as much as anywhere else outside the territory of the United States is. Are there places outside the territory of the US that you believe the US has a "vital" national interest in defending? Taiwan? Poland? Turkey? South Korea? On what basis do you draw that line?

[Mr. Bumble]

Replying to Martinned:
Seems like the vital interest should be that of Europe and only secondly to the US. Of course since the end of WWII you have deferred to the US to protect your interest.

[Martinned]

@Bumble: I'm not sure that I follow what you're saying about what is and isn't a vital US national interest. (If anything.)

The Ukraine war is clearly a vital interest of Europe, that's why European countries are supporting the Ukranian war effort as much as they can, short of risking escalation by sending in troops themselves.

But if someone is saying that the US shouldn't care about what happens to Ukraine, I'd be interested to know what they think the US should care about.

[Mr. Bumble]

Replying to Martinne:
The flood of drugs and illegal migrants and asylum seekers entering the US

[Randal]

If we are in, then we are in. All the way.

This is an incredibly stupid and naive way to think about war.

I'm glad you're not in charge!

My prediction from the beginning is slowly coming true: the US and NATO don't want either side to win any time soon, not until Russia is depleted and Putin is, one way or the other, gone.

[OtisAH]

It’s 14 troops btw.

[ducksalad]

We all know this game.

"That guy? He's a contractor, doesn't count."
"That guy? Yes he's technically military but it's a special assignment to the state department so it doesn't count."
"That guy? Only there in transit. It only counts if he's been assigned there indefinitely."
"That guy? Meets once a month with someone from the Embassy, so he's an embassy guard and that doesn't count."

[Davedave]

Let's play this the other way round: that guy, CIC, POTUS, he was actually there to hold a rifle on the front lines.

Are you people really this stupid?

[ducksalad]

I don't know the precise number of military we have there, and I don't know how involved they are with the Ukrainian military.

What I do know with certainty is that there is a long and bipartisan history of presidents from both parties misleading the public on exactly this issue. I know with certainty that legitimate national security needs for secrecy all too conveniently line up with political needs for secrecy. You know this too, Davedave.

[Davedave]

So you think Biden's state visit was actually a cover for him fighting on the front line as a grunt? Really? This is beyond daft.

[ducksalad]

No one except you is talking about Biden personally, and you know it. Even your wingman OtisAH suggested the number 14.

Your comments aren’t even rising to the level of gaslighting.

[Davedave]

Biden was in Ukraine. He is the CIC of the US forces. Your argument is as stupid as suggesting that he was a grunt fighting on the front line.

[OtisAH]

You “know” that game do you?

[YepThatGuy]

Having been three of your four categories, your comment made me literally lol. Well done!

[David Nieporent]

But no lies were spread, and Blinken did nothing wrong.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It's "Blinkin" among the half-educated fans of a white, male, right-wing blog.

[Frank Drackman]

this county was founded by white male right wing bloggers (they called them "Handbills" back then)

[bevis the lumberjack]

“No lies were spread”. Is this a serious comment?

[David Nieporent]

Yes. You should read the letter that Blinken "was involved in organizing," rather than listening to some random GOP talking head. It's linked here. What statement in there do you think is incorrect, let alone a "lie"?

[David Nieporent]

Weirdly, it's been five hours since I asked that question, and not one person identified a single lie.

[ducksalad]

OK, I read the letter. If your definition of lie is asserting something as a fact that isn't true, they are in the clear. They put in the required disclaimers: "if we are right", "we do not have evidence....just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious".

However, it was an intentional effort to make people believe a particular narrative. At least parts of that narrative now seem to be untrue and the people who relied on them were misled.

So the charitable evaluation is that they were truthful, but the experience and knowledge they repeatedly claim were defective, and should be accepted at a heavy discount, if at all, in the future. This evaluation aligns with the record of failures our national security establishment racked up during their careers.

Fair?

[David Nieporent]

. If your definition of lie is asserting something as a fact that isn’t true, they are in the clear.

Actually, my definition of a lie is asserting something as a fact knowing that it isn't true, but either one works here. Nothing in the letter is false.

So the charitable evaluation is that they were truthful, but the experience and knowledge they repeatedly claim were defective,

No, the charitable evaluation is that intel is an issue of probabilities, not certainties. What you provided is the uncharitable evaluation.

[ducksalad]

Ah, the old “we were right to be wrong” argument.

You understand that makes it worse? Someone who recognizes they were wrong – as in wrong to be wrong – and says they’ll do things differently next time could maybe have another chance.

Yes, intel is an issue of probabilities. And therefore we rate intel analysts by the probability they are right, that probability is estimated from past performance, and this letter is not one negative data point, it’s M times N negative data points, where M is the number of wrong predictions in the letter and N is the number of people who signed it.

[Artifex]

Ah, the old “we were right to be wrong” argument.

Pretty much exactly this. If you look at Blinken's statement, it is pure dodge and weave lawyer speak. There is nothing in the entire document that is measurable or concrete. Even the "the Russian's would rather have Trump than Biden" is little more than a religious party line not backed by real data. At the end of the day, Blinken has said exactly nothing. The question at this point is why do these clowns feel the need to publish an opinion piece denigrating the validity of the data on the laptop if they have exactly zero actionable information at the time they did ? If you are a partizan, you do your usual bit and apply a one time metric and they have done nothing wrong.

Perhaps a big irony in this bit of motivated reasoning by David is that one can compare and contrast the response to other events. If equivalently I make the statement, "There were events entirely consistent with voter fraud in the 2020 election". This is true and I am playing the same game Blinken was. There is nothing concrete here. In fact, I can go on this vein forever, because truly there "are" things consistent with voter fraud. That doesn't mean that I can prove voter fraud. In these cases we see the usual idiots drooling from the mouth and pronouncing that these "lies" while arguing that there is nothing wrong with Blinken's statement out of the other side of their mouth.

[Randal]

Don't be retarded. Trump went well beyond "some events occurred that are consistent with voter fraud." He did what DN described as lying: asserting known falsehoods as true in fact.

[David Nieporent]

“There were events entirely consistent with voter fraud in the 2020 election”. This is true

I mean, that's correct, but only because 'consistent with' is a meaningless phrase. I had scrambled eggs for breakfast; that's 'consistent with' voter fraud. But there were no events that looked like voter fraud (unless one counts a handful of individual Trump voters voting twice.) Which is why

and I am playing the same game Blinken was.

is not correct. Setting aside the weird attempt to pretend that it's Blinken's letter, there is a huge difference between "We don't have specific evidence, but this looks like the sort of thing the Russians would do" and "[Even though I know there was no voter fraud], voter fraud happened." Because Trump, in fact, knew there was no voter fraud.

Even the “the Russian’s would rather have Trump than Biden” is little more than a religious party line not backed by real data.

I choose to believe that you are not stupid enough to believe this.

[Randal]

I choose to believe that you are not stupid enough to believe this.

I dunno... he's pretty stupid. He's trying to do a "whataboutism" -- already a bad sign -- except where the other side's behavior is hypothetical. There's gotta be a name for that fallacy, but whatever it is, it requires a seriously compromised logic lobe.

In these cases we see the usual idiots drooling from the mouth...

"These cases" being the hypothetical cases he just made up, meaning that the usual drooling idiots he's seeing are purely in his mind.

Take note right-wing commentariat. This thing where you're hallucinating "idiots drooling from the mouth" and then decide to post about your hallucinations -- which is a surprisingly common occurrence here (I'm looking at you, B Crew... Brett, Ben, Bravo, Bob) -- is exhibit A of your established mental competence.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"But no lies were spread, and Blinken did nothing wrong."

Yet many people, including some of our most prolific commentors, were duped.

[OtisAH]

“Duped” by the truth?

[TwelveInchPianist]

I guess that's the argument.

[NOVA Lawyer]

"maybe because Trump wasn’t constantly telling lies about him"

As stupid as this is, it isn't even in the top 10 for dumbest comments here. Still, it merits highlighting for the Olympic level stupidity.

For your batshit theory of why Putin chose the timing he did to have any connection to reality, you should at least have said:

"maybe because Trump was constantly telling lies about Putin and Russia that Putin liked whereas Biden and his administration would say things Putin didn't like"

Trump constantly lied about Putin and Russia:

From saying Crimea belonged to Russia anyway (and consequently it's no big deal so let them back in the G8),

to saying Putin was more credible in his denials of 2016 election shenanigans than the FBI, CIA, the GOP-majority led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and numerous other U.S. and friendly foreign intelligence agencies,

to saying Putin's assassinations of political enemies was no different than U.S. killings of terrorists,

to saying, and I quote, "Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do." (Fake news isn't a problem in Russia?!?! lol),

to congratulating Putin for winning a sham election,

to spreading Putin's lies about Soviet history: "The reason Russia was in, in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there." - Trump. (That's not the reason Russia was there and they weren't right to be there. It was conquest, pure and simple.)

And then there's the constant praise of Putin (which, being opinion, can't neatly be called lies). And, aside from the favorable lies about Putin and Russia, the fact that Putin wanted Trump to be President, that Trump reversed sanctions relating to the taking of Crimea (so why wouldn't a future GOP administration do the same with their invasion of Ukraine), Trump constantly criticizing and undermining NATO, etc. Trump sent a signal of weakness towards Russian aggression, particularly vis a vis nations previously part of the USSR.

[Mr. Bumble]

Can anyone name one competent member of Biden's Cabinet?

[Brett Bellmore]

It's hard to say, it may hinge on the difference between "incompetent at the job" and "actually hired to do something else".

[Martinned]

Where "actually hired to do something else" is your euphemism for "I disagree with this person", I assume?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I mean literally hired to do something different than the person complaining that they’re incompetent thinks they were hired to do.

Like that dude at the NRC, who was hired to cross dress in public. He obviously rocked a pants suit, and it WAS what he was hired for.

[Mr. Bumble]

When he wasn't stealing women's luggage.

[Martinned]

O, OK, so today is not one of those days where there's a risk of you actually engaging in reasonable conversation among adults then?

[Brett Bellmore]

When you hire somebody like Rachel Levine or Sam Brinton for a serious position, reason has already left the room. This administration is actively going out of their way to hire insane people.

[Martinned]

Yes, this person is obviously not the right person to serve as assistant secretary of health:

Levine is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, and previously served as the Pennsylvania physician general from 2015 to 2017 and as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health from 2017 to 2021

/sarc

[Brett Bellmore]

On paper Brinton's qualifications looked good, too. The only problem being that he was nuttier than a fruitcake. So is Levine.

No, the real problem is that being nuttier than a fruitcake got them the job; Being sane isn't diverse enough.

[Martinned]

The fact that you apparently insist on denying that such a thing as trans people exists seems to suggest that you are the fruitcake, not Levine.

[Bob from Ohio]

Levine suffers from an extreme delusion. Not mentally balanced.

[Mr. Bumble]

…and Brinton is a common thief.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Not a common thief, a thief with a very specific set of targets.

[Ben_]

Democrats chose him because of the way he looks.

[bernard11]

Don't you guys have patients to see in the psych ward?

Why are you wasting time here?

Never get your day's work done.

[BrotherMovesOn]

That "day" is the null set, Martinned.

[Ben_]

"and it WAS what he was hired for"

Just like Kamala was hired to be a black woman. She’s succeeds at that.

Americans need a government to govern and Democrats choose officials based on how they look.

[OtisAH]

Of course you realize that Turnip selects literally everyone who works for him based on how nice they are to him on tv. You just don’t think that’s important.

[Ben_]

I love how you think yeah, we’re all as bad as the worst caricature of Trump is a good defense.

[John F. Carr]

It's easy to tell if a cabinet member is entangled in ethics scandals or getting a lot of bad publicity. It can be hard to tell if a cabinet member is doing a good job. Photo ops don't count.

[Sarcastr0]

You can be better than clickbait.

Do you even know who is in the cabinet? The head of OSTP for instance.

The Internet encourages quick snap thinking; slow it down and make an argument. If, as below, you want real discussion it could take some small amount of reflection and research from you to set the table.

[Mr. Bumble]

Do you?
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-presidents-cabinet-3322193
Don't see OSTP listed here.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s newly elevated!

https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2021/05/28/u-s-senate-unanimously-confirms-dr-eric-lander-to-become-director-of-the-white-house-office-of-science-and-technology-policy/

[Mr. Bumble]

Then I stand corrected.

[Sarcastr0]

But my main point is you are by far the wittiest and cadres of the right wing asshole brigade here, and I really think you could get some real fulfilling discussion if you put in some time.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

But my main point is you are by far the wittiest and cadres of the right wing asshole brigade here

Why the slight of Blackman?

[Davedave]

Blackman is below par intelligence-wise even compared to most cheeses. A highly trained, but extremely stupid man. How much of an idiot does someone have to be to shill for groups who want to gas him and all his relations?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Maybe he figures they wouldn't recognize that he is Jewish? I had no idea he was Jewish until someone expressly stated it.

[Davedave]

He has been reasonably open about it, especially with some of his posts.

I would hazard a guess that Blackman is so blase about it that he thinks taking Nazi money doesn't increase his chances of being killed by Nazis, although of course that's wrong.

The alternative is that he is too ignorant about the history of such things to understand that the Nazis considered the kapos/sympathisers to be the worst of the Jews (being not just Jews, but traitors to 'their own kind'), and made a special effort to kill them.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Don’t see OSTP listed here."

Presidents name all sorts of staff/minor officials as having "cabinet rank". Its just a status game. So the Chief of Staff doesn't get seated with a military attache at banquets.

Most people think of the Cabinet as the Secretaries in the line of succession who head full Departments.

Bureaucrats like Sarcasto think of the bogus "expanded" cabinet.

[Ben_]

Not so far. Do you think anyone will be able to?

[Ben_]

Hours later, still not a single name.

[Ben_]

Hours later, still zero names suggested.

[bernard11]

Yes.

Now, do you have a serious comment, or are you just looking for a stupid fight?

[PeteRR]

Is there any way to keep track of comments you've made so that you can see replies to them? This system is ridiculous.

[Mr. Bumble]

Second that. Impossible to have any real discussion. At the very least a notification that there has been a response to one of your comments might be a start.

[not guilty]

IIRC this blog had that notification feature many years ago when Discus was managing comments.

[Brett Bellmore]

You can search for your name among the comments, but that's about it. I agree, notification would be nice.

[Mr. Bumble]

Heads up: We are beginning to phase in a number of changes to the commenting system at Reason.com. Registered users can now see an enhanced profile page - accessible from the link near the top right of any page - which allows you to manage your muted commenter list and to see a complete listing of comments. Also, commenters are now able to edit comments during the first 5 minutes after posting. These initial changes also include new registration and password recovery forms. Stay tuned for bigger and better changes coming soon! Please send any trouble reports to [e-mail] and submit any feedback through our site feedback form.

Still waiting.

[Kazinski]

Yeah there's that, but good luck following the indentions and lines down in a long thread to see who is replying to whom.

[not guilty]

Attorneys for Donald Trump have written a letter to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee kvetching about the Department of Justice investigation of Trump´s handling of classified documents which were located at Mar-a-Lago. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23789802-read-trump-lawyers-letter-to-congress-reveal-foreign-leader-briefings-may-be-among-classified-documents-taken-from-white-house The letter asserts, ¨A legislative solution by Congress is required to prevent the DOJ from continuing to conduct ham-handed criminal investigations of matters that are inherently not criminal.¨

The letter further urges, ¨DOJ should be ordered to stand down, and the intelligence community should instead conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this Committee, as well as your counterparts in the Senate.¨ Remarkably absent is citation of any legal authority which would authorize the Congress or any committee thereof to issue such a stand down order or to otherwise prevent DOJ from investigating crimes.

[Michael P]

Perhaps the DOJ should investigate your comments, and you more broadly, for as long as necessary to determine what crimes you are responsible for. It sounds like you might be an undeclared agent of a totalitarian state, seeking to reduce the US to the level of your state sponsor.

[not guilty]

Michael P, are you drunk?

[Michael P]

not guilty, are you being paid by the Russian government?

[Moderation4ever]

I am a little disturbed that the Mar-a-Lago document case has been focused on the classified documents. It is important to remember that the former President took both classified and unclassified records. These are Presidential records and are the property of the American people. The former President has no right to take either and should be held accountable for taking both types of documents. More appropriately he should be charged with obstruction for failure to return the documents when asked.

[not guilty]

The statutes at issue in the Mar-a-Lago investigation do not distinguish between classified and unclassified documents. The prosecution is accordingly not required to prove as an element of the offense that documents were classified.

Whether the documents bear classification markings is relevant. The grand jury subpoena issued on May 11, 2022 called for production of documents or writings bearing classification markings. https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/just-security-mar-a-lago-grand-jury-subpoena.pdf Trump´s fraudulent response to the subpoena is highly probative of acting with a culpable mental state (which is an essential element of the offense).

[David Nieporent]

No president in history has ever gotten in legal trouble for retaining presidential records that were unrelated to national security, and would be absurd to start now. (Yes, I know the PRA wasn't passed until the 1970s. Doesn't change my point.)

[Moderation4ever]

The issue is not that he took the documents as much as his refusal to return them when asked. I don't think that can be said of other Presidents.

[John F. Carr]

Congress has the power to rein in the FBI, limiting its investigative authority. As an ad hoc solution Congress could retroactively grant ex-presidents authority to retain classified documents and legalize obstruction of investigations of things that are not in fact crimes. That would be enough to get Trump off the hook in the Mar-a-Lago case.

I do not anticipate enough votes to pass such a bill in either house, much less override a veto.

[not guilty]

¨As an ad hoc solution Congress could retroactively grant ex-presidents authority to retain classified documents and legalize obstruction of investigations of things that are not in fact crimes. That would be enough to get Trump off the hook in the Mar-a-Lago case.¨

A bill of attainder in reverse?

[John F. Carr]

Interesting comparison. At what level of specificity, if any, would a statutory exemption from criminal liability be rejected by courts? Does there have to be a rational basis for it? Outside of criminal contexts you often see descriptions that are designed to apply to only one person or municipality. An LLC formed in Rockingham County in 2011 with exactly three physicians as members. Any city with a population of at least 39,000 but not more than 40,000 at the 2010 census.

Could Congress enact a general pardon for a named individual?

[John F. Carr]

If we go the reverse bill of attainder route I'm not thinking nearly ambitiously enough. One could imagine Congress trying to preempt state court actions against Trump, like Congress tried to have federal courts overrule state courts in Terry Schiavo's case. Obviously not going to happen while Biden can still lift a veto pen.

[Krayt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEojWqx1aWo

[bernard11]

As an ad hoc solution Congress could retroactively grant ex-presidents authority to retain classified documents and legalize obstruction of investigations of things that are not in fact crimes.

And why would that be a good idea? Sounds dumb to me. What need does an ex-President have of classified material?

And how does anyone know whether an investigation is going to lead to criminal activity if it can be obstructed?

[David Nieporent]

Let’s just say that there’s a reason that letter was sent to a member of Congress rather than to a judge.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

At least a few Trump lawyers want/need to keep their law licenses?

[Kazinski]

Congress has issued "stand down" orders to the DOJ in the past, but of course not just a committee.

There is clear legislative precedent and authority for a congressional stand down order.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/06/20/congress-votes-to-block-feds-from-enforcing-marijuana-laws-in-legal-states/?sh=1d20852e4b62

Going further back, that's what the Iran Contra scandal was all about, the Whitehouse violating the Boland Amendment which was a Congressional stand down order to the Executive branch.

It's definitely a thing.

[Martinned]

Thoughts on this big new gun violence story?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413?ref=thebrowser.com

Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close.
America’s regions are poles apart when it comes to gun deaths and the cultural and ideological forces that drive them.
(...)
In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.

[Mr. Bumble]

Define “gun violence” as opposed to violence in general. Are the deaths caused by drug overdose (including suicides) “drug violence"?

[Martinned]

You can read the article yourself, but I'm not sure why you'd describe a drug overdose as "violence".

[Mr. Bumble]

Curious as to whether you read the article or only the headline.
"...but I’m not sure why you’d describe a drug overdose as “violence”. Because suicide by gun is routinely included in stats for "gun violence".

[Martinned]

I read the whole article when it came out. It cuts the data every which way but Sunday. You can have it with suicides included or excluded, as you prefer. (Regardless of whether gun suicides are violence, they are certainly gun deaths.)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If he had read the article he would've realized how stupid their premise of the article was with it's "Yankeedom" and "Greater Appalachia" and "El Norte's".

I love this:

"Forget the U.S. Census divisions, which arbitrarily divide the country into a Northeast, Midwest, South and West using often meaningless state boundaries and a willful ignorance of history. " And go with my incredibly stupid theory and made up boundaries that I use to squeeze free grant monies from morons in the government!

[Life of Brian]

Seriously, that map would make the most diehard political gerrymanderers green with envy.

And I love how they cheerfully shelved their convictions about their super amazing new way of slicing and dicing the country just long enough to write the headline about "red states."

[Martinned]

I haven't read the book, but this sort of grouping is the kind of thing you can do statistically. (Though you do have to input how many groups you want your data to be grouped into.) And once you plot it on a map, observing how it correlates with the traditional grouping of Red States and Blue States seems fair enough.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Define “gun violence” as opposed to violence in general.

The difference is the gun. If you focus on the gun, you can open to view the fraught question of gun prevalence, and its implications. Some folks think if you consider gun prevalence in detail, you might get insight into means to reduce violence.

Other folks—some of whom are actually fans of violence—say, "No, no, no, never look at gun prevalence."

For more on why some folks are fans of violence, and why those folks concentrate more in some regions and less in others, read the article and the book behind it.

[Kazinski]

Well what if I think it’s Rap music prevalence, and I want to severely curtail the themes and lyrics in rap music. And if you are looking for actual fans of violence you will find plenty. Video games too, and movies, go after the whole cultural underpinnings of urban violence, which is of course by far the biggest source of murders in the country.

First thing I’m going to be told is the 1st amendment forbids that.

The 2nd amendment forbids attacking “gun prevalence” too.

Now I actually think my attack on the first amendment would save more lives than your attack on the second amendment, but we will never find out because both of them are fascist power grabs forbidden by our system of government.

[Absaroka]

Tangentially related: Bill Maher on Hollywood and guns. N.b. he's not arguing for censorship - he's arguing that if you are a producer who won't have smoking scenes in your movies because it might influence impressionable youngsters to smoke, you might think about how you portray guns.

[shawn_dude]

That must be the "Well regulated" part that forbids it?

[Kazinski]

Well no, it’s the “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” part.

But Article 1 clearly says that Congress could heavily regulate the “militia” if they wanted to. Every able-bodied man and boy mustered and drilling every Saturday. But that’s not just gun owners, every man jack of us (although it would be women too in the current era). Because targeting just gun owners would be discrimination for exercising a civil right which isn’t allowed in our constitution.

Although they could fine non-gunowners for not showing up with their own guns.

The fact that conscription is politically unpopular and they don’t is just how democracy works.

But the idea that only gun owners would be subject to such conscription doesn’t conform to either text, history, or tradition.

[Ben_]

‘Are the deaths caused by drug overdose (including suicides) “drug violence”?’

If someone dies and Democrats can’t use it to tell stories to divide people, then does their death really matter? Shouldn’t families experiencing grief and loss just STFU when their story doesn’t advance the leftist agenda?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Of course that only applies to fighting gun control. If a Dem governor allows someone to be paroled, and the parolee kills someone, it's game on! If a required vaccine causes a complication that kills someone, it's game on! If someone gets killed by some crazy left-wing protestor, it's game on!

[Ben_]

Needless deaths are tragic.

Let's not "require" Covid vaccines that might cause death -- we should allow people make their own choices for their own health. Covid vaccines don't prevent people from getting or spreading Covid. And young people were never at significant risk from Covid anyway, so they should obviously not be forced to put themselves at risk by using a vaccine.

You also might want to avoid endangering the public by choosing to let predators loose.

And encouraging violent protests is also bad. We could talk about right wing protestors killing someone but ... was there more than 1 in the last 20 years? The death that one time was tragic.

[Davedave]

"Covid vaccines don’t prevent people from getting or spreading Covid."

Yes, they do. Stop lying. You've already conceded masks did in fact reduce the rate of transmission of Covid; what else are you going to end up admitting today?

[Ben_]

No, they don’t.

"You’ve already conceded masks did in fact reduce the rate of transmission of Covid..."

Does putting your hand in a waterfall or in a flowing river "reduce the rate" of the river's flow? Is it effective?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Without a seal at the edge, of course not. But that isn't the analogy. A better analogy would be a beaver dam. Pretty porous overall, but still effective—and applied widely, a powerful force to transform a natural landscape.

[Kazinski]

Vaccines don't prevent people from getting or spreading Covid, nobody claims that anymore, not even Fauci.

Why are you spreading dangerous vaccine misinformation?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

They reduce the odds of catching and spreading it. They reduce the severity of the symptoms if you do catch it.

The blanket statement that they simply "prevent" COVID is false.

[Krayt]

When this started, lockdown and masks were to stop overwhelming hospitals, which would cause needless deaths.

At the time, about 2 months later, I noticed the rhetoric about masks changing, it wasn’t to save others by reducing this, but about you, dear reader, saving your own life.

The original goal was to hunker down until it went away or a vaccine was developed.

But narratives evolved. Even this description about taking the vaccine as an option for you, for your own survival vis-a-vis the virus, ignores that that’s not what any of this was about.

Rules are created in response to some impetus. Then, as tine goes by, the original reason drops away, and the rule is treated as holy good in and of itself. Pols rely on this to embed stuff for ever and ever.

[Stephen Lathrop]

What idiocy. Every governor in the nation has given up on public health policy, while about 100,000 people a year still die from Covid—making every year about twice as deadly as the more-severe flu seasons which typically come round once a decade or so.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Ben wrote:

"Needless deaths are tragic..."

Your reply to my comment just boils down to: Using deaths to divide people is okay when it is for a cause I agree with. So in other words, your usual bad faith arguing.

[Stephen Lathrop]

That analysis is based on an older historical/sociological theory of regional divisions in the U.S., written by the same author, Colin Woodard. I mentioned that book, American Nations, a few days ago, as a media recommendation.

It is interesting, provocative, gets at least some of the history right, and sheds considerable light on erstwhile historical mysteries large and small.

Here is one of the small ones. Did you ever wonder why a crescent moon appears on the flag of South Carolina? Wikipedia's explanation falls short.

Get Woodard's book and find out. Woodard's explanation, if historically accurate, fills in empty spots left vague in my high school history curriculum, touching on the Barbadian origins of South Carolina, and illuminating why plantation slavery across the Deep South exceeded even Virginia for brutality. John Locke figures in.

[Martinned]

Yes, it seemed like a pretty interesting research project.
(I think I'll pass on the book, but only because there are too many other things I still have to read about first.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

The "problem" is that Trauma Centers save lives. Massachusetts has 10 Level 1 Trauma Centers (two just across a state line) -- some far (geographically) larger states have only one. Here's a list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trauma_centers_in_the_United_States

Hence any evaluation of gun *deaths* must include time to a trauma center -- and if you have multiple centers (e.g. Boston) you can send the victims to different Trauma Centers so as to not overwhelm just one.

It's not that fewer people are shot in Boston, only that those who are shot are less likely to die.

[Martinned]

That may well be the most interesting point that I've ever seen you make on this blog.

I would think that that largely gets picked up by looking at the rural areas within the zones the author identifies, but it's a very good point nonetheless.

[John F. Carr]

The same pattern has been blamed for part of the difference in highway fatality rates between rural and urban states.

[Brett Bellmore]

Indeed, back in the 90's, when I lived in a rural area, I twice had to travel as long as an hour to reach a properly equipped emergency room. Nearly lost my foot when I broke my leg, because of that. A neighbor whose tractor fell on him while he was working on it lived only because of the retired doctor who lived next to us both, who did emergency field surgery closing up his femoral artery as they jacked the tractor back off of him.

It's a huge cause of mortality in rural areas.

[bernard11]

I agree, Brett.

It's bad when medical care is not readily available.

So I'm not too sympathetic to your broken leg problems.

[Absaroka]

"So I’m not too sympathetic to your broken leg problems."

Long trips to the hospital in a rural area are bad regardless of the patient's politics. If Zooey Zephyr has a car wreck an hour out of town she also gets the long ride. Indifference to badly injured people isn't a good look.

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, you mean if you get injured hundreds of miles away from a Trauma Center you have a higher mortality rate?? I hope millions of tax dollars were spent studying that.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The level of medical care (and other "amenities") available is just one of many important reasons educated, reasoning, skilled, successful, modern Americans tend not to reside in desolate, can't-keep-up, half-educated, Republican backwaters.

The residents of those inadequate communities must hope better Americans choose to override markets and are magnanimous enough to subsidize a solution (through redistribution that picks winners and losers, of course).

[Dr. Ed 2]

The flip side, Kirkland, is the retired MD who came over to help -- and likely didn't charge anything. You won't get that in a city.

When Justice Roberts was injured after an Epilepsy fit, the St. George Volunteer Ambulance Corps did not charge him for the trip to the hospital (much to the surprise of a lot of folks in DC). Sure, you are welcome to donate to them, but it only goes for equipment, supplies and state-mandated training, not pay.

Now compare this to cities where people bleed to death because no one will even call 911. And 911 dispatchers who hang up on people and the rest.

As a volunteer, I once was in a situation where we had a MD in someone's living room in less than 5 minutes. Roads were *cleared* and wealthy tourists dumped on a dusty runway with a terse "sorry, medical emergency, we'll be back in an hour for you."

Compare that to your golden cities where ambulances are routinely stuck in traffic.

And what you might call "bowing to superstition", us in rural America call "being a good Christian" and it's why we get out of a warm bed at 2AM and go out in the cold and wet to rescue idiots with more money than brains. For free, I might add...

[hoppy025]

Better than studying how many boys RAK infected with HIV while penetrating them.

[Ben_]

"Thoughts on this big new gun violence story?"

Dumb news media narratives are dumb.

Do you think an intensely partisan rehash of cherry-picked old data is "news"? Is pushing partisan talking points the role of the news media?

[Martinned]

So that's a no on "thoughts" then? Or do you also have something substantive to say?

[Ben_]

"Partisan talking points are dumb" is definitely a thought. Why should anyone care what dishonest partisans at Politico say about anything?

If you cared about violence then you'd talk about violence, not about "gun violence" specifically in "red states". But you don’t. You care about congratulating yourself on some rhetorical point to divide people.

[Nige]

If you wanted to talk about violence you'd talk about the violence Ben wants you to talk about not the violence Ben doesn't want you to talk about.

[Kazinski]

You just have to look at the data more analytically, rather figure out what story you want to hear and find the data.

Here is a truer picture, America’s murder and crime problem is primarily an large urban city problem. Here’s the cities with the highest number of murders with murder rate and number of murders: IL Chicago 18.26 501 MD Baltimore 55.77 342 PA Philadelphia 20.06 322 MI Detroit 39.8 267 MO St. Louis 66.07 205 TN Memphis 27.73 181 LA New Orleans 39.5 157 IN Indianapolis 17.91 156 MO Kansas City 30.93 150 OH Columbus 16.28 147 WI Milwaukee 19.83 DC Washington 16.72 116 TN Nashville 16.3 110 KY Louisville 15.93 109 OH Cleveland 27.77 103

Top 4 murder cities are Blue States, but that’s not the way to look at it either. The top 2 cities have had the strictest gun control laws in the country until recently, and there current murder rates are appreciably lower now than at the height of their gun ban years.

Go ahead and spitball some solutions but at least take an honest look at the data.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, the study under consideration—which you seem not to have looked at—makes it a point to debunk political boundaries as determinate of gun effects. The study relies on other kinds of descriptors, based on historical indices, cultural traits, population density, and similar characteristics which can be held constant across contrasting political boundaries. It is not a familiar kind of analysis. It is worth looking at.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why is Ray Epps the only J6'er that isn't an "insurrectionist" when he's on video clearly insurrecting? Any one have any theories as to why the Democrats, the media, and the DOJ (BIRM) protect this guy while throwing the rest in a gulag to rot?

[Mr. Bumble]

Was Carlson planning a story on Epps 60 Minutes appearance before he was canned?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Good Question.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

These are your people, Volokh Conspirators.

And the reason your colleagues -- deans, especially -- wish you would leave today.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm not sure where you got the idea he was the only guy to get that treatment. He's just the one who gets called out most often, there are other conspicuous cases.

[Sarcastr0]

Ed is nuts and Bumble has these swings into shallow own the libs doesn’t care. You want to believe, which is natural but to be resisted.

Big thing here: Informant is not the same as agent.

[Mr. Bumble]

So your saying the FBI had informants planted in the Jan. 6 event; but no agents?

[Bob from Ohio]

Keep in mind that there are many other federal police/intelligence agencies besides the FBI.

[Dr. Ed 2]

All of whom have a really bad habit of not talking to each other.

Would I be surprised if Jan 6th was a massive inter-agency cluster bleep? No -- not at all....

One of the things I found interesting was the published fact that most (but not all) of the windows in the Capitol had been replaced with unbreakable ones. And the perps somehow knew which ones were still glass and hence breakable, and went directly to them as a means of entering the building.

*I* wouldn't know which windows were still glass -- after all that's happened in the past 40 years, I'm still honestly surprised that *any* of them were still glass -- and, IMHO, someone was negligent here, but I digress....

But who would have a list of which windows hadn't been armored? Yep, a Federal agency....

[Sarcastr0]

I'm saying there is evidence of informants, but none of agents.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, and we're saying, why the hell did you think they want to conceal so much of the video from that day? Because it doesn't reveal anything they'd want to hide?

[Sarcastr0]

Just because something would be hard to find evidence of doesn't mean you get to just speculate it as true.

I don't know why the FBI isn't releasing all the video. There are tons of possible explanations that are not that the FBI is concealing it's agents' responsibility for the violence on that day.

[M L]

It’s hilarious. After ignoring the plight of the J6 political prisoners being put in solitary confinement and beat within an inch of their life, the mainstream media is now in consternation that poor Ray Epps, who still walks free with no explanation, has an upset stomach and hurt feelings over all the right wing talk about him.

And then it’s right back to playing word games, “but there’s no evidence he’s a federal ‘agent.'”

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Some of those un-American right-wing assholes are getting years -- four, five, six, seven years -- of imprisonment for participating in the insurrection.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of useless clingers.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I'll take "Things that never happened" for $500, Alex.

[Mr. Bumble]

Psst, Alex is dead.

[Dr. Ed 2]

When you look at the "Alice in Wonderland" world of Kirkland, does a trivial fact like that matter?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

The phrase doesn't have to change just because he died.

Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with what a 'meme' is.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://rumble.com/v2hpryu-naomi-wolf-whats-in-the-pfizer-documents.html

#1: Pfizer knew their gene-based injections had negative efficacy as early as November 2020

#2: Shortly after the release of the COVID injections, Pfizer moved to hire 2,400 full-time employees to process the paperwork of the injured

#3: Pfizer and the FDA withheld information that the shots cause heart damage in youth for four months while an aggressive propaganda campaign drove many thousands to get injected

#4: Rather than staying in the injection site, Pfizer knew the shot’s dangerous lipid nanoparticles quickly distribute throughout the body to the brain, liver, and adrenals, and accumulate in the ovaries

#5: Pfizer documents acknowledge more than 42,000 adverse events, including 1,200 deaths, in just the first three months, including strokes, hemorrhages, blood clots, lung clots, leg clots, neurological disorders, dementia, guillain-barré, bell’s palsy, myalgia, and more

#6: Prior to it being legal, more than 1,000 children were injected, and Pfizer’s documents indicate a high rate of serious injury

#7:Available records of study participants who conceived children show 80% lost their babies

#8: Pfizer knew there was a danger to fertility. Lipid Nanoparticles damage the placenta during pregnancy, causing early deliveries

#9: Pfizer docs show that lipid nanoparticles also enter breast milk, stunting, injuring, and sometimes killing babies

#10: Pfizer docs show 3 to 1 of AEs sustained by women, 16% ‘reproductive disorders.’ ‘What kind of monsters look at 16% reproductive disorders and keep going?’ Results: ‘13% to 20% drop in live births'

#11 Pfizer documents reveal that LNPs “degrade baby boys in utero” by traversing “the testes of fetal baby boys” and damaging “the Sertoli cells and the Leydig cells, which are basically the factories of masculinity”

#12 Pfizer colluded with the FDA and CDC to make sure there were No Refunds for the Vaxxholes and Covidiots

[Michael P]

Does "the jab" also cause "forever chemicals"?

[Frank Drackman]

Well it contains "LUCIFER-ase"
which can't be good, I mean why would they be injecting you with something named after Lucifer??

[David Nieporent]

Notable microbiologist Naomi Wolf.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Haha yeah, it takes a microbiologist to read and understand Pfizer’s documents!

I’m so thankful that I have all these experts around to tell me what to think and what to believe! I trust them so much to keep me informed and to steward my life and my family! Especially the experts in government! When I look around and see how well these experts steward our environment, our society, our health, our culture and our economy I just know I can rely on them to take care of me and to tell me what to think!

Sincerely,

David Nieporent

[Nige]

Between you and Naomi Wolf poor reading comprehension, bad-faith interpretations and outright lies are all we're going to get.

[Ben_]

Democrats blindly follow their authorities, even when they know the authorities are lying.

They’re too afraid of their own side’s enforcers not to.

[ThanksForTheFish]

Nothing says legitimate journalist like Naomi Wolf.

[Ed Grinberg]

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/after-settlement-new-challenge-for-fox-news-a-disinformation-expert/ar-AA1af0sH

Not a single allegation of a false statement of fact. A giant loser of a case. But, with the proliferation of motivated "liberal" (ha!) judges, who knows...

[Commenter_XY]

A question for VC Conspirators. Recently, there has been a push for governmental regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Frankly, I don't know how that would even be possible, but that seems to be what the government wants.

My question: What are the dangers to our individual rights and liberties that government regulation and control of AI technology bring?

[Martinned]

Your individual rights and liberties or the rights and liberties of big tech companies? Because that "our" seems to lump more people together than would be helpful for this conversation.

[Commenter_XY]

Martinned, that is a fair point and I will be more precise.

When I say: individual rights and liberties
I mean: individual autonomous human beings (people like us)

[Michael P]

I think the most fundamental threat is a group tyranny that decides what thoughts are permissible for an AI to generate, and imposes that judgment on AIs that are used throughout society -- to propagandize for public policies and beliefs that reflect a small minority's preferences, to steer dissidents away from each other, and so forth. This is is a right that underlies freedoms of the press, of association, etc but was not recognized during the Founding as possible to directly threaten. Technology has made it viable now.

[Brett Bellmore]

That pretty much sums up my concern; A genuinely useful AI will be used, and displace other ways of doing the same thing. If it is systematically biased by the government, that systematic bias will infect all of society.

AI would also make a fantastic government informant.

[shawn_dude]

How would an AI not purpose-built to scan the public interwebs for things to worry about be a "government informant?"

What we're currently calling "AI" isn't "intelligence" the way we think of mammalian intelligence. It isn't going to have emotions, take sides, or suddenly realize its owners are criminals and call the cops. Like any piece of software, it can be reviewed, it's data seized, and it can be used as evidence in a crime.

Where government regulation may play some role is in the data used to train it (copyright comes to mind), legal liability for errors or intentional misuse (might make for an effective phishing tool), perhaps something regulating how AI's are represented to end-users so that users know it's not a person.

[Brett Bellmore]

Did you read Michael P's comment?

Let's say the feds lean on/bribe Bing to include an informant fiction in Bard. Now instead of simply refusing to write a scurrilous limerick about the President, Bard responds by compiling a file on you, and emailing a link to the FBI.

Technically, quite easy to do. They just have to add it to Bard's list of standing orders. The one that loads ahead of all user prompts.

[Michael P]

Because every single ChatGPT query goes to OpenAI, and every single Bard chat goes to Google, and every single Bing exchange goes to Microsoft, they can log those exchanges indefinitely. They were saving those for future use until people raised a stink about it. They probably log it all for legal reasons anyway, and they could provide those to government either voluntarily or through compulsory process.

But next imagine a chat bot ordered to be an agent provocateur.

[Dr. Ed 2]

AI is already causing unemployment in Kenya.
https://restofworld.org/2023/chatgpt-taking-kenya-ghostwriters-jobs/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Martinned]

In that case the next question is "liberties with respect to whom?"

People on this blog often only worry about how the government might restrict your liberty, but that's a very 19th century perspective (17th century?). If, instead of the government, some big tech company controls what I can say and do on the internet, I'm just as un-free. It makes no practical difference to me as an individual what the source of the restriction is.

The point is that a lot of regulation makes people freer, by giving them more information, more choices, etc. But if your definition of liberty by definition only looks at the government, you're ruling out that result by definition.

[Michael P]

It's a very 19th century perspective to think that a giant company will threaten liberties all by itself. Nowadays they're all working closely with government to do that -- see, for example, the Twitter Files part 20, "The Information Cartel". Government uses carrots and sticks with for-profit companies and gives large grants to non-profit organizations to steer them in the direction that government wants.

[Martinned]

So you are not one of those conservatives who suddenly wanted to abolish s. 230 when Twitter banned Trump?

[Michael P]

So you are one of those leftists who pull some random whatabout out of their ass to avoid responding to criticism?

[Martinned]

Just checking whether you actually believe the nonsense you wrote before considering whether I might want to give a substantive response. I'll take that as a "no" then...

[Michael P]

I'll take that as a "yes" to my question.

[Krayt]

That was transparently a reactionary bleat.

Democrats: Censor harrassment, or we will kill section 230, causing your business model to collapse under lawsuits, crushing your stock price. Ahh, thank you. Please start with harrassing tweets of our political opponents right before an elec…thanks again!

Republicans: Stop doing that or we will crush your stock prices.

None of this has ever been “free companies run by free people censoring using their own free speech rights.”

Not anything close.

[David Nieporent]

People on this blog often only worry about how the government might restrict your liberty, but that’s a very 19th century perspective (17th century?). If, instead of the government, some big tech company controls what I can say and do on the internet, I’m just as un-free. It makes no practical difference to me as an individual what the source of the restriction is.

It makes an infinite difference. Big Tech companies don't have guns, and do have competitors. The reverse is true for government.

[Absaroka]

I'm not sure the difference is always as stark as you posit. If you look at the late 1800's for example, living in a company town, subjected to an industry wide blacklist if you made trouble (and of course, back then the corporations had their own machine guns 🙂 ), the difference might seem a bit academic. Or the southern sharecropping system.

While granting the differences you list are important, I think you have to look at the overall practical results. Corporations, after all, have a habit of getting the government to do their bidding, and vice versa. Who is scratching whose back can get pretty fuzzy.

[Martinned]

You think only guns restrict your liberty? What century do you live in?

As for competitors, that's exactly the question. What we're worried about is companies without competitors. Hence the desire for actual enforcement of the antitrust laws.

[Sarcastr0]

In my agency, every yearly review of an AI research project includes at least often more ethicists.

The issues are myriad, from social engineering to engender trust in human teammates to algorithmic decision making in life or death situations, to unexpected emergent behavior, to control systems.

[Brett Bellmore]

My experience, reading the output of "x" ethicists, is that I wouldn't trust their judgement any further than I could throw them.

[Commenter_XY]

Especially if they're the same government 'ethicists' who told us mandatory vax, mandatory shutdowns, defined 'non-essential' work positions, depriving the elderly of companionship at life's end were the right way to go.

[Sarcastr0]

If only we could just have Brett Bellmore's in the room.

Jesus, you're an egotistical sonuvabitch.

[Bob from Ohio]

"social engineering to engender trust in human teammates to algorithmic decision making in life or death situations, to unexpected emergent behavior, to control systems"

This is an English language blog.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This is an English language blog . . .

whose target audience operates at the semiliterate level of backwater Ohio, downscale South Carolina, rural Idaho, west Texas, can't-keep-up Mississippi . .

[Frank Drackman]

Rural Pennsylvania
https://www.cor.pa.gov/Facilities/StatePrisons/Pages/Greene.aspx

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Substantial parts of Pennsylvania -- essentially anything more than 20 miles from Pittsburgh or 40 miles from Philadelphia -- might as well be in West Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, Idaho, Alabama, west Texas, or South Carolina.

[Sarcastr0]

Missed a comma after teammates. Hope that helps!

[Bob from Ohio]

Its just gibberish even with the comma.

[Sarcastr0]

It's a list of ethical concerns; not surprising you'd find that hard to comprehend.

[Bob from Ohio]

Its a series of jargon looped together to mean nothing.

Not surprising a bureaucrat would write it.

[Ed Grinberg]

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/04/04/divorced-father-inflicted-mental-injury-on-12-year-old-son-by-religious-criticisms-of-sons-felt-homosexuality/

re: “your psychotic mother”

There are AWFLs; the pink pussy-hat wearers who attend every protest and enforce every newly-invented norm.
... AWFLs: affluent, white, female liberals. Devoted to an ideology that worships victimhood, they are tragically lacking in victimhood points based on race or income or sexual orientation. But they can change this overnight if they can gift one of their own children to the trans cult.

(source)

[not guilty]

The District Attorney in Manhattan has moved the trial court for a protective order regarding the handling of discovery materials by Donald Trump´s defense team. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23789768-protective-order-motion-filed It should be interesting to see what the defense response will be.

[Mr. Bumble]

What are they afraid of?

[Longtobefree]

Truth, justice, and 'The American Way'.

[John F. Carr]

Among other remedies the prosecution seeks to bar Trump and his team from posting discovery material to "any news or social media platforms, including, but not limited, to Truth Social, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, or YouTube". They want the case tried in the court, not online, and they want to keep the number of death threats to a minimum.

[Mr. Bumble]

How common is this type of action in cases that aren't about Trump?

[John F. Carr]

It is not common as a fraction of cases. It happens often enough that I have lost count of how many times I have heard about it.

[not guilty]

¨How common is this type of action in cases that aren’t about Trump?¨

Prophylactic measures such as the prosecution is requesting here are uncommon -- very much the exception rather than the rule. That having been said, Donald Trump is an unusual defendant, and the trial court has an obligation to ensure a fair trial by an impartial jury. As SCOTUS has opined:

Due process requires that the accused receive a trial by an impartial jury free from outside influences. Given the pervasiveness of modern communications and the difficulty of effacing prejudicial publicity from the minds of the jurors, the trial courts must take strong measures to ensure that the balance is never weighed against the accused. And appellate tribunals have the duty to make an independent evaluation of the circumstances. Of course, there is nothing that proscribes the press from reporting events that transpire in the courtroom. But where there is a reasonable likelihood that prejudicial news prior to trial will prevent a fair trial, the judge should continue the case until the threat abates, or transfer it to another county not so permeated with publicity. In addition, sequestration of the jury was something the judge should have raised sua sponte with counsel. If publicity during the proceedings threatens the fairness of the trial, a new trial should be ordered. But we must remember that reversals are but palliatives; the cure lies in those remedial measures that will prevent the prejudice at its inception. The courts must take such steps by rule and regulation that will protect their processes from prejudicial outside interferences. Neither prosecutors, counsel for the defense, the accused, witnesses, court staff nor enforcement officers coming under the jurisdiction of the court should be permitted to frustrate its function.

Sheppard v Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 362-63 (1966) [emphasis added], quoted with approval in National Broadcasting Co. v. Cooperman, 116 A.D.2d 287, 290, 501 N.Y.S.2d 405 (N.Y.App.Div. 1986).

[Bob from Ohio]

"tried in the court"

As did Henry VIII in the Star Chamber!

[Brett Bellmore]

Without knowing what they want concealed, we can’t actually know if they have a reasonable basis for wanting it concealed.

Which, I guess, might be the point of wanting it concealed!

[OtisAH]

Great news, you’re not on the jury or otherwise involved in the case at all! So your opinion on whether you think the request reasonable is not needed or required. Now you can worry about something else.

[Mr. Bumble]

Otis A(ss) H(ole) strikes back. Falls on face.

[Jerry B.]

And, of course, the prosecution will also not distribute discovery materials to the news media either, right?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Maybe you should read the fucking motion?

[Michael P]

Besides "the FBI", what is holding up the release of information about the Nashville school mass murderer's writings? They've been called a manifesto, described as including a suicide note, and more. If the public is to be able to fairly assess how to respond in policy, it needs an unbiased understanding of what is in that collection.

[apedad]

The delay could be there's something in the writings that have led investigators to gather additional evidence or perhaps there are indications that others involved.

Example, say he wrote, " 敢想敢干 (Dare to think, dare to act)," and that's a slogan for a known terrorist group.

Obviously investigators wouldn't want that piece getting publicized now.

Stop looking for conspiracies at every corner.

[Martinned]

敢想敢干 (Dare to think, dare to act) (...) a slogan for a known terrorist group

Well, sort of. It's a quote from Mao.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24923993

[Bob from Ohio]

"what is holding up the release of information about the Nashville school mass murderer’s writings? "

Politics. She wasn't a GOP voting white male but a tranny. its not in accordance with the lib/media story.

[Commenter_XY]

I have to ask: What is so dangerous that the American people cannot read it?

This is the kind of behavior that makes people question the veracity of government.

[Frank Drackman]

Its obvious she either 1: Used the "N-word", not allowed except for N-words (and only real ones, no "Transitioning" Rachel Dolezars, or at least 1/2 N-words like ex POTUS Barry Hussein) 2: Blamed some of her/his/their problems on the Covid Vaccine, und Vee Vill Not Allow Dat!!!!!!, 3: Upset Hunter Biden wouldn't pay for her/his/their abortion
probably all 3,

Frank

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Is it possible that policy makers and law enforcement don't want mass shootings to be seen as a way to make one's beliefs widely publicized? Can you not see value in that position?

[ReaderY]

I am surprised nobody in the defense bar has raised the argument that sexual harassment claims do not survive Bostock. The problem is that the Civil Rights Act does not prohibit sexual harassment as such, it prohibits “discriminatory” sexual harassment. A bisexual hararasser harasses indiscriminately, and hence commits no unlawful “discrimination.”

But under Bostock, the fact that one directs sexual conduct at a particular sex is simply part of ones sex. To complain about a man who dates men rather than women is to complain about the man’s sex and hence is sex discrimination. The fact that one directs ones sexual conduct at a particuar gender and not annother is simply part of ones sex, ones status. Sexual conduct arising solely from sexual orientation is protected.

But which sex the non-bisexual harasses is just as much the direct result of the non-bisexual harasser’s sexual orientation as which sex rhe non-bisexual dater dates. Like dating, sexual harassment is simply a kind of sexual conduct, and under Bostock, the Civil Rights Act protects people’s tendency to direct their sexual conduct at particular gender.

Since sexual harassment complaints are precisely disapproval of people directing their sexual condict at a particular gender – again the sexual harassment conduct itself isn’t illegal, only being non-bisexual while doing it – it would follow that after Bostock, the Civil Rights Act protects people from people who think that only bisexual people should be permitted to engage in particular sexual conduct. Making certain sexual conduct illegal only when non-bisexual people do it is but not when bisexual people do it about as blatant a violation of Bostock as can be imagined.

If the Civil Rights Act protects people from being penalized in the workplace solely because of their sexual orientation, then it protects harasssers from being penalized solely because of their sexual orientation as well. Sexual harassment is sexual conduct. So if it’s illegal to discriminate against people solely because their sexual orientation leads them to direct their sexual conduct generally at what is considered the “wrong” gender, then it must also be illegal to discriminate against people solely because their sexual orientation leads them to direct their sexual harassment conduct at what is considered the “wrong” gender. And subjecting people to “discrimination” lawsuits solely because of their sexual orientation, and not because of anything they’ve done (again the underlying conduct is not itself regarded as intrinsically illegal), is about as discriminatory a penalty as one can get. How can it survive Bostock?

[David Nieporent]

But under Bostock, the fact that one directs sexual conduct at a particular sex is simply part of ones sex.

Dude, you get these weird things in your head ("fetuses are like foreigners") and no matter how many times people tell you you're wrong, you can't let go of them. You. Don't. Understand. Bostock. At. All.

[David Nieporent]

I should add that you also don't understand Title VII at all.

[ReaderY]

Can’t think of any actual argument? Just call the other guy stupid and hope people will think that makes you look smart.

The fact that the law treats different things similarly doesn’t make them “the same,” it just means they get treated similarly for certain legal purposes. Nothing I say has suggested otherwise.

Your position, on the other hand, has plenty of company. Plenty of people poo-pooed as just plain stupid the idea that black people and white people, or men and women, are in any way the same. They’re different, so any argument that the law treats them similarly for certain purposes is ipso facto just plain dumb. Slaveholders, segregationists, etc. had pretty much the same poo-pooing, “that’s just stupid” tone you’re expressing with me.

Historically, the “that’s stupid” poo argument has been a loser of an argument. Yes, the smart people know that God created the races black, white, and almay, it will take more than a constitutional amendment to convince that men and women are equal, etc. etc. etc. But so far the stupid people have been doing quite a number on them.

[David Nieporent]

Okay, but none of that changes the fact that you completely misunderstand both Bostock and Title VII. For example:

And subjecting people to “discrimination” lawsuits solely because of their sexual orientation, and not because of anything they’ve done (again the underlying conduct is not itself regarded as intrinsically illegal), is about as discriminatory a penalty as one can get. How can it survive Bostock?

That's not right; that's not even wrong. You don't seem to grasp who Title VII covers, who it protects, who it governs, and what it forbids.

Who would be "subjecting people to 'discrimination' lawsuits solely because of their sexual orientation"?

1) Title VII applies to employers, not individuals. One can't sue the person doing the harassing; one sues the company.
2) Suing someone for harassment is not suing them for their sexual orientation. It's suing them for the thing you bizarrely claim they aren't being sued for: "because of anything they've done."

But even if you got past both of those errors, your comment would be nonsensical. It would "survive Bostock" because Bostock is an interpretation of Title VII, which restricts the behavior of employers, not employees. An employee suing is not governed by Title VII at all. An employee can sue his supervisor saying, "I don't like women, so I'm suing you," and that still wouldn't be in any way affected by Bostock.

Since sexual harassment complaints are precisely disapproval of people directing their sexual condict at a particular gender

Wrong. The sexual harassment conduct itself is illegal. Regardless of the sexual orientation of the person doing the harassing. Only the sex of the victim, not the perpetrator, is relevant.

[ReaderY]

The Civil Rights Act has a Title III that covers public facilities including courts. Judges can’t treat defendants differently solely because of their sexual orientation. It’s the judge here who would be doing the discriminating by making a non-bisexual defendant liable for something a bisexual defendant wouldn’t be liable for, solely because of the defendant’s sexual orientation. Non-bisexual defendants are entitled to the same equal treatment under law as bisexual defendants.

And the sexual harassment itself ISN’T illegal. There is a well-recognized “equal opportunity harasser” defense. A person who harasses indiscriminantly – that is, a bisexual harasser – does not violate the Civil Rights Act. That’s the whole basis of this argument.

This article, in arguing that the “equal opportunity harasser” doctrine shoild be abolished, recognizes that it currently exists.

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/aba_journal_of_labor_employment_law/v35/no-3/equal-opportunity-harasser-doctrine.pdf

[Brett Bellmore]

The reason for that rule is, I'd assume, that the federal government lacks the police authority, and thus needs SOME sort of constitutional hook to go after such crimes.

The idea that the federal government lacks police authority is starting to fade, I'll admit.

[Josh R]

The harasser isn't the defendant. The employer/business is and doesn't have a sex or sexual orientation, and thus there can't be different treatment because of sex or sexual orientation

[David Nieporent]

Yes, that's a shorter and clearer way of saying what I was trying to say.

[ReaderY]

1. Would you concede the argument if the defendant is a sole proprietorship, so the party sued is the party doing the harassing?

2. I’m not sure the difference matters. Consider a law holding businesses liable for harassment by black supervisors or by white supervisors, but not by mixed-race ones. I don’t think such a law would be valid, and I don’t think it would matter whether the defendant business was a sole proprietor or a corporation. For a corporation you could argue that the defendant entity doesn’t have a race and hence there’s no racial discrimination involved in suing a business based on such a rule. But I don’t think that argument would fly. Similarly, the fact that harassment is considered inherently wrong wouldn’t be sufficient to justify a rule that prohibits it only when done by some people and not others, with the difference based on a protected characteristic.

[Josh R]

Your hypothetical law may violate the 14th Amendment's prohibition against racial discrimination. Similarly, assuming Title VII is interpreted to permit only bisexual harassment, it might violate the 14th Amendment's prohibition against sex discrimination. But, in that case, the most likely result would be for the courts to stop interpreting Title VII to permit bisexual harassment.

[David Nieporent]

The Civil Rights Act has a Title III that covers public facilities including courts. Judges can’t treat defendants differently solely because of their sexual orientation.

Even if the rest of your stuff weren't confused, Title III doesn't cover sex.

And the sexual harassment itself ISN’T illegal. There is a well-recognized “equal opportunity harasser” defense. A person who harasses indiscriminantly – that is, a bisexual harasser – does not violate the Civil Rights Act. That’s the whole basis of this argument.

You're confused, once again. "Equal opportunity harasser" and "bisexual" have nothing to do with each other. Anti-harassment law focuses on the target, not the harasser. The question is whether the individual plaintiff has been treated differently because of his/her sex. Not because of the sexual orientation of the person doing the harassment. A straight man can harass a male employee. A bisexual man can harass a male employee. A gay man can harass a male employee. In each case, the relevant question is whether the male employee's actual treatment was different because he was a man than he would've been if he were a woman.

[ReaderY]

Equal opportunity harassers are equal opportunity harassers precisely and only because they are bisexual. The doctrine is often called the “bisexual harasser” doctrine

Consider a company with a rule prohibiting “discriminatory dating,” prohibiting dating only men or dating only women. Nobody who engages in “discriminatory” dating can be hired. Such a rule would also focus only on the gender of the people dated, not the gender of the person doing the dating. That’s OK? But a rule saying we hire only bisexuals isn’t OK?

And you’re saying the two rules would have absolutely nothing to do with each other? Come on. We both know the two rules would have exactly the same effect. Both would permit hiring only bisexuals. Same here. Who harassers harass is as much a simple consequence of their sexual orientation as who daters date.

[Josh R]

Sure. Assuming the "bisexual harasser" is good doctrine (and again, there is a circuit split pre-Bostock and it might not be at all under Bostock per your citation), then some harassment is permitted by Title VII while some is not based on the sexual orientation of the harasser. But, that still isn't discrimination on the basis of sex under Bostock because the employer is liable, not the harasser. How can there be discrimination when the person claiming discrimination isn't facing any sanction?

Now perhaps if the employer chooses to punish only heterosexual and homosexual harassers, and allows harassment by bisexuals, that might be unlawful discrimination per Bostock since that would be discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

[David Nieporent]

Equal opportunity harassers are equal opportunity harassers precisely and only because they are bisexual.

Again, that's completely wrong. I reiterate: it's the conduct of, not the sexuality of, the harasser, that is actionable. It doesn't matter whether the harasser is gay, straight, or bisexual. It matters how (s)he treats the employees.

[Josh R]

Since sexual harassment complaints are precisely disapproval of people directing their sexual conduct at a particular gender.

Under Title VII, it is unlawful to harass a person because of the victim’s sex without regard to the sex of the harasser. Thus, Bostock’s but-for standard doesn’t apply (but-for the harasser being a man [or woman], it would still be harassment,).

[ReaderY]

Because it is unlawful for non-bisexual people to harass but not for bisexual people to harass, harassment claims have to be made with regard to the harasser’s sexual orientation. And under Bostock, to regard the harasser’s sexual orientation is to regard the harasser’s sex.

The article below argues the effect of Bostock is to eliminate the “equal opportunity harasser” defense. But one could equally argue that it eliminates harassment claims entirely. If one takes as an irreducible given that conduct that treats the sexes differently must be shown or there is no “discrimination,” and accepts that Bostock regards directing sexual behavior towards one gender or another as a matter of status, part of their sex, part of who they are rather than what they do, then the fact that a person directs sexual conduct (however disagreeable) at a particular sex cannot constitute discrimination, any more than being black can be discrimination. What gender(s) a person directs sexual conduct at is simply part of who a person is. And who a person is simply is not discriminatory.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4115622

[Josh R]

Because it is unlawful for non-bisexual people to harass but not for bisexual people to harass.

There is a circuit split on that claim and your citation argues Bostock makes it unlawful for bisexual people to harass.

Bostock regards directing sexual behavior towards one gender or another as a matter of status

No. Bostock regards the desire to direct sexual behavior as a matter of status. That status is not a defense when you act on that desire in a harassing manner. It's unlawful behavior regardless of your status.

[ReaderY]

Bostock addressed actual behavior, not merely the desire to engage in behavior. Are you suggesting Bostock wouldn’t apply if one acts on ones desire in a dating manner? Dating behaviour is protected as part of ones sex, not just a desire to date.

Under the scheme “harassment” is no more against the rules than dating. A bisexual person can harass with complete freedom from liability. Exactly as in the dating case, it is the sex one directs the behavior at, solely that, that makes it against the rules versus not against the rules. The identical behavior is permitted to people of one sexual orientation and not permitted to people with a different sexual orientation.

[David Nieporent]

Bostock addressed actual behavior, not merely the desire to engage in behavior. Are you suggesting Bostock wouldn’t apply if one acts on ones desire in a dating manner? Dating behaviour is protected as part of ones sex, not just a desire to date.

Sigh. Why do you keep confusing the protected person (the employee) and the unprotected (the employer)? It is the status of the employee, and the conduct of the employer, that matters.

But, no, "dating behavior" is not "protected as part of one's sex." That's gibberish.

[David Nieporent]

and accepts that Bostock regards directing sexual behavior towards one gender or another as a matter of status, part of their sex,

Why would "accept" something that bears no relation whatsoever to what Bostock said?

[Michael P]

So I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future.

That all sounds very profound, man, but, like, somebody should remind her that it's still a federal crime even to possess marijuana, and she must have had enough to infer intent-to-sell, bumping it up to a felony.

[Longtobefree]

To me, it sounds more demented than profound.

[Sarcastr0]

Keep fucking that chicken!

[Kazinski]

That chicken is wearing an awfully short skirt.

[Jerry B.]

"...to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future."

No, no, no. Every bit of history must only be examined with the ethics and morals of today, not last week or next week. How else can we hate people in the past for what they thought was right that we now know is wrong and evil?

[Moderation4ever]

Yesterday, Amanda Zurawski, from Texas, told a Senate Committee about her experience of having a medical crisis during a pregnancy and how here treatment was delayed due to the vague Texas antiabortion law. Her Senators, Cruz and Cornyn, chose to skip her testimony. They should both be nominated for the Profiles in Cowardice awards. They and this country need to hear this before we have a case like the one that took Savita Halappanavar life (Ireland, 2012).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you are trying to persuade Prof. Volokh to withdraw his endorsement of Ted "Mr. Libertarian" Cruz, I believe you are wasting your time.

[Ben_]

What do US Senators have to do with a state law?

[Martinned]

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of [the 14th amendment].

[David Nieporent]

Post Dobbs, the 14th amendment has nothing to say about abortion, so no. They'd have to rely on the commerce clause.

[Martinned]

Just because the GOP justices misinterpreted the 14th amendment, doesn't mean that the 14th amendment doesn't protect the right to abortion.

[David Nieporent]

It actually does mean that. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.

[Martinned]

All three branches of government have an independent right and duty to obey the constitution as they see it. That is why it is so outrageous when Congress and the President pass legislation that is plainly unconstitutional.

[Mr. Bumble]

Can't wait until you're nominated to the US SC.
I your opinion what doesn't the 14th protect?

[Moderation4ever]

Cruz and Cornyn are Ms. Zurawski representatives in the Senate. If you constituent is speaking before a Senate Committee and you are a member of that committee you should be there to hear the testimony. That should apply across the board, to Senators or Representatives whether you agree or disagree. It is not of matter of rules, it is good manners, something that Mr. Cruz and Mr. Cornyn seem short on.

[Ben_]

Did any other Senators ever miss testimony of anyone from their state?

You must be keeping careful track, since this is so very solemnly important to you. Or is this yet another pretend principle you've adopted for five minutes so you can attack others for failing to live up to pretend standards?

[Moderation4ever]

I don't know but as I stated regardless of whether the Senator/Representative agrees or disagrees, If a constituent is speaking to a committee that the Senator/Representative sits on, they should be there for that testimony. It should be the norm.

[Michael P]

Disney Corp and Donald Trump are an interesting pair. They're both being targeted under a theory of government discretion. Reedy Creek Improvement District is one (particularly expansive and wealthy) special district in Florida, and Trump is one (particularly expansive and wealthy) apparent mishandler of classified materials. Both are targeted fundamentally because of their public speech.

Besides the fact that current government officials leak classified material to the press every week, intending and causing actual disclosures to third parties that Trump never intended or caused and yet those government officials are not loudly investigated and prosecuted, what are the relevant difference between the two? Or are they similar in terms of being targeted for protected First Amendment expression?

[Nige]

'apparent mishandler of classified materials'

No. He may have mishandled classified materials, but the classification satus is irrelevant to the fact that he took documents he shouldn't have, which has nothing to do with public speech.

[David Nieporent]

but the classification satus is irrelevant to the fact that he took documents he shouldn’t have

and refused to return them. And then lied about it.

It's not the original taking of the documents that's at issue, and framing it that way allows for whatabouts.

[Davedave]

Seriously, why are you playing the Trump-traitors' silly games here? It doesn't matter that the man who undeniably attempted a (rather pathetic) coup possibly stole some documents too. Just send him to the chair already. If anyone comes out on the street to protest, great, they've identified themselves as traitors, so they can join him.

The US has laws these people have broken that lead to the death penalty. Why are they getting special treatment?

[Michael P]

Refusing to return the items after being asked is not an element of the crimes he is accused of, it's just the current way that dishonest leftists try to distinguish Trump from all of their heroes.

[Sarcastr0]

It shows he sucks amd doesn’t deserve authority.

It also goes to intent.

[Nige]

Refusing to return them is why he's facing charges, not 'public speech.'

[OtisAH]

Disney is the target of ongoing government retaliation over a single, meek public statement concerning a law. Turnip is being investigated for criminal behaviors. These are neither the same nor similar.

[David Nieporent]

I agree with you, but I think it detracts from your position when you write, "Turnip."

[OtisAH]

What you call my “position” is “what is actually happening in the two matters.” So my refusal to type his name, which requires a basic level of respect he has never earned or extended to anyone who isn’t a tyrant, really shouldn’t affect it much.

[Sarcastr0]

Eh, write for how others will take your points, not for your own self-validation.

[OtisAH]

Again, my “point” is “reality. People assuming a perspective contrary to reality because I refuse to use Big Baby’s given name is an actual problem, not my use of “Turnip.”

[Davedave]

People thinking you're being a big toddler because you use silly nicknames leads them to think your opinion probably won't contain anything worth reading. Frankly, at this point, you can't come up with a much more derogatory thing to call someone than 'Donald Trump'.

[OtisAH]

Again, my “opinion” is “the facts of the matters.” That Disney faces open and ongoing retaliation by the state of Florida and that Turnip is being investigated for possible violations of law is indisputable. There’s no debate. That’s it, that’s what’s happening.

Not to mention that being criticized on this site of all places for “silly nicknames” is fucking hilarious.

I’m not here to convince people to accept realty. That effort is wasted here. And all y’all know it despite banging your heads against that wall every day.

[Davedave]

The chief problem is that 'Turnip' is a dreadfully poor bit of ridicule.

[OtisAH]

Its usefulness to me is in that a quick read tricks the mind to seeing his name and in that everyone knows to whom I refer without me constantly referring to him a a”Big Baby,” which could cause people to think I’m referring to DeSantis (who is “Fingers,” btw).

[OtisAH]

And it’s “disrespect” not “ridicule.” He only thinks like a turnip, he doesn’t look like one.

[Super Scary]

Otis is on that Harry Potter, "Who who must not be named" level of thinking. Very common with lefties.

[OtisAH]

No, I’m on the normal level of “fuck him.”

[Michael P]

OtisAH is making it clear what his initials are for.

In a related story, one of my uncles, a true redneck's redneck, once taught a then-brother-in-law how to speak Southern, in addition to the latter's native French and fluent Standard American English. First, say the common name for solid water. Next, say the name for a narrow interior part that one walks down to reach a room or a door.

[Kazinski]

Well I'm going to straight out say that a legislature can retaliate politically against political foes. As long as the law doesn't discriminate against protected classes or violate due process or equal protection of the law there is no constitutional violation.

And in fact such retaliation is fairly common.

Say for instance oil refiners in California are vocal about how the state government is raising energy costs to consumers and makes campaign contributions to challengers to incumbents.

The legislature then passes a special tax on refineries.

Illegal retaliation that violates the first amendment, or politics as usual.

Same with Republicans making it harder for teachers unions to collect dues from members by not allowing state and local governments to automatically deduct them.

Now in Florida the state legislature revokes special privileges the granted in a bygone era, and there were probably campaign contributions made as a anticipation and consequence of those special privileges. If it wasn't illegal to grant those special privileges, possibly granted for political advantage, then revoking the privileges possibly for political advantage can't be illegal either.

I don't think Disney has a cognizable case.

[Kenneth Almquist]

You ask whether California passing a special tax is illegal retaliation that violates the First Amendment. The answer to that question depends on why California passed the special tax. If it passed it as retaliation for Constitutionally protected speech, then it's illegal retailation that violates the First Amendment. Otherwise it's not.

You claim that “such retaliation is fairly common,” but don't show that that is the case. In particular, California did not pass a special tax on refineries, and the reason that such a tax was even discussed was high gasoline prices allegedly due to excessive refinery profits, so even it if had been implemented it wouldn't be retaliation for speech.

Not all “political advantage” is the same. DeSantis hopes to gain political advantage by being perceived as willing ignore the Constitutional rights of Americans in order to go after his enemies. That's why he is on the record stating that he is retaliating against Disney due to Disney's speech.

[Mr. Bumble]

And in news you can use:

https://summit.news/2023/04/24/explosive-new-study-finds-face-masks-may-increase-stillbirths-testicular-dysfunction-cognitive-decline-in-kids/

[Ben_]

I don’t think we need hype about masks causing harm. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, maybe it’s not statistically significant.

Even Fauci finally admitted this week that masks weren’t effective as a public health tool. Everyone knows masks don’t prevent a population of people from getting Covid. They failed in every country, every state, every city. People mostly got Covid anyway. And everyone knows it.

The only holdout pro-mask people are just clinging to superstition and ritual to feel like they’re somehow in control of a world that’s scary to them.

[Davedave]

"Everyone knows masks don’t prevent a population of people from getting Covid."

And up is down, black is white, night is day.

Why do you idiots bother with this insane nonsense? Everyone, bar a handful of absolutely batshit insane conspiracy theorists, understands that masks help reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses like Covid, flu, the common cold, and so-on, even though they don't prevent the spread entirely. Even children understand this basic point. You cover your mouth and nose when you cough and sneeze, unless you're a terrible human being, even when you aren't ill - let alone when you might well be. It's that simple.

I really don't understand how so many people like you were apparently brought up without basic manners. Presumably you also never learnt about thine and mine, or any of the other simple things decent parents teach children.

[Ben_]

"masks help reduce the spread"

So you get Covid on Friday instead of Tuesday. No public health benefit achieved.

[Davedave]

So they do in fact reduce the rate of transmission, then? But somehow that isn't a public health benefit?

Jesus, you people aren't even as intelligent as _vegan_ cheese.

[Ben_]

"So they do in fact reduce the rate of transmission, then?"

Not significantly, no. No public health benefit. If you happened to avoid Covid with a mask on Tuesday (which is something that has never been demonstrated), then it gets you on Friday. Like putting your hand under a waterfall "reduces the rate" of the waterfall.

[Nige]

So, you are, in fact, less likely to catch it wearing a mask.

[Mr. Bumble]

No.

[Nige]

It's what he said.

[Ben_]

The same way sticking your hand in a river to block some water keeps people downstream from getting wet.

[Davedave]

But, this isn't your hand. It's a dam. Or a levee.

[Ben_]

No. Those are called analogies.

But regardless, we can see in places like Japan and Korea that masking doesn’t work for Covid. They had universal masking with nearly 100% compliance. Everyone got Covid anyway.

[Nige]

Yeah. Perfect metaphor. If you're SMAUG.

[Magister]

So you never use an umbrella in a rainstorm?

[Ben_]

Does an umbrella keep you completely dry? No.

An umbrella in a rainstorm is actually a good analogy for a mask. Say the raindrops are like viruses — if you get a few drops of water on you in this analogy, you get Covid. Now let’s say it rains every day or a few times a week for months. Does your umbrella keep you completely dry? Do you get even a tiny bit wet even one time?

Of course you do. So does everyone else who uses an umbrella. It might keep you complete dry once or twice though. You get wet on Friday instead of Tuesday.

[Magister]

So, you do use an umbrella, but don't expect it to be perfect protection? A small exposure to a virus doesn't mean you'll get the disease it causes. The umbrella analogy you describe is a good argument for masks - protection from unpleasant outcomes (getting soaked, getting a significant exposure to viruses), for those who use either in appropriate situations. I don't use an umbrella or even carry one when the sky is clear; I have one when I'm outdoors and I know it's going to rain, and wear a mask in crowded or poorly ventilated spaces when cases are common.

[Ben_]

"I don’t use an umbrella or even carry one when the sky is clear…"

The mask rules forced everyone to wear masks whether they had Covid or not, whether they had immunity to Covid or not.

In places like Japan and Korea, where everyone wore masks, everyone got Covid anyway.

Even Fauci now admits mask wearing wasn’t effective.

[Nige]

Yes because as people pointed out til they were blue in the face what was required was a combination of measures, not any one single measure, and slowing the spread of the virus was an unqualified benefit in terms of avoiding hospital overcrowding and vaccine development.

[Ben_]

Masks had no effect on slowing anything.

We can, again, look to Korea and Japan. No one could have done masks "better", yet cases skyrocketed even as mask usage was at it's maximum.

[David Nieporent]

Say the raindrops are like viruses — if you get a few drops of water on you in this analogy, you get Covid.

Um, no. That's not how Covid — or any disease — works.

[Ben_]

It’s called an analogy. Magister chose it. Analogies are inexact. Everyone knows that.

Since analogies are confusing to you, we can just look at the experience of Japan and Korea. Universal masking, near perfect compliance, everyone got Covid anyway. Conclusion: masks don’t work as a public health measure against Covid.

[Ben_]

"…you idiots bother with this insane.."

"I really don’t understand how so many people like you were apparently brought up without basic manners"

Pretending to care about "basic manners" immediately after your own bad behavior. Everyone knows this game now.

The worst people in the world are telling us about "basic manners" now.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, conservative
"legal" blog has operated for

EIGHT (8) DAYS

without publishing a vile racial slur;
it has published vile racial slurs in

TEN (10)

different discussions in 2023
and has operated for

THREE (3) YEARS

without imposing (new) hypocritical,
viewpoint-driven, partisan censorship.

Congratulations!?!?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

lol you sure are butthurt

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I don't like vile racial slurs.

I don't like racists.

I don't like the use of plausible deniability with respect to habitual use of racial slurs.

What is your position on the frequent use of vile racial slurs in modern America?

Carry on, clingers. Guys like me will continue to let you know just how far, just how long, and not a step beyond.

[Frank Drackman]

Hear that "Klingers"?? Jerry Sandusky's in charge, BOHICA!!!!!!!!

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

In
NINETEEN (19) YEARS

FIVE (5) MONTHS

TWELVE (12) DAYS

the (Very Wrong Rev) Jerry Sandusky will be Eligible for Parole,
when he'll be 98, and hopefully not a danger to little boys.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Whatever Prof. Volokh is paying you, I hope it is substantial.

[Jerry B.]

The "Paid Troll' accusation, like patriotism, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

[Frank Drackman]

How many days till you're eligible for Parole Jerry??
It's OK if you don't know (yeah, like Jerry Sandusky's getting paroled) a smart Lawyer never asks a question he doesn't already know the answer to.

Frank

[Estragon]

RIP Jerry Springer

[John F. Carr]

A sad loss for the entertainment world. We will never see Trump go on his show to boast about pussy grabbing only to be hit over the head with a chair by a woman whose pussy he grabbed while the mother of his illegitimate child mocks them both.

I watched his show once in the 1990s. A friend of mine knew a guest.

[Dr. Ed 2]

About 20 years ago someone pointed out that Chicago Police officers were considered "peace officers" 24/7 and hence the off-duty CPD officers he was hiring for security were supposed to (and should be) arresting people for assault as it is illegal to go hit someone.

Well, it seems that the officers, after hemming and hawing, had to finally admit that the fights were staged -- and they knew it. That they didn't have to arrest anyone because they weren't real fights....

[Josh R]

Jerry was a family friend. He took me to Game 3 of the 1970 NLCS and Game 1 of the 1976 World Series (Yankees-Reds). He was a huge Yankee fan but had to hide it since he was about to become Cincinnati’s mayor.

[OtisAH]

And then he profited off of misery and ignorance. But sure, nice guy. Otherwise.

Reminds me of several friends who benefited from Dennis Kozlowski. To this day none of them have a bad word to say about him. They all will tell you how nice he was.

[Frank Drackman]

Well he was a DemoKKKrat, thats what they do, profit off of misery and ignorance.

[Estragon]

“• In November 2022, the Defendant stated that if he had his way, he would “kill a [expletive] ton of people” because it would be “culling the weak minded.”
• In February 2023, the Defendant told a user that he was tempted to make a specific type of minivan into an “assassination van.”
• Also in February 2023, the Defendant sought advice from another user about what type of rifle would be easy to operate from the back of an SUV. He describes how he would conduct the shooting in a “crowded urban or suburban environment.”
• In March 2023, the Defendant described SUVs and crossovers as “mobile gun trucks” and “[o]ff-road and good assassination vehicles.”

With comments like these, Airman Teixeria would fit right in with his fellow travelers around here. Any huckleberries want to take a stab at the MTG defense of this guy? At the very least he should probably be detained pre-trial

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Anybody know the screen name Teixeira used at the Volokh Conspiracy?

There are several obvious candidates.

[Frank Drackman]

I think it was "Deez"

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Biden's Energy Secretary wants the entire military to run on electric vehicles by 2030.

The entire EV industry is critically dependent upon China. Her and Biden know this and must only be doing this at the bidding of their paymasters in the CCP.

Biden and the Democrats are existential threats to America.

[Nige]

Biden's Energy Secretary wants the entire US military replaced by clockwork soldiers with huge wind-up keys in their backs and vehicles propelled by the occupants running in bare feet, like in the Flinstones.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The Democrats in the DOJ are suing TN for banning puberty blockers and sex changes in children.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1581636/download

The Democrats are truly evil monsters.

[not guilty]

The DOJ complaint in intervention looks like a straightforward equal protection claim. The legislation at issue proscribes certain treatments and procedures for transgender minors, while the same treatments and procedures are available to non-transgendered minors.

[not guilty]

The original complaint brought by and on behalf of private plaintiffs (transgendered minors, parents of transgendered minors and a physician who provides gender-affirming care) raises a broader range of federal claims. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tnmd.94244/gov.uscourts.tnmd.94244.1.0.pdf

[M L]

Interesting comments from this guy.

"My friends and I confronted the executive editors for
@nytimes, @washingtonpost, @latimes, @Reuters on their censorship of Seymour Hersh, Uhuru, Julian Assange, Tucker Carlson, Russiagate..Then the Dean of Columbia and security pushed me to the ground and tried to silence me."

https://twitter.com/JosBtrigga/status/1650978643567423494?cxt=HHwWjMC92YeVuuktAAAA

[Ben_]

Censorship and trying to hide things from the public are a Democrat core value.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

yawn

[Noscitur a sociis]

So now we support disrupting public speakers?

[Kazinski]

Yeah, exactly.

When you are asking a question in a public forum "My friends and I confronted" isn't exactly the approved way to pose the question. Left or Right.

[M L]

I said his comments were interesting, not that the manner of delivery was appropriate.

I don't think I've weighed in much on the disrupting public speakers issue. This guy was rude. As I recall, though, there have been events that were shut down altogether and the speaker prevented from speaking at all by unruly mobs. That's certainly much worse than waiting patiently for your turn at Q&A, then getting rude and briefly making a scene for clout or attention.

[Sarcastr0]

What is interesting about some asshole making a scene and then tweeting about it for clout?

Other than you giving it to him, and then pulling the '....who I do not support' lame-ass dodge.

[M L]

I said his comments were interesting, not the manner of their delivery.

[Ben_]

Do you, in fact, support disrupting public speakers?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Does the first amendment, in fact, support disrupting public speakers?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why are Fauci and Weingarten whitewashing their involvement in school closures and lockdowns while Trudeau is out there claiming he never forced anyone to get the jab?

What's going on Branch Covidians? Are your High Priests abandoning the Pfaith?

[Ben_]

They all turned out to be wrong, so now they're all making up stories about how they weren't really very involved -- just bystanders, really.

The news media will let them tell their new stories and Democrats will believe them.

[M L]

Tucker video posted on Twitter at 8:01PM has 14 times more views that Fox News Tonight.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Pandering to un-American bigots, half-educated dimwits, and disaffected culture war losers online (rather than in a manner requiring payment for a cable subscription) seems effective.

[shawn_dude]

White power knows its own, apparently.

[Sarcastr0]

This isn’t blood in my mouth, it is victory wine.

[Frank Drackman]

is that what they call a dick now?

[Martinned]

Glenn Beck is also still out there somewhere, speaking into the void. The Revolution eats its own, but that doesn't mean they ever stop talking.

[M L]

HHS whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas testified that the U.S. government is working as the ‘middleman’ in a massive child trafficking operation.

[M L]

AOC reacts:

https://twitter.com/thaonlyjonathan/status/1651334517595013123/photo/1

[Estragon]

Here is her written statement

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/rodas-testimony.pdf

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Is that Project Veritas plant and Daily Caller wingnut Tara Lee Rodas?

[M L]

An 18-year-old boy died when doctors tried to create a vagina for him using part of his colon.

His colon was used because puberty blockers stopped growth of his genitals, which meant there wasn’t enough tissue to do the penile inversion surgery.

https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1650679308921208832

[M L]

A "neovagina" is an open wound that the body, naturally, tries to heal. The patient must shove a blunt object up the open wound several times a day to prevent this healing.

This is called "medicine" by "doctors" and they bill insurance companies millions of dollars for it. You are paying for it.

[M L]

“It’s a lot of money,” VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health’s Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said at one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, video reveals. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”

Taylor noted that a “chest reconstruction” can bring in $40,000 per patient, and someone “just on routine hormone treatment, who I’m only seeing a few times a year, can bring in several thousand dollars … and actually makes money for the hospital.”..

“And the female-to-male bottom surgeries, these are huge money makers,” the doctor continued, adding that such surgeries could bring in “up to $100,000” for the hospital…

At another Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, staffers are warned by Vanderbilt health law expert Ellen Wright Clayton that any “conscientious objection” will be met with “consequences,” and are told they probably shouldn’t be working at VUMC if they don’t want to participate in the trans surgeries, which include minor patients.

“If you are going to assert conscientious objection, you have to realize that that is problematic,” Clayton said. …

“I just want you to take home that saying that you’re not going to do something because of your conscientious — because of your religious beliefs, is not without consequences, and should not be without consequences,” she stressed. “And I just want to put that out there.”

“We are given an enormous — if you don’t want to do this kind of work, don’t work at Vanderbilt,” she stressed.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/huge-money-maker-video-reveals-vanderbilts-shocking-gender-care-threats-against-dissenting-doctors

[Frank Drackman]

Vanderbilt has a "Clinic for Transgender Health" https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health
Head Surgeon is an A-rab, Salam Kassis, M.D. (graduate of "American University*"!!! how can you get more "American" than that?!?!) Can you say Female (and Male) Genital Mutilation??
Vanderbilt fans are the worst in the SEC, I mean somebody has to finish last, they used to chant some BS like "You will work for us" but now they can't even get enough fans to even care.
Yeah, I know they have decent baseball/hoops teams, in the SEC its all Foo-bawl.

Frank

* of Beirut (Yes, that Beirut)

[bernard11]

Vanderbilt fans are the worst in the SEC,

This double Commodore says "fuck you."

It's a great day for baseball. Let's play two.

[Frank Drackman]

C'mon (Man!) Vanderbilt fans are "Smart" you should be able to say it in a foreign language,
I'm just a stupid Auburn Grad, so I'll start,
"Lech mich"

Frank "Is Vanderbilt still in the league?"

[OtisAH]

You’re an Auburn grad who thinks *Vanderbilt* fans are the worst fans in the SEC? Edgy *and* a freak. Double threat!

[Frank Drackman]

Ouch! I'd be butt hurt too if my hoops team got beat in the NIT by UAB, but hey, you've got that "Cool" Commodore Mascot

[Davedave]

You seem to spend an awful lot of time thinking about these details. We have a word for that.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It's little things like this that how we know God is real.

[OtisAH]

The way you behave proves you don’t really believe that.

[Don Nico]

And "they" say that it is easier to dig a hole than build a pole. Who knew.

[M L]

Dr. Frankenstein was at least putting body parts in the correct location.

[Bob from Ohio]

"doctors tried to create a vagina for him using part of his colon"

This is the future libs want.

This is murder. They should get the death penalty in a just world.

[Nige]

No, this is somebody dying from a surgical infection, it actually happens a lot. But yes, libs want a future where people have access to health care.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

People trying to make neovagina's out of someone's asshole doesn't happen a lot.

That was an experimental surgery precisely because it doesn't happen a lot.

[Nige]

No, it doesn't. But it's not experimental, and deaths from surgical infections occur for all sorts of surgeries.

[shawn_dude]

We'll give an 18yo adult a gun and send them to war to kill people. We'll give an 18yo adult the ability to vote. 18yo adults have (nearly) all the rights and responsibilities of all other adults. They get to choose what medical procedures they have as well. They get to accept that risk.

About 100 people die in the US from complications related to cosmetic surgery--mostly due to the anesthetic. (1:50,000) Meanwhile, childbirth for young black women kills far more. (69.9:100,000) If we're worried about young people taking health risks, forcing girls to give birth is going to result in a lot more deaths.

[Life of Brian]

18, 18, 18

The reason they "had to" attempt this procedure was that the boy had been on puberty blockers since the age of 10 and didn't have enough of his original junk left to do the traditional "penile inversion" [shiver] procedure.

Did he have the capacity at 10 to consent to that which painted him into the corner he found himself in at 18?

[Nige]

The same capacity as she had to consent to a tonsilectomy or appendectomy. She wasn't painted into any corner - she could have come off puberty blockers whenever she wanted to.

[M L]

likely the mRNA traveled in the vaccinated mothers milk and was absorbed by the GI tract of the newborn. Wuhan Spike protein from the genetic code overwhelmed the babies resulting in their deaths.

https://twitter.com/P_McCulloughMD/status/1646721405491240962

[David Nieporent]

"Likely." LOL.

Whatever that document that's being quoted there says the opposite of what McCullough is claiming.

[M L]

I accidentally left off, "_It's is now understood that_ likely the mRNA traveled in the vaccinated mothers milk and was absorbed by the GI tract of the newborn." The implication is that there's a more current understanding.

The document just says that the cases are not included in a discussion because exposure was "indirect" through the "trans-mammary route." Apparently that discussion was limited to "direct" exposure.

[David Nieporent]

The document is saying that they found 2 kids who had strokes, but they're not counting them as caused by the vaccine because there's no evidence vaccines had anything to do with them because their only possible exposure to the vaccines were through the milk.

[M L]

No, it just says they are not included in the review because the exposure (not possible exposure) was indirect. Apparently they were only reviewing direct exposures.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Weird. You're not a microbiologist.

[M L]

Milton Friedman

“Inflation is the most destructive disease known to modern societies. There is nothing which will destroy a society so thoroughly and so fully as letting inflation run riot. Inflation doesn't rise because you've got consumers who are spendthrift; they've always been spendthrift. It doesn't arise because you've got businessmen who are greedy; they've always been greedy. Inflation arises because we as citizens have been asking you as politicians to perform an impossible task. We've been asking you to spend somebody else's money on us but not to spend our money on anybody else. Everybody talks against inflation, but what he means is that he wants the prices of the things he sells to go up and the prices of the things he buys to go down. The real tax on the American people is not what you label taxes. It's total spending. If Congress spends $50 billion more than it takes in . . . you and I as taxpayers are paying it indirectly through hidden taxation."

https://twitter.com/PBDsPodcast/status/1618767295840649217?lang=en

[Kazinski]

Well the good news is that CPI is coming down slowly, for all items it’s 5.0% over the last 12 months. But it’s jumpy, here is the month by month change by change from preceding month for the last 7 months: 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.4 0.1

The Fed is going to have to keep interest rates at their current levels or a little higher at least another 6-9 months.

And if Congress can show it’s serious about holding the line on spending we can have inflation down to 3% by the end of the year I think.

But the key is no more new spending bills, or massive loan forgiveness programs.

[M L]

What I'm interested in is the observation that deficit spending, money printing, and inflation are an indirect form of taxation. By analogy, imagine if a central entity called Satoshi Nakamoto had the ability to create unlimited new amounts of BTC at will.

Some fairly intelligent people I know don't understand this. They think that money printing is not taxation and is a bit of a free lunch to some extent.

And that's part of why what you said is necessary - that Congress seriously gets spending and debt under control - is unlikely to happen.

[bernard11]

It's not clear you understand this either.

What Friedman is specifically saying is that spending is taxation, though I think he really means government purchases, in that they reduce goods available for private consumption.

Inflation is less a tax than a (random) redistribution of wealth.

And of course money printing can be a "free lunch" if it stimulates production sufficiently.

[M L]

Yes, he's saying that spending is taxation. It's just that the effects of this taxation may be through inflation.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Let's get real. These people believe whatever the people in the State tell them to believe.

[Nige]

This lament is coming up a lot - it's what you say when your arguments have not only failed to persuade anyone, but have mostly been shown to be utter bullshit.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Sebastian Smith@SebastianAFP
10m
⁦@POTUS⁩ talking to kids of staff on “bring your kid to work day.” Tells them he speaks every day to his six grandchildren and is “crazy” about them."

He has 7 grandchildren. Never spoken to her though.

This is the guy Dems are rave about as being decent.

[Kazinski]

Well, it's somewhat understandable she probably looks down on the rest of the family.

And her mother won't let her be around her father or grandfather unless the visits are rigorously supervised.

Sensible precautions.

[John F. Carr]

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts delivered two interesting decisions this week.

One of them allowed elder abuse charges against managers of the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke who responded to COVID by packing the old veterans even more densely, resulting in numerous illnesses and deaths. Two justices dissented on the grounds that hindsight is 20-20.

The other ruled that eight years of breath alcohol tests using the Alcotest 9510 are inadmissible due to extreme government misconduct. The office responsible for certifying accuracy of these machines intentionally withheld exculpatory evidence in violation of court orders. This allows 27,000 defendants to request new trials. In scale it's as bad as the two drug lab cases. In a way it's worse because nobody in government is going to jail.

[Mr. Bumble]

"In a way it’s worse because nobody in government is going to jail."
Do they ever?

[John F. Carr]

Annie Dookhan got 3-5 years for lying and falsifying evidence, rendering tens of thousands of drug convictions unsupported by admissible evidence. Sonja Farak got 18 months in the other drug lab case.

On the other hand, state police officers who falsified tickets to earn more overtime were prosecuted only for theft, not for falsifying tickets.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Because of a recent defection, Republicans in the North Carolina statehouse now have a veto-proof supermajority in both houses. Here is the current breakdown of registered voters in North Carolina"

Republicans: 2,190,081
Democrats: 2,410,191
Unaffiliated: 2,592,525

I would nominate NC as the most successfully gerrymandered state in the US.

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe a bunch of those unaffiliated voters (the largest group) saw something to like in Republican candidates.

[Martinned]

100% of them? Sure, that could have happened I suppose.

[Absaroka]

ISTM that rather depends on how those 'Unaffiliated' folks voted.

I am one of those unaffiliated folks and routinely vote for candidates from both parties, but I feel no compunction to split my votes according to the statewide D/R ratio. For one example, in the election after the 2020 Summer of Love if my usual google of a candidate surfaced very much 'defund the police/people need space to riot/etc' from them it made me a lot more likely to vote for their opponent, and so that ballot was skewed a lot more R than usual. Centrist voters aren't the property of the party fringes - you need to serve up candidates that appeal to the folks in the middle, or you lose elections.

In your example, if you get all the independent votes you'll win with a 70% landslide. Gerrymandering by the other side won't stop that.

[Sarcastr0]

The thing is it'd be pretty nuts to get 100% of the independent votes.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Democrats routinely get 100% of the dead people votes and there are several counties where they get hundreds of %'s.

[Absaroka]

If my math is right, the dems win if they get more than 46% of the independent vote.

I think the proper reaction to 'my side got less that 46% of the indy vote' not 'the system is broken or rigged', but rather 'what don't the indys like about my party's policies ... maybe we're out of touch'.

When the customers aren't buying, you can change your product or berate the dumb customers. One strategy works better than the others.

[Sarcastr0]

But it’s a supermajority is the thing.

You aren’t wrong that exit polls would be better, but this is pretty hinky looking.

[Absaroka]

Sure. If we looked at the district level, there may well be gerrymandering – it’s not like politicians across the board haven’t been caught with their hands in that cookie jar.

What strikes me as odd is that partisans on both sides lose a close election and go all ‘we wuz robbed!!’ over a few percent of the vote.

But look again at the numbers – which party do a plurality of NC voters prefer? Neither!

Just look at it as an engineering or marketing problem. The math is simple – most of the D’s will vote D, most of the R’s will vote R, but the biggest single bloc of voters is up for grabs. In my halcyon youth the party bosses grokked that and the smoke filled rooms produced Nelson Rockefellers and Hubert Humphreys. In a Humphrey/MJT election, Humphrey wins, and in a Rockefeller/AOC election Rockefeller wins. In modern terms, a Manchin would wipe the floor with Trump or DeSantis.

But when we closed the smoke filled rooms, as appealing as that sounded, we got a system where the true believer D’s get together and nominate their fair haired boy, who is too far left for most of the middle, and the true believer R’s nominate their fair haired boy, who is too far right for most of the middle. Whoever gets closest to the middle wins.

I get that partisans don’t like that – after all, they are right, history is on their side, the other side is a bunch of maniacs, etc. Who wants to run a candidate that appeals even a little bit to those whackos on the other side of 50%, after all. Well, people who want to win elections, that’s who.

[Sarcastr0]

Come on. The idea that the popular vote ends in the middle is just not at all borne out these days.

[Absaroka]

??? Not sure what you are saying. Can you rephrase/elaborate?

[Sarcastr0]

Whoever gets close to the middle wins?

I don’t think that’s where we are these days.

While it is technically true that maybe the supermajority in NC reflects the populace, it is statistically extremely unlikely.

In actual practice, Independents can break one way or another, but not that lopsided.

[Absaroka]

"Whoever gets close to the middle wins?

I don’t think that’s where we are these days."

So the dems get D%, and the pubs get R%. If D and R are both less than 50%, whose votes are deciding the election?

What's the theory ... if you run a Humphrey, all the AOC fans say 'Eff it, let Trump win'? I dunno, the math on that seems a little sketchy to me; there isn't all that much area under the curve out at the tails.

[Sarcastr0]

The issue is the loss of the base. And going negative depressing turnout. And empty populism that looks like boldness.

There are tons of ways going moderate is disincentivized these days at the local district state and national level.

[Absaroka]

"The issue is the loss of the base."

I get that if you run a centrist, some of the fringe might stay home. But you will get more of the center (and less of the center says 'I don't want voting for either of those whackos on my conscience, I'll set this one out').

For the math to work, you have to lose more on the fringe than you get from the center. That strikes my gut as unlikely, but if you have sources fleshing out that argument I'll read them.

Or just look at it as a three party race, D, R, and I parties, with (in the NC example) I being the largest party. Why doesn't I win?

"And empty populism that looks like boldness."

???? Appealing to the largest group of voters if empty populism? No real idea what you are saying here.

"There are tons of ways going moderate is disincentivized these days at the local district state and national level."

If you have sources that flesh that out I'd love to see them.

(aside from the obvious way that primaries tend to pull candidates toward the edges)

[Brett Bellmore]

The problem with appealing to the center is that on a lot of issues, the "center" is just an incoherent compromise between two positions that actually make sense. That's why it's occupied by people who have never thought about the issues enough to have a coherent position!

[OtisAH]

Too bad you didn’t understand that there was no actual proposal to literally “defund the police.” Then again we are likely to see an actual attempt to defund the doj/fbi because they’re double-plus no fair investigating Turnip’s possible crimes.

[Absaroka]

Oh, I dunno. I was there reading what the candidates said about themselves and voting accordingly. You seem to be thinking 'well, if he didn't vote for my side he must be a dimwit'. You get to pick your strategy.

[shawn_dude]

The problem is, some Democrats were literally saying "defund the police" even if what they meant by that was something other than "defund the police." No one means to shoot themselves in the foot. It's not up to the electorate to be mind-readers. Hopefully, the people who mindlessly parroted "defund the police" have learned their lesson and will try to use better slogans next time.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, the problem was that they were literally saying "defund the police" because they literally meant by that precisely defunding the police, which worked out about as badly as you'd expect.

So now they want to pretend that it was just a badly chosen metaphor. But if it was, why the hell did they defund the police when they got the chance?

[Nige]

They meant defund the police literally in that reducing their bloated budgets would be defunding. According to cops this would be a disaster, but cops lie.

[Michael P]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html is an evergreen link.

[Stephen Lathrop]

So it's all fine if one side has to win the middle, to get what the other side gets if it loses the middle?

Or are you just saying screw everyone but the voters in the middle?

Or maybe what you mean is that the side which enjoys the gerrymander, and wins the middle, gets to empower its extremists. But the side gerrymandered against has to win the middle to empower its centrists?

[shawn_dude]

Democrats in NC won 48.5% of the vote (1,771,061) by statewide total in 2018 but only sat 3 out of 13 Federal legislative seats. That's 48.5% including unaffiliated voters. Without gerrymandering, they may have won as many as 6 seats. Republicans won 1,846,041 votes which earned them 10 seats. This is what gerrymandering does.

[Frank Drackman]

"45" got 47% of the Vote and 0% of the Oval Orifice, thats how it works, stupid.

[Brett Bellmore]

Which demonstrates the downside of being an almost exclusively urban party: Winning urban precincts by 90% or more of the vote doesn't really help you.

That's a problem which would actually take real gerrymandering to negate, which is why Democrats keep trying to redefine "gerrymandering" from "Drawing odd looking maps to guarantee political outcomes" to "Drawing maps that don't protect Democrats from having their voters inefficiently distributed."

[Martinned]

No, it demonstrates that single-member districts are profoundly undemocratic.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, well, I actually do support proportional representation, which doesn't make simulating it by drawing maps that try to duplicate the outcome constitutionally mandatory. Which is what most of the 'measures of gerrymandering' pushed by Democrats attempt to do.

I mean, you could literally draw a map that was an Escher tiling of salamanders, and achieve a low efficiency gap. It would actually be easier, because compactness gets in the way! Like hell the efficiency gap is a measure of gerrymandering.

So long as we're going to have single member districts, my proposal is that we have computers generate a large universe of maps that comply with objective criteria such as equal population and compactness, and absolutely NOT race or voting history. Then we let the parties each eliminate the ones they dislike the most, in a process similar to voir dire.

Then pick one of the surviving maps, publicly, using a bingo cage.

No way to gerrymander under a system like that!

[Martinned]

O, I'm with you on that. I've long advocated, on this blog and elsewhere, a constitutional rule that requires district maps that have the lowest total boundaries.

In fact, typically when I see someone allege that a given at-large electoral system is unconstitutional somehow, my head explodes before I even finish reading why.

[Mr. Bumble]

Promise? (kidding)

[Brett Bellmore]

The usual argument that at-large electoral systems are unconstitutional is that it's a voting rights violation to make it hard for racial minorities to elect their own members by voting on the basis of race. Essentially, it's an argument premised on the notion that the Constitution requires gerrymandering to enhance the representation of select minorities who are assumed to be casting their votes on the basis of the race of the candidates.

I think that's part of why the Court ultimately refused to declare gerrymandering a constitutional problem: They couldn't square the circle, justify mandating racial gerrymandering in one case, and forbidding gerrymandering in another. So they just threw up their hands.

[Martinned]

In an at-large district, if you assume every voter votes for a candidate of their own race (which hopefully they wouldn't, but let's go with it), you'd end up with a legislature/school board/whatever that has the same racial mix as the community it is meant to represent. I'm not sure why anyone would want to make it more complicated than that.

Of course gerrymandering is still a problem when it is done for a (provable) illegitimate purpose, such as favouring or disfavouring a particular political party or racial group.

[Dr. Ed 2]

My guess is that the "summer of love" made a lot of Ds quietly vote R out of disgust.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Absaroka, I am also an unaffiliated voter and I vote the same way. But when a minority party has achieved supermajority status in state government, something is clearly amiss. North Carolina is a strange state politically, and statewide elections can swing either way.

Here in NC, I don't understand why everyone doesn't register as unaffiliated. Unaffiliated voters get to choose which ballot to vote in the primary, so there is literally no downside. If every voter were unaffiliated, political gerrymandering would be virtually impossible.

[David Nieporent]

If every voter were unaffiliated, political gerrymandering would be virtually impossible.

? No it wouldn't. We know how precincts voted in the last sets of elections. We don't need to know how people are registered if we know how they vote.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I suppose that is true for a while. After 20 or 30 years, though, they would just be guessing. Or trying to infer the data by indirect methods. At any rate, it would be much more difficult. How's that for goalpost moving?

[Frank Drackman]

Well you're stupid as fuck, look at NY, MA, CA just for starters,
dumbass,
oh, I already insulted your intelligence, my bad

Frank

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This will just make the predictable backlash -- when better North Carolinians get control -- all the sweeter and maybe more severe.

For example, educated and modern North Carolinians could outlaw hunting on public lands -- if gun nuts want to kill doves and squirrels, let them buy or rent land on which they can discharge their weapons.

[Frank Drackman]

"Gun Nuts"? you mean like Senescent "Get a Shotgun!" Joe? you might have something there "Reverend" (a case of Neurosyphillis most likely)
Frank "Gun Nuts? try Deez Nuts!!!!!!!!"

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I admire your optimism. Doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon here in NC.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

There are fewer prospective Republican voters every day in America, thanks to the improvement of our electorate, which becomes less rural, less religious, less bigoted, less backward, and more diverse (less white) every day. In a few years, Republicans will get routed in North Carolina by Democrats who win close elections and remember that the North Carolina way is to use partisan power strenuously and without leniency.

Bigoted clingers hardest hit.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Ah, a voting-rights issue that actually matters, not like foolish complaints about ballot-rigging.

[not guilty]

The white woman who accused Emmett Till has died. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/27/carolyn-bryant-donham-at-center-emmett-till-death-dies-00094247

Perhaps in the hereafter she will finally be punished.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The conversation between her and Clarence Thomas (when he finally goes) will be interesting. One caused a lynching, the other trivialized the word.

[Frank Drackman]

I don't get it, I thought we were to "believe the women!!!!!!"

Oh wait, how "Trans-phobic" of me, you were referring to "Emmett" as the "she"? (stop "Deadnaming"!!!!!!!!!!)
So is it "Emily Till" now? And he wasn't an uppity black teen harassing a white woman, he was just a Lesbian looking for a GF,
Speaking of harassing white women, what punishment does Ted Kennedy get for leaving a young white woman to asphyxiate (not drowned, theres a difference)

Frank

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Perhaps in the hereafter she will finally be punished."

And we wonder why women are hesitant to report assaults.

[not guilty]

Ms. Bryant didn't hesitate to falsely accuse the teenager, and she lived to age 88 without consequences for bearing false witness.

[TwelveInchPianist]

There’s very little evidence that she “bore false witness”. Believe women, remember?

I mean, I have no idea if she was telling the truth or not, but I'm not in the #BelieveWomen cult.

[bevis the lumberjack]

You forget. Not guilty is both racist and misogynistic.

Hell, not guilty, using your way of thinking all Till had to do was be a good house negro and he’d be alive today. Right?

And it’s great that y’all can judge the eternal destination of someone you don’t know. The arrogance of political zealotry…..

[not guilty]

I don't presume to know the fate of Ms. Bryant in the afterlife. Unlike some other commenters, I don't claim to speak for God. Instead, I chose the word "perhaps" advisedly.

But I can hope.

Glib, unsupported accusations of racism and misogyny are intended to shut down discussion -- the sawdust filler for substance that is lacking.

It is a travesty that Emmett Till's killers were acquitted, and it is shameful that the woman who set things in motion was never held accountable.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I agree with you as to accusations of racism and so on, but you did disparage Monica Lewinsky as – and I don’t remember the exact phrasing – as a fat slut.

And you called Thomas a house negro. Quote unquote.

And I agree with you on Till. His killers got off because the jury was made up of racist pieces of shit. But I’m not gonna judge the eternal soul of the killer’s wife, who lived almost 70 years after the event. Who knows how she conducted herself in seven decades. You and I sure don’t.
What are those statements if not misogynistic and racist?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yeah, he's a big fan of the "Uncle Thomas" slur.

[not guilty]

Southern folk wisdom holds that the hit dog hollers. White tokenist disciples of Clarence Thomas seem to be unusually sensitive about criticism of their hero's skin tone. If there were a race war, Justice Thomas would be Quisling Number One.

[not guilty]

Bevis, I don’t recall having commented on Monica Lewinsky’s weight or called her a slut. (I have joked that Bill Clinton likely wishes he had held out for a girlfriend who swallowed.) I don’t think this is the first time you have falsely accused me of disparaging Ms. Lewinsky. As Mark Twain remarked, it’s not what we don’t know that gets us in trouble; it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.

Can you think of anyone who epitomizes the House Negro better than Clarence Thomas? His toadying to white Republicans got him two judicial nominations despite a paper thin resume. To conflate harsh criticism of a particular black person with a generalized, racist antipathy toward blacks, however, is at best disingenuous — do you infer from my distaste for Donald Trump that I am prejudiced against white folks?

[bevis the lumberjack]

If you were using racial epithets toward Trump I would. “House negro” is a racial epithet. You’re calling him a privileged slave. If a white politician referred to, say, Obama as a house negro the reaction the press and democratic politicians would shit blue fire.

I don’t know about anyone who fits that definition better because I don’t think of blacks in the context of what kind of slave they’d be.

You’re characterizing him believing what he believes as toadying to Republicans. A black can’t disagree with the left without being cast out as an apostate? A fucking slave? Blacks have no agency to have their own opinions? How racist is that?

I’m not crazy about Thomas as a justice but I don’t think of him as a character in Mandingo.

And I explicitly remember being offended at what you said about Lewinsky.

[not guilty]

Clarence Thomas is an opportunist to the core, exploiting his blackness at every turn. He made his bones as a strident critic of affirmative action, despite having benefited therefrom at Holy Cross and Yale Law School. George H. W. Bush nominated him to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit even though his only legal experience was as an assistant attorney general in Missouri. Bush didn't give Thomas a second glance when William Brennan retired, but when Thurgood Marshall retired, Bush suddenly needed a black Republican.

When then-Judge Thomas was nominated for SCOTUS, he was a buffoon at his initial Senate confirmation hearings. When it looked like the nomination was in peril, however, he suddenly played the race card with vigor that would make Jesse Jackson blush. Remember "This is a high-tech lynching for uppity black folks"?

The upshot is that your hero regards affirmative action as a really crappy idea for anyone whose first name is not Clarence or whose last name is not Thomas. Yes, "House Negro" is an epithet. Next to its dictionary definition is a picture of Clarence Thomas.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Me: “I’m not crazy about Thomas as a justice”

You: Thomas is your hero.

Are you really that fucking stupid? Is your comprehension of reality that twisted by politics?

I simply don’t like people being overtly racist. Every time someone else has posted something overtly racist they’ve immediately gone on my mute list. For some reason I didn’t apply that rule to you, a mistake I’m about to correct.

Thomas may be a bad guy, but at least he doesn’t use racial metaphors and then defend them.

[Nige]

I mostly like your comments, ng, but I truly wish you'd drop this racist crap.

[Sarcastr0]

No, it’s well established she lied.

Why the fuck are you going to bat for this?

[TwelveInchPianist]

No it's not.

What do you think the evidence is?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Her admission?

The Volokh Conspirators had to work hard to develop a group of fans this disaffected, bigoted, and stupid. But they were willing to put in that work. Why?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sigh. And what’s the evidence that she made an admission?

(Hint: There's very little.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You should do your own research, you racist, worthless piece of right-wing shit. But here's a start, from one of the two best newspapers in America:

More than half a century after the murder, Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University historian who interviewed her, wrote that she had admitted to him that she had perjured herself on the witness stand to make Emmett’s conduct sound more threatening than it actually was — serving, in Dr. Tyson’s words, as “the mouthpiece of a monstrous lie.”

An arrest warrant was issued 70 years ago for her but the southern bigots never acted on it because, well, they were despicable and expendable bigots, just like you.

If my blog attracted the likes of TwelveInchPianist, I would engage in some serious introspection. The Volokh Conspirators seem unburdened by such character.

Cowards. Hypocrites. Disaffected bigots. Carry on . . .

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You should do your own research,"

I did my own research, you ridiculous fucktard. If you had done a little more research, you'd find that this so-called admission is missing from the tape recording of the interview, and that the other person present at the interview says it never happened. In addition, you have to believe that Tyson sat on this information (the historical bombshell of the century) for nine years until Bryant had dementia and was unable to refute the claim.

As I said, there's very little evidence she made an admission.

You suck at research, which I guess is why you know so little.

[Frank Drackman]

You're showing your CTE Coach Sandusky,
if you were really a Lawyer, instead of a disgraced Rapist, you'd know that bullshit you wrote is what even Judge Judy would throw out in 2 seconds as Hearsay.
Maybe Emmit Till "wasn't dooin nuffin" and maybe he was, I wasn't there, and, OK, maybe Jerry Sandusky was there, looking for recruits.

Frank

[TwelveInchPianist]

From your article:

“The federal authorities said Mrs. Bryant denied ever having changed her story, and they questioned Dr. Tyson’s claims, saying a tape recording of an interview that he had conducted with her, which he had provided to investigators, did not contain any sort of recantation. They closed the case in 2021 without bringing charges.”

I guess she could refute the claim.

It’s far from being established that she lied.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

She also testified on behalf of her husband and the other racist murderer. After the jury — whiter than the Volokh Conspiracy — acquitted the killers, the racist murders sold their story to a magazine and boasted about how they killed the victim.

You keep defending her. Maybe Harlan Crow will let you handle some Hitler mementos someday!

[TwelveInchPianist]

Changing the subject, eh?

Abandoning your original claim that it’s been established that Bryant was lying, which even the NYT article you cited doesn’t support.

Arthur, do you think Hitler killed John Lennon?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I still conclude Bryant's conduct was reprehensible and that she most likely lied.

But her memory will have the loving embrace of racist Republican assholes to provide comfort.

Until the last of you worthless clingers is replaced.

By your betters.

Until then . . . carry on, bigots!

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I still conclude Bryant’s conduct was reprehensible and that she most likely lied."

You are free to conclude whatever you want. But there's very little evidence either way.

[TwelveInchPianist]

But it’s amusing to see how fast you guys dump the #BelieveWomen mantra when it suits your politics.

[Nige]

If only there'd been some sort of, y'know, fair trial where the facts could have been ascertained.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yup. In a fair trial Till would hopefully have been acquitted, given the weakness of the evidence.

If the jury were populated with #metoo believers who feel that a single uncorroborated claim from an alleged female assault victim should be sufficient to convict, he might not have done so well.

[Nige]

When has that ever happened in the history of anything, let alone the South in the 1950s? What would they have convicted him of, whistling while black? Oh, wait, they murdered him for it, so why not?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Is was a hypothetical, of course no jurors in 1950's LA is going to be populated with die-hard me-tooers. Please try to keep up.

The point is that her testimony that he grabbed her waist for a sexual purpose without her consent is legally sufficient to convict him of some form of sexual assault. It is woefully inadequate from a factual perspective, but one of the main themes of the me-too movement was that we should give much more weight to such evidence that it deserves.

[Nige]

No, the main theme was that when women speak out they should be listened to, in the context of a long history of sexual assault not being taken seriously and rape victims being treated horribly. Reducing it to a kind of joke about how a woman got a 14 year old killed in the 1950s disrespects every single aspect of both.

[not guilty]

"In a fair trial Till would hopefully have been acquitted, given the weakness of the evidence."

Till would have been acquitted?? He was never tried. Instead, he was lynched.

[TwelveInchPianist]

No shit, Sherlock.

[Nige]

Believe what? That he spoke to her? Whistled at her? And then got murdered for it? What a brave stand.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The allegation was that he whistled at her, grabbed her waist without her consent, and made crude comments.

There is no evidence to corroborate the allegation.

[Nige]

That's because they didn't need any more evidence to murder a 14 year old child.

[Nige]

She didn't report an assault. As best can be ascertained, she said he either whistled at her, touched her hand, or her waist, or flirted with her. That was it. Then he was brutally murdered. He was 14.

[TwelveInchPianist]

She said that he whistled at her, grabbed her waist without her consent, and made crude remarks. That would be an assault. Of course, there's very little evidence to corroborate the claim, but we've been told over the past few years that a victim's word should be sufficient.

[Nige]

Sufficent for what? A proper investigation and maybe a charge. For a boy of 14 to be brutally murdered?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Nobody is defending the murder, and of course the evidence there shows that the defendants were guilty and that the jury acquitted them because they never would have convicted a white person for killing a black person.

[Nige]

Not so much defending it as losing sight of exactly what was so horrifying about the whole incident.

[TwelveInchPianist]

This thread is about the unsupported claim that Bryant was lying. Of course the murder was horrifying, no one is denying that.

[Nige]

Thinking that someone who got a 14 year old boy murdered might also have been a liar when it can't actually be proved either way is hardly an egregious leap.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Her reporting an assault makes her responsible for his murder?

[Nige]

Yes.

[Sarcastr0]

Reporting his assault in Mississippi?!

Yes, TiP.

You didn't used to be this dumb.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Reporting his assault in Mississippi?!"

A woman reporting an assault in Mississippi makes her responsible for subsequent acts by other people? Wow, talk about dumb.

Claiming that a woman should keep her mouth shut about an assault for fear of consequences to the perpetrator is one of the most misogynistic things I've seen on the internet.

[David Nieporent]

You're trolling.

[Nige]

‘A woman reporting an assault in Mississippi makes her responsible for subsequent acts by other people?’

Identifying a black boy for doing something, we’re not sure what, to two men, not the law, so he could be taught a lesson or serve as an example for others.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Identifying a black boy for doing something, we’re not sure what, to two men, not the law, so he could be taught a lesson or serve as an example for others.

She told her husband that she'd been groped, as just about any woman would. If she was lying, that would be terrible, but there's very little evidence either way.

And of course, what her husband did was terrible, but there's no evidence that she's responsible for that.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You’re trolling.

Is that directed at me? How so?

I've shown that Sarcastro's claim that it's been well established that she lied is demonstrably false, and the claim that she's culpable for the murder by accurately telling her husband that she was groped, if indeed that's the scenario, is just idiotic.

[Nige]

‘If she was lying, that would be terrible’

Even if she wasn’t lying, it was pretty terrible.

Oh, she was responsible. Whether that haunted her or delighted her or was a matter of indifference to her, that’s another thing. But she was responsible. It was misogyny and racism combined.

‘she’s culpable for’

I didn’t say culpable.

[David Nieporent]

I’ve shown that Sarcastro’s claim that it’s been well established that she lied is demonstrably false, and the claim that she’s culpable for the murder by accurately telling her husband that she was groped, if indeed that’s the scenario, is just idiotic.

Saying that because someone "accurately" told a literal lynch mob to go lynch someone they're not responsible for the resulting lynching is indeed just idiotic. Or trolling.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Saying that because someone “accurately” told a literal lynch mob to go lynch someone..."

Now you're just lying. If you can't make your case without lying, your case probably isn't very good.

[Sarcastr0]

There's plenty of contemporaries who claim she was lying, and that historian.

Evidence as weak as her own testimony, but which you ignore.

Because you're got come dumbass MeToo trolling to do, or something.

[TwelveInchPianist]

There’s plenty of contemporaries who claim she was lying, and that historian. And there’s lots of reasons to doubt the historian’s claim.

Claims are claims, evidence is evidence. You should learn to tell the difference. No one claims to be an eyewitness to the actual incident.

Evidence as weak as her own testimony, but which you ignore.

Huh? I’ve said that her claim was weak. Please try to keep up.

[TwelveInchPianist]

And they're lots of reasons to doubt the historian's claim.

[Ben_]

The white woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh is still alive.

[Frank Drackman]

Funny how she didn't know the what, when, where, how, or why, only the "who".

[Nige]

Not for lack of death threats.

[Mr. Bumble]

Against Kavanaugh.

[Nige]

Yeah, lotta death threats to ignore til it gets to ones you can pretend to care about.

[hoppy025]

Emmet Till was a classless piece of crap who whistled at a woman.

[not guilty]

Mike Pence reportedly has testified before the grand jury in D.C. in the investigation of Donald Trump's and others' attempt to prevent Congressional certification of the electoral count. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/politics/pence-grand-jury-trump.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20230427&instance_id=91222&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=59209117&segment_id=131535&te=1&user_id=86ac9094018f7140c62a54a4e93c075f

I hope that means that we are getting near to indictments.

[not guilty]

Pence reportedly arrived at the courthouse at about 9:00 a.m. and left around 4:30 p.m. Jack Smith is said to have personally participated in the examination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCDzp67tf0A

[Life of Brian]

The walls are closing in this time for sure, Rocky!

[Martinned]

Can someone explain to me why that needed to last for seven hours? As far as I can tell it's not particularly unusual, but it still seems like a lot of time. Is this just lawyers having gotten in the habit of wasting everybody's time?

[David Nieporent]

Remember that grand juries serve an investigative function. They were entitled to explore what he knew, not just elicit specific information from him the way they would at a trial.

[Martinned]

I was thinking of other questioning by lawyers too, like depositions. My understanding is that those also commonly take hours/days.

[Me asking google...]

Google directs me to Rule 30 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, where we read:

(1) Duration. Unless otherwise stipulated or ordered by the court, a deposition is limited to 1 day of 7 hours. The court must allow additional time consistent with Rule 26(b)(1) and (2) if needed to fairly examine the deponent or if the deponent, another person, or any other circumstance impedes or delays the examination.

That isn't as bad as I thought, but of course it all depends on what the courts typically do when they're asked for additional time.

It looks like this applies to depositions in the context of criminal trials too. (Fed. Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 15.)

[John F. Carr]

The media are concerned that alleged leaker of allegedly classified information Jack Teixeira allegedly had a lot of guns. The Boston Globe reports on court records telling an interesting story. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/27/metro/jack-teixeira-gun-application-letter/

When Teixeira originally applied for a gun permit the police chief denied it. A high school classmade had "overheard him make remarks about weapons, including Molotov cocktails, guns at the school, and racial threats" He later reapplied with a letter explaining that his military service and top secret service left him a changed man and he was responsible now. Cops love military men. He got the permit and a bunch of weapons.

As far as violence is concerned he may well be a changed man. As far as guns are concerned, I see 18 USC 922 in his future. Technically it doesn't apply yet because he has not been indicted. However, I expect he won't be allowed to have AR-type rifles or bazookas in jail awaiting indictment.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A right-wing gun nut and uneducated Republican bigot who betrayed his country?

The more time this un-American loser spends in prison, the better. Twenty or thirty years seems reasonable.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why are the Democrats, led by Pocahontas, trying to ban crypto?

Is it because they're fascists?

[Sarcastr0]

We must never forget when Il Duce banned Bored Apes.

Dark days.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Carolyn Bryant, whose lies caused racist southerners to kill Emmitt Till and to acquit the killers, has died. Our world is a better place without her in it.

Fuck her and anyone who wouldn't spit on her.

[hobie]

Agreed. Were hell to exist, she'd be in it

[Frank Drackman]

Well its made up superstitious nonsense, so it doesn't matter.

[TwelveInchPianist]

As I said above, there’s very little evidence that she lied.

[hobie]

Nor did she speak the truth. The two are mutually exclusive

[TwelveInchPianist]

I know of no evidence to corroborate her claim, and very little to discount it.

[TwelveInchPianist]

To me, that means that we have no idea whether the claim is true or not.

Feminists claim that we should believe women by default, but they have a hard time applying that reasoning to this case.

[Stephen Lathrop]

It's an especially hard case to make about a woman in a time and place where she probably risked at least a beating from her husband if she even tried to tell the truth. She may indeed have been an active participant in the lynching of Till. But folks are in a poor position to judge who do not understand the pervasive terror inflicted on everyone, white and black alike, in the Deep South at that time.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

She testified on behalf of racist killers who were acquitted by a jury of bigoted Southerners. The killers -- relying on double jeopardy -- then sold to a publication a story in which they boasted about the killings.

She was a worthless, weak piece of shit. Her death has improved our world.

As has the culture war, which relegates our vestigial bigots to inconsequential whining at places such as the Volokh Conspiracy.

[Nige]

If you believe her that he whistled at her that hardly makes his murder less brutal or the offence less shockingly trivial. She didn't accuse him of assault. Whether she made it up or or not is almost irrelevant given the enormity of the consequences. Once she spoke up, he was as good as dead because yeah, she'd have been believed alright because it was a black boy she was accusing and all he'd done was little more than look at her and that's all the excuse that was needed.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"If you believe her that he whistled at her that hardly makes his murder less brutal or the offence less shockingly trivial."

The claim was that he sexually assaulted her. The left has spent decades arguing that that is not a trivial offense, but suddenly you guys back away from that position when it suits your politics.

And of course that doesn't make the murder less brutal. You just keep bringing that up to draw attention away from your hypocrisy.

[Nige]

I’m glad you think the lesson to be learned from the murder of Emmet Till is that #metoo doesn’t lend itself to defending and supporting the actions of a white woman in the 1950s that lead to the torture and murder of a 14 year old black boy, therefore it is hypocritical. Thart’s some motivated reasoning right there.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It's possible that there are many lessons to be learned from the murder of Emmett Till.

Many people seem offended and angry that the evidence for the Bryant recantation is thin. It's like you guys are trying to reinforce the idea that leftists don't care about facts, only about the narrative.

Are there any leftists on this thread willing to admit that:

1. Facts matter.
2. There's very little evidence that Bryant changed her story?

[Nige]

I've made no reference to any recantation, and no reference to anything other than the facts. People are angry at her that she caused the death of a 14 year old boy. You're more interested in whether she was justified in setting racist murderers on him, or are at least willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Well, you do you.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I’ve made no reference to any recantation, and no reference to anything other than the facts.

Several people explicitly said that they were angry that she lied, and I pointed out, correctly, that there's very little evidence that she did.

Pointing out this fact is what appears to have set you off on me.

[Nige]

Well, one reason why is that the other party involved was murdered by the men she pointed him out to. So I'm not sure why people who think she was acting in bad faith annoy you.

[David Nieporent]

No claim was made that he sexually assaulted her. What on earth are you talking about?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Bryant testified that Till grabbed her by the wrist and waist while making lewd comments, falls into a layman’s definition of sexual assault. I wasn’t claiming the allegation met the elements of a particular statute.

[Davedave]

She admitted that she perjured herself, FFS. She was a racist POS who effectively murdered Till because he spoke politely (but not subserviently) to her despite being black.

[TwelveInchPianist]

As pointed out above, there's very little evidence that she admitted that she perjured herself.

Many folks on the left have faith that she did, but that's not based on evidence.

[hobie]

Will America, indeed the world, ever be prepared for the ultimate passing of Dolly Parton?

[Frank Drackman]

probably, but when is Jimmuh Cartuh gonna go? He's been dying for the past 20 years, it's like he's some friggin Dorian Gray or something, Bill Clinton, Obama, or Senescent J will probably die before Jimmuh (naturally, naturally)

[ReaderY]

This law review article makes the case I’ve been making. It argues that the bisexual or equal opportunity harasser defense results in discriminatory consequences for pretty much the same rationale I’ve argued above. Penn thought it a serious enough argument to publish it.

The article understandably proposes, as a remedy, dropping the defense and prohibiting sexual harassment generally, whether or not it is only directed at a particular sex.

But it is open to a defense lawyer to argue for a remedy more favorable to a defendant. Rather than abolish the defense as the remedy, abolish the claim entirely because the claim itself is a discriminatory claim.

After all, calling it a “defense” is something of a misnomer. A plaintiff must prove the harassment targeted a particular sex. Rather than being a defense that the defendant must prove, or can be dropped without changing the basic wrong, proof of discrimination is part of the very nature of the wrong itself and inherent in establishing liability.

In the 1960s, Florida had a law prohibiting miscegenous fornication. The US Supreme Court didn’t say we’ll just drop the “miscegenous” part and constructively amend the law to prohibit fornication by everyone. They struck the law down in its entirety,

After all, states defended their miscegenation laws by arguing that that they target only the race the defendant had sex with, not the race of the defendant, and hence are not discriminatory. It dodn’t fly.

A defense lawyer is free to argue that a law that prohibits only non-bisexual harassment should be treated just like a law that prohibits only miscegenous fornication, or for that matter only miscegenous rape. And the remedies should be the same. A defense lawyer can argue that the remedy is to strike down the law, not to remove the portion that limits it. And a defense lawyer ought to raise plausible arguments against liability for their clients. That’s their job and ethical duty.

This is far from the first time an argument that seemed preposterous on its face becomes a serious argument when carefully examined.

https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1204&context=jbl

[Brett Bellmore]

"The article understandably proposes, as a remedy, dropping the defense and prohibiting sexual harassment generally, whether or not it is only directed at a particular sex."

As I wrote above, that option isn't, theoretically, available to the federal government. The federal government doesn't have the general police power states have, they can't ban sexual harassment just because they think it's naughty, they need a constitutional hook. The 'discrimination' provided that hook. Omit it, and the law becomes an unconstitutional usurpation of power.

[David Nieporent]

The constitutional hook is the commerce clause. (I know you don't agree, but your personal views are irrelevant.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, in most cases, the hook is the Federal Funding.

[Bored Lawyer]

Years ago, our firm had a sexual harrasment case. The supervisor had a very filthy, sexually charged mouth. His defense was, I am filthy and obnoxious to everyone, men and women. It did not fly.

[Dr. Ed 2]

See the Lumber 84 case in Massachusetts.
http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/424/424mass285.html

[Mr. Bumble]

There has to be a better way to format the comments thread.
Having to scroll through 700 plus comments (and counting) ranging fro over a day old to just minutes old is too time consuming.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, there are systems that automatically minimize comments replying to a given top level comment, until you click on it. So that you start out only seeing the top level comments.

But, really, this system is actually a lot less glitchy than I've seen at some sites, and there's a lot to be said for "just works".

[Mr. Bumble]

If your comment wasn't at the bottom of the thread, I wouldn't even respond. Barely works is more like it and so far the promised updates (except for edit) have yet to appear. Can't even view my own comments. Maybe they should hand this over to an AI for a fix.

[Mr. Bumble]

Final rant: Why does the thread jump to the beginning after I enter a post?

[Brett Bellmore]

Because it reloads the comments, duh.

There really are no good options for displaying upwards of a thousand comments.

[Life of Brian]

It's supposed to reload and then jump to the comment you just entered (end of the URL should read "#comment-NNNNNNNN"). It's possible you're running an extension/adblocker/whatever that might be interfering with that.

[Martinned]

Apart from searching for my name, I tend to search for "mins ago" to see the recent ones.

[Mr. Bumble]

Help me out here. Search where and how?

[Brett Bellmore]

Ctrl-F brings up the search menu, it's a standard feature of desktop browsers. If you're doing this on a crippled browser on a phone, how to search in a page can be pretty complicated.

[M L]

I didn't follow the Fox/Dominion lawsuit, so I'm not aware of the first thing about it, namely the defamatory statements in question. Can someone post just the quotes of the statements, or better yet a video link? In particular, any of the statements by Tucker Carlson since reports seem to be that he was a chief offender.

[Martinned]

Just look it up on the Fox News website...

[M L]

After your comment I figured I wouldn't get any real responses, so I went and Googled a bit and found this CNN article.

Here are the 20 specific Fox broadcasts and tweets Dominion says were defamatory https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/media/dominion-fox-news-allegations/index.html

Unfortunately, only 1 item out of 20 on the list is related to Tucker Carlson, and it's a quote by Mike Lindell that was said on Carlson's broadcast. So I'm still not sure what Carlson said about Dominion, if anything.

[Voize]

The March 31 opinion from Judge Davis lays out (in only 130 pages) what the statements were, who made them and when, and why the court awarded summary judgment to Dominion that the statements were false, defamatory per se, and published without privilege by FNN, leaving for trial only the questions of actual malice and whether Fox Corporation was also a publisher.

Carlson’s involvement was that he was one of the hosts who encouraged and repeated the statements, plus the internal communications where he admitted he didn’t believe any of it. The remaining actual malice question was whether those admissions by Carlson and others establish that the defendants, Fox News Network and Fox Corporation, knew or recklessly disregarded that the statements were false.

[M L]

Thanks. Only 130 pages!

It sounds like Carlson said nothing about Dominion himself. But prominent Trump figure Mike Lindell said things on the program.

[Bored Lawyer]

It’s a bit late, but no one commented on this.

This week, President Biden was photographed using a “cheat sheet” wherein his staff had shown him names and photos of journalist, and the questions they would ask and answer he should give. This link has a good picture.https://petapixel.com/2023/04/27/photographer-captures-biden-holding-cheat-sheet-during-press-conference/

What an utter embarrassment. Less so for the president, whom we already know is mentally limited. Much more so for the press, most of whom have now shown themselves to be ideological lapdogs. Can one imagine a Republican president getting the same treatment?

(And please spare me the “but Trump” arguments. If the best you can say in defense is “but he’s better than Trump,” then best keep quiet and not embarrass yourself.)

[Mr. Bumble]

Better yet he couldn't remember the last country he visited after only a week or so.

[apedad]

I have the exact opposite reaction and wish presidents, CEOs, whatever, would use tools (like cheat sheets), when speaking publicly.

It's simply impossible to remember every detail on every issue.

I want our presidents to make informed, measured statements not guessing or half-correct, or Trumpish (i.e., childish), rants.

[Mr. Bumble]

A competent leader makes sure to be informed on the subject he is discussing.

[Bored Lawyer]

“I have the exact opposite reaction and wish presidents, CEOs, whatever, would use tools (like cheat sheets), when speaking publicly. It’s simply impossible to remember every detail on every issue.”

You are not addressing what this was. The cheat sheet was not an outline of facts the president might get asked about. It gave specific questions he would be asked, by specific reporters, with their pictures, with specific pre-scripted responses. That makes him look like a trained monkey, and is far beyond the type of fact sheet you are talking about.

[Voize]

The press shouldn't be negotiating for permission to ask questions, but this could just as easily be them giving notice of topics so they'll have a better chance of getting a substantial answer instead of "I'll get back to you on that". In this case the LA Times seems to have denied even that much

[Bored Lawyer]

Focus on what it IS, not what it COULD BE. Look at the picture in the link I posted. It's far more than what you are suggesting.

[Voize]

I saw the picture. The LA Times claims it was a good guess by the White House staff, maybe based on articles by that reporter.

Your "ideological lapdogs" comment tells me you don't buy it, you think they are colluding with the White House to script a press conference. Maybe you're right, it COULD BE that.

But all I can tell for sure that it IS is a President prepared by his staff with anticipated questions, and the names and pictures of the expected questioners so he can pretend to have a better memory than he does.

[Nige]

‘It gave specific questions he would be asked’

On any given day, for any given news conference, in any given news cycle, with any given set of reporters, it’s not exactly a feat of higher mathematics to work out a given number of questions that are likely to be asked.

[apedad]

And it's funny/sad how you'd like to squash commentary and comparisons about Trump.

He is a presidential candidate again, and commentary and comparisons are expected.

[M L]

Well, Trump never had questions and answers scripted and agreed upon in advance with these fake journalists. Instead they were extremely unhinged and hostile to him 100% of the time, because they're sick people. And then this is how they are with Biden. It makes him look like an empty suit, just a figurehead for some cabal, and senile to boot. To be fair, this isn't new, that's exactly what he looked like before he became President, and it's exactly how his Presidency should be expected to look. Meanwhile the media for their part look like they are about on par with something like CCP media mouthpieces. Not much more to say as far as comparisons to Trump on this particular point.

[Bored Lawyer]

You can compare all you want. Biden is still an embarrassment. That Trump is arguably worse is a poor defense of Biden. It's like Charles Manson saying, "Hey, at least I'm not Hitler."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Or like Democratic Supreme Court Justices saying, "Hey, at least we don't pal around with people who collect Hitler artifacts (and try to conceal it)."

[Sarcastr0]

Prepping for press engagements with reference notes is pretty normal to do.

This is shades of Obama using a teleprompter.

Biden isn’t an embarrassment, you are.

[Bored Lawyer]

Precisely the type of dishonest deflection I'd expect from you.

You've earned your muting. Good bye.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You’ve earned a continuing stomping in the culture war. From your betters.

You get to whine about it as much as you like.

But you will comply, clinger. Until you are replaced.

[Theendoftheleft]

Keep openly espousing your faith in replacement theory, AIDS! It’ll only help to expedite the genocide of progressives in every blue city in your country. No laws, no social pressures, no cancel culture, no military, and no police will be able to protect you. Millions of working and middle class Americans are awakening to the idea that your plan is to fuck over their children. This won’t be some leftist faith in the eventual rise of the ‘protelarians seizing the means of production’. The American people are finally beginning to see the direct threat you pose to their childrens’ futures, socio-economically and culturally, and will mass murder you for it.

And if you try to flee to other Western countries, rest assured that people here have long anticipated the flight of Yankee Dems to our lands. They are organised, AIDS; you will not be tolerated and will not be permitted to live.

Moreover, your side of the culture war doesn’t meet replacement rate in terms of births. This is no surprise, as it is a direct effect of your inferior value system. You will be outbred by people who consciously reject your values and despise you for them, both domestically and (more importantly) abroad. You are inferior and unequal, AIDS. Your delusions otherwise fool only yourself.

[Theendoftheleft]

AIDS, what do you reckon happens to someone’s legal practice, career, and reputation as a lawyer and teacher of election law, when their local community and the whole country discovers that they openly support population replacement?

That they (let alone the blue team, or government bureaucrats) don’t believe at all in a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ but instead in comprehensive population replacement?

What would the effects be upon the people you love and care about, AIDS?

[Theendoftheleft]

Do you think anyone in the rest of the world believes your pathetic rationalizations? Your leadership has become a laughing stock to the world, whilst your government and media has exposed itself as fascistic.