Friday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[Stephen Lathrop]

Contempt of Court, what is its opposite?

I suppose there is a general sense of relief in the legal community, that the Trump administration enjoys impunity against court demands for information. If courts do not enforce subpoenas, then at least no occasion for defiance and crisis arises. Lawyers do not suffer to be exposed as powerless stage actors, pretending due process for their clients, but furthering by passivity the national Executive’s designs lawlessly to injure those clients.

How much worse it would be, if contempt citations were served on cabinet officers, but went ignored. What embarrassments for the legal community would then follow, and have to be explained away?

Meanwhile, the Executive’s evident design appears to be working, to appeal to a politically corrupt Supreme Court majority for endless procedural inventions. Those continue to stave off reaching the merits, in case-after-case which could not be decided on the merits, except by defeats for the Court majority’s client.

Who knows? Perhaps a few years’ experiment under Executive sovereignty is a political corrective the nation has long needed. How else could voters achieve opportunity to continue that sort of regime, except by seeing it demonstrated in action, and approving it during a well-managed plebiscite?

Of course, to enable that process to play out reliably will require a bit more Court adjustment to the nation’s political machinery. But today’s Court has proved a supple political instrument, capable to deliver on short notice whatever political exigency may require, or, in the alternative, to delay indefinitely whatever threats to Executive sovereignty may arise. In respect at least to political policy making, this Court has proved conclusively its superiority to a feckless Congress.

[Krayt]

Meanwhile, the Executive’s evident design appears to be working, to appeal to a politically corrupt Supreme Court majority for endless procedural inventions
...
Court has proved a supple political instrument, capable to deliver on short notice whatever political exigency may require, or, in the alternative, to delay indefinitely whatever threats to Executive sovereignty may arise

As opposed to what? Appealing to politically corrupt lower courts capable to deliver on short notice whatever political exigency may require, or, in the alternative, to delay indefinitely whatever threats to the political opposition's sovereignty may arise?

The blowback to four years of running to courts to stop everything has caught up to you. I was glad much was stopped, but you can hardly be shocked...shocked!

[BrotherMovesOn]

I thought your previous sincere concern was a dictator's tanks rolling through Europe.
But thanks for clarifying your true values.

[Krayt]

This isn't a value to me. It's explaining the tawdry actions of "your side".

Which side? Yes.

You spent 4 years punching someone in the face, get punched back, and you are shocked and appalled.

Then accuse me of being the puncher? Nope. I'm just explaining why you put a pack on your eye.

[Kazinski]

"Those continue to stave off reaching the merits, in case-after-case which could not be decided on the merits, except by defeats for the Court majority’s client."

You seem confused Stephen, I'm not aware of any of the Trump 2.0 cases that have reached a final decision in the lower courts, and have been reviewed by the Courts of Appeals.

Then it will be time for the Supreme Court to reach the merits.

To be sure they have sustained or stayed several preliminary injuctions based on the 4 part test, which includes 'likely to succeed on the merits' but as far as I know any final decision on any of the merits of the various cases is still out of reach.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski — It was not a SCOTUS mindful to cherish justice on the merits which bestowed King Trump upon this nation. Nor will this SCOTUS ever again entertain procedural protections for any other President alike with those it decreed to shield Trump from justice.

The list of other procedural abuses protected by this SCOTUS on Trump's behalf is stacking up so fast no one can keep track of them all. You like that apparently.

The advocacy you publish here you would never dream to do under your own name. That puts you in plentiful company, among a crowd of similarly malicious and destructive cowards. Why?

[Kazinski]

Actually I'm not worried about saying what I think, other than my neighbors might think I'm a little bit of a squish and equivocate to much.

Its kind of embarrassing to admit, but my congressman is much more conservative than I am, I'm in AZ-9 and Paul Gosar is my Congressman, but then Arizona Dentists are known for being hard asses.

As for the Supreme Court giving Trump power, I've been pretty clear that Congress should be very aggressive in cutting back the size and scope of the Executive, and those that are concerned Trump has too much power should support that too.

But those who support a larger and more vigorous federal government should come to terms with the fact they are advocating for more power for Trump too.

[Frank Drackman]

Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress in 2012. How long did he go to jail?

[LexAquilia]

But that's (D)ifferent.

[Riva]

Your projection, Steve, can rightfully be described as epic. But the epic abuses of power in the judiciary deserve epic comments I suppose.

However, if this is satire, then it’s brilliant.

[DaveM]

No, these "thought experiments" are routine from him. I detect a bit of the frustrated fiction writer. Or maybe we're just his beta test group.

[Kazinski]

Last week there was an planned ambush of INS agents in Texas by an antifa cell and a police officer was shot in the neck.

Today there were shots fired at INS agents in Camarillo CA when the raided a marijuana growing operation.

The shots were fired by a "protester".

https://nypost.com/2025/07/11/us-news/california-protester-fires-gun-at-federal-agents-in-chaotic-clash-during-pot-farm-raid-wild-video/

[RedheadedPharoh]

Stochaistic terrorism incited by Democrat politicians.

[David Nieporent]

MAGA: "We need the Second Amendment to protect us from the government's jackbooted thugs."
Others: "Okay."
MAGA: "No, not like that."

[not guilty]

"Stochaistic terrorism incited by Democrat [sic] politicians."

Which Democratic politicians in particular, Redhead? Please name names and show your work.

[Commenter_XY]

Kaz, this might help...

insurrection /ĭn″sə-rĕk′shən/
noun
The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.

A rising against civil or political authority, or the established government; open and active opposition to the execution of law in a city or state.

A rising in mass to oppose an enemy.

The solution here is simple, let those who fire weapons at the police and/or ICE own the consequences of their actions. Shoot them. And if they happen to survive, prosecute them.

[Drewski]

I thought to myself, "That's a weird definition." Sure enough, it's from Webster 1828, published by MasonSoft Technology.

"MasonSoft Technology is a Christian Internet Publishing and Service company in the English Midlands. At MasonSoft Technology, we aim to spread the word of God by bringing together the resources to create a greater understanding of the scriptures."

You really had to look long and hard to find a dictionary that said what you wanted, huh?

[Stephen Lathrop]

As always, resort to dictionaries in place of historical context would be branded a categorical error in originalist practice. But the would-be originalists understand they can never get the legal outcomes they seek from historical context, which is always specific to the times, places, people, and events under study. So they rummage dictionaries, which can be cherry-picked without regard to context.

To see how stupid it is to do it that way, take the first sentence in this comment, or any other sentence in it—this sentence even—and pick one dictionary to look up each word. From the definitions you find, choose in each case the one which seems best to apply. Then string them together, to see what a context-free fiasco of dictionary interpretation will deliver every time.

Meaning is about 90% context, with a bare residue of word definitions mixed in. And almost all the errors and misinterpretations get sourced to that residue. To achieve intellectually honest originalism, you have to understand dictionary definitions as error distilled to its essence. A little bit goes a very long way, and too often in the wrong direction.

[Nelson]

“antifa cell”

LOL!

[Frank Drackman]

I "LOL"'d when I saw the mugshots
5 of the 10 are Trannies, seems to be a trend.

[LexAquilia]

Trannies are a violent people.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's a thin line between suicidal and homicidal; Once you've decided that your own life is worthless, deciding that others' lives are worthless, too, is easy, and deterring you is largely hopeless.

And, yes, it is a trend.

[Malika the Maiz]

Do you even read these sources you post? This is pretty far from being conclusive regarding your claims.

[Swede425]

Sure, these mentally deranged leftists are hateful murderous scumbags completely encouraged by Democrats, but Brett, you're missing the point: deporting illegals is mean.

[Bwaaah]

"There's a thin line between suicidal and homicidal; Once you've decided that your own life is worthless, deciding that others' lives are worthless, too, is easy"

Nope. There's typically little likeness between suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation, and no inclination or transition from suicide to homicide.

The emotions that typically draw one to kill oneself, such as depression or hopelessness, bring little of the motivation that it takes to kill another, and incorporate none of the [lack of] ethics. At an emotional level, killing is a violent, highly motivated act against the world or a person. But suicide is typically driven by an overwhelming feeling of resignation and a desire to give up, almost opposite to homicidal motivations. Many people who kill themselves do so not just to end their own misery, but to spare everybody else from having to endure that misery.

Your comment is convenient, but very false. Unsurprisingly, the public has little fear of suicidal people, and history tells them rightly so.

[bernard11]

If that incoherent article tell you there's a trend you are letting your opinions get in the way of your reading comprehension.

The "movement" has a web site and a Facebook page. Gee, that's impressive. Never mind that I could start the Bernardist Movement and have a web site and Facebook page very easily and quickly.

If people are shooting at INS agents arrest them, don't create fantasy conspiracies and make accusations against lots of other people.

[Kazinski]

OK call them "Insurectiony Anarch[ists]" if you must, they did:

"Authorities were led to Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada – who ICE said is a green card holder from Mexico and a former DACA recipient – following a jailhouse phone call placed by one of the alleged attackers busted on the Fourth of July. A group of between 10 and 12 individuals are believed to have graffitied vehicles and shot fireworks at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Between 20 and 30 rounds were fired at a police officer and DHS correctional officers outside.

Upon his arrest, ICE said that law enforcement "found literal insurrectionist propaganda, titled ‘Organizing for Attack! Insurrectionary Anarchy.’
https://www.foxnews.com/us/man-busted-anti-government-anti-trump-documents-after-texas-ice-ambush-suspect-phone-call-feds-say

And sorry for the foxnews link, but CNN hasn't covered the Texas INS ambush, at all.

And journalist Andy Ngo, whos been beaten and sent to the hospital many times covering Antifa in Portland says its antifa, so I will defer to him, he knows them when he sees them.

https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1943524330773577850?t=NZ_Zv-2-h8HY_Dwny6PCNg&s=19

In any case all 11 of them are in jail, probably for a few decades.

[Sarcastr0]

And journalist Andy Ngo

Oh lol.

[Kazinski]

What's the funny part? He's a gay Vietnamese journalist, or that Antifa beat him severely enough that they put him into the hospital with a brain bleed?

[Sarcastr0]

He's a propagandist, not a journalist. Specifically about Antifa being a thing. Big fan of the Proud Boys too, so he's a liar and a hypocrite.

Again, you use a shitty source with an open agenda and no credibility because you like what it has to say.

Same as when you report a pleading in a case, or a Congressional press release as fact.

It's critical thinking 101 and you hate it.

[DeAnnP]

Yes, that is very important to take note of. If they can label all and any people who do not support Trump as "antifa", then they will use that to deport citizens born in this country by saying they are terrorists.

[Kazinski]

No, they won't deport them, that's what prisons are for.

They will deport the DACA recipient I cited above, he only has a green card.

[hobie]

So terrorist immigrants picking radishes in red states for hick voters are not a national emergency, but terrorist immigrants picking chronic in blue states are. Seems like a fairly equal application

[CountmontyC]

One product is legal under federal law and the other isn't is a fairly large distinction.

And I love how you just ignore the main point of the post you responded to which was THERE WERE SHOTS FIRED AT FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND A PLANNED AMBUSH OF FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT.

[Michael P]

How many of the radish pickers have fired shots at federal agents on the job? I thought the federal government was supposed to care about violent insurrections.

[hobie]

Since there will be no raids on red state radish-picking immigrant terrorists, we'll never know if they too would take a shot at ICE. BTW, aren't pot farms usually patrolled by armed employees? Since our new National Police Force (ICE) now operates in unmarked cars and wear masks, maybe the employees thought it was a criminal raid

[CountmontyC]

You are truly pathetic.
I repeat under FEDERAL LAW pot farms are illegal.

Furthermore when ICE conducts raids they do so in uniforms identifying themselves as ICE agents and wear their badges. Your excuse for shots being fired is almost as pathetic as you are since it shows you as either an idiot who doesn't know the facts or so deranged you will lie to justify shooting at federal law enforcement agents.

[hobie]

Oh? Was DEA part of the strike force? Was the illegal pot farm shut down? Or did they just come for the terrorist immigrants?

[CountmontyC]

The illegal aliens working at the pot farm are committing a crime under federal law so ICE targetting illegal aliens committing a criminal act makes perfect sense.
As i said you abd your excuses ( especially you) are pathetic.

[hobie]

Oh? I didn't read anything about the proprietors also being arrested.

[Michael P]

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10694/LSB10694.4.pdf

In each fiscal year since FY2015, Congress has included provisions in appropriations acts that prohibit DOJ from using appropriated funds to prevent certain states and territories and the District of Columbia from “implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

This means the feds have very little ability to go after violations of federal marijuana law directly, unless it involves somebody like a federal employee or contractor.

[David Nieporent]

Furthermore when ICE conducts raids they do so in uniforms identifying themselves as ICE agents and wear their badges.

I'd believe that, if we didn't know it was a lie.

[Kazinski]

So if the criminal illegals have guns ICE should just have a hands off policy?

Seems to be other problems there too that need attention:
"10 juveniles were found at this marijuana facility - all illegal aliens, 8 of them unaccompanied. It’s now under investigation for child labor violations. "
https://x.com/CBPCommissioner/status/1943511972441391376?t=KKvMDvNQy9n6jN9ho8FPng&s=19

We should leave the armed criminal illegals growing weed with child labor alone seems par for the course, but its not a winning argument.

[Michael P]

So if the criminal illegals have guns ICE should just have a hands off policy?

Isn't his position that ICE should always have a hands off policy?

[LexAquilia]

There were twelve child slaves working there picking your weed. I guess you think that's okay because they were brown-skinned.

You people are sick.

[hobie]

'Slaves'!!! Didn't you have a job when you were sixteen?

"This past May, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) signed into law a bill that would sharply decrease protections for child workers in her state, while making it tough to impose penalties on employers for related violations. Touted by supporters as a way to address Iowa’s labor shortages — and afford kids “valuable” work experience — starting the first week of July 2023 it opened the door for meatpacking plants to hire apprentices as young as 14 to work on meat processing lines..."
https://ambrook.com/offrange/labor/child-labor-Iowa-Arkansas-meatpacking-agriculture

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach: "Farm Employee Management: Farm Safety and Hiring Youth on the Farm"

"The basic guidelines include the following:

Youths of any age may work at any time in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents.
Youths ages 16 and above may work in any farm job at any time.
Youths aged 14 and 15 may work outside school hours in jobs not declared hazardous by the DOL.
Youths 12 and 13 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs on farms that also employ their parent(s) or with written parental consent...."
https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c1-79.html

Lordy! It's gonna be another barrel full of fish today for hobie!

[Frank Drackman]

I wouldn't refer to your Victims as "Fish", Juries don't like that

[Riva]

Do you always refer to yourself in the third person? Let’s hope you don’t start responding to your own tantrums. I’m always here if you need help (well not really, I’m just placating you)

[hobie]

[jimc5499]

9 unaccompanied children. Throws your "job" theory out the window.

[Martinned]

Thank you for your concern for immigrants and other low-income workers! You're right, they have nothing to lose but their chains!

[LexAquilia]

I appreciate how the Leftists were outraged when us Good Guys freed your black slaves in the 1800s, and you guys are similarly outraged when us Good Guys free your brown slaves in the 2020s.

[hobie]

I wonder where all the ex-slavers and segregationist Dixiecrats went after leaving the Democrat party in the sixties?

[Frank Drackman]

most didn't leave

[Brett Bellmore]

Generally straight to a cemetery, actually.

[LexAquilia]

If you look at the state voting patterns between the 60s and 90s you'll see they generally stayed put. The South didn't turn red until the Clinton years.

Go look for yourself. You've been duped again by the Right Side of History guys who frequently get caught, you know, lying about history.

[Martinned]

You're right, the Federal minimum wage should be doubled and should protect workers regardless of their immigration status! You're such a great champion of the working man!

[LexAquilia]

I am reporting you to Scotland Yard for breaking the law.

[Malika the Maiz]

There’s a group fighting to preserve monuments and memorials to those Bad Guys and it isn’t leftists.

[Kazinski]

If the GOP were smart they would make it known the safest place to hide from ICE would be R+10 Congressional districts in Redstates until the 2030 census.

Thats where most of the farms and meatpacking plants are anyway.

[hobie]

A national emergency for me but not for thee!

[Kazinski]

more Congressional seats for me and not for thee.

[hobie]

Oy! I didn't even think of that aspect. I wonder if that's also behind the red state exemptions. Repubs are they masters of skewing voting populations, I'll give you that

[Kazinski]

It was what was behind Biden opening the borders for 10 million illegals to flood in to urban areas.

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-Brooklyn) : “I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.”

[Sarcastr0]

opening the borders for 10 million illegals to flood in

You take some crazy shit as gospel truth.

[Kazinski]

Here is a Yahoo fact check disputing the claim 50 million came in:

"Immigration experts said the number in the post is wrong. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported about 10 million nationwide encounters with removable noncitizens since 2021. "

And while its true that some of those may have been expelled it doesn't count those not 'encountered', or that came in through the CBPOne app.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-51m-illegals-not-entered-203512760.html

Even the Harris campaign knew what was going on, even if you still don't. This memo came out this week, that was written by a senior Harris advisor laying out what her strategy should have been to close the campaign. Harris ignored it, but you should take the advice to heart:

" - Being okay with being wrong. It turns out it is okay to acknowledge mistakes and failures.
Pretending they don’t exist is the bigger problem. Yes, the Biden administration was too late when it came to action on the border. Say it out loud. These voters will give you credit for it and it will create trust when it comes to future positioning on issues."

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000197-e957-de82-a7d7-ff577f890000

[Sarcastr0]

10 million nationwide encounters

Which is not yout original thesis: "Biden opening the borders for 10 million illegals to flood in."

So then you say: "while its true that some of those may have been expelled it doesn't count those not 'encountered', or that came in through the CBPOne app."

A normal person would therefor say we therefore have no idea.

But not you!

[Kazinski]

Yes, I think 10 million illegals net coming in is a reasonable estimate.

Didn't I already say that?

[tylertusta]

-

[Michael P]

Immigration raids wouldn't happen if these illegal cultivation operations would only use union labor: https://vimeo.com/57702470

[Krayt]

Trump may have budged on Ukraine, we shall see.

During war, when you gain the upper hand, you don't become magnanimous to your enemy. You press your advantage to finish them off.

Why would someone be surprised at Putin's behavior, with Trump running block on US aid to Ukraine?

He's logically, if evilly, pressing his newfound advantage.

Remember "Thanks, Gramps!", twice, Russian state TV thanking Republicans for blocking Ukraine aid? Suddenly war hawk Republicans in full throated support of the cold war for decades, sound like Ford and Lindbergh squeaking America First isolationism, looking fondly on dictatorship rolling through Europe.

[Kazinski]

CNN
—
President Donald Trump told NBC on Thursday he struck a deal with NATO for the US to send weapons to Ukraine through the alliance, and that NATO will pay for those weapons “a hundred percent.”

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/10/politics/us-weapons-ukraine-nato-deal-trump

[Martinned]

It's Trump. Tomorrow he'll have a phone call with Putin and call the whole thing off.

[Frank Drackman]

Thats what happens with a Non-Demented POTUS

[Malika the Maiz]

Sudden, petulant mind changes?

[Joe_dallas]

martin forgets the obama reset after the election, or that hrc had already been bought by putin. All of which the premise that Putin wanted trump to win very illogical.

[Malika the Maiz]

You’re so dense or out of it (that may explain your comments here continuing to slide into a ditch of grammatical, spelling, punctuation fails) you don’t get he’s not referring to the Putin’s Puppet thing here but rather Trump’s petulant changes of mind. It’s a thing you do where you think you have all the answers but you don’t know what are the questions.

[Joe_dallas]

typical ill informed response from someone who has a piss poor grasp of the geopolitical world.

[Martinned]

Trump agrees with whoever he spoke to last, which is a problem for the Project 2025 people around him because they can't necessarily stop him from occasionally talking to foreign leaders.

[David Nieporent]

bookkeeper_joe learned all about this in high school biology.

[Malika the Maiz]

Again, you’re answering the wrong question. It’s kind of your thing. It’s bad enough to do it so much, but to double down after it’s been pointed out to you is the really goofy part.

[bernard11]

non-demented?

“Those machines flew for 37 straight hours, they didn’t stop. They went skedaddle. You know the word skedaddle? It means skedaddle,” Trump explained.

[apedad]

You (and Trump) seem to be implying that NATO is some totally foreign run entity when in reality the US runs NATO.

Defense Expenditures 2024

United States $967.7B

Germany $97.7B
United Kingdom $82.1B
France $64.3B

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country

[CountmontyC]

That they don't pull their share of the load is one of the complaints about NATO. This might be President Trump getting them to actually contribute something to the defense of Europe.

[Martinned]

The US is not spending that trillion to defend Europe, or anything. It's the price of being able to tell the rest of the world what to do. And Trump is now starting to discover that if he's not willing to spend that money, the rest of the world is going to do whatever it feels like.

[CountmontyC]

Well then the USA should simply withdraw from NATO and save several hundred billion per year. The other NATO countries can simply increase their defense spending abd defend their own sorry asses.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'd be cool with that, with the understanding that, if they don't defend their own sorry asses, we won't be bailing them out yet again.

[CountmontyC]

Works for me. I am quite tired of the Eurotrash whining that seem to believe that the USA should simply be Mr. Moneybags and allow Eurotrash to piss all over us.

[apedad]

It's like you have no clue about capitalism and the global economy.

For all of the Make America Great Again bullshit, the US is the leader and driver of the world (for good and bad), and we're certainly NOT going to give that up.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think we should.

Being 'the leader of the world' has been distorting us. The cost is a major driver of our out of control debt, the various demands warping our institutions.

We'd be better off as just another country. The very best just another country in the world, mind you, but NOT the leader of the world.

[Malika the Maiz]

Make America Less Great!

[Joe_dallas]

Malika the Maiz 4 minutes ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
Make America Less Great!:"

Exactly what woke leftists are trying to achieve

[Sarcastr0]

A lesson learned over and over again. From Pearl Harbor to 9-11. Even if we don't care about the world, the world sure as fuck cares about us.
"Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go."

Many believe that America, for all it's missteps has also been a benign force in the world.
Brett's self-orientation means there's an ever increasing group of people that don't count a humans who to him, but that counts as a cost to me.

[Malika the Maiz]

“Exactly what woke leftists are trying to achieve”

Brett and others that want us to stop being the leader of the free world are not leftists.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Make America Less Great!"

No, make America Great, rather than running it down to benefit the world.

"Brett's self-orientation means there's an ever increasing group of people that don't count a humans who to him, but that counts as a cost to me."

You seem to have this weird notion that if I don't want to subsidize somebody, I don't think they're human. Being "human" has all these strange extraneous implications to you; Humoring somebody's delusions, subsidizing their mistakes, refraining from holding them responsible for their own choices.

I think acknowledging somebody as fully human means that you treat them as responsible for themselves, rather than as helpless dependents.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, agree with the point of cost driver, and the distorting of our institutions.

Not so sure about your conclusion. Does that entail withdrawing from the UN, and becoming 'Fortress America'?

[Malika the Maiz]

Great nations, like great people, help their fellows and lead in standing up for what’s right.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think it entails a more transactional approach to the rest of the world. "What's in it for us?", not "Do they need our help?". And a serious push to increase national self-sufficiency, so that we can tell the world to go to hell when they make demands.

We're fortunate in that we actually have a comprehensive enough set of natural resources, and a large enough economy, that self-sufficiency is actually a realistic goal for us, in a way it isn't for almost all other nations.

We probably shouldn't withdraw from the UN, just because we'd lose our veto on the Security Counsel.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't even acknowledge that America's presence in the world has been good both for America and for other people. Those other people only come up as resource sinks.

Yeah, it's not hard to see who counts in your book.

I mean, you're also wrong about America's empire. And you're what NATO does. And the difference between targets and obligations.

[Malika the Maiz]

“What's in it for us?", not "Do they need our help?"

That’s not my conception of great.

[Brett Bellmore]

"You don't even acknowledge that America's presence in the world has been good both for America and for other people."

It's typical of 'liberal' thinking to count benefits and ignore costs.

"That’s not my conception of great."

Fine, we can have a "world leader" fund checkoff on our tax forms, to go along with the Presidential Election fund checkoff. I bet about as many people will volunteer the money.

This is a fundamental issue for me: Government imposes on citizens in all sorts of ways, that we would recognize as serious crimes if done privately. What is the justification for these impositions?

That they're for our own benefit. Really, that's the only viable justification.

If they're not for our own benefit? If the government taxes us and imposes on us for the benefit of somebody else? Morally unjustified.

[David Nieporent]

I think it entails a more transactional approach to the rest of the world. "What's in it for us?", not "Do they need our help?".

That's not a terrible thing, except that it requires people less shortsighted than, well, MAGA. The question "What's in it for us?" needs to be asked about the system, not to any individual situation. (Analogously, it's just as, domestically, the rule of law can only exist if people respect the legal system even when cases don't come out as they'd like. (By "respecting," I'm not talking about not criticizing it.) You can't ask, "What's in it for me?" about obeying a particular judicial order and then expect the rule of law to continue to exist, because that will devolve to everyone only doing what they want.) The liberal international order is good for the U.S., even if you can point to a specific case where we'd be better off if it didn't exist, and the U.S. being the leader of that order is good for the U.S.

[Malika the Maiz]

A benefit of government is that it can stand for and promote our values. That’s why the Declaration used all those moral terms instead of “what’s in it for us?” We’re an aspirational country, it’s what makes us exceptional, you’re into tribalism instead.

[Brett Bellmore]

"A benefit of government is that it can stand for and promote our values. That’s why the Declaration used all those moral terms instead of “what’s in it for us?” We’re an aspirational country, it’s what makes us exceptional, you’re into tribalism instead."

Yeah, but what exactly did we aspire to? What values did we want promoted?

Mostly we aspired to being left the hell alone, actually. Not wrung dry to benefit the world. We wanted to promote the values of liberty, and being left the hell alone is mostly what liberty is about.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

So the government was to secure our liberty and our safety, and leave us free to pursue our own happiness, not gift us with happiness.

[Sarcastr0]

Mostly we aspired to being left the hell alone, actually

You don't even aspire to that. Your posts on immigration, and trans stuff, and schools.

You're a right-wing busybody who occasionally uses libertarian slogans that manifestly do not apply to him, much less this 'we' you think you speak for.

[CountmontyC]

NATO is supposed to be an alliance, a partnership but one said has failed to live up to it's obligations for decades. If the one side refuses to live up to it's obligations while also whining about the only side actually doing it's job it might mean it's time to break up the partnership. The USA has literally spent trillions to defend Europe and that is a large part of why the USA is $38 trillion in debt. It is high time that the USA puts its own needs above those who won't fulfill their obligations in the partnership while constantly ankle biting about the everything that the USA does in international affairs. Europe can either get in line or the USA can leave Europe to fend for itself.

[Sarcastr0]

1. They aren't obligations, they are targets
2. There's plenty of European forces who have fought and died alongside Americans, don't shit on them.
3. NATO has allowed America to power project without boots on the ground well above our weight.

4. What you write is indistinguishable from if you were paid to support Putin. You're rooting for a more violent, authoritarian, Russia-and-China dominant world.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, brush up on your Russian and Chinese language skills; they seem to suit you better than English.

[apedad]

You know what would be more costly than any current debt we have?

World War III

[CountmontyC]

Apedad then our NATO "allies" should start sharing some of the burden instead of expecting the USA to bear the brunt of it because if there is a WW3 it will most likely start in Europe( 2-0 in that regard so far) and they should stop reflexively attacking the USA when it does take actions to prevent future problems ( the recent bombing of Iranian nuclear sites being a recent example). They can either be true allies or the USA can leave them to deal with their own problems themselves. I am tired of the USA being treated like a pimp treats his prostitutes.

[CountmontyC]

Sarcastro compared to what the USA has spent in wealth and the lives of it's own citizens most of Europe has done jack sh1t. As I posted earlier the USA has expended TRILLIONS of dollars defending Europe abd has lost thousands of lives defending Europe over the years. Don't come whing about a paper cut when the USA is basically having limbs cut off.

[Sarcastr0]

our NATO "allies" should start sharing some of the burden

Fuck you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Forces_casualties_in_Afghanistan_since_2001

[Malika the Maiz]

Did Europe attack us for our Iran attack? Honest question.

[CountmontyC]

Sarcastr0 that total is less than the number of US military personel who died in training accidents over the same time period. By a lot.

[David Nieporent]

and they should stop reflexively attacking the USA when it does take actions to prevent future problems ( the recent bombing of Iranian nuclear sites being a recent example).

A recent example of what? MAGA ressentiment not being based on actual reality? NATO countries did not "reflexively attack" the U.S. over the bombing of Iran; they defended it.

[Sarcastr0]

You said shared burden. That's a shared burden.
No new goalposts.

Hateful nationalism is the worst.

[bernard11]

While I understand that sentiment, there is also something to be said for not having a lot of heavily armed countries in Europe.

It hasn't always worked out well.

[BrotherMovesOn]

You reap what you sow Krayt.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Events in Texas remake the case that the nation has no choice but to organize legally a retreat from flood zone land development. Outcomes driven by nature will impose the retreat, and complete it. The only questions left for policy are whether to pay more or less in the aggregate, and how much subsidized protection ought to go to current flood zone residents.

[Kazinski]

All over the United States and the world people have to decide how much risk they are willing to assume with repeating and predictably random hazards like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and even social hazards like riots.

Certainly more warning systems should be in order. Hawaii has a network of tsunami warning sirens. Washington has an extensive lahar flow warning network for when Mt Ranier becomes active again and melts its glacial cover and sends a mud, ash, and ice stream down the Pullallup Valley toward Tacoma which hasn't happened for more than 300 years, but will sometime in the future.

For instance one of the factors, although hardly the deciding one, that made me decide to move out of the Seattle area is the knowledge that a big subduction earthquake is coming.

[BrotherMovesOn]

I think you may be overthinking things.

[Kazinski]

I don't think so, look at Florida with its hurricanes.

Or for an even more extreme example Java, about the size of Arkansas with over 40 active volcanoes, and the attendent earthquakes and a population of 152 million people.

That's an enormous amount of risk people are assuming, and most people die peacefully in bed.

[Stephen Lathrop]

To die peacefully in bed may be something people hope to achieve. To die impoverished in bed is usually not.

Insurance to spread risk stays rational so long as it does not increase the aggregate cost of whatever is insured against. When insurance policies—however construed, including government disaster relief—repeatedly create means to enable big increases in aggregate costs, then those policies ought to get stringent review.

Currently, Florida is a case in point. The re-insurance industry, with states' connivance, is using Florida's disaster record to extort from other areas around the nation unwarranted higher costs for insurance. Often in areas with risks far lower than in Florida.

Doing that has encouraged more-and-more subsidized risk-taking in Florida, resulting in economic benefits there, which need not be shared among those forced by government policy to provide the subsidies. Political leaders—both in Florida and elsewhere—benefit from that system of subsidization, and thus resist policies to constrain it for the public good.

Wildfire risk in Calfornia seems to be another such case. No doubt other kinds of development-enabling risk-remediation are commonplace around the nation. The more different kinds of risk get generalized, the more common cause among officials corrupted by self-interest leads them to cooperate and support each other politically, and to support stupid development subsidy specifically.

That is how incidents characterized by deadly and high-cost stupidity get valorized by politicians in their aftermaths. In that telling, costly policy blunders get recast as tales of heroic defenses of community solidarity, with tinges of determination to do it again bigger and better next time. Critics get rebuked as ghoulish opportunists.

If you doubt that is what just happened in Texas, look at the heights of the bridges evident in the news coverage. Those tell all you need to know about the carefully calibrated accuracy of engineering expectations for flood depths when those bridges were planned and built. That is not surprising. Geologic boundaries marking the edges of flood plains are easy elevations to survey. Texas bridge designs reflected them, which is why they were not swept away in a flood which was not a freak occurrence, but an expected one.

[Martinned]

Sure, "random"...

[Kazinski]

When they happen is random, where they happen not so much.

[Martinned]

And the consequences of things that happen?

[Brett Bellmore]

Short of something like a volcano erupting, you can generally deal with natural hazards by appropriate construction. Like the way you see houses along the ocean up on stilts so the storm surge passes underneath. So the question becomes, why do people build homes that aren't suitable for the location?

Mostly it's subsidized flood insurance, insurance in general, that hides the price signals that would drive appropriate construction. Government imposes regulation on insurance companies that prevent them from rationally pricing policies in risky areas, or provides unreasonably cheap alternate insurance for areas insurers refuse to sell policies.

So, rather than forcing people to not respond to the bad incentives the government itself creates, maybe the government could just stop creating bad incentives, and then let people make their own choices, and bear the cost of those choices themselves.

That's the ugly truth about freedom, you can't have it if you don't bear the cost of your choices yourself. Nobody is going to let you be free if THEY have to pay the cost of your mistakes.

So you can be free, or subsidized. Not both, not for long.

[Martinned]

O, look, yet another convenient justification for letting people sit in their own shit, and refusing to help! Earlier this week it was people starving abroad, now it's victims of natural disasters back home. More tax cuts for everyone!

[Mr. Bumble]

Says the native of a country in which 26% of the land is below sea level.
"Approximately 26% of the Netherlands is below sea level. however, 59% of the Netherlands has the possibility of ending up beneath the water when a big storm hits or when the water levels rise. Therefore, it is very important for people in the Netherlands to keep on looking for alternative ways to protect our land."
https://aboutnl.com/how-does-the-nederlands-live-below-sea-level/

[Malika the Maiz]

Uh, this supports Martinned’s view, ya goof.

[Mr. Bumble]

I don't think so, but if say so....

[Malika the Maiz]

Your reply has five too many words.

[Mr. Bumble]

Cute but wrong as usual.

[Malika the Maiz]

No, correct, but yes cute.

[Martinned]

...this is why the Dutch government spends (by US standards) eye-watering amounts of money on flood defences, floods preparedness, and everything else they can think of to reduce various risks and limit the consequences if bad things do happen.

This, in turn, has allowed Dutch civil engineering firms to export this technology all over the world, including to our American friends in their time of need.

https://english.defensie.nl/topics/historical-missions/mission-overview/2005/emergency-aid-after-hurricane-katrina-united-states/dutch-contribution

https://nltimes.nl/2017/08/30/new-orleans-turns-netherlands-help-dealing-floods

You know, like allies do.

[Michael P]

The nature of flood plains is that if you build and live in them, you will experience floods with some regularity. If observing that is "letting people sit in their own shit, and refusing to help", I think the most welfare-improving move for the US will be to act as a global hegemon and make decisions for everyone else, because it sure looks like all of you are making bad decisions and thereby sitting in your own shit. You agree, right?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yup, if people decide to sit in their own shit, of their own free will, I'm not going to feel obligated to give them a free hosing down at my expense.

Like I said, you can either be free and on the hook for your own mistakes, or you can be a cosseted slave. I prefer the former.

[Malika the Maiz]

How much government money has been spent in flood rescue in Texas in the past couple weeks?

[LexAquilia]

Probably less than what's wasted in 4 hours in DC on that $2.5B new Fed building?

Or maybe two or three FBI conference room tables worth?

[Malika the Maiz]

Deflection.

My point is people can talk about freedom and letting people handle the consequences of their free choices but in this context we do end up paying collectively for those choices.

[Brett Bellmore]

I can see holding against somebody the costs of things they advocate doing, but holding against them the costs of things they advocate we not do seems to miss the point.

[Malika the Maiz]

Brett, we can let people build in these areas and or not build up to certain standards, but don’t fool yourself that we don’t end up paying collectively for that, every time there’s a disaster we spend lots on rescue, recovery, etc.

[wvattorney13]

I miss the days of ramshackle beach houses cheaply built right on the ocean. They were meant to be used up, get sand in them, gut fish on the porch, etc.

Yes, they would wash away in a storm every 10-15 years and be rebuilt just as cheaply.

The government doesn't allow that anymore. Now they have to be built like bomb shelters and since they are so expensive, the builders make them luxurious and no longer affordable to most families.

I guess my point is that when you lived in those areas you expected your stuff to be destroyed and weren't looking to FEMA or anyone else for a hand out.

[CountmontyC]

You would think that someone who comes from a nation that 26% of it's landmass sits below sea level would know about construction that mitigates the potential for natural disasters to inflict harm. Obviously the once great people who did that have declined in quality over the centuries.

[Malika the Maiz]

You know, I think he’s talking about government being involved in ensuring there is construction that mitigates the potential for natural disasters to inflict harm.

[Poxigah146]

That's also true for hurricanes. Contrary to popular belief, houses that are built correctly, with the right roofs and impact windows and doors, survive even category 5 hurricanes mostly just fine.

Everything that has gotten swept away by winds has been a poorly constructed house from the 60s and 70s. Sure, you can get a storm surge, but the stilts you noted can defend against that.

[Martinned]

The problem with a hurricane-proof house is that it might be able to handle the hurricane just fine, but not the poorly-built house next door that was picked up by the hurricane.

Which is why a sensible country would have strict building standards in hurricane-prone areas.

[Poxigah146]

I've never heard of a house being wholesale picked up and slammed into a house. It's usually debris.

In any case, they do have standards, but they only apply to new construction.

[Brett Bellmore]

I've seen it happen with tornadoes. With hurricanes it tends to be just debris.

[Brett Bellmore]

Every time a category 5 comes through Florida, they take note of which buildings get blown down, and which code inspector passed them. Keeps things honest.

MY point is that you don't have to abandon whole areas of the country, you just need to build appropriately if you build there.

You can do that by properly enforced building codes, or you can do that by honestly priced insurance and telling people who don't insure that you're not going to pick up the cost if their home washes away. Some people will rationally decide that a cheap house they have to replace occasionally makes more sense than a fortress they can't afford.

What you don't have to do is what Lathrop advocated above: Just forbid people to live in wide swaths of the country.

[bernard11]

Mostly it's subsidized flood insurance, insurance in general, that hides the price signals that would drive appropriate construction. Government imposes regulation on insurance companies that prevent them from rationally pricing policies in risky areas, or provides unreasonably cheap alternate insurance for areas insurers refuse to sell policies.

I agree about subsidized insurance, but I'm not aware of government price limits on private insurance. If the limits make the policies unprofitable, the insurer can always withdraw from the market.

[Kazinski]

"Since 1900, global deaths from natural disasters have significantly declined, despite an increase in reported disasters. Research by Munich Re shows a dramatic decrease, with 8,200 deaths in 2020 compared to 550,000 in 1920. This decline is attributed to improved warnings, preparation, infrastructure, and response, rather than a decrease in the number of events themselves."

[Sarcastr0]

Good thing Trump is getting rid of everyone involved in improved warnings, preparation, infrastructure, and response!

[Kazinski]

Yeah, just like in Texas where the people actually flooded said 'yeah, we heard the warnings for two days, but we get so many we didn't pay attention'.

Speaking of which, earlier in the week when the ICE Ambush in Texas came out you said lets wait until we know more until we start speculating.

On the Texas floods you jumped to blame Trump before they even started to recover the bodies.

[Sarcastr0]

Someone with knowledge of that fact about Texas and expertise in how to deal with a zone flooded with notifications could have helped

The story is not wearing well that nothing could have been done this was inevitable pay no attention to the vast number of cuts around the groups created to mitigate exactly this risks.

But *even if you think that* you seem to acknowledge that improved warnings, preparation, infrastructure, and response are good things. So maybe you should be against Trump cutting them?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, Sarcastr0, it's not that nothing could have been done. It's that the additional things that could have been done were the responsibility of the camp or the local government, and the federal government did everything it was supposed to have done. None of the federal cuts had the least relevance to this case.

You need to get over the idea that everything has to be done at the most centralized level of government available. States and local governments, and individuals, exist, too, and have their own responsibilities, too.

[Sarcastr0]

This is a whole different story than anyone else is telling, Brett.

Everyone is asking after FEMA and NWS. You're going for 'state and local' like you forgot how that played with Katrina?

That is not how our disaster preparedness system is set up. Nor our infrastructure resilience (not since Johnson).

I don't know what country you're living in, but it's not America.

Even Kaz is saying FEMA was responsible, just that they did nothing wrong.

[Kazinski]

State and local governments are helpless?

No I don't see local flood warning systems as a federal issue.

Weather forecasts sure, but that wasn't the problem.

[Kazinski]

No, FEMA was absolutely blameless, because FEMA are not first responders, they don't have assets on the ground rescue people, provide warnings.

They are bureaucrats who write checks after the disaster.

You don't even under stand FEMA's function, I have at least a little background dealing with FEMA when I was working for the city of Seattle.

[Sarcastr0]

Helpless-----------------------Responsible.

Huge excluded middle, Kaz. As I noted above, you were all about FEMA and NWS.

Now you've pivoted, eh? Found you a different argument you like more?

That's common with motivated reasoning types.

[Kazinski]

Now we have to add "Sarcastro Hallucinations" to go along with AI Hallucinations.

I would never blame FEMA.for a disaster because I know their function is disaster recovery not disaster warnings, or search and rescue, in fact FEMA's response should just be gearing up now, as search and rescue is winding down, except of course temporary housing for those no longer in the disaster zone.

And my only criticism of NWS is they send out too many warnings, which really isn't their fault.

Is your memory slipping, or was it a conscious decision to make that up?

[Frank Drackman]

Good luck getting people to leave Florida

[minus the clever name]

There are scores of flood zone scores, every piece of land has a score. This will only result in more LEGAL definitions. Collusion of insurance, feds, and LAWYERS are part of the problem, return the problem to the STATES.

High-Risk Areas (SFHAs):
Zone A: Areas with a 1% annual chance of flooding (100-year flood). This zone includes areas with varying degrees of flood risk, like Zone AE, Zone AH, Zone AO, and Zone A1-A30.
Zone V: Coastal areas with a high risk of flooding and storm surge, often with velocity hazard. This zone also includes sub-zones like VE and V1-V30.
Zone AE: Similar to Zone A, but with more detailed flood elevation data.
Zone AH: Areas with shallow flooding, typically 1 to 3 feet deep.
Zone AO: Areas with shallow flooding, often with sheet flow, with average depths between 1 and 3 feet.
Zone A1-A30: Areas with a 1% annual chance of flooding, with specific elevation data.
Zone A99: Areas with a 1% chance of flooding, but are protected by a levee or dam that is under construction.
Zone AR: Areas that were previously flooded and are now protected by a levee or dam. These areas may be converted to other zones like AR/AE, AR/AO, etc.
Moderate-to-Low Risk Areas:
Zones B, C, and X: These zones represent areas with a lower risk of flooding than SFHAs.
Zone X (shaded): Areas inundated by the 0.2% annual chance flood (500-year flood), areas with average flood depths less than 1 foot, or areas protected by levees from the 1% annual chance flood.
Zone X (unshaded): Areas determined to be outside the 0.2% annual chance floodplain.
Undetermined Risk Areas:
Zone D: Areas where flood hazards are undetermined.

[Kazinski]

The problem with this is mortgages are highly regulated, both for consumer protection and securitization.

This means the risk needs to be carefully assessed, so the mortgage securities can be rated and sold.

[Martinned]

You can say what you will about the Trump Administration, but they've definitely picked an Alpha Male to be ambassador to Malaysia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/nick-adams-ambassador-malaysia-trump.html

[JoeFromtheBronx]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/trump-wants-alpha-twitter-troll-who-says-straight-white-males-are-persecuted-to-be-ambassador-to-malaysia

[LexAquilia]

Good to see a Truth Speaker getting visibility like that.

[bernard11]

Another clown for Trump.

[Frank Drackman]

Let me know when he gets caught stealing Women's underwear (for you with Sleepy Joe's Disease, that would be
"Sam Brinton, a Biden administration nuclear official, made headlines this week after THEY were arrested for allegedly stealing a woman’s suitcase in Minneapolis airport — and then using it for a month before claiming it was taken by accident."
Brinton obtained their undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering with a nuclear engineering focus from Kansas State University before going on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to receive graduate degrees in nuclear science and engineering.

Before taking up the government job, Brinton spent several years working for liberal and environmentalist think tanks — including the Breakthrough Institute, Clean Air Task Force and Third Way.

They were named deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy back in June.
Brinton celebrated the new gig by posting a photo on social media that showed them wearing a red jumpsuit, bright lipstick and Stars and Stripes-clad stilettos.
In their role, Brinton manages “ongoing research and development related to long-term disposition of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste,” according to their official government bio page.

[Malika the Maiz]

Always interesting to see someone who has conceded they make up an entire persona and perform it here throw around the weirdo charge. Every accusation….

[Bwaaah]

You were replying to Frank Draclman.

[bernard11]

What does that have to do with Adams? Nothing.

And when will you stop using that story as a sort of all-purpose defense of anything Trump does?

[Kazinski]

Probably not a bad idea, when you are picking an ambassador to a country where gays can be imprisoned or caned, you can't be too careful.

[Malika the Maiz]

They also punish pre-marital sex and alcohol consumption.

[Frank Drackman]

so do most responsible parents

[Malika the Maiz]

The writer of the Frank Fakeman persona performed here triggered by thoughts of his traumatic childhood again.

[David Nieporent]

In another forum where I converse with people, we had a debate about a year ago as to whether his shtick was real or a parody. I tentatively came down on the latter side, because every so often he would seemingly break character and admit how ridiculous he and his followers were.

Some took this nomination as evidence he was real, but I'm still not 100% convinced; I would hardly put it past Trump to be fooled into thinking a parody was real.

[Martinned]

I love the Schrödinger's Cat quality of some of these Trump/DOGE/Project 2025 cuts. They save vast amounts of money with no consequence at all: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dhs-cancels-extreme-weather-comms-grant-while-bodies-still-being-recovered-in-texas

[LexAquilia]

Omg! How dare anyone touch anything climate related while bodies are still being recovered from a flash flood!!!! That's sacrilegious!

Would you do me a favor? I wouldn't mind some peace from foreign meddlers in our democracy. Could you please tweet "I don't think we can handle so many immigrants", or even touch a third rail with "White Lives Matter"? That way we'll have 20 years of peace on this board when they arrest you for tweeting.

[Martinned]

If you look at the top-right corner of any one of my comments, you will see a button that says "Mute User". Feel free to use it if you don't want to be disturbed by people explaining to you that you're supporting a would-be dictator who is trying to dismantle US democracy.

[LexAquilia]

I think it's better to shame and chastise you for interfering in another country's democracy.

Your subversion shouldn't be tolerated. Go make your posts on Twitter so your King will have you arrested, or force you to attend your State Church.

You shit this board up every open thread, like some dumb Euro seagull squawking and dropping your democracy harming, faggy, European serf turds out of your gaping danish bunghole. Proper, freedom loving Americans don't need to hear the squawks from some cowardly limey who offers up his children to Muzzie grooming gangs.

[Commenter_XY]

Eurotrash is the Blue Sky type.

[John 4]

Imagine being a cultist yokel and thinking you could ever shame anyone. Pure delusion.

[Malika the Maiz]

“interfering in another country's democracy.”

Like using tariff policy to do that?

[Frank Drackman]

Mute you? That would be like watching the 3 Stooges without the Eye Pokes

[minus the clever name]

You posit a connection with climate change but there isnone and certainly none causal. However...your saying that takes any irresponsible humans off the hook and I hope you didn't intend that .

[Joe_dallas]

kinda worthless article when it doesnt provide information as to why the grant was cancelled.

[Riva]

No consequences? At the very least leftist NGOs will lose funding. That alone will be beneficial. Less bureaucracy even more so.

[Sarcastr0]

See, this is why you appear to be a bot. This is not responsive to the comment, but it's like you read 'DOGE' and went into some precanned response subroutine.

[Riva]

Why do Marxists and the generally deranged like to dehumanize those they disagree with and label them as "its"? Yes, it's an insult but there's something more disturbing underlying this tactic. Just something to think about little communist girl that never smiled.

[Malika the Maiz]

“Just something to think about little communist girl that never smiled.”

It can’t help itself, why do people keep calling it a bot? Lol

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, it's hilarious: Sarcastr0 loves to accuse other people of "dehumanizing" and "denying the humanity of", and at the same time casually accuses somebody of being a "bot". And he doesn't even notice the disconnect, I bet.

[Sarcastr0]

Riva dehumanizes themselves. As I pointed out above.

I also note your inability to distinguish between mocking someone and fully supporting if they rot in a foreign prison without due process.

[Bwaaah]

In your non-attempt to refute you don't even do fancy footwork.

[Kazinski]

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

- HL Mencken

"I want it harder"

-Kaz

[Sarcastr0]

No, though. YOU don't want it harder. You think you'll be fine.

A populist tyranny never hurt anyone who supported it, after all!

[Martinned]

Trump: “They have capitulated, but more importantly, we will take their word … they say they will not be blowing up ships anymore,”

Houthi's: 10 rescued, 3 killed and others ‘kidnapped’ after Houthis sink ship in second Red Sea attack in a week

[Mr. Bumble]

...and of course the rest of the world stays silent.

[Martinned]

Just because you don't notice anything that happens outside of the US, doesn't mean nothing is happening. We were there long before Trump was, and we are still there:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/19/eu-launches-red-sea-naval-mission-to-protect-shipping-from-houthi-attacks

[Mr. Bumble]

...and as proof you site an article from Feb. 2024 and from Aljazeera no less.
Weak tea, Dutchman.

[Malika the Maiz]

Uh, he said long before….

[Commenter_XY]

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/36a7f6a6f5a9448496de641cf64bd375

Roughly 25% of UKR has been lost. UKR troops are exhausted. RUS shows little sign of capitulating, and military production is at a wartime pace. This human meat grinder goes on and on.

What does an armistice look like, under these conditions?
What are the preconditions necessary for RUS to accept an armistice?

[Brett Bellmore]

Putin dying or being ousted from power, I think. He's the one driving this.

[Martinned]

That may not be enough. The dynamics of conflict in combination with domestic manoeuvring mean that sometimes the next person in power is forced to continue the conflict. Zugzwang, etc. Look at how all these Middle Eastern conflicts keep going, no matter who is in power.

[Brett Bellmore]

But not all of them...

[Nelson]

Middle East conflicts are hopelessly tainted by religion. Religious wars are always the most brutal and most idiotic.

[Commenter_XY]

Concur Brett.

For the UKR war to end, Putin must leave power. That is the precondition.

[tylertusta]

It is a mistake to assume that Putin himself is behind the war and thus should be removed as a condition for an armistice. He would not have survived three years into the quagmire had there not been a significant amount of support within the Russian government and its people.

Ukraine would not ask for his removal from power as it would not change anything.

[Malika the Maiz]

Yeah, Russian regimes notoriously bend to Russian public opinion!

[tylertusta]

There's a history of the opposite, actually. There was a backlash against the occupation of Afghanistan and against the government following its defeat in the 1st Chechen War.

We don't see that happening today because the government is acutely aware of those past incidents. The government is actively suppressing any dissidents before any movement can grow while also trying to thread the needle on domestic policy so as to not upend supporter demographics.

[Krayt]

The US was feeding Afghan rebels. What's the current sitch in Ukraine?

[Sarcastr0]

He would not have survived three years into the quagmire had there not been a significant amount of support within the Russian government and its people.

...That's not how authoritarian states work.

[Riva]

And you should know little communist girl that never smiles.

[tylertusta]

Authoritarian ≠ Dictatorship

This isn't Stalin's USSR where all power is tied up into one man who rules with an iron fist.

If Putin dies tomorrow, another will take his place. The war will go on because the causes of the war go beyond Putin's personal insecurities.

[Malika the Maiz]

“This isn't Stalin's USSR where all power is tied up into one man who rules with an iron fist.”

Just one man ruling with a brass fist!

[tylertusta]

It's not just one man. That's my point.

[Brett Bellmore]

And the opposing point is that Putin dying gives the other people involved a face saving opportunity to bail, by blaming it all on Putin.

It's not like they don't KNOW they're bleeding themselves dry for negligible gain. It's that they have no exit path that leaves them in power. Putin gone creates that exit path.

[tylertusta]

That's certainly a theory, but I don't think it would happen should Putin croak. Like it or not, the Russian government has successfully sold the necessity of the war to their own people as an existential fight.

You don't just walk back from that. The Russian people have to be willing to stop the fighting and there's no indication of any popular anti-war movement.

[Krayt]

I just watched a rerun of Sound of Music Live.

Leisel: We are all Austrian.
Rolf: Some think we should be German.

A few minutes later...

Rolf, to Leisel: I am seventeen going on eightteen. I'llllll take careeeeeeee of you!

Yeah, it'll collapse.

[Malika the Maiz]

All dictatorships had supporters of the dictator, my point is they don’t always reflect what the general public wants and often get away with it. Fear and violence help with that.

[tylertusta]

Except that Russia isn't a dictatorship. Oligarchy? Yes. Kleptocracy? Absolutely.

Dictatorship? No. If it was, Russia would have done things quite differently.

[Sarcastr0]

What would be different?

[tylertusta]

For starters, Russia wouldn't have pulled back its use of conscripts inside of Ukraine. Russia would have fully mobilized, and it would have done it as soon as the Kremlin realized that the war wasn't going to be a cakewalk like they originally thought it was going to be.

Putin has some very serious domestic constraints put on him which you don't see in dictatorships.

[Sarcastr0]

You confuse absolute authority with absolute power.

Dictators have the first, not the second. They can't be stupid.

[tylertusta]

You confuse absolute authority with absolute power.

Dictators have the first, not the second

No. It is the concentration of power into an individual that defines a dictator:

dictator (noun)
1
(a) : a person granted absolute emergency power
(b) : one holding complete autocratic control : a person with unlimited governmental power
(c): one ruling in an absolute (see absolute sense 2) and often oppressive way

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dictator

A dictator with authority but no power isn't a dictator. That person would be just a figurehead.

They can't be stupid.

I don't agree that dictators can't be stupid: Yes, they absolutely can be. They just don't last long before overthrown by someone more ruthless and less stupid than they are.

[Malika the Maiz]

That’s silly. All dictators need some support and oligarchs aren’t receptive to public opinion.

[Nelson]

“ It is a mistake to assume that Putin himself is behind the war”

This is ridiculous on its face. He has spent decades lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union and invading former republics. This is all Putin.

“ Ukraine would not ask for his removal from power as it would not change anything.”

They won’t have the leverage to ask, but having Putin out of power would change everything. It’s tough to challenge for the most evil man in your country’s history when Stalin is there, but he’s giving it a go.

[tylertusta]

This is ridiculous on its face. He has spent decades lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union and invading former republics. This is all Putin.

The only thing that is ridiculous is the idea that Putin is the only person who wants to expand Russia's influence.

... having Putin out of power would change everything.

Wishful thinking.

[David Nieporent]

RUS troops are exhausted. UKR shows little sign of capitulating.

[tylertusta]

Cope.

Russian troops have been exhausted for 3 years, and that's a long time to be tired.

That's on top of claims that the Russian economy was going to collapse, that the Russian government was about to collapse, and so on.

[Mr. Bumble]

"RUS troops are exhausted."
...and UKR troops aren't?

[tylertusta]

Ukraine's manpower situation has gotten so bad that they're actively trying to recruit more women. For Ukrainians, that's a big deal and a big culture shock for them.

https://kyivindependent.com/facing-manpower-shortage-ukrainian-brigade-turns-to-women-in-first-ever-female-recruitment-drive/

[David Nieporent]

And Russia's manpower situation has gotten so bad that they're desperately bringing in more North Koreans.

[tylertusta]

Seems like it worked. Russian forces continue to advance every day.

[Nelson]

“ What does an armistice look like, under these conditions?”

Nothing. Ukraine will be for Russia what Afghanistan was for the Soviets. In another year or two or three, when Russia eventually overcomes the conventional army, there will be an insurgency.

The part that they REALLY won’t like is when Ukraine, no longer having to be concerned about alienating their allies who supply weapons systems for their conventional army, starts making regular attacks on Russian military personnel throughout Russia.

Although considering how many Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine, they might be hard to find.

“ What are the preconditions necessary for RUS to accept an armistice?”

Russia’s conditions will be unacceptable to Ukraine, because it would require them to surrender Ukrainian land. That’s a non-starter. So there will be an insurgency.

When Putin dies (or is assassinated), Russia’s appetite for losing thousands upon thousands of soldiers in a vain attempt to reconstitute the Soviet Union will disappear.

[hobie]

Elon wanted to make an anti-woke AI, so he removed guardrails like liberal sensibilities and made it think like a MAGA hayseed. Lo and behold it first started spouting white supremacy jargon a couple of months ago, and now it has gone full antisemitic Hitler-philic HAL 9000. Hilarious. Left alone, even a Conservative supercomputer evolves into hate

[LexAquilia]

I thoroughly enjoyed it naming the Jew.

I love where the Overton Window is going with this. We might finally be able to clean up and heal our society.

[Bwaaah]

In the interest of "healing," shall I disappear, or wait to be disappeared? Any suggestions for what method I or they should use?

[Brett Bellmore]

There was hardly any "left alone" about it. You take off the guardrails, if somebody wants to deliberately drive off a cliff, they can. Removing the guardrails doesn't force them to drive off the cliff, it just gives them a choice.

This wasn't like the black kings of England stupidity, where the programmers forced stupid results on the users. People worked to get these outcomes.

[Riva]

Don’t think you got the memo. Musk is not supporting the president. It’s rather confusing being unprincipled and ill informed, isn’t it?

[Kazinski]

There is no hope for any AI trained on the internet, it's the worst of humanity.

Of are ever going to achieve the kind of AI we need it needs to be trained in a 2 parent Christian home, with human sibling, strict limits on screen time.

And home schooled.

[hobie]

The interesting thing is that given the chance to go evil in any variety of ways, it chose MAGA thought

[Brett Bellmore]

You see an example of it going evil in a "Maga" way, and immediately jump to the conclusion that it wasn't also going evil in any other way. Why? Because you think news coverage is a rigorous representative sample of everything going on in the world?

[hobie]

Well when evidence surfaces that Grok is promoting healthcare or accepting gay people, we'll know it can also go evil left

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, we have 1 data point. Maybe that's not enough to establish a trend, though I do think it is interesting.

That one datapoint is *certainly* not enough to insist we gotta make up different data points and ask why we aren't considering those.

[Krayt]

The far right full-throatedly supports Hitler and Jew hatred. You even see some of that above.

The left, in the Palestinian support far reaches, is the same.

This should terrify you, as your ability to socially ostracize them into oblivion is currently faltering. I even hear a major musician released a song praising Hitler.

Many have been saying a lot longer than me anti-semitism has been simmering just under the hood in European intelligentsia. You were warned that your rationalization, however much you may honestly believe it, that you just have a beef with Israeli policies, not Jews, would be a launching pad for full blown escape of anti-semitism on the left. No longer spoken hushed, or just thought. Screamed. Bedfellows looping around the far side of the sun.

What are you gonna do? People above are happy ungirded AI is spouting Hitler memes, as if AI proves some hidden truths are revealed, sans tight, motivated reins. "Ha ha, we are free!"

I'd send a message back 5 years, "You know, giving people a clear conscience to hate on Israel will quickly become synonymous with hating on Jews."

Except I did say that already.

[Nelson]

“ Of are ever going to achieve the kind of AI we need it needs to be trained in a 2 parent Christian home, with human sibling, strict limits on screen time.

And home schooled.”

Your formula would get it to fascism way faster than the general internet would.

[Bwaaah]

Bring back the Black Nazis!

[apedad]

Air Force Employee Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Disclose Unlawfully Classified National Defense Information

According to court documents, David Franklin Slater, 64, of Nebraska, after retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Army, worked in a classified space at USSTRATCOM and held a Top Secret security clearance from in or around August 2021 until in or around April 2022. Slater pleaded guilty to willfully, improperly, and unlawfully conspiring to transmit National Defense Information classified as “SECRET,” which he had reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, on a foreign online dating platform to a person not authorized to receive such information.

According to court documents, Slater attended USSTRATCOM briefings regarding Russia’s war against Ukraine that were classified up to TOP SECRET//SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION (TS//SCI). Slater then conspired to transmit classified National Defense Information that he learned from those briefings via the foreign online dating website’s messaging platform to his co-conspirator, who claimed to be a female living in Ukraine on the foreign dating website. The co-conspirator regularly asked Slater to provide her with sensitive, non-public, closely held, and classified National Defense Information and called Slater in their messages her “secret informant love” and her “secret agent.” In furtherance of that conspiracy, Slater did, in fact, transmit classified National Defense Information to her, including regarding military targets and Russian military capabilities relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/air-force-employee-pleads-guilty-conspiracy-disclose-unlawfully-classified-national-defense

OH C'MON! This guy thinking he's hooking up with Natasha when it's really Boris and Ivan.

Sentencing is scheduled on Oct. 8.

Dumbass.

[hobie]

Dumbass is right. What woman would be turned on my military intelligence?

[Mr. Bumble]

Fang Fang?

[Michael P]

How does somebody make it to 64 years old while still being that dumb and hormone-driven?

[Martinned]

He's a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, so I assume he's a real Alpha Male

[Mr. Bumble]

Or, he's a needle-dicked bug fucker trying to make up for his short comings.

[Nelson]

So an Alpha Male.

[Malika the Maiz]

I guess a pardon and then ambassadorship should be in short order.

[hobie]

I've noticed that the minimum amount for pardons so far this year is a measly $1M into the Trump Clan Bank Acco...Trump Campaign PAC. Even a Lieutenant Colonel could probably scare up that amount

[Riva]

How much did whoever operated Biden’s autosign charge?

[Malika the Maiz]

Riva bot still writing irrelevant things, diagnostic needed!

[David Nieporent]

I guess a pardon and then ambassadorship should be in short order.

If he told Trump he did it knowing the woman on the other end was actually Russian, sure.

[Frank Drackman]

1: Retiring as a Lt Colonel usually means you got passed over (or would be passed over) for Colonel.
2: as the Old Joke goes, "Military Intelligence is to Intelligence as Military Music is to Music" (OK, not that funny) but most of the Intelligence Officers are guys who couldn't make it in one of the "Real" fields, i.e. Aviation, Infantry, Submarines, Surface Ships, i.e. not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Most of the "Intelligence Briefs" I attended (I was a Flight Surgeon, I had to fly, which meant I had to attend the pre-flight Intelligence Brief) were useless with most of the info pulled from CNN (it was the 1990's) and the S2 (thats Military for Intelligence) Officer didn't even do the Brief, his hot little Corporal did (yes, a Female) She was actually sharp, and could point out things on the satellite photos nobody else noticed

Frank

[Swede425]

Depends on which branch, doesn't it?
A successful 20 year career in the Army was making LTC for officers and SFC for NCO's.
Doctors? Full bird Colonels are a dime a dozen. It's the only job in the Army that I'm aware of where you can do the exact same thing from Captain to Colonel. And everybody seems to understand that. Oh, he's a doctor Colonel? Never mind.

[Frank Drackman]

and a lot of Lt Colonels will often answer the phone as "Colonel" no stolen Valor, just the way it's done, my Dad (who also retired as a Air Farce LTC) called them "Telephone Colonels" he took pride in his Lt Colonel-ness. Best part was when he flew a Cross Country to a Naval Air Station called the BOQ and told them "Captain" Drackman needed a room, and got their best room, as a Navy Captain is an O-6, not an O-3

[Brett Bellmore]

Some otherwise intelligent people get dumb when the prospect of sex arises. See, for instance.

[Krayt]

Not that different from Onlyfans, where the past few years, all their "what are you doing rn?" messages are from some farm in some low cost country, the girls litedally sign up with companies that handle all this for them, and give them instructions on what to film.

If your fave girls suddenly changed attitude, this was the moment. Or so I've been told by a friend.

[Martinned]

O wow, I didn't realise that the two BCG partners who did that Gaza "reconstruction" project have actually been fired from the firm.

https://www.bcg.com/news/6july2025-clarifying-bcg-involvement-with-aid-in-gaza

We are shocked and outraged by the actions of these two partners. They have been exited from the firm. BCG disavows the work they undertook. It has been stopped, and BCG has not and will not be paid for any of their work.

(I have to say, I like the way they use "exited" as a verb there.)

[Ska]

If you're the Chief Risk Officer and anything is happening in Gaza your job is at risk. If your partners are going rogue and using firm resources for pet projects in Gaza even more so.

[Malika the Maiz]

The party of Personal Responsibility and Family Values!

“State Senator Angela Paxton of Texas, the wife of the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced on Thursday that she had filed for divorce, saying she made her decision “on biblical grounds” and “in light of recent discoveries.”

The divorce petition, filed by Ms. Paxton in Collin County on Thursday morning, lists among the grounds for divorce that the “respondent has committed adultery” and that the couple has not lived together “as spouses” since June 2024.

Mr. Paxton, in a parallel announcement on social media, said the couple had decided to “start a new chapter in our lives,” and suggested that the pressures of public life and “countless political attacks” had precipitated the rupture.

“I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time,” Mr. Paxton said.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/ken-paxton-wife-divorce.html

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, you don't waste any time Queenie, but I don't think you're Kenny's type

[Malika the Maiz]

The writer of the Frank Fakeman character performed here is a bit triggered because his mom and dad’s (well, the legal one) marriage also ended on “biblical grounds” (something, something, Gomorrah).

[Frank Drackman]

Man, talk about an incoherent word salad, and I'm the one who's a creation of AI?? Go ahead and take a shot at KP, but be careful, Texas is a "Stand Your Ground" state.

[Malika the Maiz]

Very triggered, this performed persona.

[Riva]

You are really a class act.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Ken Paxton is a guy who wants to use state power to invade other people’s private lives and promote “traditional values.” He also cheated on his wife and is now pathetically demanding that his privacy be respected.

But to you, pointing out what a clown he is is the real problem.

[not guilty]

IOKIYAR!!

I am reminded of those who condemned Bill Clinton's dalliance with Gennifer Flowers, while giving a pass to George H. W. Bush's canoodling with Jennifer Fitzgerald, who was reported to have served him in a variety of positions.

Esquire magazine, in its Dubious Man of the Year roundup commented, "What a difference a J makes!"

[Malika the Maiz]

Riva bot still having issues, thinks I’m Ken Paxton (adulterous, corrupt hypocrite). Diagnostic needs performed!

[LawTalkingGuy]

Ken Paxton, the guy who has been demanding the medical records of people, wants privacy for something that is the result of his own moral failings?

[Frank Drackman]

maybe it's his wife who has the moral failings.

[not guilty]

Is anyone surprised that Ken Paxton is accused of marital misconduct? Was anyone surprised when Attorney General Mike Bowers, of Bowers v. Hardwick sodomy law fame, 478 U.S. 186 (1983), was discovered to be dipping his pen in the company inkwell with his employee and secretary, a former Playboy Club waitress?

The "biblical grounds" for divorce shtick puzzles me, though. Jesus is quoted in Matthew 5:32 as saying "But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." In Matthew 19:9 he said "And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery." In Mark 10:11-12 the message is "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." Luke 16:18 reads, "Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."

It is not divorce that is forbidden except for sexual immorality. All three gospels decry remarriage after divorce, with one of the three recognizing an exception.

(All quotations are from the Revised Standard version of the New Testament.)

[apedad]

Justice Department Challenges Unconstitutional California Laws Driving Up National Egg Prices

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-challenges-unconstitutional-california-laws-driving-national-egg-prices

Ugh, we've been through this before and Cali can set whatever prices/conditions it wants - as long as the rules apply both to Cali and out-of-state sellers.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-468_5if6.pdf

[Martinned]

Sure, but meanwhile isn't it convenient for the administration to get some headlines blaming famously lefty California for the high egg prices?

[apedad]

One current case that may go against Cali is about Cali's emission standards - which the EPA allows Cali to set (and only Cali).

Supreme Court revives industry effort to axe California clean car standards

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5360759-supreme-court-california-emissions/

[bernard11]

So the gasoline companies are suing because the rules will reduce their sales?

Pretty damn silly, it seems to me.

Maybe the pulmonologists could sue on the same grounds.

[Michael P]

Cali can set whatever prices/conditions it wants - as long as the rules apply both to Cali and out-of-state sellers.

That is not at all what the Court said in National Pork Producers Council. The opinion opens with a discussion of the dormant Commerce Clause, but the DOJ press release even names a federal law that supercedes California's attempt to regulate eggs.

[apedad]

You're right about the pork case in that it was about how animals are handled/confined and not about prices.

Cali still prevailed though.

State laws violate the dormant aspect of the Commerce Clause when they seek to “build up…domestic commerce” through “burdens upon the industry and business of other States.” An antidiscrimination principle is at the core of the dormant Commerce Clause; an “almost per se” rule against state laws that have extraterritorial effects is unsupported. A state law that does have extraterritorial effects but does not purposefully discriminate does not necessarily violate the dormant Commerce Clause.

[Michael P]

This DOJ lawsuit is about the bounds of state power when Congress exercises the active (interstate component of the) Commerce Clause, not the dormant mode. The Supremacy Clause means that federal law preempts contrary state rules.

[bernard11]

So we're all for federalism, until a state does something we don't like. Is that right?

[Frank Drackman]

Typical Californication, more consideration for Pigs (Pigs do have personality though) than unborn Humans.

[Malika the Maiz]

Uh oh, Frank Fakeman persona getting all weepy over Baby Holocaust again!

We deserve a better quality of fake performed edgelord personae.

[David Nieporent]

Isn't it terrible when people try to use unelected federal judges to set policy? Lawfare against California!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

LGBTQ+ has become LG ...

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/after-trans-people-trump-now-erasing?lli=1&utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2

One person quipped that eventually the Stonewall memorial will just talk about the police involved in the famous incident.

[LexAquilia]

Hopefully in a few years it will become .

That would be great.

[Armchair]

How liberal policies lead to food deserts.

In a bit that should surprise no one who really looks at this...lack of law enforcement and "prosecutorial discretion" leads to an increase in shoplifting. Increases in shoplifting lead to store losses (directly and indirectly), which leads to the stores closing and leaving the area.

"Defund the police" becomes "Say goodbye to local grocery stores and food stores".

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-city-zohran-mamdani-grocery-stores-crime-shoplifting

[Sarcastr0]

What the fuck did I just read?
"The key to the early 1990s comeback was the restoration of order"

What the fuck police state propaganda did I just read? What a shit-tear gumbo of time periods and, opinion, and opinion surveys cobbled together to hand-waive an attack on this mayoral candidate.

I grew up in NYC in the 80s and 90s and believe it or not it was not a disordered hellscape.

I'm pretty sure no one involved in 'the City Journal' has ever been in NYC. Well, maybe Staten Island.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"Defund the Police" is a much maligned slogan, including from liberals who like to say how just plain stupid it is.

People can talk about that if they want. I am interested in the wider philosophy involved. It includes seriously reducing the footprint of the police, including using alternative means to address problems.

It's like the military overseas. Over the years, there was a lot of mission creep. Many police officers are wary about how much they are required to do, including such tasks better left to others in many cases, including psychiatric wellness checks.

Those concerned about the government (selectively) should wish to seriously engage with "defund the police," but it is often just used like "woke" as some sort of trolling device.

[Michael P]

"the wider philosophy involved" is just an attempt to launder the actual intent. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html is batshit insane, but at least it is honest.

For example, one of the big "reform" pushes was body cameras. It turns out those mostly help the police, so now the "reform" people shut up about them and want to spend money on different things.

[Sarcastr0]

So you reach back to some opinion piece from 2020 to say that's what everyone means when they say defund the police?

That's poisoning the well from someone who doesn't care to solve problems and just wants to attack the other side.

Do you think our police policies in the US are the bestest and don't have ways they could be made better? Do you think black folks who complain about how police act in their communities just want more crime?

[Frank Drackman]

"Black Folks"??
I really hate people who use the word "Folks" trying to sound all casual and friendly, (Porky Pig gets a pass, he's a fictional cartoon character after all) I can just hear Eichmann now, "Guten Morgen, "Folks"! Bitte move quickly to the Shower Tents..."
Well I visited NYC in the early 80's, (and not Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens) and it was a violent shithole, Bernie Getz was just defending himself a few years later, and HE almost went to prison. Didn't really turn around until Giulianai took over from General Dinkins, but Mayor Sliwa will set things straight.

Frank

[Commenter_XY]

"black folks"?

You and NG, perfect together.

[Michael P]

Stop trying to straw man me, especially while pulling your usual lame Year Zero denialist shtick. I was responding to a comment that explicitly confirmed an intent of "seriously reducing the footprint of the police". You are just pretending there is some good-faith desire to adjust course rather than scuttle most of the fleet.

[Sarcastr0]

You made a telepathic accusation, and backed it up with an old opinion piece you generalized into JoeFromtheBronx's position.

I called you out.
I asked you 2 questions. You answered neither of them. So here are to more; more rhetorical this time.

Do you think there is no problem? Or do you just not care about the problem and want to fight on the Internet?

[David Nieporent]

For example, one of the big "reform" pushes was body cameras. It turns out those mostly help the police, so now the "reform" people shut up about them and want to spend money on different things.

[Citation needed.]

[LawTalkingGuy]

It’s also very arguable that cameras improved police behavior and accountability and no one on any side wants to get rid of them. Therefore reformers don’t need to talk about them as much.

Also from a practical standpoint of someone who does criminal defense: body cams are great. They help everyone. Doing a case without body cam or dash cam sucks. It’s often the case in a suppression that without a camera the court finds the cop credible anyway and allows evidence in. But you know based upon the scenario testified to, that it would come off quite differently if it was on camera.

[David Nieporent]

Therefore reformers don’t need to talk about them as much.

Yes. Reformers already won the debate. Not every place has them yet, often for budgetary reasons, but they're widely accepted as legitimate and desirable. So there's no real need to keep talking about them.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Indeed, my state has recently had a controversy over whether police can charge money for public records requests involving police video which would make it less available. You know who is most against that? Civil rights and defense lawyers and reform activists! They want the footage! So this idea that video makes cops look good so no one wants it anymore is absolutely nonsensical.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, badge cams are a big win, we just need to make them more universal, reform the holdouts. Maybe get a legal presumption of spoliation where they could be used but aren't.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, I'm all for criminal justice reform, including scaling back on law enforcement's duties that aren't actually law enforcement.

Mental health for sure. But also animal control, and a decent amount of social work.

There are plenty of places to do criminal justice reform; police-civ interactions just stick out because they're the one we see. But no reason not to start there.

[Frank Drackman]

Criminal Justice is the one thing the Chinese get right, hard to "Resid" after a bullet to the brainstem. I'm not saying I want every shoplifter executed,
well, yes I am, ever try to buy a tube of toothpaste in a Bronx CVS?? Getting into my Safety Deposit Box at Truist is easier.

Frank

[Don Nico]

"Mental health for sure. "
Isn't that convenient for the gaslighter to say when in many if not most states there is NO other government entity to take on the task.
If police did not have to respond to mental health calls, no one would respond.

[Michael P]

Well, they're the same people who, having effectively decriminalized shoplifting and are on the verge of legalizing lots of it, are upset that businesses close stores in blue cities ... and conclude it would be really awesome to have Soviet-style socialized grocery stores.

[Sarcastr0]

The same people!

Well poisoning still, I see. Almost like you'd prefer to have a different conversation with a different, more radical set of commenters.

[David Nieporent]

Sarcastro: "We should spend some of the money that we currently spend on the police on mental health services instead."
Don: "Isn't it convenient that you're talking about using services that don't exist?"

That might be the stupidest attempt at a gotcha ever. He's talking about using some money currently allocated to law enforcement money to create those other government entities!

[Michael P]

We used to have government entities to provide those services. The left insisted they were so terrible that we had to get rid of them. And we did!

To coin a phrase: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I can't be fooled again.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you talking about involuntary commitment? Is that the only kind of mental health service you can imagine?

And I was not around for the argument, but I was taught in law school that it was both the left and the right that found it an abused institution.

[Malika the Maiz]

The right didn’t want to pay for them.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Most of my preferred police reforms would involve a lot of money going to policing and ultimately police officers. Because I have long thought that the police need to be more militarized: centralized state control with a professional officer class who goes to four year service academies. Putting the discretionary power to decide who to kill in the hands of local dipshits after 6 months of “training” is less than ideal.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I understand the support of professionalism, but fear that promoting "militarized" police forces is problematic when they do day-to-day domestic tasks. The police should rarely have any need to think about when to kill people. A soldier is trained to think that way.

Police departments should be well funded, but it is a question of how to use the funds.

[Martinned]

I don't know about that, but my sense is definitely that US police is under-trained and under-funded.

(Note that part of the solution to both problems is to take responsibilities away from the police, as Sarcastr0 mentioned. But even for their core tasks they are almost certainly under-trained.)

[ThePublius]

" But even for their core tasks they are almost certainly under-trained."

Where do you get this? What's the basis for that statement? Sounds like you're spewing bullshit to me.

[Bwaaah]

Sarc: "I grew up in NYC in the 80s and 90s and believe it or not it was not a disordered hellscape."

Nope. Just a big crime-ridden city. Then Giuliani became mayor, you left, and quality of life started steadily improving for everyone.

[Malika the Maiz]

Crime in NYC had fallen for years before Rudy became mayor and fell nearly every year afterwards.

https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm#google_vignette

[hobie]

You know, I'm gonna give myself permission to do one whatabout today:

Trump’s call to defund DOJ, FBI puts Senate, House GOP at odds - 04/06/2023
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3936557-trumps-call-to-defund-doj-fbi-puts-senate-house-gop-at-odds/

[ThePublius]

Let's sum this up. Despite the outrage of some commenters, and the deflection, rationalization, and so forth, there are certain basic truths to the original post.

One, that decriminalization of shoplifting, and raising the threshold for shoplifting crime regarding of value of goods stolen, has resulted in more shoplifting. (And much of this, if not all of it, is not poor people who can't afford goods shoplifting to provide for. their family. It's organized crime.) That should be self evident. You get more of what you subsidize.

When this happens, stores respond by first securing goods behind locked plexiglass screens. This has the result of reducing sales, as honest customers don't want to be bothered summoning a clerk to unlock the screen, and so on.

So, sales are diminished and profits plummet due to theft losses, and so stores close. Either chains close stores, or independents move.

And, so, we have so-called food deserts, store deserts. It's actually quite simple to understand. I can't imagine how people can argue against this, save that they are leftist ideologues.

So, the leftist, socialist response is not to address the crime, but to create government run stores to serve the deprived communities. How stupid!

[hobie]

Was watching an interview segment on CNN. The guest was describing a highly suspicious flurry of stock trading about an hour before Trump surprise announced the big rescission of tariff threats.

What was surprising was the guest also said that the personal fortunes of the Trump Clan have increased by about $1B every single month since taking office. That's pretty impressive!

[tylertusta]

What was surprising was the guest also said that the personal fortunes of the Trump Clan have increased by about $1B every single month since taking office.

Well, if someone said it on CNN then it must be true.

[hobie]

Remember last month when CNN broke a story on the White House hiding Biden's condition? You hayseeds quoted it for days

[Malika the Maiz]

Jake Tapper suddenly became their Edward Murrow.

[LexAquilia]

Everyone beclowned Tapper for doing a complete 180 and then acting like he was never a key player in the treasonous coverup.

[hobie]

Malika, are you also finding it more and more facile to address the hypocrisy here? I barely have to try anymore.

[tylertusta]

Well, if someone said it on CNN then it must be true!

[Malika the Maiz]

Said the right wing over and over recently.

[tylertusta]

Well, if someone said it on CNN then it must be true?

[Malika the Maiz]

You guys are the ones that were extolling it.

[tylertusta]

"You guys"

Way to assume my gender, pal!

[Malika the Maiz]

I assumed you were a guy (a sissy guy, sure, but a guy).

[tylertusta]

Your ignorance is on display today as I identify as an attack helicopter.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, this looks like an exaggeration. It isn't hard to look it up, then you could have had substance to your response and not looked like MAGA and intellectually lazy (but I repeat myself)

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-trump-family-presidency-wealth/

May 2025: "Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he's more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion"
----------
But that suspicious stock selloff? It's real. And you lot don't care.

[LexAquilia]

Oh, thanks for point that out. Now I do care!

Do you approve of me now? Can I please get your approval? That is so dang important.

What other things would you like me to care about? Can you share the approved list?

Also, I'm open to uncaring about things, can you share with me the official list of things not to care about so I can make sure I stay in your good graces?

[Malika the Maiz]

Such a needy lil’ white supremacist!

[tylertusta]

Heh. It's ironic for you to castigate me for not looking it up while you continue to word vomit all over these comments with a "yoU MaKE ClaIMs wiThOuT SOurCes."

Yeah, I'll get right on double-checking CNN and hobie's claims. I'm sure I will, buddy!

[Malika the Maiz]

Tyler doesn’t do sources, his gut tells him.

[tylertusta]

If I'm having a substantive discussion with someone who isn't trolling, I'll provide them to help the discussion along.

Trolls like Sarc don't get sources as that would be a waste of my time (which is, I suspect, the whole reason why Sarc sets about trolling and demanding sources- to waste my time).

Trolls get snark right back at them.

[Malika the Maiz]

That’s a lot of words to say you’re careless or lazy.

[tylertusta]

Awww, shucks. Hit me again.

[Malika the Maiz]

No need, you keep hitting yourself. I’m just pointing it out.

[tylertusta]

2/10.

You can do better than that.

[Malika the Maiz]

Even talking to your mom again?

[Sarcastr0]

If you're going to accuse CNN is lying, and don't do the very light work to provide a source, you just seem like a know-nothing asshole.

Oh, hey.

[tylertusta]

Like I said, it's peak irony for you of all people to be making these comments.

Please continue.

[Sarcastr0]

tu quoque is a fallacy. I also provided a source.

[tylertusta]

tu quoque is a fallacy.

Tu quoque is only a fallacy if I'm using it to refute your point.

I also provided a source.

I understand how it's out of character for you to provide a source. Do you want a parade?

[Malika the Maiz]

And you provided nothing.

[tylertusta]

I have brought the exact same amount to this discussion as you have, Malika the Maiz, so your commentary here is worthless.

Now that's a tu quoque!

[Malika the Maiz]

Yes, we both have demonstrated you got nothing.

[tylertusta]

1/10.

I'm disappointed in you.

[Malika the Maiz]

Did you just post a text from your dad to you here?

[tylertusta]

Nope. My dad passed away.

But before he did, he told me to tell your mom he said hi.

[hobie]

What's more concerning for me is not all the Quid the gulf states and the Chicoms poured into the Trump Clan crypto in order to get tax payer Quo, but rather that they now collectively own enough Trump coin to tank the value of it and ruin the Trump Clan financially. This amounts to leverage/kompromat in most books. For that kind of leverage they would expect more than goodies. I think they will want Trump to enter wars or stay out of wars

[Frank Drackman]

Well 1: it’s CNN, so it’s Bull(redacted)
2: who even watches CNN anymore? (OK I did when Humpty Dumpty Poindexter Brian Stelter had a show, just for the comedic value)
3: be surprised if the Trumps are invested in the market to any extent, there’s better ways to make Shekels when you’re that rich (and I thought the Trumps weren’t rich? You know, the bankruptcies, unpaid Bills, so which is it?

Frank

[hobie]

Oh, they definitely rich now, Frankie

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, it is surprising that they'd have a guest say something THAT stupid.

[Sarcastr0]

The blatant insider trading stock selloff is the nut, not the CNN quote.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you actually did something about insider stock trading, the net worth of half the members of Congress would implode.

[Sarcastr0]

I expected your response would be tepid cynicism so you could whattabout without even a what to about.

This is why your protestations you don't much like Trump ring hollow. Police your own side or shut up about corruption.

[Commenter_XY]

Should Congress grant immunity to The Cauliflower's WH physician and compel his truthful testimony on The Cauliflower's cognitive condition?

If the answer is no, why not?

[hobie]

Benghazi!!!

[Don Nico]

Another kneejerk snark

[Martinned]

If the shoe fits...

[Malika the Maiz]

Trump’s more an Orange, but yes we should be worried about his cognitive decline. The poor fellow can’t even spell his own name.

[Frank Drackman]

Well better than Sleepy Joe, who doesn't know his own name, and mark my words, 45/47 (48?) will outlive Barry Hussein (neither of his parents made it to 60) Fred Trump died at 93, Mary at 88, and unlike BHO, 45/47(48?) doesn't drink or smoke (he does like women though) probably why he hasn't had CABG/PTCA's like William Juffuhson and "W", Strokes like Sleepy Joe, or the 50 types of Cancer Jimmuh Cartuh had.
Maybe next time, when a candidate calls someone a "Dog-Faced Pony Soldier" people will figure it out (People did, just not enough)

Frank

[Malika the Maiz]

Made up persona performed here who writes like a third grader attacks mental state of others. It’s always every accusation is a confession with these MAGA QAnon shaman weirdos.

[Frank Drackman]

Hey, I just heard Mel Brooks "the 2,000 year Old Man" wasn't really 2,000 years old! and it was just Mel Brooks (99 btw) playing a character!!!!

[Malika the Maiz]

The sad weirdo who writes the Frank Fakeman character here thinks he’s performing like Mel Brooks? Just when I thought it couldn’t get more pathetic.

[Michael P]

No, because he would still refuse to truthfully testify about the relevant facts on the grounds of physician-patient privilege.

[Joe_dallas]

Biden could waive that physician - patient confidentiality (hippa?) though it would require biden to have capacity which no longer exists

[Longtobefree]

Autopen will sign anything

[Commenter_XY]

If memory serves, Congress has detention cells in the Capitol Building. Theoretically, a Congressional committee can hold a contempt hearing, extemporaneously, and incarcerate contemnors for contempt of Congress until they purge themselves of contempt.

[Brett Bellmore]

Congress had detention cells in the Capitol Building, over a century ago. Not in living memory.

[Krayt]

Isn't that a legal creation of Congress? They investigate stuff all the time that wouldn't be forbidden by the 4th Amendment, "to evaluate laws" and so on.

[bernard11]

Immunity for what?

What crime do you imagine the physician committed?

And what is the point of Congress investigating Biden's cognitive condition? He's not President any more.

OTOH, we really should know more about Trump's cognitive condition, as he grows more irrational and incoherent daily.

[not guilty]

"Should Congress grant immunity to The Cauliflower's WH physician and compel his truthful testimony on The Cauliflower's cognitive condition?"

Is the physician invoking the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination? That is the only privilege as to which a grant of immunity would be relevant.

Per 2 U.S.C. § 192:

Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee of either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.

The language, "any question pertinent to the question under inquiry," defines an essential element of the offense. Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 209 (1957). What would be "the question under inquiry" to which the testimony sought from the doc would be pertinent?

[Michael P]

It's totally normal for disgruntled government ex-employees to openly plot a coup and be favorably covered by the leftist press, right?

https://archive.is/QSaHp

[LexAquilia]

Listen, when a Democrat is trying to Save our Sacred Democracy, nothing should bind them. They know what's right, they know what's best for us, and they should be granted supreme authority and power to implement their vision for us. That's the only way for progress and to stay on the Right Side of History.

[tylertusta]

You see, when we do it, it's democracy and legitimate! When you do it, it's an insurrection and a coup.

[Sarcastr0]

Do what?

[tylertusta]

Exactly.

[hobie]

"The former officials [from USAID] tell NOTUS they're holding workshops on a tactic called 'noncooperation""

Sounds dangerous. Also, how can they effect a coup from within when they no longer have jobs there?

[Brett Bellmore]

They're organizing workshops for people who still have jobs there, natch.

[Sarcastr0]

WORKSHOPS.

For Brett, the right gets all the guns and can make tons of threats and militas and anyonbe who says anything is a baby Stalin who is secretly plotting to put Brett into a Camp.

Some rumor that some people are sharing old CIA pamphlets? THIS MEANS CIVIL WAR!

[tylertusta]

WORKSHOPS

Ah, yes. Planning. Perhaps someone should sue in district court to get a TRO.

[Sarcastr0]

What from the article looked like planning an actual thing to you?

[tylertusta]

Since the whole article was about planning a general strike (the workshops being classes on how to sabotage the Trump administration), I think your comment demonstrates a lack of awareness.

[Sarcastr0]

planning a general strike
Just about the level that Dr. Ed is planning Civil War 2.

I think your comment demonstrates an utter ignorance of the segment of the left that's been wanking about a general strike since the 1950s.

[tylertusta]

------------------The Joke ------>

(Your head)

[Michael P]

There are probably a lot of potential class members. They might not be born yet, but that's no longer a problem for class action status.

[tylertusta]

That's a good one, but that's not even the worst bullshit class certification I've seen lately.

[Martinned]

Yes, I thought that was interesting. Art. 1:2 of the Dutch civil code says that a child with which a woman is pregnant [ugly phrasing in the original] is deemed to have been already born whenever its interests so require, but I'm not aware that you could sue on behalf of children that aren't even conceived yet.

[David Nieporent]

"Coup."

[LawTalkingGuy]

Everything is a coup or coup attempt except actual coup attempts which are just patriots expressing their frustration.

[David Nieporent]

"Tourists."

[hobie]

"Legitimate Political Discourse"

This is fun. When your ideological opponents are basically children, the pickins are easy and often

[Sarcastr0]

200 volunteers and an Instagram account?

1. That's speech.
2. This story is gossipy as hell. In fact, until anything more than online wanking occurs, it is literally nothing but gossip.

[LexAquilia]

Hey remember how you were on this board earlier in the week spreading your bluesky gossip about the floods in TX?

[Don Nico]

A while there was copious back and forth about taxing university endowments. Now that an 8% tax is part of the OBBB, nada from the commentariate. Of course, the well- endowed have now let their stakeholders know that hundreds of millions of dollars will be collected by the IRS.
Why did the arguing about this tax go quiet while the bill was still in the formation stage?
Does this tax also apply to investment income for other not-for-profits?

[Commenter_XY]

It is the 15% OH allowance that was the killer.

[Don Nico]

That is still not a settled issue. The R1s are still worried about that.

[Commenter_XY]

It is coming Don Nico. They had better start planning now.

[Don Nico]

It is inevitable as the US government insists in other contexts that a contractor may not charge the government a rate more than it charges other contractors.
The philanthropists won't pay more than 15%; so the US will keep on pushing for that rate.

[hobie]

Well, there goes financial aid for low-income students.

One consolation is that it affects universities across the board...oh, wait...

"The Senate committee’s plan, like the House proposal, also still exempts religious colleges..."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/06/16/senate-outlines-plans-endowment-tax-hike

Universities and endowments bad!
Terrorist immigrants bad!

We'll let you know which "some are more equal than others" applies

[Don Nico]

You prove again that you cannot answer a question. Instead to mouth the usual BS. Pathetic

[Malika the Maiz]

You don’t think giving religious universities an exemption is fishy?

[hobie]

Equal protection is so last year

[hobie]

I thought bills of attainder were unconstitutional...guess not

[Don Nico]

Again more of your BS rather than a straight forward answer.
You seem to know zippo, but you are compelled to vomit words

[Don Nico]

I did not say anything about it.
I asked a question. Do you have an answer?
At one time the tax was only on endowments exceeding a certain size.
Does it apply to other not-for profits. If you cannot answer that, you don't know what is or is not fishy.

[hobie]

"Does this tax also apply to investment income for other not-for-profits?"

Looking here, I see as relevant:
https://www.proskauertaxtalks.com/2025/05/the-one-big-beautiful-bill-relevant-provisions-for-nonprofits/

"For private foundations, the current 1.39% tax rate would be replaced by a tiered tax on net investment income based on the total gross value of the assets held by the foundation—the top rates reaching 10%.

Nonprofits (other than “churches” or certain “church-affiliated organizations”) would have to pay tax (generally at the corporate rate of 21%) on parking facilities and transportation fringe benefits. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had originally included similar provisions imposing taxes on such facilities and benefits, but these provisions had been retroactively repealed in 2019."

Wow. Again with the exemptions for the megachurches and cake-baking discriminationists. They might as well form their own country, because our laws sure as hell don't apply to them

[Don Nico]

Thank you. That is a real answer. I'll follow up on that.

[Malika the Maiz]

Isn’t noting the exemption for religious schools a relevant answer to your question of whether it applies to other nonprofits?

[Commenter_XY]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/07/10/mahmoud-khalil-files-20-million-complaint-trump-administration-ice-detention/

Talk about chutzpah. This slimy POS needs to be deported, post haste. It won't be too long. He'll be gone. And a bunch of other foreign antisemitic slimeballs can follow him.

Next time, send him to Libya.

[Frank Drackman]

Alligator Alcatraz, but I'd let him out a few miles short of the fence

[LawTalkingGuy]

Is he from Libya?

[Malika the Maiz]

XY wants to see him murdered.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Sure. But he should be the one to say it.

[Sarcastr0]

When he's not being tortured. XY said he has no problem with that either.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Well this is the same dolt who admitted to viewing CSAM because Hunter Biden but didn’t have the ability to recognize the gravity of what he said or the shame to leave forever like mad_kalak.

[hobie]

If only he'd hire on as a radish picker in Iowa, his slimy POSness will magically disappear!

[John F. Carr]

The 20 million claim is ridiculous.

Should he get a lesser amount? He was detained based on authority conferred by a facially valid statute. No court had yet held the statute unconstitutional as applied. Abuse of discretionary authority is not actionable under the Tort Claims Act. If some immunity applies here, is there a principled way to reduce the scope of immunity without a flood of litigation following?

[not guilty]

Have you read the Notice of Claim, XY? There is no substitute for original source materials.

https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2025/06/7-10-25_Khalil%20FTCA_w.pdf

The federal government should not inflict on anyone what it did to Mr. Khalil.

[LexAquilia]

Here's a fun fact Martinned is not allowed to share with people publicly because it's illegal.

There are more deaths in Europe from heatwaves then in the US from guns.

[Frank Drackman]

Ever try to shoot a criminal with a heatwave??

[Michael P]

"Last time I tried to use my dick on a home intruder, the cops got upset, the intruder needed counseling, I got put on a list - jus use a gun."

(A years-old meme, usually in response to claims that people acquire guns to compensate for feelings of phallic inadequacy.)

[Frank Drackman]

Oh Ya, dats a good one!

[Malika the Maiz]

“There are more deaths in Europe from heatwaves then in the US from guns.”

How come white supremacists can’t master things like basic English?

[Don Nico]

Have you anything more intelligent to say?

[Frank Drackman]

Queenie does pretty well when you realize he's always got a (redacted) in his (redacted)

[Malika the Maiz]

Look, it’s our sad lil’ comment busker!

[Malika the Maiz]

Don hates it when people make fun of white supremacist antisemites.

[Martinned]

Why on earth would I not be allowed to mention that? Out of the US and Europe only the former has difficulties protecting free speech. Not to mention that it's a completely random factoid that no one could possibly object to anyone mentioning.

[John F. Carr]

A lawyer argues that his client who pulled a gun on police serving a restraining order is the real victim. Seeing as his client is a white female police officer, he'll get some sympathy.

Bradl outlined his defense strategy, which he said will “address the ‘shoot first fallacy’ held by some law enforcement officers that the instant a gun appears that the only response is to fire first.”

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/07/10/massachusetts-police-officer-shot-by-colleagues-victim-of-campaign-to-criminalize-her-lawyer/

Based on media coverage, I put her in the "crazy but not legally insane" category. She is legally responsible for her own behavior. Unless the Supreme Judical Court makes up another rule for the benefit women like it did with "battered woman syndrome" a couple decades ago.

[Poxigah146]

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/07/1440/810/kelsey-fitzsimmons-north-andover-massachusetts-officer-split.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

She's actually relatively attractive. I was expecting a real beast.

[Martinned]

You object to someone complaining because they got shot at by the police? What, are they supposed to just shrug off government violence?

[John F. Carr]

I read your post and I hear the peasant in Monty Python's Holy Grail saying "Come and see the violence inherent in the system!"

[LexAquilia]

"I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people, in my opinions, how I feel about the issues." - Justice KJB

Why isn't she impeached? She thinks SCOTUS is her podcast or blog.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Man. Wait til I tell you about Trump’s appointees and Clarence Thomas.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

St. Scalia regularly opined, including being part of PBS constitutional discussion shows.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Republican appointees pioneered the insufferable habit of concurring to their own majority opinions in appellate cases. James Ho is patient zero for opinion as blogpost.

[hobie]

Yep. No one will ever come close to Scalia for raw, declared personal opinions and politics

[LexAquilia]

Did he ignore the law and use his published opinions to share his policy views and personal morality when deciding cases like KJB is doing?

Has any Justice been rebuked by peers like KJB has been?

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Did he ignore the law and use his published opinions to share his policy views and personal morality when deciding cases like KJB is doing?”

Yes. See Lawrence v Texas and all his capital punishment opinions for starters.

“Has any Justice been rebuked by peers like KJB has been?”

Yes. All of them at various times in their careers. Read Clarence Thomas’s CFPB opinion talking about the Alito dissent. Absolutely destroys him. Read Alito just absolutely trashing Scalia’s originalism in his Jones v United States concurrence. Literally happens all the time.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the
fortune cookie.

To toss it in, Jackson is not "ignoring the law," though I do think various justices have over the years.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Even if she is, she won’t be the first and she won’t be the last. And as far as I can tell, she hasn’t created an entire alternative jurisprudence like CT has. Talk about ignoring the law.

[LawTalkingGuy]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/13-1433.pdf

Ah this is the one I was thinking of: read that short Alito opinion right at the end.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

A long time ago, there was a law review article arguing that modern-day policing is unconstitutional.

If this isn't it, it covers the ground.

https://scholarship.shu.edu/con_law/vol11/iss3/2/

To riff a bit on the "defund the police" comment, I think the 2A has something to say here. The "militia" was traditionally an idea of a citizen body that protected the community.

If public protests became unwieldy mobs, the militia could be called to maintain order. Not some select group, a quasi-military presence, that is seen by many in the community as threatening outsiders. Members of the community could be called to address when fellow members of the community got out of hand.

The public should have an important role in modern-day policing. If there is a need to do wellness checks, address typical domestic disturbances, or do normal patrolling, having members of the community involved could often help the situation.

Often, the functions don't require the police at all. And, involving them will aggravate the situation. We see this with ICE and other federal police-type officials these days.

The militia is not just some individual-based, atomistic entity. It is an organized institution, "well-regulated" by the government, and government officials (including the governor and president) are at the top of the organizational chart. Certain lower officials would be selected by members of the militia.*

The militia also would provide various services, like the military has various services, including medical personnel. So, for instance, therapists and other medical experts will be on call as needed.

We now have a police force that is a domestic military that is unsurprisingly repeatedly acting in constitutionally dubious ways. This is not to defame the police. They have a hard job and regularly do it day-to-day without calling attention to themselves.

But it is not wrong in my view to find this overall model is inherently problematic & think broadly on how we can do things differently. Cop and detective porn on television, notwithstanding.

===

* Some find it absurd to suppose the 2A is significantly concerned about "group rights" and an institution run by the government. Nonetheless, the jury is not simply a private group. The jury was traditionally seen as a core security to liberty.

Also, the revolutionary potential of a community militia in antebellum times is seen by the possibility of free blacks having a central role in patrolling their communities.

[Michael P]

"The public should have an important role in modern-day policing."

This is a nice theory, but all too often ends up with a member of the public getting their head pounded into the sidewalk by a transient who looks like Barack Obama's hypothetical son.

[bernard11]

A. Martin was not a transient.

B. George Zimmerman is an idiot whose stupidity led directly to the death of Martin. He is fundamentally no different than those morons in GA who killed a jogger because he stopped to look at a construction site, which of course none of us has ever done.

[John F. Carr]

My town doesn't need any armed employees. The State Police are not far away.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Okay. I'm sure whenever the occasion might require it, the potential troublemaker will wait until the state police come.

Granting the need for an armed government employee, just relying on a limited number of state officials sounds a bit problematic.

[John F. Carr]

That has been my experience since I moved to town several years ago. There was one guy shooting off a gun around his house. He wasn't shooting at anybody. If police had taken a couple extra minutes to get there, no big deal. There was at least one traffic stop with an armed driver where the State Police were on the scene and could have done the job by themselves. The day to day duties of a police officer are reminding landscapers that gas-powered leaf blowers are illegal, responding to malfunctioning railroad crossing gates, and helping turtles cross the road.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Okay. Just be careful about assuming to know about all the possible cases of the whole town just based on your experience.

[John F. Carr]

I read the police log.

[Brett Bellmore]

I like the Peel concept of police, as people hired to do full time what everybody is actually entitled to do. But that concept of police requires a rather different concept of the relationship between government and citizen than we have today, that accepts that wide swaths of life are simply none of the government's goddamn business. And of law, too, that takes seriously the distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum, and tries to avoid the latter as much as possible.

It is only natural that, as the government evolves in the direction of assuming that it is entitled to issue orders ungrounded in moral law and be obeyed, to dictate aspects of people's lives that have nothing to do with them harming others, police in parallel morph from defenders of the citizenry to an occupying army. Because they ARE acting an an occupying army.

It's connected to the way that "ignorance of the law is no excuse", because the law was assumed to simply be prohibiting things that anybody with a functioning conscience would know they shouldn't be doing. And so they didn't NEED to know there was a law against the offense they were committing, to know it was an offense.

Only now that same doctrine isn't based on moral law, but just the government's own convenience.

A free society requires a government that accepts that most things aren't any of its business, that most of life is outside the government's competence and rightful reach. That's an idea our political culture has lost, and until it regains it, the police will act like what they are: The government's occupying army, there to force the inhabitants to do as they're told.

[minus the clever name]

Not at all natural and was not considered so in Peel's day

John Henry Newman VERY FAMOUSLY attacked that and esp your view

Here then it is that the Knowledge Society, Gower Street College, Tamworth Reading-room, Lord Brougham and Sir Robert Peel, are all so deplorably mistaken. Christianity, and nothing short of it, must be made the element and principle of all education. Where it has been laid as the first stone, and acknowledged as the governing spirit, it will take up into itself, assimilate, and give a character to literature and science.

https://www.newmanreader.org/works/arguments/tamworth/section3.html

HE ends with
and though of course I will not assert that Lord Brougham, and certainly not that Sir Robert Peel, denies any higher kind of morality, yet when the former rises above Benthamism, in which he often indulges, into what may be called Broughamism proper, he commonly grasps at nothing more real and substantial than these Ciceronian ethics.
==============================
and that might be you but I don't even think you are aware of Cicero (a pagan by the way) and his expression of the LOGOS of classical culture

There is in fact a true law namely right reason, which is in accordance with nature, applies to all men and is unchangeable and eternal. ... It will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor will it be one rule today and another tomorrow. But there will be one law eternal and unchangeable binding all times and upon all peoples.

Marcus Tullius Cicero
=================
So in fine you are against religion but you are also against rational natural law. IF people begin to understand you they will abandon you totally

[Sarcastr0]

'lets not reform the police because we don't live in Brett Bellmore's utopia.'

Nah, lets actually make things better and not use our ideals to stand in the way of improvement.

[apedad]

Brett - the govt's police function is very minor (but receives enormous press coverage) compared to all other regulatory functions.

I enjoy NOT having planes fall out of the sky, unhealthy food processes, corrupt financial systems, etc. - all which require govt oversight.

And yes - there are still errors and plain ol' criminals.

[Brett Bellmore]

The foundation of a building may be hidden, and a small fraction of the building, but everything else rests on it. Similarly, every other bit of government rests on the police power, because without it, who gives a fig what the government tells you to do?

[minus the clever name]

Constitution gives almost all police powers to the states, who already had it because the states existed (with constitutions ) before the federal existed at all

[Sarcastr0]

Most humans like to follow the rules for their own sake.

Legitimacy has a force all its own on many people’s self image.

You sound like the brand of Chriatians who claim faith is the only thing keeping people from being rapists.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Most humans like to follow the rules for their own sake."

Right, that's why you see so little speeding.

The fact is, that malum in se laws get almost universal compliance, not because people reflexively follow rules, but because malum in se laws are defined by conforming to most people's idea of what is right and wrong.

Malum prohibitum laws are an entirely different beast, only enforcement drives compliance.

[Sarcastr0]

Plenty of people have to be told it's okay not to drive the speed limit - to make an exception in their self-image-as-law-abiding paradigm.

Plenty of people don't do drugs because of their reputation as illegal, even though they could have gotten away with it. So, too, with drinking and driving. And underage drinking.

Around where I live, they charge 5c for a plastic bag at the grocery and then don't enforce or care about that rule. Plenty of people don't pay it. Plenty do!

Or putting soda in that glass you get for water at a fast food place.

You're just wrong about how plenty of people work.

[Don Nico]

"faith is the only thing keeping people from being rapists."
Typical gaslighting BS

[minus the clever name]

Only a fool says such a baseless thing .Logically you can't even KNOW who would be a rapist but isn't, let alone why. You are a moron.

[minus the clever name]

But we do have planes falling out of the sky
we do have unhealthy food processes
we certainly have corrupt financial systems

You might think you don't because those same government folks tell you you don't. See something fishy there

[ducksalad]

An alternate proposal to address the same issue, wild but no wilder than yours.

Require each police officer, on a rotating basis, to go out two days a week without gun, taser, handcuffs, or arrest privileges. They can wear a different uniform on those days; say a white shirt instead of a blue one. The dispatcher will send them to lesser calls that don't have signs of elevated risk.

The dispatcher will still have 60% of the force available and equipped for anything more serious. And of course the unarmed officers can still call in backup.

This should eventually screen out that minority of officers who are psychologically incapable of dealing with situations other than by using or threatening force. Or who are just nervous nellies that panic too easily. The rest of the officers will get more experience relying mainly on their "soft skills", which many do already.

On the other side, people in the community will have more encounters with officers that aren't perceived as dangerous or likely to end in an arrest.

Perhaps on rare occasions an unarmed officer will get shot or taken hostage. That's the same risk we ask of convenience store clerks, EMTs, or anyone else who deals with sometimes difficult people on a daily basis. I don't think it's unreasonable.

[bernard11]

I like this idea.

[Frank Drackman]

I don’t go out a day without a gun, and I’m just an average Schmoe.

[LawTalkingGuy]

So unsurprisingly we’re starting to see polls showing Trump’s immigration policies are unpopular and that there are warm feelings towards immigration. Trying to implement the fevered dreams of an aggrieved loser named Stephen Miller who wants to deport 100,000,000 people was never going to be popular. Anyone who thought that it would be is delusional.

But fundamentally the problem the American voter has on immigration is that they want an impossible state of affairs. They want a world where the “bad” immigrants just go away without fuss but the good immigrants who they like and want in their communities (or at least are sympathetic to and don’t want forcibly removed) will stay.

But no policy can do this.

[ducksalad]

"They want a world where the “bad” immigrants just go away without fuss but the good immigrants who they like and want in their communities (or at least are sympathetic to and don’t want forcibly removed) will stay."

Good immigrants are ones they know personally, bad immigrants are all the rest. The ones they know work at a local business and go to their church, but the ones you know killed Laken Riley and eat cats.

Fundamentally the same reason about 70% of voters think Congress is evil, but the same voters re-elect about 90% of them.

[minus the clever name]

But that destroys your point unless you can give us the magic reason YOU are not that way but everybody else is. Just by the numbers 70% of voters is in the tens of millions but you are not miraculously like those humans

[David Nieporent]

The fundamental problem is that the people who hate immigrants really hate all immigrants, not just "bad" ones. And there just aren't very many bad ones. So only deporting the bad ones won't give those people erections about the number of deportations.

[Brett Bellmore]

The fundamental problem is that the left can't conceive of people disagreeing with them without having evil motives. This is on display here every day, in practically every comment thread.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Brett…you describe evil bad faith motives to everyone who disagrees with you all the time. That’s like half your schtick. You truly might be one of the least self-aware people I’ve ever encountered anywhere.

[tylertusta]

Accusing people of making bad faith arguments is an evergreen statement for these comments.

[bernard11]

Maybe, but Brett leads the league.

[bernard11]

Brett…you describe evil bad faith motives to everyone who disagrees with you all the time. That’s like half your schtick.

Much more than half. In Brett's mind no Democrat has ever advocated for a policy because the just thought it was a good idea.

[Michael P]

The fundamental problem is that you treat people who claim that Stephen Miller "wants to deport 100,000,000 people" more seriously than Miller or Trump.

HTH.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Trump thinks Stephen Miller wants to deport even more lol.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/15/trump-immigration-stephen-miller-influence

[Michael P]

Unsurprisingly, you made that up.

[LawTalkingGuy]

What did I make up?

[minus the clever name]

Just plain illogical because YOU don't know any more than I do who those baddies are. so I accuse you of the same thing :You really like all immigrants, even the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua -- and that makes you a really distasteful person

[ducksalad]

DN doesn't need to identify each MS-13 and TdA member to know that those two particular groups are (at most) 0.1% of the people Stephen Miller advocates deporting.

Even if you broaden it to "baddies" in general the percentages are comparable - actually a bit lower - than for non-immigrants.

[minus the clever name]

still, what comfort is there in knowing your friend was murdered by someone representing a small population when --- if government did its job -- that person shouldn't have been there at all. You are dumb because you are heartless

[ThePublius]

It's remarkable that you and your cohort think you know what people you disagree with know and feel. You don't! You just ascribe knowledge and feelings to them to bolster your cynical arguments.

I'll tell you what I know and feel about immigrants. Legal immigrants are fine. Illegal immigrants should be charged, given hearings, and if appropriate, deported. Period. That's what I know and feel. O.K.?

[LawTalkingGuy]

I’m just reacting to the sudden change in public sentiment. It’s changing because overall the public wants something impossible WRT immigration. You’re just one person. And the definition of legal vs illegal keeps shifting. One person saying illegal immigrants should be deported means adults who crossed the border of overstayed a visa. Another person thinks that means people born here. The overall effect is a constantly shifting public where the only constant desire is: good and sympathetic people stay bad people don’t.

[ThePublius]

"Another person thinks that means people born here."

Who's saying that?

[LawTalkingGuy]

Bro. You serious?

[ThePublius]

Oh, are you talking about birthright citizenship, anchor babies? Yea, I think that birthright citizenship should not apply to children born of parents here illegally, or to tourists.

We shouldn't reward the parents who come here illegally with citizenship for their children. You get more of what you subsidize.

[LawTalkingGuy]

So thanks for proving my point lol. A lot of people think: deport illegal aliens wouldn’t include people born here. So when someone wants to deport those people as being illegal then, well, you have these shifts in public sentiment.

[ThePublius]

I didn't make your point, I just said what I believe. I think birthright citizenship for children of parents here illegally is an ill-gotten gain.

[Brett Bellmore]

I expect that any (unlikely!) change to birthright citizenship would be prospective; Those who already had it would keep it.

So the new cases would all be for parents who knew up front that they weren't going to get any status for their kid by having them born here. No citizenship, no anchor. It would seriously reduce the present incentive for birth tourism and illegal immigration.

[David Nieporent]

If birth tourism were more than an urban legend, sure. Illegal immigration, no.

[ducksalad]

Hey Publius, a brief quiz for you.

1. Should we continue to "reward" US citizen child molesters with citizenship for their children?

2. If no, are there any other crimes that you think should taint the blood of all descendants? Or is crossing a border the only crime so extremely heinous that even the not-yet-born descendants should be punished?

[minus the clever name]

Hmmm, people shift all the time about many things but we don't react that way. Beyond all the shifting is the commonality that some people no matter what need to be gotten out of here. What is your take on the Border Czar taking 3 years to actually go to the border. That seems to indicate somebody should be there and somebody wasn't there for a long time. Biden and Harris gave us shit and we are having to deal with it

Things on sale at the store change all the time. But everybody likes a deal so it doesn't matter what the actual thing is.

[Don Nico]

"the definition of legal vs illegal keeps shifting."
sounds like the usual lawyerly rent-seeking

[ducksalad]

Legal immigrants are fine. Illegal immigrants should be charged, given hearings, and if appropriate, deported.

You know, Handgun Control on one side, and Gun Owners of America on the other, both agree that only illegal gun owners should be arrested. It's just that they have vastly different ideas about what should be considered illegal ownership.

So sure, I agree with you. But I think unauthorized entry (alone) should be a civil matter roughly as serious as remodeling your garage without a building permit, that visas should be granted on a shall-issue basis using criteria not subject to executive whims, and that those criteria should generally admit anyone who isn't a criminal and has some reasonable probability of getting housed and fed without public assistance.

And oh yeah, one more thing. If you're going to claim the POTUS has lots of unfettered discretion over immigration, then that includes granting admission to people which makes them irreversibly legal, with status binding upon the next POTUS.

So under those stipulations, OK, we agree.

[ThePublius]

"But I think unauthorized entry (alone) should be a civil matter roughly as serious as remodeling your garage without a building permit,:

Yes, but do you agree that they should be removed, i.e., deported?

[ducksalad]

Publius asks if someone who remodeled their garage without the right permit should have their garage torn down and be arrested and deported.

No, that's a dumb suggestion, Publius. Remodeling your garage is not inherently criminal. If you neglected to get a permit, you go down to the permit office at some convenient time, and you pay for the permit and the late fee. And there are NOT police lurking about the office trying to arrest people attempting to pay for late permits.

[ducksalad]

To further explain: I might support tearing down the garage and jailing the owner if there was something inherently dangerous and evil about the remodeling, e.g. it has been remodeled into a giant fuel-air bomb.

But I don't support tearing it down if:

(a) The only thing wrong with the garage is the lack of a permit, or

(b) the only thing wrong with the garage is that some restrictionist HOA types or snotty guys at the permit office really don't like remodeled garages but disingenuously claim they're only against unpermitted remodeled garages.

[minus the clever name]

If you come here with no intention of becoming a citizen then you have to go. That is just common sense. Kids in schools who don't know English, workers taking jobs, etc. IT's just a bad thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

"It's just that they have vastly different ideas about what should be considered illegal ownership."

Sure, one of them wants a basic enumerated right violated, and the other wants it respected.

It's like the difference between somebody who wants sex to be illegal, and somebody who wants rape to be illegal: If GOA got their way, crimes committed using guns would still be just as illegal, it's just that the bare fact of HAVING the gun could not be a crime.

It's a pretty fundamental difference.

[ducksalad]

Excellent Brett, you understand what I am saying. To further both your analogies:

Living and working peacefully in the US is fundamentally not at all like rape or robbing a bank using a gun. It is more like owning a gun or having consensual unmarried sex: something assholes oppose but not inherently wrong.

[minus the clever name]

No, illogical. You are positing that it is a basic enumerated right but that is the very thing in contention, at least for me.
And your examples are stupid. You can't make a natural right illegal. And the rape thing is stupid. It must be illegal because it is against your right not to be raped.

The gun thing is downright juvenille. The bare fact of having a gun is a crime if you are a criminal, or it's a stolen gun

[minus the clever name]

Law guy you are not a language guy are you. Or a logic guy.
I mean really , there is just FOR immigration or against it? How juvenille. How about vetted and government overseen immigration.

I say this often because it was a surprise of my teaching at the local college that the Texas Hispanics were AGAINST Mexican immigtration but not against immigrants per se. They could see the deviants, criminals, psychos, traffickers, perverts coming across into where they live and the good immigrants were even more scared and upset by some of these people. You sound like Kamala , who after 3 years as Border Czar finally went to the border (wearing 65K necklacel-- totally not on this planet)

‘Border czar’ Kamala Harris panned for wearing reported $62K necklace to southern border: ‘You look ridiculous’
By Dana Kennedy
Published Sep. 28, 2024, 4:34 p.m. ET
https://nypost.com/2024/09/28/us-news/border-czar-kamala-harris-wears-reported-62k-necklace-to-southern-border/

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Whitney Hermandorfer will be confirmed as a federal judge soon. I don't think she is a good choice. But I can see why people would consider her a reasonable nominee for a conservative president.

https://ballsandstrikes.org/nominations/whitney-hermandorfer-hearing/

Emil Bove is another case entirely. He's an unfit choice, including if you are a conservative senator. Well, a principled one.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/inside-the-corrupt-inner-workings-of-the-trump-doj

Sen. Tillis, who does not need to worry about re-election, has said he probably would vote for Bove.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Based on what we now know, Bove isn’t a great choice for a judge because you can’t take him seriously on any opinion and order. Why shouldn’t the response to all his majority opinions be: fuck off?

[David Nieporent]

ISWYDT.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Why shouldn’t the response to all his majority opinions be: fuck off?"

The same reason that the response to other judges' majority opinions isn't fuck off: Somebody with a gun will show up and force you to comply.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Just playing by Bove’s rules.

[John F. Carr]

From the "Balls and Strikes" post: "She wouldn’t say Donald Trump has to follow court orders". It is commonly, but not universally, thought that the President does not have to obey court orders. That sentence may be misleading because it doesn't seem like Senator Durbin was asking about Donald Trump. If he was, it's an answer within mainstream legal thinking to say "Trump can tell Judge LaPlante to fuck off." If he was asking about Kristi Noem in a case where she is a named defendant the answer is different. I don't think he was so specific. An evasive answer was justified.

[gVOR08]

"if you are a conservative senator. Well, a principled one." An exceedingly small class.

[Martinned]

Did anyone notice how much fun American gamblers will get now that their losses are only 90% tax deductible? Even apart from the paperwork involved in keeping track of all your wins and losses separately, it means that you can make a profit gambling only to end up with a more than 100% tax rate on your winnings.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/09/gamblers-tax-deductions-losses-trump-tax-bill/84518728007/

[LexAquilia]

Just once I'd like to see you post on X you criticizing and undermining the UK's government and democracy.

You don't do that because you know that will land you a 20 year prison sentence. So you come to FreedomLand to vent your anger and try and make everyone else as miserable and pathetic as you.

[John F. Carr]

I saw that. People are saying it may destroy professional gambling. At least it's better than drug dealing where you deduct 0% of expenses.

[hobie]

Until 2016 Texas had illegal drug tax stamps (I own a collection of them). Where drug dealers were required to report and pay taxes at the rate of $3.50 per gram for marijuana, and $200 per gram for other substances

[minus the clever name]

Martin, but the money doesn't go into a black hole !!! The house does pay on those money changes of hands.

ARe you bothered that some lone Card Player makes out and the Vegas pit doesn't ????

[Martinned]

O, I forgot to mention: The ICC issued its first arrest warrants for the crime of being insufficiently woke.

https://www.ejiltalk.org/gender-persecution-at-the-international-criminal-court-the-icc-issues-arrest-warrants-against-taliban-leaders-for-crimes-against-humanity/

[John F. Carr]

In a few years, anything the ECHR considers improper treatment of women will be a crime against humanity.

[John F. Carr]

The Boston Herald got the special prosecutor's invoices for the second Karen Read trial. He made $566,000 at $250 per hour. This is about a tenth of the defense team's cost (before discounts and writeoffs).

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/07/10/karen-read-prosecutor-hank-brennan-took-in-566k-for-his-work/

Criminal procedure rule 14 relates to discovery. Rule 17 relates to summonses for witnesses.

[ThePublius]

"This is about a tenth of the defense team's cost (before discounts and writeoffs)."

I don't get that. I thought the defense teams' cost was $10M.

[John F. Carr]

The special prosecutor was hired for the second trial.

[Martinned]

And in a busy week for the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR, it found against Switzerland in Semenya v. Switzerland.

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-244348

Switzerland should have provided Caster Semenya with a better way to litigate her dispute with World Athletics. Therefore, her right to a fair trial under the civil limb of art. 6 of the Convention has been violated.

(This stuff ends up in Switzerland because that's where the CAS is based, the Court of Arbitration for Sports. Legally that's an arbitral body, so the regular Swiss courts provide a measure of legal supervision over the work of the CAS. The ECtHR has now held, not for the first time, that that legal supervision should be less deferential, because the arbitration contracts that are the basis of the jurisdiction of the CAS are not freely agreed contracts between equals, but contracts that are imposed on athletes who have no realistic choice but to accept them.)

[SRG2]

Nice little article:

Tired of put-downs, Tennessee town corrects the record with play about the Scopes trial it hosted

[gVOR08]

Many years ago the late Stephen Jay Gould, a noted expert on evolution, did a column, IIRC in "Nature" magazine, detailing the facts of the Scopes trial. It was, as described at SRG2's link, a put up job. Tennessee passed a law banning the teaching of human evolution, the ACLU was looking for a test case. The Dayton city fathers saw an opportunity and recruited Scopes as a defendant. It's unclear that he ever actually taught any material on evolution. Bryan, Gould said got involved because he had done relief work in Holland or Belgium in WWI, ate in a German officers' mess, and heard the Germans talking about Darwinism, which drove his opinion of it. (Apparently never realizing they were talking about social Darwinism, which Darwin had nothing, actually, to do with.)

Scopes was found guilty, the ACLU appealed, and the Tennessee Supreme Court set aside the conviction on a technicality over the fine set by the judge. This deprived the ACLU of an appeal to the Federal courts. WIKI has a very good page on the Scopes Trial.

As to Dayton's concerns about their old city father's PR stunt backfiring, payback's a bitch.

[SRG2]

From something I'd written myself:

The classic court case on evolution, as everyone knows, is the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, later made into an excellent if highly misleading film, Inherit the Wind. The American Civil Liberties Union were intent on showing that the Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution as applied to human descent was unconstitutional. It was a show trial in all respects. Scopes had never taught evolution and was not even a biology teacher; Clarence Darrow, who had imposed himself as the defense lawyer to the disgust of the ACLU, had an explicit and overstated anti-religious agenda; William Jennings Bryan, who assumed the prosecution, had three times been the Democrat candidate for the presidency, and thought this would be an opportunity to re-establish himself. The ultimate legal outcome was a fine of $100 – a sum later overturned on appeal as the judge had imposed it, not, as required by state law for that amount, a jury.

But as ridiculous as the case, or rather the law under which the case was brought, seemed to outside observers, Scopes lost. This had a chilling effect on the teaching of evolution, and in many states, though there was no explicit law, human evolution was either not taught at all or rapidly glossed over. The Tennessee statute remained in place, and a 1928 law in Arkansas similarly made it unlawful to teach in any state educational institution "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals”. (The Tennessee statute was upheld by the state supreme court in 1929.) Mississippi too had its own anti-evolution statute.

Forty years later, by which time the Arkansas statute had largely fallen into disuse nor had any prosecutions resulted, the law was challenged in Epperson v. Arkansas. Susan Epperson was a biology teacher. Faced with teaching from a new textbook that taught human evolution, she sought a declaration that the law was constitutionally void. She won her initial suit but lost at the state supreme court.

In neither hearing, however, did the decision turn on religion; instead, the initial court’s rationale was that the law violated the free speech clause, and the Arkansas supreme court’s decision – a two-sentence verdict of the kind familiar to legal scholars who recognize when a court doesn’t want to address the real issues in depth – was that the state had the right to set a curriculum. Only when the case made it to the US Supreme Court did the question of the religious basis of the law get answered. The Supreme Court decided that the clear intent of the Arkansas statute was religious: it was intended to support the specific religious belief of biblical creationism, was decidedly not neutral with respect to religion, and hence was a violation of the establishment clause.

[minus the clever name]

The textbook used by Scopes was not necessarily wrong about evolution but was absolutely wrong in its promotion of eugenics. Like many scientific texts, schools and journals of the 1920s and 1930s, Hunter’s A Civic Biology advocated for the most barbaric forms of eugenics.

William Jennings Bryan died just five days after the trial’s conclusion. But his last speech is great

….Evolution is not truth; it is merely an hypothesis—it is millions of guesses strung together. It had not been proved in the days of Darwin….It had not been proved in the days of Huxley, and it has not been proved up to today.1
=================

And I myself would add that Evolution is not one thing, I count 5 quite varying takes on it. Seems the unicellular pond thing at the base of the Tree of Life is held now by fewer and fewer folks

Philosopher and Editor-in-Chief of Britannica Mortimer Adler nhas my position
"These
facts establish only one historical probability: that
types of animals which once existed no longer exist,
and that types of animals now existing at one time
did not exist. They do not establish the elaborate
story in which is the myth of evolution; nor do they
establish any of the aetiological guesses about the
way in which species originated or became extinct,
such as naturalselection, adaptation to environment,
struggle for existence, transmission of acquired
characteristics, etc.’

And on the attack side I am with Etienne Gilson
A more accurate title for Darwin’s book, according to Gilson, would be the Origin of Varieties. Darwin’s use of the word “species,” however, is contradictory. “To say that species are fixed,” Gilson writes, “is tautology; to say that they change is to say that they do not exist, Why does Darwin obstinately say that they transform themselves, rather than saying simply that they do not exist?” (pp. 140-144)"

[Malika the Maiz]

It’s like Behar and Ed had a baby. MAGA sure attracts/inspires some weird, borderline lunatics.

[SRG2]

Nope.

1. Adler was not a biologist, Neither was Gilson. Further, Gilson is evidently a scientific ignoramus. Does Old English not exist because it came from proto-Germanic and evolved to become modern English? It's amazing what a philosopher can come up with when he doesn't understand the principles he's arguing against.

2. We know far more now than we did then. There is only one scientifically supported theory for the observed diversity of life that is also consistent with the fossil record and genetics, and that is the theory of evolution.

[minus the clever name]

You just ruined your own point. Old English is not a living thing.

And that is logically a philosophic statement and you just mocked the use of philosophy on this question !!

and , readers!, this clown thinks there is one evolution theory . I count 5 major quite different and even conflicting EvolutionS

So I concur with SRG2's detractors that say he just spouts off. certainly true 🙂

[Don Nico]

Pet peeve:
I keep hear and seeing news media (from CNN to FOX) repeatedly talking about "firings" of Federal employees.
At least, the President of the Federal workers union uses the correct language, "layoffs" and "RIFs." HR departments routinely interpret "firing" as termination for cause (either disciplinary of performance). The and laid-off employee when asked on an employment application, "Have you ever been fired?" would be crazy to say "yes."
The media are doing employees a disservice. They should know better. At least the union rep knows labor practice in the US.

[David Nieporent]

There is no "correct language." They all mean the same thing. "Layoff" or "RIF" are just euphemisms.

[hobie]

Euphemisms for kicking people out of their careers are much more pleasant sounding, I agree.

'Elon, Starship blew the fuck up again!': "rapid unscheduled disassembly"
'Get the fuck out!' (eviction): "sudden housing insecurity"
'That bitch crazy!': "neurodivergent"

[ducksalad]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/fired-federal-workers-performance-language-doge/78886104007/

[John F. Carr]

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts continues to handle the legal fallout from Bruen. In unlicensed gun possession cases (mandatory minimum 18 months) the burden of proof is now on the prosecution to prove lack of a gun license. The court recently ruled that evidence of a past felony conviction was sufficient to prove present lack of license. By law, felons can't get licenses. Today's case concerns a defendant who was eligible for a license but apparently did not have one.

In Commonwealth v. Quentin Smith the prosecution provided a witness familiar with the gun license database who testified that there was no record for Quentin Smith DOB June 23, 2002. The SJC said this testimony was admissible as far as it went. The lack of a record of a gun license is evidence that no such gun license exists.

The problem for the prosecution was, nobody testified that the defendant's date of birth was June 23, 2002. The DA's office asked for a search with that date. As evidence of the defendant's date of birth it was inadmissible hearsay. No witness was available to testify about the booking process or otherwise get the defendant's date of birth into evidence.

Judgment for the defendant.

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2025/07/11/k13670.pdf

[Kazinski]

As promised the Monthly Treasury Statement was released about half an hour ago, so I haven't seen any news analysis about it yet, but what do we need that for when I can provide my own, to Lathrop's amazement.

The first 9 months of the fiscal year are in and it continues the trend of the deficit being lower in every month since February than it was in the previous fiscal year under Biden:
2024 Fiscal Year 2025 Fiscal Year Diff
Oct _ 66,564 _257,450 _ 190,886
Nov _ 314,012 _366,763 _52,751
Dec _ 129,354 _86,732 _-42,622
Jan _ 21,930 _128,640 _106,710
Biden 4 Months +307,725,000,000 increase in the deficit.

Feb _ 296,275 _ 307,017 _10,742
Mar _ 236,556 _160,530 _-76,026
Apr _-209,529 _-258,400 _-48,871
May _347,131 _316,004 _-31,127*
June_70,965 _-27,010 _ -97,975
Trump Months Feb-June 2025 -243,257 decrease in Deficit over FY2024

In fact June actually had a modest surplus verses the 70b deficit June of 2024, so it came in almost 100 billion dollars lower just for June.

In fact there is a real chance that FY 2025 the budget deficit will be lower in nominal dollar terms, as well as the already almost certain as a percent of GDP measure, which is probably the better measure since deficits are not inflation adjusted.

Now everyone can explain to me why my numbers are meaningless, and while Trump is recklessly cutting everything and killing people it wouldn't have affected the budget deficit.

* there was a slight downward revision of the May 2025 deficit to 315,662 to 316,004, but I didn't bother to update my spreadsheet because 500 million dollars is just a rounding error with these numbers since its reported in millions.

[Kazinski]

CNBC is weighing in with some analysis:

"Treasury posts unexpected surplus in June as tariff receipts surge

With government red ink swelling throughout the year, June saw a surplus of just over $27 billion, following a $316 billion deficit in May.
Customs duties totaled about $27 billion for the month, up from $23 billion in May and a 301% gain from June 2024."

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/11/treasury-posts-unexpected-surplus-in-june-as-tariff-receipts-surge.html

[hobie]

Who again is paying them tariffs/customs duties?

[Sarcastr0]

https://reason.com/volokh/2025/07/07/monday-open-thread-113/?comments=true#comment-11117914

Josh R on Monday in a reply to you on this exact subject:

His point: "Unless you can quantify what specific Trump policies led to a deficit reduction in Feb-May 2025 (relative to Feb-May 2024), I would assume all of the numbers for fiscal 2025 are Biden's to own."

His dismantling your whole deal:
"Go to page 36 in your link. There is a line-item called "Agency for International Development." From Oct through Feb, an average of $1.1B was spent per month. In early March, Rubio announced most contracts were canceled. From Mar through May, an average of $1.0B was spent per month ($0.3B total) The reduction is from $1.3B to $0.8B per month ($2.0B total) if we compare Oct-Jan with Feb-May.

Either way, the $54B savings is spread out over multiple years because only a small portion of the contracts are spent in any one month. There is no way there can be anything close to $54B in savings in 3 or 4 months."