Nah unfortunately you’re 100% right, it has never actually been equal in practice. But at least we all could delude ourselves into thinking that we were striving towards that principle. It’s all laid bare now, and it’s fucking ugly. The fact that they’ve been actively working towards these very goals with laser focus, for decades, makes it all the worse.
And who gets to decide if a lower court decision stands? You guessed it, the Supreme Court. This was always going to be their ultimate decision.
Exactly, and that’s how this court is so tricky. By not fully defining what an “official act” is, they’re claiming the power to decide later. Because that very issue will inevitably reach them after some batshit district court ruling. So they ultimately get to decide regardless, and this court regularly makes up ahistorical and completely absurd justifications that don’t pass the smell test, so we’re doomed.
Not “may have,” did. They did legalize any action taken by the person holding the office of the presidency. Trump tried to have his VP killed for fucks sake. That actually happened. It’s no longer the case that everyone in America is equal under the law. The president is now legally allowed to do anything that would get the rest of us thrown in jail. This society isn’t even pretending to be equal anymore. We’re finished.
I’m so fucking tired, and I feel like that was one of the main points of this. Dems are too exhausted and afraid of taking big actions to do anything about this, so like I said, we’re finished.
Yup, this immunity decision and their ruling overturning Chevron deference will fundamentally change how our government functions. If expert agencies are no longer able to rely on their expertise and presidents are officially above the law, then our democracy is over. Whoever holds the office of the presidency is now a de facto king (in the words of Justice Sotomayor). The comparison to the Enabling Act is super useful for people who care at all about history or democracy.
Yeah I hear you, but that door they left open is exactly why it doesn’t matter. By not defining official acts, they essentially gave themselves the authority to make that determination later, which means anything done as president can be considered official, as long as they say so. This was another power grab for them and any republicans who want to use it, but you can be sure the rules would be different for democrats.
In her dissent, Sotomayor made it pretty clear that that doesn’t matter.
“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote. “Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
“In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” the justice added.
It’s a little known fact that Justice Gorsuch’s mother was the EPA Administrator under Reagan, and she resigned after an abysmal record of mismanagement.
He’s clearly got some mommy issues.
I’m a very engaged voter, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be watching this debate. I know more than I need to about both candidates, so the only reason I’d watch is for entertainment value and to see who fucks up the most. That’s not a valuable use of my time, nor is it a good reason for having a debate.
I don’t have much sympathy for undecided voters at this point. If you plan to vote for Trump, for any reason, then I don’t respect you. This debate won’t change that.
It feels right to me. People are being injured, maimed, permanently disabled, and killed. All by a particular piece of readily available technology. When we can point to the single thing that causes all those individual health emergencies, and it’s consistently happening across the country on a daily basis to many many people, in public spaces that are otherwise quite safe, that’s most definitely a public health crisis.
Keep in mind, this enhanced program lasted only six months (if I’m doing my math correctly) and resulted in these mental health improvements, on top of all the other benefits of not having a country full of starving children. All it took was six months. Imagine what a properly compassionate social safety net would do for everyone?
The republicans who prevented the program from being extended have once again shown a crass lack of compassion and empathy. They should be ashamed of themselves, though of course they won’t be.
Think of the children! Oh wait, this was their opportunity and they chose to be unsympathetic assholes.
….Chuckles nervously……
True that.
The Onion was recently bought, and the new CEO is a well-regarded former disinformation reporter. Literally a journalist who reported on fake news, is now running the world’s preeminent fake newspaper. Only the Onion could make that work. There have been some great interviews with the new CEO, he seems to really give a shit about the company.
To run Global Tetrahedron as CEO, Lawson hired Ben Collins, formerly senior reporter at NBC News covering “disinformation, extremism and the internet.”
“My friends and I now own and run The Onion. I’ll be the CEO,” Collins posted on X. “We’re keeping the entire staff, bringing back The Onion News Network, and sharing the wealth with staff. Basically, we’re going to let them do whatever they want. Get excited.”
Well said. Fat lot of good the “Never again” mantra did…
Wow, these extremists are getting really good at talking out of both sides of their mouths.
Catholics and evangelicals appear to be increasingly “putting aside theological differences in order to bond together so that they can push back against the creeping, secular humanism that is happening in America.”
And yet, in one of the recent Rolling Stone pieces about Alito, he was caught on tape essentially saying seculars and religious nuts can’t live in peace, one side has to win out.
Justice Samuel Alito spoke candidly about the ideological battle between the left and the right — discussing the difficulty of living “peacefully” with ideological opponents in the face of “fundamental” differences that “can’t be compromised.” He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to “return our country to a place of godliness.”
So it’s okay for different sects of Christians who disagree on a lot to band together to fight against secularism, but god forbid the same grace is extended to seculars to live in peace with Christian nuts (puns intended).
As a Jewish atheist, I’m flabbergasted. I’m clearly not welcome here according to any of these assholes.
I mean…
If the government can take away the right to basic reproductive healthcare for half the population, there’s no reason they couldn’t do it for the other half. They likely wouldn’t, because the right wingers obviously believe men deserve more rights than women, but let’s not underestimate the government’s capacity for making terrible policy in furtherance of some fantastical pseudo-purity culture that only exists in their minds.
Oh, I see your edit now. You meant they can’t take it away after they’ve already had one. True that.
I agree her behavior is abhorrent and she needs to feel some consequences, and I totally understand your sentiment, but violence isn’t going to help, nor will violent language. That’s what they do. We need to stay above reproach when it comes to threatening political violence. Just about anything short of violence is okay in my book. Civil disobedience? Absolutely. Sustained protest? Yes please. Harm to property? All good with me. But threats of personal violence need to stay off limits.
Dems need to grow spines and be more willing to fight dirty politically. They need to take some pages from the right wing book, but leave all the chapters about violence unread.
I don’t mean this to antagonize you, I totally get what you’re feeling, but I’m just really worried about this place and where we’re headed.
You’re totally right about the SEO industry. My comment wasn’t meant as an endorsement of SEO, I agree it’s one of the internet’s most fundamental problems. I’m just so frustrated by how consistently google lies about these things. Their first impulse, in so many different situations, is to immediately tell a bald-faced lie, then double down on the lie, and then when the truth comes out, they somehow always seem to get a pass. That’s what’s despicable to me.
But it did expose all the lies google has been telling about SEO and how it works with their algorithm. Basically all the times google was asked “so are you sure you don’t do x, y, or z to prioritize certain sites?” They said no, emphatically, despite some very clever folks who had a pretty good idea of how things were working based on independent tests and experiments on SEO. So google was lying all along, while trying to convince the experts that what they were seeing wasn’t real. Pretty despicable if you ask me.
There are some good points in this, and the ending is particularly strong, but he shuts down some critical arguments about the ability of government to function, that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Instead he says the problem is that this stops Congress from functioning. I strongly disagree. Sure, Congress funds the agencies and sets up the broad regulatory framework, but it is almost entirely the executive agencies and their experts who have been entrusted with the latitude to interpret Congress’ often vague and imprecise goals, using science and deep institutional expertise. The end of Chevron deference will go down as the structural change to government that allows it to be fully corrupted and ineffective. When it’s no longer the experts and scientists who get to decide how to deal with incredibly complicated issues, issues that are well beyond the understanding of a few zealots in robes, we no longer have a government based on anything but the whims of those zealots.