That has nothing to do with my comment or the comment I responded to.
If the Republicans take the Senate and White House, they will ditch the filibuster the first day the next Senate leader takes the gavel. Count on it.
The Judiciary Act of 1869 should be amended today, and 4+ justices should be confirmed before January. It's a hell of a lot easier to confirm them now than it will be for Republicans to remove them from the bench next year. Not easy, mind you, but easier.
Looking at polls beyond the straight horse-race numbers between Biden and Trump offers a glimpse of hope for Democrats.
> After last week’s debate disaster, some Democrats are trying to circle the wagons to protect President Biden, noting that Barack Obama lost his first debate as an incumbent president, too.
> But this one doesn’t pass the smell test. Mr. Obama wasn’t 81 years old at the time of his debate debacle. And he came into the debate as a strong favorite in the election, whereas Mr. Biden was behind (with just a 35 percent chance of winning).
> A 35 percent chance is not nothing. But Mr. Biden needed to shake up the race, not just preserve the status quo. Instead, he’s dug himself a deeper hole.
> Looking at polls beyond the straight horse-race numbers between Mr. Biden and Donald Trump — ones that include Democratic Senate candidate races in close swing-state races — suggests something even more troubling about Mr. Biden’s chances, but also offers a glimpse of hope for Democrats.
The problem is party leadership are all moderates, and only a tiny slice of Dem voters are.
Fifty-two percent of Democratic voters are moderates. Only 12% are progressive. You don't help your argument by making statistics up out of thin air.
You're right. He consulted on campaigns for some pretty vile sons-of-bitches, but at least he's a member of the Lincoln project who endorsed Biden in 2020 and voted a straight-D ticket, so in that way he's one of the few who's putting his money where his mouth is.
Who is to blame for that? Voters, the media or Biden himself?
> President Biden’s policy agenda is incredibly popular, much more popular than his opponent’s. But Biden the man? Not so much.
> The question now is whom to blame for the approval gap between the president and his agenda: voters, the media or Biden himself.
> Democrats have long argued that their policies are more popular than those of Republicans. In a recent blind test conducted by YouGov, that was unmistakably true. The polling organization asked Americans what they thought about major policies proposed by Biden and Donald Trump without specifying who proposed them. The idea was to see how the public perceived ideas when stripped of tribal associations.
> Biden’s agenda was the winner, hands down.
> Of the 28 Biden proposals YouGov asked about, 27 were supported by more people than opposed them. Impressively, 24 received support from more than 50 percent of respondents.
The syllabus only says that SCOTUS can't decide the line between official and unofficial acts because it's a court of final review, and they offered a list of guidance to lower courts who they charged with making the distinction. They point to pp 16-32 for more detail on that guidance.
The guidance says:
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Courts cannot consider motive
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An act is not unofficial simply because it violates a law
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Courts cannot consider negotiations with DoJ
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Courts cannot consider negotiations with or influence of the VP if the VP is serving an executive branch function, but may consider influence of the VP if the VP is serving a legislative branch function (i.e. supervising the Senate)
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Engagement with private parties is not an official act
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Public communication of the person serving in the role of President is official, but public communication of the President serving in another role is not
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Prosecutors cannot use a jury to indirectly infringe on immunity unless a judge has already ruled that immunity does not exist
So again, if a President sends a branch of the military to a) assassinate a terrorist or b) recover national security secrets, none of the allowable court considerations above come into play. Nor do they if the assassinated individual is a SCOTUS justice or a political rival. The executive branch and military are the only entities involved, no public communication happens, murder is OK if it's done in an official capacity, and planning records are inadmissible. A prosecutor would have no authority to bring a case, and a court would have no precedent to allow consideration of the charge even if they were brought.
That's a loophole the size of the Hoover Dam.
You ignored a lot of other information in my comment.
But national security is. All they would need is a flimsy justification that the person was stealing state secrets (like Trump) or organizing a terrorist attack, which could include any contact with an armed or paramilitary group that's planning a protest. They could use state influence to coerce that group to take action, and the records of that planning process would be inadmissible per this ruling. It's not hard to come up with superficial reasons that do align with Constitutional obligations.
Edit to add: Hell, just look at the McCarthy era, or the Iraq war. It's not hard at all for a sufficiently shameless group of politicians to gin up a moral panic about national security. They don't even need evidence, they just need motive. We're real fucking close to the government being able to legally assassinate purported communists for subversion.
So then nothing a President ever does can be considered premeditated. This timeline is fucking insane.
I mean, that's what this comes to, right? If he ordered Seal Team Six to storm Mar-A-Lago to recover classified materials with deadly force, then he's operating in order to maintain national security via his authority as Commander in Chief. That would be legal under this ruling, correct?
I get that would lead to an actual civil war, and I get that their argument is important to shield the office from neverending frivolous lawsuits, but in being forced to rule so explicitly on this it seems like they've opened the door to political assassinations. All a President would need is a willing wing of the military and a superficial rationalization and there'd be nothing a court in this country could do about it.
Please, someone tell me I'm missing something.
Imagine how powerful leftist grassroots organizations would be if folks like you would dedicate the same amount of time and energy to voter engagement and activism that you devote to ranting and raving on political message boards. This country would be completely transformed in a matter of months.
Edit: Seriously, 6,800 comments over a 12 month period is almost 19 comments every single day of the year. That's borderline obsession, and it can't possibly be good for your mental health.
You've offered no proof that it is, despite my asking several times. From what I can tell that's just your opinion, which is fine but carries significantly less weight.
So his delegates are not pledged to Harris, they aren't required to support Harris, her name isn't on a single ballot in the country, Biden's name isn't on a single ballot in the country, and no one has officially been nominated. You've offered no proof to the contrary.
Whether you think a change is likely before ballots are finalized was not my question, merely whether or not you had proof that it's impossible.
As you suggest it’s a regulatory problem. There was a recent kerfuffle involving the Ohio ballot, which was solved by putting Biden/Harris on the ballot before they are officially nominated. So any changes made at the Democratic convention will come too late to change the Ohio ballot.
.....nnnnno. That's not what's happening in Ohio. From your article:
President Joe Biden will be formally nominated as the Democratic presidential nominee through a virtual roll call ahead of the party’s official convention in Chicago in August
The Democratic National Convention, where the president would otherwise be formally nominated, comes after Ohio’s ballot deadline of Aug. 7. The party’s convention is scheduled for Aug. 19-22.
I really hate to repeat myself because it seems like you're engaging sincerely and at least trying to support your argument, but there are currently no ballots that have been formalized in the entire country. Biden and Harris have not been put on the ballot before they're nominated, they're being nominated before the ballot access deadline in Ohio. So quite simply, as long as the Democrats nominate any US-born person older than 35, that person's name will appear on the Ohio ballot. You have it quite literally backwards.
partly because her name can’t be taken off the general ballot in multiple states
Again, where is your proof of this? Ballots haven't been finalized anywhere in the country, as Biden isn't even officially the nominee yet. You keep saying these things as if they're set in stone, but from what I can tell they're not. Do you have proof that ballots have been printed before the convention, or that states have closed the registration window for running mates before closing the registration window for candidates?
Note: I agree with the rest of what you said, for the most part.
And sadly, the campaign response to this sentiment is not inspiring a lot of faith in their judgment. This after the NYT Editorial Board called on him to step aside:
Does he think that "LOL! Fuck you!" is the correct response here? The chorus of people in every corner of the country calling for him to step aside is deafening, and all he can muster is a Trump-style clapback?
Furthermore, at this point I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario where asking the incumbent to drop out would be more justified. Like, how bad would it actually have to get for the party to admit, "hey guys, this isn't fixable, time for Plan B"? Incumbency advantage is huge, but it's certainly not all-powerful.
The subtext here is just as important as the main story. The reason the EPA has had to try desperately to stretch their interpretations of statutory authority into gray areas that are vulnerable to judicial review, is that Congress has utterly failed to pass any truly meaningful environmental protection laws for decades. The Clean Water Act, for example, has only been meaningfully amended once since it was passed 50 years ago, and that resulted in a huge (albeit slow) improvement in stormwater management in urbanizing areas. The last time we had a bipartisan interest in curtailing the excesses of industry, the Cuyahoga River was routinely catching fire and places like Love Canal had children playing in actual toxic sludge.
There have been very few times that the EPA has been granted any kind of legal authority since the 1970s, and most of them were intentionally ambiguous. Bush II's Clean Skies Act, for example, was a direct result of the Kyoto fiasco and actually weakened a lot of environmental regulations from the 1970s. In contrast, things like Obama's Clean Power Plan were simply agency-level policies devised to get around the fact that Congress hadn't amended the Clean Air Act since 1990. Since they were policies and not laws, they could be subsequently gutted by future administrations (i.e. Trump) and the courts. Policies and rules have no staying power.
Congress has done fuck all for the environment since Nixon, and that lay at the feet of the Reaganite neoliberal coalition wedded to the free market which had champions in both parties for several decades. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is a fucking awful ruling because it'll take away the few powers the EPA tried to devise in the absence of Congressional action, but it's actually overdue because Congress should have dealt with these problems long before now.
In the end, voters are left with a choice. Start giving enough of a shit to vote for politicians that will pass environmental laws, or live in the regulatory world that stopped evolving before the personal computer was invented. We've been able to eke out a meager existence because things like Superfund and NPDES exist, but as we can see from the Flint and GenX disasters, we've taken clean water, soil, and air for granted for far too long. It's not the job of the EPA to devise creative ways to get around the shitty, intansigent Congress we keep sending to DC. It's our job to send better politicians to DC to help them keep us safe.
But they're not "Biden/Harris delegates". They're Biden delegates, as he was the only name on the ballot. Are you just saying they'll go with her out of deference?
If Biden decided to step down, his delegates are pledged to support Kamala Harris.
I've tried to verify that this is the case and can't find evidence anywhere. Can you point me to a source? I was under the impression that they'd be expected to turn to her, but that they're not required to.
Edit: After lengthy back and forth, it finally became clear that this is simply an opinion. User has absolutely no proof.
I'm sorry, but what universe are you living in? You don't remember this exchange?
Mod has been inactive for a year, and I’d like to take it over and help it generate more traffic.
The six most extreme fire years have occurred since 2017, the study found.
> The frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires around the globe has doubled in the last two decades due to climate change, according to a study released Monday.
> The analysis, published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution,” focused on massive blazes that release vast amounts of energy from the volume of organic matter burned. Researchers pointed to the historic Australia fires of 2019 and 2020 as an example of blazes that were “unprecedented in their scale and intensity.” The six most extreme fire years have occurred since 2017, the study found.
Agricultural insecticides were a key factor, according to a study focused on the Midwest, though researchers emphasized the importance of climate change and habitat loss.
> The latest insight comes from a study on butterflies in the Midwest, published on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE. Its results don’t discount the serious effects of climate change and habitat loss on butterflies and other insects, but they indicate that agricultural insecticides exerted the biggest impact on the size and diversity of butterfly populations in the Midwest during the study period, 1998 to 2014.
I deleted it when it didn't gain enough traction, and I'd like to revive it.
> A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium and give Tehran new options for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal if it chooses to, according to confidential documents and analysis by weapons experts.
> Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed new construction activity inside the Fordow enrichment plant, just days after Tehran formally notified the nuclear watchdog of plans for a substantial upgrade at the underground facility built inside a mountain in north-central Iran.
> Iran also disclosed plans for expanding production at its main enrichment plant near the city of Natanz. Both moves are certain to escalate tensions with Western governments and spur fears that Tehran is moving briskly toward becoming a threshold nuclear power, capable of making nuclear bombs rapidly if its leaders decide to do so.
You have to wonder if American “friends” of Israel have any clue about the nature of Israel’s government.
> Israel is up against a regional superpower, Iran, that has managed to put Israel into a vise grip, using its allies and proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq. Right now, Israel has no military or diplomatic answer. Worse, it faces the prospect of a war on three fronts — Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank — but with a dangerous new twist: Hezbollah in Lebanon, unlike Hamas, is armed with precision missiles that could destroy vast swaths of Israel’s infrastructure, from its airports to its seaports to its university campuses to its military bases to its power plants.
> But Israel is led by a prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has to stay in power to avoid potentially being sent to prison on corruption charges. To do so, he sold his soul to form a government with far-right Jewish extremists who insist that Israel must fight in Gaza until it has killed every last Hamasnik — “total victory” — and who reject any partnership with the Palestinian Authority (which has accepted the Oslo peace accords) in governing a post-Hamas Gaza, because they want Israeli control over all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Gaza.
> And now, Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet has fallen apart over his lack of a plan for ending the war and safely withdrawing from Gaza, and the extremists in his government coalition are eyeing their next moves for power.
> They have done so much damage already, and yet not President Biden, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, nor many in Congress have come to terms with just how radical this government is.
> Indeed, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his fellow G.O.P. mischief makers decided to reward Netanyahu with the high honor of speaking to a joint meeting of Congress on July 24. Pushed into a corner, the top Democrats in the Senate and the House signed on to the invitation, but the unstated goal of this Republican exercise is to divide Democrats and provoke shouted insults from their most progressive representatives that would alienate American Jewish voters and donors and turn them toward Donald Trump.
A federal judge blocked most parts of the law propelled by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that banned gender-affirming care for children, and limited it for adults.
> A federal judge blocked most of a law championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that strictly limited transgender health care for adults and banned it completely for children.
> In his decision, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle rejected a common mantra of the DeSantis administration, saying that “gender identity is real,” and that the state cannot deny transgender individuals treatment.
> “Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate,” Hinkle wrote. “The ban is unconstitutional.”
More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
> More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
Automakers and dealers are starting to offer discounts, low-interest loans and other incentives to lure buyers as the supply of cars grows.
> For much of the last four years, automakers and their dealers had so few cars to sell — and demand was so strong — that they could command high prices. Those days are over, and hefty discounts are starting a comeback.
> During the coronavirus pandemic, auto production was slowed first by factory closings and then by a global shortage of computer chips and other parts that lasted for years.
> With few vehicles in showrooms, automakers and dealers were able to scrap most sales incentives, leaving consumers to pay full price. Some dealers added thousands of dollars to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and people started buying and flipping in-demand cars for a profit.
> But with chip supplies back to healthy levels, auto production has rebounded and dealer inventories are growing. At the same time, higher interest rates have dampened demand for vehicles. As a result, many automakers are scrambling to keep sales rolling.
> Netanyahu reportedly met this month with three foreign policy envoys working with former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump — who could yet win the election despite being convicted Thursday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case.
> Netanyahu, who benefited immensely from Trump’s first term, is arguably hoping for a similar dividend in the event of a second. In the interim, he has openly rejected the Biden administration’s hopes for the Palestinian Authority to take the lead in the postwar administration of Gaza, and he and his allies have shown no interest in even engaging in the White House on reviving pathways for a Palestinian state. And contrary to the Biden administration’s wishes, Netanyahu may soon act on a Republican invitation to address a joint session of Congress.
___
> It’s not just Netanyahu who is waiting for Trump. The evidence is more clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out for a Trump victory, which would probably help the Kremlin consolidate its illegal conquests of Ukrainian territory. My colleagues reported last month that Trump and his inner circle have outlined the terms of a potential settlement between Moscow and Kyiv that they would attempt to usher in if in power. “Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential,” they reported.
> Such a move would fracture the transatlantic coalition built up in support of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion. It would cement the Republican turn away from Europe’s security at a time when Western resolve around Ukraine is flagging. And it would be yet another sign of Trump’s conspicuous affection the strongman in the Kremlin.
> Essentially, today’s 213-member Democratic caucus breaks down into a few categories, the largest of which are traditionally liberal lawmakers who come from cities or inner suburbs and are comfortable with incremental victories in helping the working class. There are dozens of moderates who are more friendly toward business but believe in socially liberal values.
> And there are dozens of far-left liberals, hailing from the progressive caucus or the small-knit “Squad,” who have clashed with leaders for not pushing for a more purely liberal agenda. This group has been on the rise over the past half decade, both at the ballot box and inside the caucus.
> But now, at this stage of the primary calendar, this wing is facing tough political headwinds.
I don’t think Biden fully understands his “old friend” Netanyahu. Israeli defense officials are sending a clear warning.
> If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present any plan for non-Hamas Palestinians to govern Gaza and appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza instead. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8.
===
> “Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the extreme right, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, has generally been seen as motivated out of his need to keep his coalition together and himself out of jail,” Friedman told me. “Now it seems that he has willingly sold his soul to the extreme right. One explanation is that the extreme religious right projects a Messianic image onto him that corresponds with his own sense of having been called to save Israel and the Jewish people. He has a plan for the day after and it’s very clear to anyone who listens: ‘Total victory’ — and eventually the return of Jewish settlement there. Israel is on the way to reoccupying Gaza.”
> If that happens, Israel will become an international pariah and Jewish institutions everywhere will be torn between Jews who will feel the need to defend Israel — right or wrong — and those who, with their kids, will find it indefensible.
We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom — they do what they must to survive. And we need to focus on giving more people the freedom to live up to their potential, to flourish and to be creative. An agenda that would increase the number of children growing up in poverty or parents worrying about how they are going to pay for health care — necessary for the most basic freedom, the freedom to live — is not a freedom agenda.
Champions of the neoliberal order, moreover, too often fail to recognize that one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom — or, as Isaiah Berlin put it, freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Freedom to carry a gun may mean death to those who are gunned down in the mass killings that have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States. Freedom not to be vaccinated or wear masks may mean others lose the freedom to live.
There are trade-offs, and trade-offs are the bread and butter of economics. The climate crisis shows that we have not gone far enough in regulating pollution; giving more freedom to corporations to pollute reduces the freedom of the rest of us to live a healthy life — and in the case of those with asthma, even the freedom to live. Freeing bankers from what they claimed to be excessively burdensome regulations put the rest of us at risk of a downturn potentially as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s when the banking system imploded in 2008.
Mod has been inactive for months, and I'd like to take it over and help it generate more traffic. They have dozens of other communities they gobbled up during the API protests which have also been abandoned, just fyi.
Also forgot to add, I messaged them a few weeks ago about joining the team to revive the community, and haven't received a response.
The conflict between a restaurant and conservative neighbors is tearing at the fabric of The Plains, Va., population 250.
Bob Huggins said he did not draft or review the statement that announced his resignation as West Virginia's men's basketball coach last month.
I can see that there are posts that have been made to my community, but when I go straight to the community they are not visible to me. I have "Show Read Posts" toggled on, my language selection is "Undetermined", the community's language selection is "Undetermined". What am I doing wrong? Is this a bug, or is there a selection I'm missing?
Also, can someone explain what "Warning: If you deselect Undetermined, you will not see most content." means and why it's necessary?
