All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[CSTowle]

Justice Thomas wants the Supreme Court to revisit libel protections to make it easier for public figures to sue media organizations

https://news.yahoo.com/justice-thoma...142908011.html

Two-fer, Trump's going to love this and silencing the media is one of the steps on the road to authoritarianism. When the press has already been described as an "enemy of the people" there likely won't be a large pushback when it happens.

I notice the posters who usually tell me that Trump is untouchable have been awfully quiet.

You didn't ask. Now that you have, let me see him in cuffs or being barred from running again and I'll be satisfied. Until then, how'd those two impeachments work out? How'd that NYC DA case work out? How'd a thousand fraud suits and countersuits and porn star payouts and salacious allegations/etc./etc./etc.

The Mayor of NYC agrees with me, btw.

Sure, he's a politician and that plays well. Certainly distracts from the job he's doing, so bonus. And of course Rudy's exaggerating, it's what he does. It's still putting hands on a public person because you disagree with them, and it's still wrong. I know people tend to be blind or apologetic to bad behavior coming from "their team", but they shouldn't if they want better from them.

[Zauriel]

Bullshit! Here is where she stood on abortion. What you said was a lie. If you think, had she been elected, she would not have appointed Justices that would uphold Roe, you are delusional.

https://ballotpedia.org/Hillary_Clin..._2016/Abortion

Here is what she said in 2015;

Hillary Clinton's quotes: https://www.ontheissues.org/Hillary_Clinton.htm

"Abortion is a sad, tragic choice to many women." (May 2007)

Does this sound pro-choice to you?


"Make abortion rare by supporting adoption & foster care." (Apr 2008)

"Respect Roe v. Wade, but make adoptions easier too." (Nov 2006)

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't it sound like Hillary favors adoptions instead of abortions? Does that mean she thinks women's choice is irrelevant? Was she saying that women should not abort babies but give them for adoption?

[Jack Dracula]

Hillary Clinton's quotes: https://www.ontheissues.org/Hillary_Clinton.htm

"Abortion is a sad, tragic choice to many women." (May 2007)

Does this sound pro-choice to you?


"Make abortion rare by supporting adoption & foster care." (Apr 2008)

"Respect Roe v. Wade, but make adoptions easier too." (Nov 2006)

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't it sound like Hillary favors adoptions instead of abortions? Does that mean she thinks women's choice is irrelevant? Was she saying that women should not abort babies but give them for adoption?

You're reaching.
Abortion really is a sad choice. Do you believe there are many women overjoyed they get to have an abortion?

It is possible for someone to support women's freedom to choose without being happy abortions are taking place.

[Kirby101]

You obviously did not read what her position always was and have taken those cherry picked quotes completely out of context.
If you actually read that link on her position, she has always supported Roe and said so many, many times.
You are either misreading everything there or being intentionally untruthful.

And not voting for Hillary gave us this Supreme Court.

[Mister Mets]

https://twitter.com/GreenPartyUS/sta...Ch7bWUq-MqAAAA

Green Party US tweets:

In 1974, then-Senator Joe Biden stated in regards to #RoeVsWade, "I don't like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far." He went on to say, "I don't think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body."

"In 1982, Senator Biden was 1 of only 2 Democratic lawmakers who supported a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade and pass their own laws on abortion. 9 years later, Biden was largely to blame for the confirmation of anti-abortion Justice Clarence Thomas."


How the Democrats are culpable in the erosion of abortion rights

Can you explain your views about the constitutionality of abortion?

[Tendrin]

After the Supreme Court last week ended the constitutional right to an abortion, attention turned to the states that forbid the procedure outright — and the states that might soon do so.

In KANSAS, the state’s Supreme Court decided in 2019 that abortion was protected by the state’s constitution. So, post-Roe, Republican state legislators are trying to change the state constitution. There’s a statewide vote to amend it on Aug. 2. If the amendment is approved by voters, the state’s legislature would have a clear path to criminalize abortion rights out of existence.

Naturally, pro-choice activists in the state are organizing to oppose the amendment. But here’s where it gets complicated: Last year, Republican legislators passed HB 2183 over Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D) veto. The law makes it a crime to impersonate an election official — or simply to engage in conduct “that would cause another person to believe a person engaging in such conduct is an election official.”

As we reported in April, the law moved the Kansas League of Women Voters to pause its in-person voter registration efforts, for fear volunteers could face criminal charges.

Almost like it's doing what it was designed to do.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/newsle...p-election-law

[CaptainEurope]

Actually, today showed Trump planned an armed attack on the Capitol. That he knew for days that there crowd would be dangerous, and then was told the mob were armed with assault weapons and body armor, yet still sent them to the Capitol. That he was planning to go inside the Capitol with an armed mob. That is clearly criminal. It's easily indictable. But whether the DOJ acts or not...I am not optimistic.

There is now speculation that Garland didn't go after Meadows for contempt of the committee because there is a siditious conspiracy case against him already.

[CaptainEurope]

This seems prety clear cut man, they've taken an entire racial population which makes up a third of the state and congregates them in such a way that they represent just once six of the districts in the states.


In other troubling news was anyone else as shocked as I was that Flyn took the fifth when asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power? How is that not a convictable act of sedition?

Once you plead the 5th, you need to do so with all questions or you wave the right.

[CaptainEurope]

Democrats gerrymander as well.

They say so under oath.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...umn/467349002/

I think we're in agreement that gerrymandering is bad, and politicians should not determine their constituents. But how should redistricting be done? When new districts are formed, what standards should we use to determine that the independent body selected for the job did it correctly?

It’s harder for Democrats to gerrymander effectively

Largely due to segregation, partisan map drawing is a game Democrats can’t win.

[CaptainEurope]

Lauren Boebert says she is ‘tired’ of separation between church and state: ‘The church is supposed to direct the government’

This dangerous extremist just won her primary, too.

[Tendrin]

No one says Democrats *don't* try to maximize their maps under the current rules, of course. Opponents love to try to paint that as a moral failing on the part of the Democrats, an example of them surrendering to political pragmatism and just wanting 'more dems' instead of *really* caring about gerrymandering. In reality, conservatives often advance this argument in bad faith, knowing that their party would benefit were the Democrats to 'live up to their principles' on the matter and ban it in states they control while it remains unchanged in states Republicans do, or even simply for them to attempt be fair, all the while Republicans take extreme gerrymanders in states they control which creates deeply unrepresentative legislative bodies, as it does in Wisconsin.

Gerrymandering needs to be abolished, and its abolition is gonna have to come from the federal government. I think personally congressional maps ought to reflect people rather than land, but I'm just some silly guy who wants to live in a properly representative country.

(Also, uncap the house.)

[numberthirty]

Once you plead the 5th, you need to do so with all questions or you wave the right.

I believe that will depend on if you are on the stand as a "Witness..." or a "Defendant..."

Defendant?

I think that you do waive the right.

Witness?

While I am not one hundred percent sure, I believe that witnesses can selectively invoke said right.

[numberthirty]

(Also... That would be in a regular "Judicial..." setting. No telling if that translates "Apples..."/"Apples..." to this setting.)

[CaptainEurope]

I believe that will depend on if you are on the stand as a "Witness..." or a "Defendant..."

Defendant?

I think that you do waive the right.

Witness?

While I am not one hundred percent sure, I believe that witnesses can selectively invoke said right.

Not sure how reliable the source is that I provided in the Jan 6 thread, but they clearly disagree with you.

[Tendrin]

I dunno, guys, but Gorsuch believing nakedly false descriptions of events to advance a Christianist agenda seems bad.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ne...506a7b70b91dca

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed Gorsuch’s refusal to follow both reality and precedent in a bonus episode of Amicus available to Slate Plus subscribers. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: Mark, you recently told me that Kennedy v. Bremerton was going to be the sleeper case that you were watching because it wasn’t just a referendum on doctrine. It was a referendum on truth. The case just came out, and the court held 6–3 that Coach Joseph Kennedy had his First Amendment rights to religious liberty and free speech violated by a school policy that did not allow him to pray with masses of students following football games. This feels like a singular moment because this entire case—and Justice Sonia Sotomayor used photos in her dissent to make this point—is a referendum on truth.

Mark Joseph Stern: There were two narratives in this case. One is that Coach Kennedy was simply engaged in quiet, private prayer at the 50-yard line and students voluntarily joined him. The other is that Coach Kennedy created a spectacle by engaging in loud prayer circles, to which he invited not only the members of his own team but also opposing teammates and individuals who attend the school. And the Supreme Court adopted this first narrative, even though—as the pictures in Sotomayor’s dissent illustrate—it is flatly false. This was not quiet, silent prayer. This was coercive, loud prayer during the course of school duties by a school official who was hired in part to serve as a leader and role model for students. He conveyed the reality that if you did not join his Christian prayer circle, you were not a full and true teammate, and you might not even deserve to be playing on that team.

Dahlia: And just to go through the facts for a minute, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court accepts the narrative that Kennedy was fired. Which he wasn’t—he was put on paid administrative leave. And Gorsuch accepts the narrative that this was “private” and “quiet,” even though there were TV cameras and elected officials and people storming the field and knocking over the tuba players to join.

It’s as if Gorsuch is writing some sort of medieval tract about a holy saint on a journey through the desert who’s just trying to pray, and this dumb school district keeps throwing obstacles in his way that it calls “accommodations.” It’s such a strange framing of the facts.

Mark: Gorsuch evinces an almost divine certainty, as though he is a holy man traveling the countryside of a medieval land back in the 13th century, receiving these visions from a deity that must supersede any puny, mortal illusions of reality. As he so often does, Gorsuch reflects an almost pathological certainty in his own rightness, an inability to believe that something he perceives to be true might not be true. He bulldozes over the facts of this case and blows past photographic evidence.

This is a horrifying approach to judging. It ratifies the Supreme Court’s stature as a group of gods on Mount Olympus who speak the truth because anything they say must be the truth. And in Kennedy v. Bremerton, we get this pathology in its purest form. The Supreme court can just manipulate the facts to craft a narrative—a “siren song of a deceitful narrative,” as a lower court judge put it—to get where they want to go when rewriting the Constitution.