Text: “Evidence-based policymaking” at the scale of responding to social media is simply the fantasy of policy without politics — in the cybernetic terminology of Dan Davies’ fantastic recent book about Stafford Beer, it is an “accountability sink.” Technocratic politicians love it: they don’t have to be leaders, merely followers of the evidence—if things turn out poorly, well, that’s just how science works, it never claims to be perfect, merely self-correcting. It certainly wasn’t my fault—what do you want me to do, ignore the evidence?
"Notice, by the way, how the Republicans claim Joe Biden is a tyrant and a dictator, yet they explicitly grant him dictatorial powers, confident that he will not use them!" @adamkotsko https://itself.blog/2024/07/02/what-do-they-think-is-going-to-happen/
"cynicism is the defense mechanism of the irresponsible, and sincerity is the only way to counter such poisons." @profmusgrave https://musgrave.substack.com/p/teaching-politics-during-hard-times
@csaltos that was just one example one day. (some time ago!) i like apple products too, but i think they are remarkably terrible about some things.
"What makes Chief Justice John Roberts, or other participants in the extension of Trumpian power, think they are exempt from the end of the constitutional order as we have known it?" @profmusgrave https://musgrave.substack.com/p/youre-not-exempt-from-the-end
Did the Supreme Court also implicitly overturn the War Powers Act? Posse Comitatus?
i can't believe i largely agree with Bret Stephens. i think that's a first. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/opinion/israel-netanyahu.html
for a minute there i worried whether we could still sit on the more Athenian side of the big "democracy vs autocracy" global geopolitical struggle.
but then i remembered where Saudi Arabia sits, so it's probably cool if we just hang with them.
"Essentially, the Court in Trump v. United States is declaring the Constitution itself unconstitutional. Instead of properly starting with the Constitution’s text and structure, the Court has ended up repealing them." #AkhilReedAmar https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/trump-v-united-states-opinion-chief-roberts/678877/
We need — fast! — a Netscape series dramatizing plausible hypotheticals under Trump vs the United States.
From Watergate II — no problem! the President just pardons the burglars — to firing the general who won't shoot protesters then pardoning the general who does, to suspending elections then firing and jailing any official who dissents or resists.
It can and should emphasize legal realism. A pardon is a conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.
"It's odd that a supposedly conservative court has been so eager to make so many radical changes to settled law, no?" #KevinDrum https://jabberwocking.com/precedent-we-dont-need-no-stinkin-precedent/
Sometimes when Congressional candidates become unable to contest an election, the spouse has subbed in. (See e.g. Lisa Murkowski, who is still in the US Senate.)
Is Jill Biden a potential candidate?
(I'm not trying to comment one way or another on the advisability or perhaps absurdity of that.)
how might missiles raining over Tel Aviv and Beirut affect the election?
i find it hard not to curl up into a fetal position right now.
it's no good to look forward to saying "i told you so" when we're dead.
"A ringing example of an establishment conspiracy theory, that Saddam Hussein was somehow in cahoots with Al Queda, helped to touch off a regional conflagration." @maxbsawicky https://sawicky.substack.com/p/the-united-states-of-paranoia
People really are not cognizing just how bad this is, once you get past the headlines.
Assertion of some narrow immunity that might have somewhat helped Donald Trump in his current legal travails would be one thing.
This is a profound short-circuit of any form of executive accountability. I am simply terrified, at a very personal level.
screenshotted quote from #QuinHillyer https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3066424/supreme-court-grants-trump-a-malignant-degree-of-immunity/
Text: Barrett, in the middle, wrote the single most concisely cogent line of all: “Properly conceived, the president’s constitutional protection for prosecution is narrow.” And in the part of her opinion that dissents from the main holding, she absolutely blasted Roberts’s truly bizarre, entirely untextual conclusion that even if a president is being tried for conduct outside the very “outer” bounds of presidential authority, prosecutors can’t discuss conduct for which he is immune as part of the evidence in their case. If the president is being charged with bribery, for example, then, of course, the jury should be told what “official act” it was for which the bribe was paid. “To make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo,” she wrote, “the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quo.” (ltalics are Barrett’s.) Under Roberts’s astonishingly grandiose assertion of presidential immunity, a jury would be denied that basic information.
@kentwillard they are, if they continually elect incumbents. turn-taking is non-negotiable if you want any governance system that is not the mere oppression of some factions by others. the US two-term limit is fantastic, or at least it was while Presidents still had to respect it.
@Hyolobrika they've made the President immune from prosecution for any and everything that might colorably be described as an "official act". so, if a President were to unilaterally declare that, due to say a pandemic, any Federal election must be delayed, and orders enforcement of that edict, even if courts agree it would be illegal, he could not be prosecuted, while President, or after (if there is any after). an official act can be illegal still, but the President can't be prosecuted.
@realcaseyrollins our government is doing fine. our Supreme Court has torn away the guard rails that help insist it will continue to do so.
