ignirtoq

He and his allies have made the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan a central focus of their criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of national security and foreign policy.

What I consistently don’t see brought up is the fact that the “chaotic withdrawal” was directly set up by Trump. He signed the agreement with Afghanistan that put a fixed date on the withdrawal squarely in the next President’s term. This gave enemies a clear timetable of US actions beforehand, which gave them a significant advantage. So Biden was left with the choice of either fulfilling the US promise, despite it being in every way a bad construct, and executing an extremely difficult withdrawal, or harming the US image on the global stage by reneging on an already agreed upon deal.

I would go so far as to say this, like the expiration of the middle class portion of the Trump tax cuts, was specifically designed to make the next administration, which was always very likely to be Democrat, look bad regardless of the cost or collateral damage.

My mistake, I thought by “qualified immunity” the original comment meant the immunity to any prosecution they just gave to Presidents. I wasn’t thinking about qualified immunity to law enforcement.

Edit: I was thinking about the wrong “immunity” in this comment (the recently granted Presidential immunity to prosecution, not immunity to prosecution for law enforcement officers). I’ll leave the comment for context, but it’s not what the original commenter was talking about.

Actually it will be very easy for the Supreme Court to give Trump a win and keep qualified immunity. If Biden didn’t directly order the raid on Mar-a-lago, then the immunity they granted doesn’t apply.

Remember, these rulings don’t need logical consistency because they are bad faith justifications for any actions taken by their team. So when a Republican is in office they can extend the immunity to basically the whole Executive branch, but when a Democrat is in the White House that can shrink to just the President’s actions. And even there only those that are “official acts,” which only the Supreme Court gets to decide, so they can shrink it to almost nothing.

I don’t recommend making significant changes to activity levels at the same time as making diet changes. Weight loss comes from changing what you eat. Exercise is absolutely necessary for a healthy lifestyle, but it is not the major factor in weight loss. And increasing exercise behaviors can destabilize eating habits, making it harder to stick to any good changes you do make with either diet or exercise.

Yes, I got a paywall.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/JAUUA

Your comment is technically accurate, but leaves out context and relevant information, which makes it misleading. My comment is accurate as well.

The $80 billion is spread over 10 years, and Republicans have already reduced that by $20 billion. Also, that’s the total increase in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, whereas this $1 billion recovered is only one success story of many. Please don’t make such misleading statements.

Corningphobia?

He’s not asking for the citation for the quote. He’s asking for the citation of the veracity of the assertion. We know Adam Schiff said the thing. What matters is the justification for saying the thing.

With no data to justify it (and plenty available showing it’s not true), this is just further evidence Democratic leadership is stuck in the mindset of political battles from 30 years ago. If Trump were running in the political reality of the 90s with his current background and record, even current Biden would mop the floor with him. But we’re not in the age of the party of Gingrich. This is the party of Trump, and facts and record don’t matter to Trump voters and Republicans in general. Welcome to 21st century American politics, Mr. Schiff.

At least it’s before the election that they’re getting the uptake. Might actually be in time to help something for once.

Idk overall more jury trials sounds better than judges just getting to decide.

I don’t have enough information on the topic to form an opinion about whether trial by jury for these cases is better overall for society. But I do know this is not the right way to make this change. This was a case between a hedge fund manager and the SEC, and now as a result OSHA can no longer enforce anything? And with no prior warning for anyone to make any preparations. How could that possibly be the right way to make this change?

How so? I’m arguing for SCOTUS not to take a wrecking ball to our government by suddenly making unlawful procedures that have been relied on for so long they are assumed in laws passed by Congress decades ago. Should alleged violations of those laws be tried in front of a jury instead of this other mechanism? Maybe, but how about we make that change in a way that doesn’t suddenly render those laws de facto unenforceable with no warning?

Yes, I agree with that reading of history, but just because things have been a certain way, doesn’t mean they have to be that way. I concur that the historical precedent for the SCOTUS is to stand in the way of progress, or often to cause regression, but that doesn’t mean we have to quietly accept it. Especially if and when there have been historical departures from that trend that demonstrate things can work differently, and work well.

(Not trying to be confrontational, just trying to prevent a nihilistic reading of your comment.)

I had heard about this case basically removing a powerful tool for the SEC and effectively requiring them to spend way more money trying cases in front of a jury, but I didn’t know there were so many other agencies that aren’t even allowed to bring jury trial cases and are only allowed to bring the type of case that the SCOTUS basically just eliminated. More and more I’m having trouble not seeing the actions of the SCOTUS majority as a deliberate attack on the US government itself rather than “correcting” earlier rulings that have been precedent for decades.

Roberts turned to history in his opinion. “Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” he wrote.

Some courts have gone too far, Roberts wrote, in applying Bruen and other gun rights cases. “These precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber,” he wrote.

In dissent, Thomas wrote, the law “strips an individual of his ability to possess firearms and ammunition without any due process.”

The government “failed to produce any evidence” that the law is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, he wrote.

“Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue,” Thomas wrote.

Am I taking crazy pills? Why is some arbitrary reading of history the sole mechanism by which these opinions are being made? What happened to the textual literalism these justices claimed to follow? Doesn’t that require reading the words in the Constitution and making judgements from that?

Why is the arbitrary choice of legislative implementation of the state governments of the 1800s determining what laws states are allowed to have in the 2000s? If they passed a law that was unconstitutional, but no one challenged it for 200 years, then it’s suddenly not only constitutional, but now a metric against which new laws can be judged to determine if they are constitutional? How is that anything but laws “trapped in amber”?

Did I miss the slow court transition to this singular decision-making process? Or was this a sudden shift that I just missed the headlines? I knew they used suspicious historical reasoning in Dobbs to throw out abortion rights, but do they do that for every case now?

I was expecting some kind of analysis showing that otherwise normal people who adopted GOP politics simultaneously transitioned to showing sociopathic behavior, like in a measurable, scientific way. Instead the author gives a definition of sociopathy (“acting without feelings of guilt, remorse, or shame coupled with a tendency to reject the concept of responsibility”) and proceeds to label the policy positions and enacted laws of the GOP as sociopathic.

Applying neuroscience terms developed for individual people to actions of groups does not seem scientific at all. Isn’t that the field of sociology? I’m not really sure how such a labeling helps the conversation, especially from a neuroscientist. I don’t disagree with the positions, but this isn’t neuroscience, so I can’t really take this author as any sort of authority or expert on this; I feel like this article has the same level of expertise as a Lemmy comment (like mine).

https://archive.ph/flBZ1

When his form was released to the public, Justice Thomas included an unusual addendum, a statement defending his acceptance of gifts from Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a donor to conservative causes. He had “inadvertently omitted” information on earlier forms, the statement said, which also sought to justify his decision to fly on private jets. He stated that he had been advised to avoid commercial travel after the leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

So saying he has “acknowledged” them is being very generous. He’s still making excuses and not taking responsibility for breaking the rules.

Including the advise about avoiding commercial travel after the Dobbs draft leaked is a non sequitur I’m having a really hard time not interpreting as a dog whistle to a political audience. Sure, avoid commercial travel, but include the gift of travel in your documentation. Why bring up Dobbs except to hint that he believes he’s being persecuted for doing his job, despite the fact that the binding, precedent-setting opinion has no legal basis at all. That’s not my conclusion, because my personal conclusion would be garbage since I’m not an expert. That’s the conclusion of countless legal experts and the dissenting justices.

But sure, you were so rattled by this unprecedented persecution of a sitting justice that you “inadvertently” omitted huge gifts from conflicts of interest in your disclosure forms. You still did it, so take responsibility.

But this is Trump. Even Merchan has allowed Trump to play by a completely different set of rules (violating the gag order 10 times and still not being thrown in jail, as an example). He has also been openly hesitant about the idea of throwing Trump in jail.

During the trial. The argument I have seen for why Trump has gotten away with playing by completely different rules is that if the judge or prosecution makes absolutely any wrong step in procedure, the kind of lawyers Trump hires will jump on that and can push for all sorts of ways to shut down the case on procedural grounds (mistrial? Forgive me I’m not an expert), and based on the nature of this case, that would shut it down for good. But the trial is now over, so that argument should no longer apply. The options on the table for Trump’s lawyers interfering with the sentencing are significantly reduced compared to trial, so the judge should be able to go for a really harsh sentencing, particularly for the reasons in this article. We’ll see if the procedural mistrial argument really was the explanation, or just another rationalization of the 2-tiered justice system.