• 9 Posts
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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • Look, Judge Cannon says you raise some good points too. We’ll need some time for written briefs from each side. Due three months from now. Then we’ll need time for written responses, at least another month. We’ll schedule a few days of hearings to really hash through those details. And then she promises to think about it real hard, imply she’ll dismiss the case immediately once the trial begins, but make no actual official ruling yet, that would be premature. Then we have this backlog of other issues to work through of course even though we never actually decided anything yet on this issue. What, you suggest we address these issues in parellel? How dare you speak to a judge in this way, you are being inappropriate!! These issues that have been ruled on many times in the past by other courts as a routine matter are totally novel and demand years of study before a trial can begin!

    Etc etc etc

    If he doesn’t win the election and just fire half the justice department next January, she may just push the trial date so far Trump dies of natural causes before it even happens.


  • I thought he was a little bit of a piece of shit. I was surprised to find out he’s a facist who doesn’t believe in the rule of law though. Not surprised at all about Alito and Thomas though. Or Thomas making a concurrence to explicitly try and help give Trump even more ammo. I guess both literally and figuratively if he gets back in office.


  • Exactly, that’s what’s so scary about this. The courts now explicitly can’t consider things like motive to determine any of this. Just the action in a general sense. And since of course restricting the ability of a president to speak publicly to supporters in the general sense could infringe on the power of the executive, immune.

    And even if by some miracle some act was declared unofficial, he could either pardon the person or himself (automatically an official act), or fire the prosecutors bringing the case (automatically an official act). Or in the extreme case, order an assassination (automatically official act). Those core powers in article 2 mean even when the president uses some power not described in article 2, even when a court overcomes the extremely high hurdle placed to declare something not an official act and without immunity, it will still all be for naught. There’s effectively no limits.

    Trump has already said he wants to pardon the January 6rh rioters/coup participants. Immune.


  • Weird cause I’ve got the FTC act right here. Says this:

    (a) Declaration of unlawfulness; power to prohibit unfair practices; inapplicability to foreign trade (1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.

    And then later on it has this whole entire section where it lays out the process for how the FTC is supposed to make rules in regards to unfair or deceptive practices

    Except as provided in subsection (h) of this section, the Commission may prescribe– (A) interpretive rules and general statements of policy with respect to unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title), and (B) rules which define with specificity acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title)

    And more sections about how they can enforce those rules on individual rule breakers.

    Sure sounds like congress was trying to give the FTC the authority to make rules about unfair competition. Both general rules and with “specificity” apparently. Specifically here, non compete agreements have been declared an unfair practice and they followed all rule making procedures as laid out in the law.

    https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/statutes/federal-trade-commission-act/ftc_act_incorporatingus_safe_web_act.pdf



  • If anything it seems like the media hasn’t grasped just how bad this is. Too focused on plastering the front page every day with more anonymous source opinions on if Biden is going to stay in the race or not. The whole official vs unofficial acts thing just has tricked people to believing there’s some discretion or something. There’s not. If it’s a power listed in the constitution, like the military or pardons, the president can legally do whatever they want with that power for any reason. And the unofficial vs official acts determination explicitly doesn’t allow consideration of motives or results. So talking to justice department employees is official? Alright, then talking with justice department employees to coordinate a bribe or a coup means immunity. As long as the president is using functions of government to commit crimes basically, they’re golden.



  • Okay I’m not saying she’s the best choice, wouldn’t be my preferred choice, but also this is a poll run by the Daily Mail. I can’t even find any pollster reputation ratings for them. I also can’t find any of their methodologies published online, which is also sketchy. And knowing what we all do about the Daily Mail anyways, this should all be taken with a massive truckload of salt.

    Edit: Ah found it, it was run by J.L partners, ranked 145 on five thirty eight pollster rankings for reliability (1.6/3 stars for reliability with a transparency score of 4.2/10). And again, without the methodology being published who knows. The pollster themself, James Johnson, is also a former senior advisor to Theresa May and the UK conservative party.




  • It’s mostly been conservatives that have a problem with this, not progressives for the most part. I mean sure some progressives are against but they’re by far the minority.

    I know progressives and democrats, and conservatives and Republicans, aren’t the same thing, but you get the picture. I think most on the left would prefer to stand up to authoritian genocidal governments, whereas many conservatives crazily see a lot they like in Russian government and want the US to embrace them.




  • As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.

    *and even the number of democrats minus 50 don’t want to. So even one (plus Harris helping) in the first two years of the term or even two (if Harris helps again) in the second two years of the past term. It’s not like all democrats are unified about the filibuster, most voted to bypass it. You need either more than 60 dems total, or more than 50 dems that support bypassing the filibuster.

    Or you know, even a single republican that doesn’t want to be a facist helping to transition the country to authoritarian rule. But that seems less likely unfortunately.




  • Apparently these judges can’t read:

    https://natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-holds-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-are-protected-title-vii

    Even by their own facist supreme court, discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity inherently involves discrimination on the basis of sex (ie, if someone assigned woman at birth can wear a dress but someone assigned man at birth can’t, if an assigned woman can kiss a man but an assigned man can’t, these are both discrimination on the basis of sex). So any law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex will logically have to apply to gender indentity and sexual orientation as well. While the ruling was about title vii, there’s no reason the same logic wouldn’t apply to title ix as well. Title ix can also protect sexual orientation and gender, because there’s no way to discrimate on that basis without discriminating on the basis of sex at the same time.

    It’s totally ridiculous to try and say otherwise. Like take a cis woman being fired from her job because her boss hates women: “No I didn’t discriminate against this person because they were assigned woman at birth, I did so because they identify as a woman.” “oh well that’s alright then I guess”/s

    Opponents who try to seperate sex from sexual orientation and gender indentity definitions when this is logically impossible, will essentially neuter the power the law has to help anyone, whether cis or trans, straight or gay, from discrimination. But that could be the object of some of their intentions as well I suppose.

    Let’s hope the supreme court keeps the same reasoning as their previous ruling when this is inevitably appealed up.