SCOTUS 2023: Rice pilaf from Louisiana...is that like an ISIS video?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > SCOTUS 2023: Rice pilaf from Louisiana...is that like an ISIS video?

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Didn't everyone just get done arguing that sort of connection was NOT important when it was about Vaughn Walker?

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 03:12

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 18:43

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

The Warszawa posted:

Judges aren't a party's lawyers and they play very different roles. Baer's argument is more in line with Sotomayor's "empathy" comments than anything.

It seems pretty similar when it's about turning minority membership (or in turn, lack of it) into a measure of competence. This particular "compatibility" angle of doing it is pretty dangerous because, if it's validated, it can just as easily allow minority lawyers to be excluded or devalued if the class is mainly white.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 03:49

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Kalman posted:

White people don't have unique problems in the way that minorities do, so the rationale you're proposing only works if you're John Roberts.

If the class is disproportionately white, then it's a "white problem" by definition. (Or at least, by the definition Baer is using here)

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 04:15

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

VitalSigns posted:

rich powerful minority-run businesses that harmed them

When did I even hint at something like this?

How about something like securities mismanagement or fraud? White men are pretty overrepresented as investors, so big fund (which is probably mainly staffed by other whites) mismanages a bunch of assets and gets sued by the investors. Judge decides that this since the class is full of rich white guys, this is a white male problem, so minority and female lawyers just won't understand and counsel had better be stacked with white men.

It could have easily been done in the case in question, since SXM subscribers are disproportionately men, and mostly make over $100k/yr.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 05:19

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

The Warszawa posted:

What Baer is saying fits into what was once the dominant theory of racial justice law in this country: that you cannot extricate underrepresentation of minorities/women from the hundreds of years of systemic marginalization that those groups have endured, while no comparative systemic marginalization exists for white people qua white people or men qua men.

If this was about an AA program to get more minorities and women into law, I'd agree, but it isn't. It's about a rule that is about effectiveness of counsel, with effectiveness being measured by racial compatibility with the represented class.

Both aspects are problematic: If discriminatory hiring practices are evidence of poor counsel, then using the represented proportions within the class is a very poor way to detect it, because class composition varies wildly. If race/gender matches translate to better counsel, then that's a very problematic assumption to allow for reasons I've already explained.

Kalman posted:

There is no such thing as a white male problem.

By the logic of Baer, where class representation translates into how well people of the same or different race can properly represent it in a court of law, apparently there is.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 06:42

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Kalman posted:

Except that that implies there are unique aspects to being white and male in American society. (There aren't.)

Let me be clear: What I'm calling a "white issue" in this case does not mean whites are disadvantaged by it, only that it's disproportionately experienced by whites, and that it can go to court. I don't think it's possible to reconcile the belief that minorities are systemically excluded from some aspects of society without the things they were excluded from becoming "white issues" by that definition.

VitalSigns posted:

You didn't hint at something like this. I was pointing out that the defendants in these suits are usually big businesses controlled by rich white men.

Right, and since we're talking about lawyers for the plaintiffs, it's irrelevant.

quote:

It's reasonable to question whether a rich white lawyer would have the perspective to effectively represent a class disproportionately made up of minorities that are hurt by the businesses' actions and understand the extra burdens that the plaintiffs face which he does not when he shares the perspective of the defendants.

I think it's reasonable to expect that they can do their job, especially when they stand to collect millions of dollars in attorney's fees, and their job is to understand the law and understand their clients well enough to represent them. It's much less of a stretch than is needed by, for example, criminal defense attorneys. That's not to say it wouldn't make a difference, but it's already massively incentivized by money, and is so far down the list of things that matter when arguing for a multi-million-dollar class action suit that if a judge is going to reject an attorney lineup because of it on the grounds that they're unqualified, it should be viewed with extreme suspicion.

That and I'm not sure what the systemic discrimination angle in a satellite radio anti-trust case is even supposed to be anyway.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 07:29

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

McAlister posted:

Due to the combination of 2, 3, and 4 my employer cannot make moral or ethical judgements about my treatments because they do not have adequate information to form such opinions and furthermore have no right to such information.

Insurance companies already have that information and are explicit about their interaction with it in the plans, like their typical refusal to cover elective surgery and other options that the plan doesn't consider "medically necessary."

So, your employer may not have a right to know why you were at a plastic surgeon, for instance, or even that you were at one, but the insurance company does if you ask them to pay for it, and the employer has a right to know what visits to a plastic surgeon will be paid for by the plan.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2013 07:33

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

McAlister posted:

We don't, actually. Have that information. I coded electronic claims processing software for three years as the data architect and there weren't any tables in our database for that level of detail. You had specific coverage events but not diagnosis details.

HIPPA would make trying to obtain that information hella awkward.

I'm not sure how insurers could have managed things like pre-existing condition exclusions without knowing diagnoses to determine coverage, but if they can't do that, then all it really means for the complaint you're raising is that they're forced to make clumsy, overbroad decisions. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to accuse an insurer of doing something unethical by inflicting collateral damage with low-information poorly-individualized decisions while simultaneously insisting that their decisions are as uninformed as possible.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2014 02:18

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Main Paineframe posted:

And anyone who says that we know enough to evaluate teacher performance objectively relying solely on data is lying through their loving teeth.

Using seniority IS relying solely on data as an objective performance measurement, it's just using "years worked" as the sole data point.

e: In case that seems pedantic, it's really annoying to see metrics get criticized as the justification for either using no metrics or using really lovely ones. I realize that merit pay as it actually gets proposed is mostly sugar-coating from politicians that want to scuttle the public education system entirely, but the idea that we don't know enough to develop objective standards that correlate well to educational outcomes when we have more data and more tools to analyze it than ever is ridiculous. Test scores being "meaningless" is the same flavor of bullshit.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jan 23, 2014

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 04:28

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

joeburz posted:

You don't have to be a pedant, everyone knows he meant student metrics as the data in question.

Just trying to be clear that it wasn't some dumb "gotcha" snark. Seniority-based pay and merit pay aren't categorically different, both are estimates of value based on an objective data point, which begs the question of what's so special about it.

There are other reasons of course, like retention, but that's only good if you want to retain everybody.

quote:

As for the the notion that our analytical methods for measuring teacher performance are viable at the current time, I'd be interested to hear more about that position. It may or may not be true, but I'm wondering if there is anything in particular bringing you to that position or if it's just a gut feeling.

It's mainly 2 things:

First, this entire thing stinks of defensive maneuvering, it's like listening to a bad salesman complaining about commission or gross margin: The only metrics they think are worthwhile are the ones that either say nothing about their performance, or aren't tracked. Considering that this is coming from an organization that has no vested interest in work quality and plenty of vested interest in keeping people hired, I'm forced to be extremely skeptical.

Second, while the evidence is a bit scarce due to the recency of widespread evaluation programs being implemented, what research has been done on VAM-based approaches has mostly been favorable in suggesting that it's improving teacher quality. There are still problems with implementation stupidity not accounting for economic differences well, but that happens with seniority anyway (i.e. high-poverty schools typically have younger teachers, who are first in line to get laid off, causing heavy churn), and it's an addressable problem.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 09:50

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Green Crayons posted:

I'm predicting Scalia will be #5 (or #6, depending on how Breyer feels about this particular issue and if the win goes to California, depending on how Kennedy feels about this particular issue if the win goes to Navarette) who writes the opinion, regardless of which way it rolls out. If not Scalia, then Breyer or Kennedy. Also, I own a crystal ball.

I'm not sure what the rationale for ruling in favor of California would even be. Exigent circumstances still require probable cause, so this looks like a Florida v. J.L. rerun.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 18:47

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Green Crayons posted:

Yes, but Scalia was all like "WHAT ABOUT ANONYMOUS TIPS ABOUT ATOM BOMBS ON THE ROAD!?" during OA. I think OneEightHundred's point is simply that Scalia's factual hypothetical would be addressed by the exigent circumstances doctrine, which in turn still requires probable cause to establish that the exigency exists. Which I agree with insofar that the hypothetical would be addressed by the exigent circumstances doctrine. I was never clear on what level of suspicion that the exigency existed was required, basically because the cases I encountered was "cop saw blood, heard gunshots, was chasing dude, etc." and therefore it was clear that the exigency simply existed. But, yay! Consensus!

I misunderstood the evidence standard, but I think the "feels like a Florida v. J. L. repeat" still applies. It was unanimously decided there that anonymous tips with no indicia of reliability (including corroboration) aren't enough to fulfill a reasonable suspicion standard, and you can pretty much swap in "ran me off the road" for "is carrying an illegal weapon" and get Navarette.

quote:

A second major argument advanced by Florida and the United States as amicus is, in essence, that the standard Terry analysis should be modified to license a "firearm exception." Under such an exception, a tip alleging an illegal gun would justify a stop and frisk even if the accusation would fail standard pre-search reliability testing. We decline to adopt this position.

Firearms are dangerous, and extraordinary dangers sometimes justify unusual precautions. Our decisions recognize the serious threat that armed criminals pose to public safety; Terry `s rule, which permits protective police searches on the basis of reasonable suspicion rather than demanding that officers meet the higher standard of probable cause, responds to this very concern. See 392 U. S., at 30. But an automatic firearm exception to our established reliability analysis would rove too far. Such an exception would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call falsely reporting the target's unlawful carriage of a gun. Nor could one securely confine such an exception to allegations involving firearms.

I'll be surprised if it doesn't go 9-0 against California.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Jan 24, 2014

# ¿ Jan 24, 2014 03:39

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

evilweasel posted:

The Court has historically drawn a distinction on spending independent of candidates and giving candidates a big fat check directly, and been more willing to uphold restrictions on the latter.

Which is in practice a stupid distinction because the only real difference between spending shitloads of campaign money in hopes of getting carve-outs from a politician and exchanging a suitcase full of cash in a hotel room for them is that the latter is slightly more explicit about it.

Slate Action posted:

Let me put it this way: Obama better buy a new 'VETO' stamp.

I don't know how much will actually change considering it takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate these days.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 3, 2014

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 01:26

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

e: Nevermind, misread.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 3, 2014

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 03:37

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

The big thing I'm wondering about this is how it will affect cryptography and data compression patents, especially public key cryptography, that are not much more than applying an otherwise-unpatentable mathematical formula.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 05:55

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Paul MaudDib posted:

This, and I think "no", clearly.

I guess one important question might be the reverse, actually, given the opinion: Can the "invention" even improve the operation of a computer? You could argue that algorithms designed to make data more secure or more compact would do so, but the patent in question didn't actually describe a way of improving any existing computational operation, it just proposed a new one with only the vaguest of implementation details.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 07:08

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Haven't first amendment claims by government employees been pretty much universally shot down on the grounds that it doesn't apply to government employees acting on their official duties? And that's with claims much more directly applicable than "I don't want to join a union."

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 15:04

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

If anyone that hated McCullen v. Coakley wanted some silver lining to the ruling, here you go:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/03/4048491/wake-judges-ruling-to-dismiss.html

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 03:34

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

OddObserver posted:

Edit: Open-source people care about this a great deal since APIs are often created by commercial vendors (think Microsoft, or Apple), and they want to prevent
the vendor from being able to 'lock in' a market via a legally-granted monopoly on the API. Linux is also basically an independent implementation of
UNIX APIs.

Ironically the reverse is probably true as well since if APIs are ruled uncopyrightable, it would render the GPL linking provisions largely unenforceable. (Not that it matters that much given the number of potential loopholes in those provisions.)

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jun 4, 2015

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 23:56

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

hobbesmaster posted:

The library binary is still copyrighted and can only be linked against with an appropriate license.

Sure, but you can distribute the library binary anyway. What they want to prevent is distributing a non-GPL program that links to it, on the grounds that it's a derivative work. If APIs aren't copyrightable, then the program isn't a derivative work any more.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 00:06

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

hobbesmaster posted:

Then you'd need to answer whether ABIs are copyright able which is almost certainly yes.

I'm not really sure how to interpret this, but if you mean the details of how the data is organized in memory and passed around to be compatible with the library, that's all generated by the compiler from the API, not copied from something else in the library, so it's hard to see how that's any more copyrightable than the API is.

Nevermind that many languages handle ABI implementation in the execution environment rather than the program.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Yes and no. Remember that the GPL's provisions also relate to binary distributions. So you could no longer use section 5 or 6 to compel GPL licensing of the product solely on the basis that it CAN link to a GPL library, but you can still presumably compel GPL licensing of the primary software under section 6 if the binary distribution includes the GPL library as part of the distribution.

There are parts of section 5 that includes stronger wording than section 0 ("combined with it such as to form a larger program"), but those those conditions are only used to create an exclusion, they're not a requirement of the section 5/6 distribution terms.

It currently relies on the linking program falling under the section 0 definition of "covered work" by being "based on" the library, and "based on" is defined as using part of the work in a way that requires copyright permission. If implementing the API doesn't require copyright permission... well...

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jun 5, 2015

# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 01:12

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

GulMadred posted:

Does the policy carry a discriminatory intent? Debatable. It originated in a time of moral panic, but it has been reviewed and renewed by public-health experts (whose decisions are presumably more nuanced than "ewww gay").

The policy is explicitly and intentionally discriminatory. The thing that protected it is that it wasn't explicitly discriminatory against a group that the FDA wasn't allowed to be discriminatory against.

It's also not (currently anyway) because of a moral panic either, it's because the HIV infection rate among gay/bisexual men is something like 18%.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2015 01:03

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

ToxicFrog posted:

Ahahahaha holy gently caress, I'm actually reading the Scalia dissent now instead of skimming it for delicious tears

Apparently straight-only marriage

Does he actually believe this poo poo, and if so, how did he become a Supreme Court Justice? And in either case, isn't there some sort of feedback mechanism to prevent justices from writing complete, obviously false bullshit into their decisions?

If by "unanimous judgment" he means it wasn't legal anywhere then he's right. Honestly, I like the outcome, and the issue is probably not going to be controversial at all in a decade, but it's probably the judgment most blatantly founded on shifting political winds that has ever existed, and the idea that it's built on some long-standing legal tradition is openly contradicted by its incredibly short history.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2015 18:59

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Kalman posted:

It's basically a concern that instead of allowing the legislative process to work out, constitutionalizing it will turn it into an issue like abortion.

I doubt it. Abortion remains contentious by people getting upset about "baby-killing" being legal. Same-sex marriage's downsides on the other hand are 99% FUD, so unless an actual downside materializes (which is unlikely), it'll probably all blow over in 20 years.

alnilam posted:

Like as far as I can tell this is a pretty obvious, normal application of SCOTUS's basic powers ever since its inception, or at least Marbury v Madison. There is a law (or multiple state laws in this case), it violates the constitution (14th amendment is specifically called out here), it is struck down. This is like 8th grade civics class

The issue is that it probably didn't actually violate the constitution, but the Supreme Court can effectively amend the constitution by just saying it means something unintended, and here we are.

It's not going to "damage the authority of the court," it's going to damage the authority of the legislature because the legislature will once again demonstrate its inability to do anything about it, and because of that, will further politicize control of the court.

Heavy_D posted:

This is precisely why it matters. If people didn't reach a saturation point, it wouldn't matter that campaigns that bought a handful of ads were up against greater numbers from their opponents, because every message would be heard. Massive disparity in volume of advertising increases the chance an individual begins to tune out the adverts before hearing both sides.

Saturation also means that the cost of those adverts goes up and the less-funded groups have a harder time getting their message heard. That's the biggest kink in the free speech argument (from a practical perspective anyway, not so much legal): You don't really have the freedom to speak if the opportunity to speak is sold to the highest bidder.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jun 28, 2015

# ¿ Jun 28, 2015 02:42

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Northjayhawk posted:

RBG has the Arizona opinion, 5-4

I'm wondering how that would have gone if Kennedy didn't join the majority, since Scalia and Thomas both wanted to dismiss. Could it have ended up with a 4-3 split on the merits and wound up letting the lower court's ruling stand?

# ¿ Jun 30, 2015 00:56

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

The assumption was that eliminating the Supreme Court filibuster wouldn't happen because the Senate must really like the smell of its own farts if it's keeping this dumb unnecessary 60 vote threshold around in the first place, and it would be an outrageously flagrant power grab to get rid of it.

In retrospect, the 2010 gerrymandering spree probably should have been a clue-in that the Republicans were totally cool with outrageously flagrant power grabs and weren't going to respect it themselves if they got the opportunity.

The Senate's red state tilt is also responsible for Democrats being reluctant to do anything particularly aggressive with Senate control because they're worried losing red state Senate seats.

# ¿ May 7, 2020 07:25

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Evil Fluffy posted:

The whole idea of the argument is "marriage" is now called "civil unions" to the government and makes no difference between whether it's straight or gay couples. Taxes and other spousal rights would be completely untouched. The label "marriage" would, as far as the government is concerned, mean nothing. If religious or secular people wanted to get married they could and "B-b-b-but God" arguments from bigots would fall on deaf ears in the courts.

It's a stupid argument since a.) words can mean different things in different contexts, and religions can already set their own definitions of what they consider a valid marriage that don't have to match the government's definition, or any other religion's definition, and b.) you can bet your rear end that if some state passed a law replacing "marriage" with "civil union" in all of their laws, there'd be an enormous uproar about secular PC language police gone mad.

Armack posted:

How on earth do we square Roberts joining the liberals in Bostock with his extremely lovely dissent in Obergefell?

The circumstances and legal reasoning are very different. In this case, it's not a constitutional law question, it's not about substantive due process, it's just about whether discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation are types of sex discrimination.

(With the absence of the ERA, the Constitution DOESN'T prohibit discrimination based on sex, so the entire basis for this opinion doesn't even apply to Obergefell.)

# ¿ Jun 16, 2020 08:47

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Raenir Salazar posted:

Uh actually I don't think it was? There's a few threads on /r/askhistorians that dispute this heavily.

IIRC short version is that nearly all of the wide array of atrocities and abuses that the Third Reich inflicted upon their various targets were legal and known by the public for the most part.

The existence and scope of an explicit extermination campaign however was unofficial, covert, and censored in the media.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jun 19, 2020

# ¿ Jun 19, 2020 07:49

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Stickman posted:

Couldn't you argue that "book1ng.com" is sufficiently indistinct from "booking.com" and use that as a basis of shutting down domains? That's how trademark works in every other field.

AFAIK yes, but it's a bit different. Both of those fall under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (which allows the owner of the mark to sue) and ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (which allows the owner to have the domain name released), which have roughly the same requirements: It has to be confusingly similar to the mark, and it has to be registered in bad faith.

It's not really the same as most of how trademark law applies because of the bad faith requirement. Domains are global within the TLD, so there is no separation by what market they operate in or what type of product they sell like there is with otherwise-identical marks that are allowed to coexist. There have been some famous holdouts that had some tiny business with the same name as some massively larger business get to keep their name, like "dodge.com" was operated by some financial software company until 2001.

The bad faith requirement makes Breyer's argument make even less sense though, because it already makes it hard for owners of a "generic.com" mark to exert control over the domain if they, for whatever reason, don't own it. Like let's say "Booking.com" let their domain registration lapse and it gets scooped up by some random talent promoter or something. They'd probably have a difficult time getting it back.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Jul 4, 2020

# ¿ Jul 4, 2020 08:28

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Two other things about the Breyer dissent:

First, the reverse situation of what he describes is actually way, way more common - squatting easy-to-remember domains to force anyone that wants it to pay up (a.k.a. anticipatory squatting). The bad faith requirement in the UDRP is worded in a way that the domain basically has to be registered to screw with the specific mark, not any hypothetical future mark, so registering a mark for a squatted domain doesn't mean you get to take over the domain, even if it really is registered only to squat.

Second, the situation that he's describing sounds like the Internet from like 20 years ago before search engines existed, where people would plop the thing that they're looking for into the address bar and put ".com" after it. That hasn't been the case for a long, long time, largely because the prime .com naming real estate has long since been scooped up.

A more relevant analogue to this (which would have been nice to be addressed in the opinion) is that there are already a ton of trademarks for 1-800 phone numbers.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jul 4, 2020

# ¿ Jul 4, 2020 19:22

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

They're gonna hold the vote after the election so the Republican Senators can strategically be either "thinking" about their decision or have declared their intended vote ahead of time, depending on which sounds better in their state.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2020 02:30

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

https://twitter.com/charles_duan/status/1379074836073488391

Google v. Oracle ended in close to the best possible outcome: Established a fair use doctrine for copying API.

edit: It is also a good day any day that Oracle eats poo poo.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Apr 5, 2021

# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 16:22

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Mr. Nice! posted:

It's congress' job to deal with this, though. Too bad we do not have a functioning legislative branch.

Also too bad our legislative branch is technologically illiterate and mostly unwilling to step on the toes of entrenched interests that have made lots of money by abusing the worst aspects of IP law.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 18:27

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

vyelkin posted:

It gets even worse when you drill down to state levels. In 2018, Wisconsin voted Democratic by a 53-45 statewide margin, a 7-point swing from 2016, but the State Assembly results were 63-36 in favour of the Republicans and only one seat changed hands. Relevant to this thread, SCOTUS has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is fine, which means that there is functionally no way for the voters of Wisconsin to remove their Republican state government.

And the root problem is too many voters deciding that anti-democratic fuckery at every level of government is totally fine if they're the ones benefiting from it.

# ¿ May 10, 2022 23:24

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Ershalim posted:

I assume most people don't actually know that. Most people are uniformed at the best of times, so the idea that the system is so ridiculously stacked in the way it is probably evades the notice of anyone who isn't a huge nerd, like we are. The reason "silent majority" resonates so well with people is that they assume that all the people they don't know must agree with them, because while they haven't thought about anything very hard, it's just common sense.

There's so much contempt for "the city" out in the weeds that if you told people that the reason their weird district includes part of Austin is so that Austin gets fewer elected representatives, a large chunk would be like "that's actually awesome."

But even aside from that, it definitely doesn't seem to bother the voters in the unfairly-drawn districts enough for them to throw out the people drawing them.

Chamale posted:

The original intent of the Founding Fathers was for the three branches to stop each other from oppressing the property rights of rich landowners.

We're kind of in a situation where the original intent is being undermined in some cases (i.e. the House is supposed to be a majoritarian branch, the Electoral College is supposed to exist to prevent demagogic morons from becoming president, and the Senate is supposed to remove presidents that are blatantly violating their duties) and upheld in others in a way that's producing the worst outcomes of both.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 02:53 on May 11, 2022

# ¿ May 11, 2022 01:59

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

PerniciousKnid posted:

I think liberals were thrilled that they can claim the mantle of feminism rights defenders without ever having had to do anything, thanks to the supremes' largess, and now Congress is probably panicking at the thought that they might be asked to do something.

The SCOTUS (and POTUS executive orders) being positioned as Stalwart Defender Of Good Things hasn't been good for the quality of legislatures in general. Decades of voters being told that the way to ban abortion is by electing Republicans and the way to keep it legal is to file lawsuits, among a bunch of other issues where it's taken the heat off of increasingly-crap legislatures and hollowed out a bunch of the institutional memory of how to actually get a law doing something positive passed. And the long game was always to use the crapped-out legislatures to capture the judiciary anyway (and at the rate things are going with the electoral college scheming, capturing the executive too).

# ¿ May 11, 2022 05:04

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

virtualboyCOLOR posted:

The Supreme Court is granted zero power in the constitution to enforce and rulings and thus can be ignored.

The Constitution requires that the executive branch "faithfully execute" laws, and the Supreme Court rules what those laws are. Technically the executive can decide to stop doing that and do whatever it wants, but at that point we're in full-blown constitutional crisis territory.

# ¿ May 11, 2022 18:01

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Mr. Nice! posted:

That bill wouldn't have passed even with Manchin's token vote. It's similar to the $15 minimum wage that Sinema voted with her curtsy-thumbs down action that cost her nothing to vote for since it wouldn't hit 60 votes.

With Manchin's vote it'd put them in the awkward position of screaming about how this is a flagrant disregard for a fundamental human right but not one as fundamental as the right of a Senator to talk forever.

# ¿ May 12, 2022 04:34

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

It might turn into a dangerous can of worms to open. States have a lot of freedom to choose electors however they want, and you know the response to this will be "okay if they can throw Trump off of the ballot, we must find a way to throw Biden off of the ballot!" or some future Democratic candidate, and Democratic presidential victories right now depend on winning in states controlled by Republican legislatures with a track record of brazen anti-democratic power grabs.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2023 05:48

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 18:43

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

JUST MAKING CHILI posted:

It turns out Republicans will do whatever they can for the sake of power, regardless of any provocation from Democrats or not.

If it were that simple then they'd have already done it when they held supermajorities large enough to do it. They can do it right now in NC if they want.

It's still too unpopular to pull off without threatening their grip on power, so they need to boil the frog first.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2023 06:36

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