Israel thinks the PA is not up to the task. Maybe it’s the shear incompetence and corruption.
You think war is better than incompetence and corruption?
Maybe it’s the PA’s ideological support for an Israel destroying “Right to Return”(*).
Yes, it sure it weird that the PA has not pre-negotiated that demand away. I'm going to address that in a different comment.
Because that's completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about the border agreement, we are talking about stopping the war.
Are you not aware how closely the PA and Israel work together? Like, literally all the time? That's literally part of the corruption I was talking about.
Maybe it’s the paying terrorists by the number of Jews they kill.
You mean the thing the PA agreed to end a month ago as part of the ceasefire?
Israel isn’t willing to leave Hamas in power, that’s their top priority.
So Israel is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, then, right? To put them in charge?
I mean, that's the other, obvious government that could take over, and theoretically sorta legally is. Hamas was elected to run the Gaza Strip under Palestinian elections, and then seized full control of the Gaza Strip from the PA, but the PA still are the government of all of Palestine, in a theoretical legal sense. We can just sorta pretend the Hamas-Fatah civil war didn't happen, and Israel is 'fixing' it.
Like, legally, that's a grey area and no one would really have a problem with the PA ending up in control. And Fatah controls the PA, and Fatah has recognized Israel and works with them as part of the PA. They seem to be mostly honest partners, a lot of corruptions and criticized for things, but one of the things they are criticized for is letting Israel walk all over them.
So surely, that's what Israel is doing, working with the PA . Trying to put Gaza back how it was in 2003 or whatever. Now, obviously, Hamas, being a bunch of death-seeking fanatics who will never settle unless the other side is fully destroyed, will reject the idea of turning over Gaza to a bunch of people it thinks are cowards and collaborators with Israel.
So Israel will have to remove Hamas by force, but they're presumably planning to at least get the PA on board before that and say what they're planning on doing-
*is handed a note, reads it*
Sorry, this can't be right. I'll be right back.
*footsteps, door opens, closes, more footsteps, long whispered argument, door opens, closes, footsteps back*
So apparently _Hamas_ proposed handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel rejected it.
So, again, as always, my question is when do we stop pretending that Israel is looking for any outcomes that are not 'Israel owns Gaza and eventually all of Palestine and none of the annoying existing people are there anymore'?
Or, to put it another way: Do we know why he wasn't going to make it though the confirmation hearing? Because that's essentially the only reason Trump would have withdrawn him.
Ah, I see you're still clinging to the hope that Trump will not order the Justice Department to do obviously moronic things and fire people until someone agrees to do it...yet again. I sorta gave up after like the third time it happened.
So I fully expect to see an announcement that Justice Department or FBI is opening an investigation to something very obviously covered by a Biden pardon under this legal theory. No one can really stop that from happening.
Whether or not a lawyer is willing to instantly torpedo their own career by setting foot in front of a judge with charges against someone that has been pardoned for those charges is unknown. There's loyalty, and then there's 'Walking directly into running chainsaw for no benefit except the boss is a lunatic and said to'.
But...that used to be an obvious no, but it appears people have wildly overestimated the amount of professionalism and intelligence in Justice Department lawyers. Who have, at this point, made half a dozen judges _incandescently angry_ and we're nearing the point where the government is going to be start held in contempt in multiple places.
(I really hope the DoJ does get classified as a vexatious litigant, that would be hilarious.)
I like how this site keeps talking about things that are objectively, factually, incorrect at every possible level. They are wrong about observable reality (Biden had slowed, he was not even vaguely at the level of mentally incompetent), they are wrong about the actual laws (A president merely has to grant pardons, not sign them, and the courts have held that autopen counts as signing anyway) and the actual constitution (It matters not one bit how mentally competent he even was! It doesn't matter if he was asked to pardon and literally didn't understand the question and just nodded! He was the President, and while the president, he could do it!)
And yet, not only did that take over the Open Mic, but now we have an actual front page article on it.
Okay, am I the only person here with enough knowledge of the intelligence community to think that the Operations Section of the Office of Intelligence of the Department of Justice is a _weird_ place to do that review?
That's the people who do FISA warrants and have general oversight over the intelligence community. It's not particularly large, either. Since when does the JFK assassination have _anything_ to do with the intelligence community?
I guess if you want to keep it in DoJ, but _not_ do it at the FBI, there's not much choice, but why the hell aren't you doing it in the FBI? They're the ones who conduced the investigation!
"Wow, it's almost like the only people who care about trans issues are either strongly supportive or strongly opposed, and Democrats risk losing the former while having no chance of winning the latter, and the wider electorate doesn't care either way no matter what binary answer they give in polls"
“The implication that the Imperius Curse was used to procure these pardons is preposterous!”
You know, I actually typed this and deleted it in another post, but there is literally no way to invalidate a pardon if the president has granted it, and I mean the word literally literally.
For the harshest example, if a president grants a pardon at gunpoint, it is still a granted pardon and can be used. It cannot be revoked or invalidated. This may seem Obviously Wrong, but it is not.
The pardon power is almost entirely absolute, exempting only impeachment or state law violations. It used to be slightly restricted by the idea we could prosecute a president who misused it, like selling pardons, until the Supreme Court said no. So now, as long as it's on a violation of Federal law, that presidential power is literally unchecked and absolute. It's even uncheckable, after the fact, by the person who used it!
I think that it signals the weakness of the position instead of its strength.
"How dare people in a discussion forum point out every level of what Trump is trying to do is complete and utter bullsh*t instead of just picking one!"
Gee, I don't know, could it be that Trump _himself_ introduced two different arguments, one about the way they were signed, and one about Biden not knowing about them?
Could it be that this is, in fact, exactly how this administration operates, a gish gallop of nonsense that moves from one thing to another, constantly falling back from nonsense position to different nonsense position, and it's worth pointing out preemptive how it's _all_ nonsense from top to bottom, and in fact Trump not only does not have the legal power to question pardons, he does not even have the _ability_?
Otherwise, what’s the ex-post facto defense in court that Trump privately pardoned me over the phone… as long as Trump – after he’s president – says he pardoned me privately over the phone.
There is basically nothing stopping that from happening. If you were trying to prosecute that person, you could maybe attempt to introduce doubt that had happen, like the defendant's behavior later did not indicate they thought they were pardoned. But that evidence is very circumstantial, and, as I said, presenting a pardon is an affirmative defense, which means the prosecutor has to prove it _wasn't_ issued.
It's really hard for a prosecutor to prove that certain things were not said in private between two individuals if those two individuals are saying it was, and there's no other record. I think that's sort of obvious?
It’s a lot like Trump claiming he declassified the documents in his heart as he was leaving the oval office.
The classification of documents is a process laid out under the law, and Trump did not follow it. Until he does follow it, as President, they are classified.
I think that we can similarly conclude that if Biden directed a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to a pardon, then that pardon is officially official and it’d be silliness to say that it wasn’t a real pardon.
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn't even need to do that. Because pardons don't even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just 'granting' them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they're just...said.
“I’m asking about a subordinate affixing a signature without having been directed.”
The idea that the court is going to take an official government document issued and posted by the Executive Office of the President and represented by the government at the time as signed by the president, and allow that fact to be _debated in court_, is just utterly insane.
This not only is something the prosecution would have to prove (Because it's an affirmative defense), but they'd have to have all their evidence before hand. Because this is otherwise a pre-trial dismissal that will be issued instantly from the bench.
By a very very angry judge.
And if they tell the judge that they have enough evidence to demonstrate that, what would actually happen is that the defense would just get a sworn statement from Biden that he did sign the thing. The End. It's over.
This would probably make the judge _even angrier_ at the prosecution.
In terms of what the Trump administration is doing it seems to fall under pulling strings everyone for reasons I will never comprehend forgot were, and always have been, attached.
...what a weird thing to say.
Yes, the Trump administration is doing that, but they are _also_ deporting people based on their speech. Which not only is itself wrong, but it makes it pretty clear what it is asking colleges to do.
There is an amazing ability of people here to pretend that Trump's actions exist in a vacuum, and that we should judge 'Trump administration claims to be worried about disorder on campus and doing things to reduce that' alone, and not notice that the Trump administration is also literally grabbing all the protestors it can and secreting them across the country to stand trial, and making it extremely clear it's about their content of their speech, and also openly saying its dispute with Columbia is about specific speech.
"Let's pretend that we have no context for this thing and things being stated about it by the Administration do not exist. We shall, for the purposes herein, pretend it happened under a perfectly spherical government." is getting a little old.
Well, I'm not a doctor, but I do know people with prescriptions for gender-affirming reasons, that's why I was using them as an example, and they are generally prescribed them to adjust their hormone levels to within a normal range. There is testing done to start with, seeing how far things are off those ranges, and then more testing after the prescription to check the new levels, and there sometimes will be adjustments afterwards.
This is, from what I understand, the reason that they are prescribed to a lot of people... in a very broad way. I can't say that's always true, some of the same things can be prescribed for birth control or heart disease or even cancer treatment, and now we're getting in medical stuff that doctors know and I don't.
(I actually do know, but we're pretending for the purposes of this discussion that I do not, and I'm talking absolutely everything said on this topic at face value.)
And yet if they have the Wrong Opinion regarding these treatments then that’s terribly important and we need to make sure everyone knows about it (and punishes them for it).
Do you have examples of academics making public statements about medical treatments and getting 'punished' for it?
In fact, you do have examples of academics making public statements about medical treatments at all? That's weird thing for them to do.
My definition of medical treatment is, let me steal one from AI: Medical treatment refers to the various methods used to diagnose, manage, and cure health conditions, which can include medications, therapies, and surgical procedures.
Pardons do not even need to be signed. Or even _written down_. They are not laws, they are affirmative defenses in court.
All they have to do is be 'granted' by the president.
And everyone seems very confused about this, thinking Trump can do anything about pardons. He cannot. He can say anything he wants, he can direct the justice department to investigate anyone he wants, even if pardoned for it. He can declare them invalid. Sure, he can do that.
And the defense will walking into court, or not even 'court' but the very first hearing in front of a judge, their lawyer will silently hand the pardon to the judge, and the judge will turn to the prosecution and says 'Case dismissed with prejudice, and you are all sanctioned to the full extent I possible can, and I'm going to make you stand there while I write to the bar to have you disbarred'.
It is such incredibly obvious legal misconduct that it would be hard to conceive of a few months ago from government lawyers, but, hey, here we are. Should be funny as hell if it happens.
It's worth pointing out that there is literally no requirement that pardons _even be signed_, only that the President has granted them. There is nothing, textually, stopping the president from just issuing them verbally. This is probably a bad idea, but there's nothing stopping it.
This is because pardons are not laws.
They are merely affirmative defenses you can use in court. The best affirmative defense is indeed a signed document, but it's not invalid if it is not.
Also, it is _completely insane_ that Jaybird has decided to talk about this as if it is some reasonable legal theory Trump can operate under. Is that hows it's going to work, as we descend farther and farther into fascism and the executive keeps spewing more and more nonsense?
--
For the record, it being an affirmative defense means it is the _court_ that decides if the pardons are valid, not the president or law enforcement. Trump can indeed direct the justice department to investigate and even charge, and the second they end up in court, in front of a judge, the lawyer for the defense will hand over the pardon and say 'Here you go, the pardon. Say the words, judge', and the judge will say 'This case is immediately dismissed with prejudice. The defendant can go. Prosecution lawyers, stay here, I have to sanction you so hard literally everyone in your office who glanced at this case get disbarred.'
Actually, I will make it least one comment, because it's extremely clear, as article makes out, that 80/20 is bullshit.
It turns out the majority of Democrats don't have a problem with trans people in sports at any of the levels that are being impacted, especially not youth sports, and at most care about the Olympics and maybe the major leagues.
And they also think the issue is literally unimportant.
Thinking about this, it really is weird that an op-ed that is written about how academia is actually not behaving well and needs to talk to more people, or however you want to phrase..
... Is, at the exact same time, arguing that academia needs to start debating medical treatments?
What an oddly contradictory position to have.
If academia is full of a bunch of out-of-touch liberal elites, why do we want them debating medical treatments?! What if they decide that, I don't know, putting shunts in people's hearts is... Cultural appropriation or something?!
It sure is fun to write an opinion piece about something, quote someone else saying something vaguely agreeing in that general direction, and then have people pretend the quoted person actually agrees with everything said in the article.
The president of Wesleyan is not a doctor, but more important, hasn't actually said anything about debating medical treatments whatsoever.
Indeed, he's complaining that academia is too insular. As I pointed out, medicine and academia are not the same thing. Like, at all.
So apparently the thing you're arguing, and the thing you're claiming that is being argued in this op-ed, is that academia not only should start debating medical treatments, it should open the doors letting in _more_ people debate medical treatments?
What are the legitimate questions about medical treatments?! I assume by academia, we don't mean medicine, right? We're talking about 'professors and university administrators', right?
So, um, why does non-medical academia have positions that they wish to _debate_ on any sort of medical treatment? Do they even _know_ enough to debate how specific treatments are done?
'I, as a professor of literature, think instead of the traditional way of doing this heart surgery, you should open the incision more to the side and put drainage over here. This will allow easier access to the area you need. Also, unrelated, I think the dosage of Edoxaban should be lowered, but taken more often. No, I have no medical knowledge whatsoever, why do you ask? Let's have a professional debate on this!'
Yeah, I can see why doctors would not be willing to debate various medical treatments with random guys who teach a class in Early American poetry! They probably do get pretty rude if you keep trying.
Also, looking at that, I just noticed they said 'gender transition treatments', specifically, which is weird, because almost all those treatment are used for other things. Hormone therapy is hormone therapy, and the goal of which is basically the same regardless of what it is treating. Plastics surgery is plastics surgery.
Also, that's not the right term for that. Not to nitpick, but it's kinda important in medicine. The term is gender-affirming treatments, not gender-transition treatments. Transition would imply you change when you do it, which...would have people flipping back and forth every time they took a pill? What?
I don't think _this guy_ knows anything about medicine either! Why does he want to debate doctors about medical treatments?!
You know, it's really funny when an exact hypothetical comes true. Like, a week ago, I asked the question, which no one answered: Would it be DEI for a webpage about a medal winner to mention the fact he was gay and was only able to join the military after Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed?
You know, a webpage that had a person mention the basic factual information that the military had policies against homosexuality for a while. Not promoting any sort of 'diversity', but 'This used to be true, and no longer is'. Should that webpage be removed?
Turn out, my hypothetical was even softer than what actually happened (Softer in the sense that homophobia still is more accepted than racism.): The military is removing pages that mention that _Black people_ didn't have equality in the service.
I guess the only question is: Is this just general bigotry, or is it a deliberate attempt to rewrite history? Or is that a false distinction?
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
You think war is better than incompetence and corruption?
Yes, it sure it weird that the PA has not pre-negotiated that demand away. I'm going to address that in a different comment.
Because that's completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about the border agreement, we are talking about stopping the war.
Are you not aware how closely the PA and Israel work together? Like, literally all the time? That's literally part of the corruption I was talking about.
You mean the thing the PA agreed to end a month ago as part of the ceasefire?
"
So Israel is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, then, right? To put them in charge?
I mean, that's the other, obvious government that could take over, and theoretically sorta legally is. Hamas was elected to run the Gaza Strip under Palestinian elections, and then seized full control of the Gaza Strip from the PA, but the PA still are the government of all of Palestine, in a theoretical legal sense. We can just sorta pretend the Hamas-Fatah civil war didn't happen, and Israel is 'fixing' it.
Like, legally, that's a grey area and no one would really have a problem with the PA ending up in control. And Fatah controls the PA, and Fatah has recognized Israel and works with them as part of the PA. They seem to be mostly honest partners, a lot of corruptions and criticized for things, but one of the things they are criticized for is letting Israel walk all over them.
So surely, that's what Israel is doing, working with the PA . Trying to put Gaza back how it was in 2003 or whatever. Now, obviously, Hamas, being a bunch of death-seeking fanatics who will never settle unless the other side is fully destroyed, will reject the idea of turning over Gaza to a bunch of people it thinks are cowards and collaborators with Israel.
So Israel will have to remove Hamas by force, but they're presumably planning to at least get the PA on board before that and say what they're planning on doing-
*is handed a note, reads it*
Sorry, this can't be right. I'll be right back.
*footsteps, door opens, closes, more footsteps, long whispered argument, door opens, closes, footsteps back*
So apparently _Hamas_ proposed handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel rejected it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-agree-to-cede-gaza-governance-to-pa-netanyahu-not-going-to-happen/
So, again, as always, my question is when do we stop pretending that Israel is looking for any outcomes that are not 'Israel owns Gaza and eventually all of Palestine and none of the annoying existing people are there anymore'?
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
And your email is where?
On “Trump’s CDC Director Nominee Withdrawn Before Hearing”
Do we have any idea why he was withdrawn?
Or, to put it another way: Do we know why he wasn't going to make it though the confirmation hearing? Because that's essentially the only reason Trump would have withdrawn him.
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
You know what? Fine. I just wrote something. How do I get it in here? I assume I have to make an account?
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Ah, I see you're still clinging to the hope that Trump will not order the Justice Department to do obviously moronic things and fire people until someone agrees to do it...yet again. I sorta gave up after like the third time it happened.
So I fully expect to see an announcement that Justice Department or FBI is opening an investigation to something very obviously covered by a Biden pardon under this legal theory. No one can really stop that from happening.
Whether or not a lawyer is willing to instantly torpedo their own career by setting foot in front of a judge with charges against someone that has been pardoned for those charges is unknown. There's loyalty, and then there's 'Walking directly into running chainsaw for no benefit except the boss is a lunatic and said to'.
But...that used to be an obvious no, but it appears people have wildly overestimated the amount of professionalism and intelligence in Justice Department lawyers. Who have, at this point, made half a dozen judges _incandescently angry_ and we're nearing the point where the government is going to be start held in contempt in multiple places.
(I really hope the DoJ does get classified as a vexatious litigant, that would be hilarious.)
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
Yeah.
I like how this site keeps talking about things that are objectively, factually, incorrect at every possible level. They are wrong about observable reality (Biden had slowed, he was not even vaguely at the level of mentally incompetent), they are wrong about the actual laws (A president merely has to grant pardons, not sign them, and the courts have held that autopen counts as signing anyway) and the actual constitution (It matters not one bit how mentally competent he even was! It doesn't matter if he was asked to pardon and literally didn't understand the question and just nodded! He was the President, and while the president, he could do it!)
And yet, not only did that take over the Open Mic, but now we have an actual front page article on it.
On “The JFK Files Drop Today (Supposedly)”
Okay, am I the only person here with enough knowledge of the intelligence community to think that the Operations Section of the Office of Intelligence of the Department of Justice is a _weird_ place to do that review?
That's the people who do FISA warrants and have general oversight over the intelligence community. It's not particularly large, either. Since when does the JFK assassination have _anything_ to do with the intelligence community?
I guess if you want to keep it in DoJ, but _not_ do it at the FBI, there's not much choice, but why the hell aren't you doing it in the FBI? They're the ones who conduced the investigation!
Anyway, the files were just released.
On “So Let’s Put Together a Democratic Party Ad Campaign”
Or to quote this Blue Sky comment, which perfectly sums it up:
https://bsky.app/profile/docvivileandra.bsky.social/post/3lknqmyt36j2b
"Wow, it's almost like the only people who care about trans issues are either strongly supportive or strongly opposed, and Democrats risk losing the former while having no chance of winning the latter, and the wider electorate doesn't care either way no matter what binary answer they give in polls"
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
No, Jaybird, it's the debate _you_ are choosing us to have.
If you think it's absurd, you had a chance to comment on that WHEN YOU INTRODUCED IT.
"
You know, I actually typed this and deleted it in another post, but there is literally no way to invalidate a pardon if the president has granted it, and I mean the word literally literally.
For the harshest example, if a president grants a pardon at gunpoint, it is still a granted pardon and can be used. It cannot be revoked or invalidated. This may seem Obviously Wrong, but it is not.
The pardon power is almost entirely absolute, exempting only impeachment or state law violations. It used to be slightly restricted by the idea we could prosecute a president who misused it, like selling pardons, until the Supreme Court said no. So now, as long as it's on a violation of Federal law, that presidential power is literally unchecked and absolute. It's even uncheckable, after the fact, by the person who used it!
"
"How dare people in a discussion forum point out every level of what Trump is trying to do is complete and utter bullsh*t instead of just picking one!"
Gee, I don't know, could it be that Trump _himself_ introduced two different arguments, one about the way they were signed, and one about Biden not knowing about them?
Could it be that this is, in fact, exactly how this administration operates, a gish gallop of nonsense that moves from one thing to another, constantly falling back from nonsense position to different nonsense position, and it's worth pointing out preemptive how it's _all_ nonsense from top to bottom, and in fact Trump not only does not have the legal power to question pardons, he does not even have the _ability_?
Could it be that is all extremely stupid?
"
There is basically nothing stopping that from happening. If you were trying to prosecute that person, you could maybe attempt to introduce doubt that had happen, like the defendant's behavior later did not indicate they thought they were pardoned. But that evidence is very circumstantial, and, as I said, presenting a pardon is an affirmative defense, which means the prosecutor has to prove it _wasn't_ issued.
It's really hard for a prosecutor to prove that certain things were not said in private between two individuals if those two individuals are saying it was, and there's no other record. I think that's sort of obvious?
The classification of documents is a process laid out under the law, and Trump did not follow it. Until he does follow it, as President, they are classified.
"
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn't even need to do that. Because pardons don't even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just 'granting' them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they're just...said.
The idea that the court is going to take an official government document issued and posted by the Executive Office of the President and represented by the government at the time as signed by the president, and allow that fact to be _debated in court_, is just utterly insane.
This not only is something the prosecution would have to prove (Because it's an affirmative defense), but they'd have to have all their evidence before hand. Because this is otherwise a pre-trial dismissal that will be issued instantly from the bench.
By a very very angry judge.
And if they tell the judge that they have enough evidence to demonstrate that, what would actually happen is that the defense would just get a sworn statement from Biden that he did sign the thing. The End. It's over.
This would probably make the judge _even angrier_ at the prosecution.
On “From The New York Times Editorial Board: The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education”
...what a weird thing to say.
Yes, the Trump administration is doing that, but they are _also_ deporting people based on their speech. Which not only is itself wrong, but it makes it pretty clear what it is asking colleges to do.
There is an amazing ability of people here to pretend that Trump's actions exist in a vacuum, and that we should judge 'Trump administration claims to be worried about disorder on campus and doing things to reduce that' alone, and not notice that the Trump administration is also literally grabbing all the protestors it can and secreting them across the country to stand trial, and making it extremely clear it's about their content of their speech, and also openly saying its dispute with Columbia is about specific speech.
"Let's pretend that we have no context for this thing and things being stated about it by the Administration do not exist. We shall, for the purposes herein, pretend it happened under a perfectly spherical government." is getting a little old.
"
Well, I'm not a doctor, but I do know people with prescriptions for gender-affirming reasons, that's why I was using them as an example, and they are generally prescribed them to adjust their hormone levels to within a normal range. There is testing done to start with, seeing how far things are off those ranges, and then more testing after the prescription to check the new levels, and there sometimes will be adjustments afterwards.
This is, from what I understand, the reason that they are prescribed to a lot of people... in a very broad way. I can't say that's always true, some of the same things can be prescribed for birth control or heart disease or even cancer treatment, and now we're getting in medical stuff that doctors know and I don't.
(I actually do know, but we're pretending for the purposes of this discussion that I do not, and I'm talking absolutely everything said on this topic at face value.)
"
Do you have examples of academics making public statements about medical treatments and getting 'punished' for it?
In fact, you do have examples of academics making public statements about medical treatments at all? That's weird thing for them to do.
My definition of medical treatment is, let me steal one from AI: Medical treatment refers to the various methods used to diagnose, manage, and cure health conditions, which can include medications, therapies, and surgical procedures.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Pardons do not even need to be signed. Or even _written down_. They are not laws, they are affirmative defenses in court.
All they have to do is be 'granted' by the president.
And everyone seems very confused about this, thinking Trump can do anything about pardons. He cannot. He can say anything he wants, he can direct the justice department to investigate anyone he wants, even if pardoned for it. He can declare them invalid. Sure, he can do that.
And the defense will walking into court, or not even 'court' but the very first hearing in front of a judge, their lawyer will silently hand the pardon to the judge, and the judge will turn to the prosecution and says 'Case dismissed with prejudice, and you are all sanctioned to the full extent I possible can, and I'm going to make you stand there while I write to the bar to have you disbarred'.
It is such incredibly obvious legal misconduct that it would be hard to conceive of a few months ago from government lawyers, but, hey, here we are. Should be funny as hell if it happens.
"
It's worth pointing out that there is literally no requirement that pardons _even be signed_, only that the President has granted them. There is nothing, textually, stopping the president from just issuing them verbally. This is probably a bad idea, but there's nothing stopping it.
This is because pardons are not laws.
They are merely affirmative defenses you can use in court. The best affirmative defense is indeed a signed document, but it's not invalid if it is not.
Also, it is _completely insane_ that Jaybird has decided to talk about this as if it is some reasonable legal theory Trump can operate under. Is that hows it's going to work, as we descend farther and farther into fascism and the executive keeps spewing more and more nonsense?
--
For the record, it being an affirmative defense means it is the _court_ that decides if the pardons are valid, not the president or law enforcement. Trump can indeed direct the justice department to investigate and even charge, and the second they end up in court, in front of a judge, the lawyer for the defense will hand over the pardon and say 'Here you go, the pardon. Say the words, judge', and the judge will say 'This case is immediately dismissed with prejudice. The defendant can go. Prosecution lawyers, stay here, I have to sanction you so hard literally everyone in your office who glanced at this case get disbarred.'
On “So Let’s Put Together a Democratic Party Ad Campaign”
Presented without comment, an article about how moving to the right worked for Gavin Newsom.
https://capitolweekly.net/ca-120-gavins-podcast-presidential-run-or-empire-building/
Actually, I will make it least one comment, because it's extremely clear, as article makes out, that 80/20 is bullshit.
It turns out the majority of Democrats don't have a problem with trans people in sports at any of the levels that are being impacted, especially not youth sports, and at most care about the Olympics and maybe the major leagues.
And they also think the issue is literally unimportant.
On “Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, and Protest Expectations”
What a completely grotesque post.
On “From The New York Times Editorial Board: The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education”
Thinking about this, it really is weird that an op-ed that is written about how academia is actually not behaving well and needs to talk to more people, or however you want to phrase..
... Is, at the exact same time, arguing that academia needs to start debating medical treatments?
What an oddly contradictory position to have.
If academia is full of a bunch of out-of-touch liberal elites, why do we want them debating medical treatments?! What if they decide that, I don't know, putting shunts in people's hearts is... Cultural appropriation or something?!
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It sure is fun to write an opinion piece about something, quote someone else saying something vaguely agreeing in that general direction, and then have people pretend the quoted person actually agrees with everything said in the article.
The president of Wesleyan is not a doctor, but more important, hasn't actually said anything about debating medical treatments whatsoever.
Indeed, he's complaining that academia is too insular. As I pointed out, medicine and academia are not the same thing. Like, at all.
So apparently the thing you're arguing, and the thing you're claiming that is being argued in this op-ed, is that academia not only should start debating medical treatments, it should open the doors letting in _more_ people debate medical treatments?
Or have I misconstrued this somewhere?
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What are the legitimate questions about medical treatments?! I assume by academia, we don't mean medicine, right? We're talking about 'professors and university administrators', right?
So, um, why does non-medical academia have positions that they wish to _debate_ on any sort of medical treatment? Do they even _know_ enough to debate how specific treatments are done?
'I, as a professor of literature, think instead of the traditional way of doing this heart surgery, you should open the incision more to the side and put drainage over here. This will allow easier access to the area you need. Also, unrelated, I think the dosage of Edoxaban should be lowered, but taken more often. No, I have no medical knowledge whatsoever, why do you ask? Let's have a professional debate on this!'
Yeah, I can see why doctors would not be willing to debate various medical treatments with random guys who teach a class in Early American poetry! They probably do get pretty rude if you keep trying.
Also, looking at that, I just noticed they said 'gender transition treatments', specifically, which is weird, because almost all those treatment are used for other things. Hormone therapy is hormone therapy, and the goal of which is basically the same regardless of what it is treating. Plastics surgery is plastics surgery.
Also, that's not the right term for that. Not to nitpick, but it's kinda important in medicine. The term is gender-affirming treatments, not gender-transition treatments. Transition would imply you change when you do it, which...would have people flipping back and forth every time they took a pill? What?
I don't think _this guy_ knows anything about medicine either! Why does he want to debate doctors about medical treatments?!
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/10/25”
You know, it's really funny when an exact hypothetical comes true. Like, a week ago, I asked the question, which no one answered: Would it be DEI for a webpage about a medal winner to mention the fact he was gay and was only able to join the military after Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed?
You know, a webpage that had a person mention the basic factual information that the military had policies against homosexuality for a while. Not promoting any sort of 'diversity', but 'This used to be true, and no longer is'. Should that webpage be removed?
Turn out, my hypothetical was even softer than what actually happened (Softer in the sense that homophobia still is more accepted than racism.): The military is removing pages that mention that _Black people_ didn't have equality in the service.
I guess the only question is: Is this just general bigotry, or is it a deliberate attempt to rewrite history? Or is that a false distinction?
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