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?
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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?
So, the DoD has delete their page about Medal of Honor winner Charles Calvin Rodgers. If you search for 'Charles Calvin Rodgers site:defense.gov' on duckduckgo, you'll see where it's supposed to be as the first result, which is this:
This now (Very slowly in my browser?) redirects to almost the same US, but the last part is now: /deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/ Which doesn't actually seem to exist, so weird redirect.
But he's apparently a DEI Medal of Honor! Let's check the Wayback for what the page used to say about his DEI Medal of Honor:
Rogers ran through a hail of exploding shells to rally his dazed crewmen into firing their howitzers back at the much larger enemy. Despite being hit by an exploding round, he led some of those men in a ground battle against enemy soldiers who'd breached the howitzer's position. Rogers was again wounded during that foray, but he continued fighting, killing several enemy soldiers and driving the rest back.
Rogers refused medical attention and instead worked to get the defensive perimeter set back up.
When more enemy troops poured through a different section of the defensive line, Rogers directed that artillery fire, too, and led another successful counterattack on the charging forces, encouraging his men throughout the difficult endeavor.
At dawn, the enemy tried to overrun the base a third time, so Rogers continued directing his unit's fire. He even joined a struggling howitzer crew after several men were hit by enemy fire and the gun had been rendered inoperable. Rogers helped the crew get the massive gun operating again, but in doing so, he was hit a third time. He could no longer physically help his men, but he continued to direct and encourage them.
Rogers' valor helped push back the enemy that day, which finally retreated for good. Twelve U.S. soldiers died and dozens more were wounded; however, Army records show that the casualties on the enemy's side were much higher.
I'm not entirely sure what people are calling DEI these days, but...I don't think that's it. Is there something else...got a bridge named after him...given a Medal of Honor by President Nixon, Nixon doesn't sound very DEI...man, I am completely baffled. I wonder if it's this first sentence:
From the 1950's to the 1980's, a lot changed in America and abroad, and Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers served through all of it. As a Black man, he worked for gender and race equality while in the service.
You know what? This is probably more malicious compliance.
The protesters weren’t disrupting the University over settlements, they were upset the Jews won’t tolerate terrorism and were fighting a war.
The protest was literally over the fact that the university was investing in companies that profited off the conflict.
You can't just invent what the protests were over. And, also, protests of a university are about the behavior _of the university_. People do understand that, right? When someone protests an entity, it's because they want _that specific entity_ to do something different. Otherwise, it's just a rally.
We have an actual list of demands...which no one seems to have bothered to reprint and the websites removed, so let me instead like to the _response_ to these demands, where it's made extremely clear everyone understands what the protestors are asking for:
I don’t see why the openly genocidal Palestinians should be assumed to have good intentions.
But you're fine with the openly genocidal Israeli government, which is literally, at this very moment, talking to other countries about removing Palestinians from Gaza?
Urban warfare is “genocide” if Jews do it, but not if anyone else does.
Urban warfare is extremely prone to causing violence against civilians, a fact which is very well know. Which is why almost no country actually does it, and the ones that do generally don't use any of the sort of tactics Israel does, like long-range bombing, and instead focus more on close-quarter battles.
The ones that do bombing like that are places like _Syria_. Which, last I checked, was also roundly condemned for it.
Israel shouldn’t be an ethnostate because ethnostates are bad, however all non-Jewish ethnostates get a pass.
Get a pass from _who_? Who do you think are defending ethnostates? Which ones?
Saudi Arabia? Do you think it's the _left_ saying that we should work with Saudi Arabia?
And you do understand there is a difference between an ethnostate as a general concept, and one that is _actively holds territory containing people it does not extend rights to_, right?
Do you know what the last ethnostate like that was? Apartheid South Africa. And if you look into for ten second, you might realize it's the same people defending Israel, and that Israel itself was a huge defender of that place. In fact, Israel is the reason it took so long to do anything about that place!
Israel should put up with terrorism that non-Jews would never tolerate.
Dude, Islamic terrorists have killed, over the specific issue of Israel, more _Americans_ than Israelis in the past 25 years. They killed more on a single day! Granted, the US is larger so that's proportionally less.
But you know, here's the list of a general estimate of how much terrorism effects a country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Terrorism_Index
You'll notice Israel is second (Now, after Oct 7th), but you'll also notice how many other countries are within spitting distance. Plenty of people who have much more restrained behavior, along with some psychopaths we don't have anything to do with or don't even have functional countries. (Does anyone even know what's going on in Burkina Faso?)
Do you know where Israel was _before_ Oct 7th? It was below the US. For 2022, we were 28th, they were 30th.
It almost feels like the level of terrorism couldn't actually justify any of their behavior at that point.
Israel is expected to deal with a generational Right to Return.
It really is amazing how people do not understand 'Abstract demands that exist as a resistance rally point and are used as opening for negotiation' are not the same as 'things people would actually need done to accept something'.
I have pointed out before how general cries of protest are interpreted as explicit demands by Palestine in a way that _literally no others are_. The same way that general talk of having a struggle against people is a holy war, because we've decided not to translate the word jihad so that being in a fight is called being in a jihad and literally all fighters are 'jihadists' And we've apparently completely decided to just invent a new meaning of martyr, despite that being an English word.
Waving keys around and talking about reclaim houses is a _rallying cry_, in the same way that 'pry my gun from my cold death hands' or 'give me liberty or give me death' is. 'Remember the Alamo' on Texas license plates is not a battlecry to go kill Mexicans, one hopes. And talking about 'continuing the fight' is not demanding violence.
--
Anyway, Israel is not 'expected' to actually let people return. What is expected is that the right of return will be used as _concessions_ in negotiation. That Israel will go 'We won't give you back your houses, instead we will pay for new houses' or something like that. And maybe, allow some small symbolic return of very historic communities it uprooted, or even trade some land and call that 'returning'.
But that would only work if Israel was, at any point, trying to fix this situation. They are perfectly happen with this situation, because allows them to continue their plans to end up with all of what they consider as their birthright.
Zionism is the idea that the Jews should have a country. Ergo anti-Zionism is the idea that they shouldn’t, i.e. Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish state.
Zionism is still an active political idea, not something that happened decades ago and finished. It is a political philosophy that is constantly taking land in the West Bank. It is what drives the illegal settlements. Do you think people have a right to oppose that political philosophy?
Also, 'destroyed' is doing an insane amount of work there. It's very interesting how you had to qualify the destruction 'as a Jewish state'.
Governments govern by consent of the governed. The concern should be protecting right of minorities, not demanding the ability to exclude entire sections of the population because they will vote wrong, but having control over them anyway via occupation and imprisonment.
Israel can either choose to be a democracy over the entire area (Which will probably peacefully vote to change it in a lot of ways), or they can withdraw to areas that only has the people they want in them.
That seems seriously antisemitic on the face of it,
The idea that opposing the nation of Israel is antisemitic assigns the goals and behavior of Israel to the Jewish people as a whole.
and that’s without the real world likelihood that it would require a second holocaust.
I find it interesting how we can't call an actual thing that is happening to people a genocide, but somehow it's fine to call a totally imaginary thing that isn't even close to happening a holocaust.
I’ve pointed this out on this thread before that many of the “arguments” used against Israel are never used against non-Jews.
Let me guess. You're going to bring up examples of small population replacements that happened and _ended_. Aka, you're going to try to justify the Nakba. Which was a bunch of violence and isn't really the same thing as a war settlement, but, sure, let's pretend it was the same. Let's pretend that should been the end of it. Indeed, that's the difference. Those _ended_.
You know, a thing that _could_ have happened at any point after 1967 after Israel found itself occupying Palestine? Israel could have said 'Okay, line drawn here, and we're gone'...and no, before you start talking terrorism, it took a good two decades for Palestinians to ramped up to even throwing-rocks-at-soldiers levels of violence, the first Intifada, in 1987. And that started because Israel refused to leave and was settling the place and talking, very openly, about how the entire area was theirs.
Or, alternately, Israel could have simply declared that entire area was Israel, in 1967. I honestly doubt anyone would have done anything about it. Jordan did the same thing a decade earlier with the West Bank and no one did. No country really owned that land, there was no one to say no. People would have grumbled, but it would have quickly disappeared.
But...that would have let all those Palestinians vote. Which Zionism does not allow.
That's what Zionism is. It requires a _Jewish_ state, which requires a Jewish majority so that the Jewishness of the state cannot change by democracy, but it also claims, via mythos, ownership of an territorial area that _is not majority Jewish_. There's no way to square that circle. Except by removing some of the non-Jews.
That's that side that requires a holocaust, or at least ethnic cleansing. The other side is just a democracy.
Columbia is not punishing the students for what they’ve said, just for the things that are normally illegal. Almost like the things which are normally illegal are still illegal, even if you call it “speech”.
What Columbia is doing is completely legal and entirely within their rights as a private university. What they are doing probably would be legal even if they were a public university, but as a private university, it certainly is legal. I don't particularly think it's a _good_ idea, but it is certainly something they are allowed to do. (Although I do think it might actually be good idea to have laws that stop universities from refusing to confirm already-issued degrees, because that seems ripe for abuse and extortion. But there are no such laws, I just think they'd be good to have.)
The problem is what the Trump administration is demanding they do under the threat of the Federal government.
Including, perhaps, some of what Columbia just did because of those demands.
It's one thing for Columbia to do things because of their own free will, it's another to do things because they were extorted into it by the unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration. It's fair to not only complain about the Federal government doing that, but Columbia, a respected university with a long history of protests that they pretend they are proud of, caving to that without a whimper.
That said, we do not know if what they just did _was_ due to the Trump administration. We're just sorta guessing on that. It very much looks like it due to the timing, but extremely bad timing does sometimes happen.
Oh, is that the case? Man, I sure hope that a precedent wasn’t set earlier! It might result in absolutely *ZERO* sympathy!
Jaybird, you say sh*t like this assuming people know what the f*ck you're talking about, but no one ever does, because the thing you have linked it to when you evidentially end up having to explain is _extremely obviously_ not the same thing at all.
I am getting extremely tired of these conversations with you where you have to be repeatedly prompted to say what you mean. Something like half your posts here are implications that NO ONE FOLLOWS.
“Guys, why are you insisting on using the same rules we insisted on when we won the argument last time?”
Pointing out that public universities are not the exact same thing as 'the government' and thus can restrict certain things for proper functioning and safety with rules is not the same thing as _the actual government_ demanding they restrict things like that under the threat of legal punishment.
And none of that is the same thing as the Federal government making demands of private university.
Also, and I know everyone here is used to the quiet parts being said quietly, but that's not happening anymore, because we've move from crypto-fascism to open fascism. So they're just straight up it's about speech. Literally just saying that.
Read the bulleted item there about anti-"Zionist" discrimination, and tell me if you agree that is something that the government can demand a _private organization_ take the position of and enforce upon students.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
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!
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"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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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?
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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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So, the DoD has delete their page about Medal of Honor winner Charles Calvin Rodgers. If you search for 'Charles Calvin Rodgers site:defense.gov' on duckduckgo, you'll see where it's supposed to be as the first result, which is this:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/
This now (Very slowly in my browser?) redirects to almost the same US, but the last part is now: /deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/ Which doesn't actually seem to exist, so weird redirect.
But he's apparently a DEI Medal of Honor! Let's check the Wayback for what the page used to say about his DEI Medal of Honor:
I'm not entirely sure what people are calling DEI these days, but...I don't think that's it. Is there something else...got a bridge named after him...given a Medal of Honor by President Nixon, Nixon doesn't sound very DEI...man, I am completely baffled. I wonder if it's this first sentence:
You know what? This is probably more malicious compliance.
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The protest was literally over the fact that the university was investing in companies that profited off the conflict.
You can't just invent what the protests were over. And, also, protests of a university are about the behavior _of the university_. People do understand that, right? When someone protests an entity, it's because they want _that specific entity_ to do something different. Otherwise, it's just a rally.
We have an actual list of demands...which no one seems to have bothered to reprint and the websites removed, so let me instead like to the _response_ to these demands, where it's made extremely clear everyone understands what the protestors are asking for:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/college-pro-palestine-protest-demands_n_662c2672e4b0c2fde1a5b467
But you're fine with the openly genocidal Israeli government, which is literally, at this very moment, talking to other countries about removing Palestinians from Gaza?
Urban warfare is extremely prone to causing violence against civilians, a fact which is very well know. Which is why almost no country actually does it, and the ones that do generally don't use any of the sort of tactics Israel does, like long-range bombing, and instead focus more on close-quarter battles.
The ones that do bombing like that are places like _Syria_. Which, last I checked, was also roundly condemned for it.
Get a pass from _who_? Who do you think are defending ethnostates? Which ones?
Saudi Arabia? Do you think it's the _left_ saying that we should work with Saudi Arabia?
And you do understand there is a difference between an ethnostate as a general concept, and one that is _actively holds territory containing people it does not extend rights to_, right?
Do you know what the last ethnostate like that was? Apartheid South Africa. And if you look into for ten second, you might realize it's the same people defending Israel, and that Israel itself was a huge defender of that place. In fact, Israel is the reason it took so long to do anything about that place!
Dude, Islamic terrorists have killed, over the specific issue of Israel, more _Americans_ than Israelis in the past 25 years. They killed more on a single day! Granted, the US is larger so that's proportionally less.
But you know, here's the list of a general estimate of how much terrorism effects a country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Terrorism_Index
You'll notice Israel is second (Now, after Oct 7th), but you'll also notice how many other countries are within spitting distance. Plenty of people who have much more restrained behavior, along with some psychopaths we don't have anything to do with or don't even have functional countries. (Does anyone even know what's going on in Burkina Faso?)
Do you know where Israel was _before_ Oct 7th? It was below the US. For 2022, we were 28th, they were 30th.
It almost feels like the level of terrorism couldn't actually justify any of their behavior at that point.
It really is amazing how people do not understand 'Abstract demands that exist as a resistance rally point and are used as opening for negotiation' are not the same as 'things people would actually need done to accept something'.
I have pointed out before how general cries of protest are interpreted as explicit demands by Palestine in a way that _literally no others are_. The same way that general talk of having a struggle against people is a holy war, because we've decided not to translate the word jihad so that being in a fight is called being in a jihad and literally all fighters are 'jihadists' And we've apparently completely decided to just invent a new meaning of martyr, despite that being an English word.
Waving keys around and talking about reclaim houses is a _rallying cry_, in the same way that 'pry my gun from my cold death hands' or 'give me liberty or give me death' is. 'Remember the Alamo' on Texas license plates is not a battlecry to go kill Mexicans, one hopes. And talking about 'continuing the fight' is not demanding violence.
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Anyway, Israel is not 'expected' to actually let people return. What is expected is that the right of return will be used as _concessions_ in negotiation. That Israel will go 'We won't give you back your houses, instead we will pay for new houses' or something like that. And maybe, allow some small symbolic return of very historic communities it uprooted, or even trade some land and call that 'returning'.
But that would only work if Israel was, at any point, trying to fix this situation. They are perfectly happen with this situation, because allows them to continue their plans to end up with all of what they consider as their birthright.
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Zionism is still an active political idea, not something that happened decades ago and finished. It is a political philosophy that is constantly taking land in the West Bank. It is what drives the illegal settlements. Do you think people have a right to oppose that political philosophy?
Also, 'destroyed' is doing an insane amount of work there. It's very interesting how you had to qualify the destruction 'as a Jewish state'.
Governments govern by consent of the governed. The concern should be protecting right of minorities, not demanding the ability to exclude entire sections of the population because they will vote wrong, but having control over them anyway via occupation and imprisonment.
Israel can either choose to be a democracy over the entire area (Which will probably peacefully vote to change it in a lot of ways), or they can withdraw to areas that only has the people they want in them.
The idea that opposing the nation of Israel is antisemitic assigns the goals and behavior of Israel to the Jewish people as a whole.
I find it interesting how we can't call an actual thing that is happening to people a genocide, but somehow it's fine to call a totally imaginary thing that isn't even close to happening a holocaust.
Let me guess. You're going to bring up examples of small population replacements that happened and _ended_. Aka, you're going to try to justify the Nakba. Which was a bunch of violence and isn't really the same thing as a war settlement, but, sure, let's pretend it was the same. Let's pretend that should been the end of it. Indeed, that's the difference. Those _ended_.
You know, a thing that _could_ have happened at any point after 1967 after Israel found itself occupying Palestine? Israel could have said 'Okay, line drawn here, and we're gone'...and no, before you start talking terrorism, it took a good two decades for Palestinians to ramped up to even throwing-rocks-at-soldiers levels of violence, the first Intifada, in 1987. And that started because Israel refused to leave and was settling the place and talking, very openly, about how the entire area was theirs.
Or, alternately, Israel could have simply declared that entire area was Israel, in 1967. I honestly doubt anyone would have done anything about it. Jordan did the same thing a decade earlier with the West Bank and no one did. No country really owned that land, there was no one to say no. People would have grumbled, but it would have quickly disappeared.
But...that would have let all those Palestinians vote. Which Zionism does not allow.
That's what Zionism is. It requires a _Jewish_ state, which requires a Jewish majority so that the Jewishness of the state cannot change by democracy, but it also claims, via mythos, ownership of an territorial area that _is not majority Jewish_. There's no way to square that circle. Except by removing some of the non-Jews.
That's that side that requires a holocaust, or at least ethnic cleansing. The other side is just a democracy.
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What Columbia is doing is completely legal and entirely within their rights as a private university. What they are doing probably would be legal even if they were a public university, but as a private university, it certainly is legal. I don't particularly think it's a _good_ idea, but it is certainly something they are allowed to do. (Although I do think it might actually be good idea to have laws that stop universities from refusing to confirm already-issued degrees, because that seems ripe for abuse and extortion. But there are no such laws, I just think they'd be good to have.)
The problem is what the Trump administration is demanding they do under the threat of the Federal government.
Including, perhaps, some of what Columbia just did because of those demands.
It's one thing for Columbia to do things because of their own free will, it's another to do things because they were extorted into it by the unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration. It's fair to not only complain about the Federal government doing that, but Columbia, a respected university with a long history of protests that they pretend they are proud of, caving to that without a whimper.
That said, we do not know if what they just did _was_ due to the Trump administration. We're just sorta guessing on that. It very much looks like it due to the timing, but extremely bad timing does sometimes happen.
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Jaybird, you say sh*t like this assuming people know what the f*ck you're talking about, but no one ever does, because the thing you have linked it to when you evidentially end up having to explain is _extremely obviously_ not the same thing at all.
I am getting extremely tired of these conversations with you where you have to be repeatedly prompted to say what you mean. Something like half your posts here are implications that NO ONE FOLLOWS.
Pointing out that public universities are not the exact same thing as 'the government' and thus can restrict certain things for proper functioning and safety with rules is not the same thing as _the actual government_ demanding they restrict things like that under the threat of legal punishment.
And none of that is the same thing as the Federal government making demands of private university.
Also, and I know everyone here is used to the quiet parts being said quietly, but that's not happening anymore, because we've move from crypto-fascism to open fascism. So they're just straight up it's about speech. Literally just saying that.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/14/nyregion/columbia-letter.html
Read the bulleted item there about anti-"Zionist" discrimination, and tell me if you agree that is something that the government can demand a _private organization_ take the position of and enforce upon students.
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