The abortion "plank" is framed as though Dobbs was some sort of restoration of personal liberties and is framed in terms of people voting about abortion and thus deciding for themselves what to think and do about the issue.
24 out of the 50 states do not have any sort of citizen initiative. This includes many the states with the most restrictive laws about abortion out there, including Texas and almost all of the Deep South. So the idea of "people voting" sounds good but doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny. At best, the people can vote on the issue indirectly by electing pro-life or pro-choice state legislators, assuming their state legislative districts are not gerrymandered into uncompetititveness and that there aren't other ballot access issues.
And then there's the framing of Dobbs as somehow restoring a personal liberty. Dobbs restored a power to a state. I've said it before and I still think this is the right framing for U.S. law: governmental powers end where individual rights begin. Q: What thing can an individual do after Dobbs that they could not do before it? A: ....
No, people are now less able to to a thing (get abortions) than they were before, because Dobbs enlarged state powers as compared to Roe/Casey, such that a state now has the power to restrict first-trimester abortions up to and in some cases including restricting them 100%.
Maybe you think that's the right result, maybe (like the majority of Americans, or like me) you think it's a bad result, but either way, Dobbs didn't expand individual liberty. It expanded state power.
I can look back in history to 1968 and see LBJ stepping down as handing Nixon a powerful advantage. This suggests that Biden stepping down would hurt, in ways that are easily foreseeable: a chaotic, divisive convention; an admission of partisan weakness; a concession that Trump won the debate so hard it knocked Biden out of the race. It's very questionable that Democrats would gain more than they'd lose by switching horses at this point. Doubtful, in my opinion.
Democrats need to pitch that Joe Biden has been a good President and good things have happened because he's been President. Democrats need to remind people that Donald Trump was a bad President and that bad things happened because Donald Trump used to be President. Such as Roe v. Wade being overturned.
There's nothing wrong with saying "The other candidate is worse than me." Repeatedly, forcefully. That is a winning strategy. Just ask Donald Trump, who made that his strategy in the only election he's ever won.
If the President cannot be held accountable for violating the law, then what good is the law?
Why should we bother to have a Congress anymore, if the President can simply do what he wants?
If the Courts are going to say the President is immune from any consequences for exceeding the law, then why do we have Courts?
A President ought to fear being held to account for exceeding his authority. A President ought to fear being charged with crimes if he commits crimes. He is, after all, tasked with the faithful execution of the laws. Far better to say that the President lacks power to violate the laws, that no criminal act is ever within the scope of Presidential power.
I suspect SCOTUS will eventually figure that out... if it's a Democratic President being indicted for something at some point in the future.
Notable that the collapse of the Republic is generally thought to have reached a decisive point of no return when one politician used force to illegally hang on to power after his term of office expired while he feared prosecution for flagrant abuses of power for personal gain committed while in office. And that the Republic was purportedly "restored" for public consumption but not as a political reality, and the political reality of belying that "restoration" was not particularly well concealed.
The parallels aren't exact, of course. But damn, history rhymes.
...So far. Give it time and the Six Mandarins will provide such cover as Judge Cannon's dilatory case management does not, in the event that Trump is not re-elected and orders the prosecution of the case against himself ended.
Which, as we now know, would be an official act of the core powers of his office, beyond the ability of Congress or the Courts to gainsay.
IIRC Trump took them when he was still President, and retained them after his term expired under... some sort of claim that they were his personal papers? Unclear what the claim is as that sort of shifted along with how many of them there were.
OP: If Joe Biden stays on the ticket, will I still vote for him? Absolutely. Given the choice between a guy who is a bit slow but who helped the country recover from COVID and is a strong defender of the free world versus a who hurt the economy by launching unnecessary trade wars, cozies up to Putin, has been legally held liable for sexual assault, and who goaded his supporters into attacking Congress, I’ll take Biden any day.
Me: If my choices were Donald Trump and a bitten liverwurst sandwich that had been left out in the sun for four hours, I'm voting liverwurst and I urge you to vote liverwurst too and really, the kind of mustard they used on the sandwich just isn't important.
I agree that if it's true Biden had an off night then the campaign needs to get him out there showing energy, vibrancy, and plausibility as a person who can many important decisions. Apparently Biden had a really good rally in North Carolina today.
We need to be seeing and hearing more of that. A lot more of it. Soon.
To me, this looks like a technical mistake rather than an intentional leak. It was accidentally posted one day before the actual release of the finished ruling with the concurring and dissenting opinions.
Note that the per curiam ruling is to dismiss, which has the effect of, for now, reinstating the preliminary injunction. Note also the 3-3-3 split (with Jackson staking out a slightly different bit of reasoning than her Sisters in the liberal bloc).
But reporting that this decision resolves the issue in Idaho is incorrect, or at best deceptive. Enforcement of the state law is enjoined for now. The issue of whether the federal law, EMTALA, pre-empts the state law is not yet formally resolved. There's no guarantee that by the time this case works its way back up to SCOTUS on full review that the Nine won't resolve the matter on a permanent basis in Idaho's favor.
The Barret concurrence, for the Roberts bloc, appears to suggest that she, the Chief and Justice Kavanaugh want to see more development of evidence since the Idaho Supreme Court put a very moderately softening gloss on the language of the state statute. That's why they voted with their more liberal Sisters in the result of letting the injunction against state law enforcement reinstate -- so that the new interpretation of the state law by the state court system can get hashed out by the District Court. Even if the state supreme court's gloss is a bit, shall we say, extra-textual.
But there's no reason to think the Roberts bloc won't work hard to find a way to reconcile the state law with the federal law. Because maybe there will be political changes at the federal level resulting in new guidance to Idaho hospitals and courts about how EMTALA applies in Idaho, depending on events scheduled to occur in about four months. (Justice Jackson writes separately to say she is NOT going to be buying THOSE moldy blueberries -- the state law and EMTALA are in direct, irreconcilable conflict.)
So for now, turn the heat down on having another abortion decision, folks. Make it look like we're actually very moderate and balanced as we approach this issue. As opposed to, say, our Brother Justice Alito, who on Page 19 writes of "The Members of this Court are not physicians and should therefore be wary about expressing conclusions about medical issues" and proceeds to spend the next three pages of his opinion doing exactly that with respect to a hypothetical situation involving a preterm prelabor rupture of membranes, ultimately saying that the Idaho law does indeed conflict with Federal law in that Federal law requires a termination in that event and Idaho law prohibits it -- and which by all reasonable predictions, his future ruling that Idaho law does indeed pre-empt the federal law and Idaho can forbid an abortion in such a circumstance.* It's as nakedly political as I can recall the Court being.
The big point being, this opinion was not leaked, and this case is not over.
* Personally, I'm of the opinion that Alito is hoping that a future HHS secretary in a Second Trump Administration will come along and relieve him of the odious duty of actually making that ruling, but it's also clear enough to me that he's prepared to render it if need be against a future Second Biden Administration.
I think the real turn comes in the next paragraph of Roberts' majority opinion:
As we explained in Bruen, the appropriate analysis involves considering whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition. 597 U. S., at 26–31. A court must ascertain whether the new law is “relevantly similar” to laws that our tradition is understood to permit, “apply[ing] faithfully the balance struck by the founding generation to modern circumstances.” Id., at 29, and n. 7. Discerning and developing the law in this way is “a commonplace task for any lawyer or judge.” Id., at 28.
Two things that I take away from this:
1. The Chief is coming all the way around the jurisprudential horseshoe to living constitutionalism here. Once an originalist concedes that there are principles that underlie the limits and balances of powers allocated in the Constitution, and it's the Court's job to apply those principles to modern laws addressing modern problems, the whole game is given away. The moose has got the muffin. The slope has begun to slip. There's no stopping it -- you're soon enough going to be "breathing life" into the words of the Constitution and holy crap you've just transmogrified yourself into William Brennan. Oh, no, Toto, I don't think we're in 1791 anymore!
2. That last line is... facially true and simultaneously risible. It's very easy to justify, or criticize, a given law by way of reference to some larger principle. It's very hard to get other lawyers to agree with you that you've done so in a proper and intellectually honest way, particularly when it happens that those abstract principles somehow always wind up favoring your client's preferred interpretation of the specific modern law. In particular, getting nine unelected mandarins to agree that a given contemporary articulation of a timeless Constitutional principle applies in this or that way as regards a given statute will probably prove a good deal less simple than the "commonplace" of which Chief Justice Roberts writes -- just as it did in this very case.
My last thought on Rahimi is that the plaintiff here is a poster boy for "Dudes Who Obviously Ought Not Have Guns." You knew he was going to wind up losing this case when the Court spent so long detailing the criminally dangerous things he had done with weapons in a [checks back to the opinion] twelve-month period culminating in firing a handgun in a fast food restaurant to resolve a dispute about a declined credit card.
To "write a case for the ages" implies that the case will be celebrated in years to come. But Gorsuch, more than any of his colleagues, knows that the bare meaning of the phrase simply is that it's a case that will be remembered for the duration of American law, a case that will make it into Constitutional Law textbooks.
So Dred Scott v. Sanford was a decision for the ages, just as much as Brown v. Board fo Education was. Korematsu v. United States was a decision for the ages too, and it hasn't even been overruled yet either by case or Constitutional amendment.
I'm sure Justice Gorsuch will have an opportunity to write a case for the ages. But until he realizes that the reason some cases are celebrated and other cases are condemned is that some expand liberties, and others diminish them, he seems to be fated to write a case that will be remembered for the ages the same way that cases like Bowers v. Hardwick or Lochner v. New York are.
My last encounter with someone who was pretty obviously mentally ill was peaceful, if saddening. This person's behavior demonstrated a profound distrust of basically everything and everyone. Wouldn't take a bottle of water when offered, for fear it had been poisoned. Wouldn't get in a taxi when called for fear of assassins hiding in the back seat despite wanting to go back to a trusted place in another part of town.
I was left at something of a loss for how to talk to them, how to steer them towards helpful resources, and concern not that they'd do something bad but that someone else would do something bad for them. A third party intervened and got them sent off to the "safe" location they'd named, although I questioned whether that facility would be able to help them due to lack of available beds.
Involuntary confinement under most states' current laws would not have been an option. Not violent, not a danger to self or others. Just likely to wind up huddled under a bridge or some similar place, hiding from their own shadow, obviously in need of some sort of mental health intervention that there simply isn't a lot of money allocated for (if any).
I'm not an SME. I can't even begin to imagine answers here. But this is where I saw a need recently. A bit different than Freddie's concern about the mentally ill person who stabbed an innocent, was confined for seven years, and then released. I get the distrust surrounding the release of such a person. In that case, we either allow people who are SME's to make meaningful treatment decisions, or we don't.
But the case of someone non-violent but in need? That turns out to be a very hard problem to solve, and I bet (as discussed above) there's a lot more of that kind of person at need than of people who pose imminent threats to themselves and others.
When they tell you what they want to do, listen and believe them.
Contrary to popular jokes, most politicians at least try to fulfill most of their campaign promises. Broken campaign promises are the exception, not the norm. By all means point to [thing] to claim I'm wrong about this; but bear in mind that I'm not saying politicians never break their promises. I'm saying that they mostly at least try to keep them.
Donald Trump is not an exception to this rule. When he promises he'll try to be a dictator on day one and that he'll use the Department of Justice to take revenge on his perceived enemies, I believe him.
As I read it, that means a felon can't be an ELECTOR for a Presidential candidate. But I'll admit that the exact text of the law refers to a candidate whose name appears on the ballot, not the person who will actually hold the office.
But also bear in mind, the chances that Trump will win Washington State in 2024 are functionally zero, so this is, at least for this cycle, an academic quibble.
Do gotta wonder about the person who thinks: "I'll vote for Colin Powell for President and Elizabeth Warren for Vice President, yes, THAT'S the empty political signal I want to send to trivia wonks in the future who are the only ones who will care about what I'm doing here today."
IIRC back in 2016 the Republican Anointed One was to be Jeb! Bush. Some other "smart money" went to Rick Perry and Scott Walker. Had any one of them performed half as well as the Smart Guys told us they were supposed to, Trump wouldn't have had a vacuum to walk into.
I have a lot of things to say about Fani Willis and none of them are good, and not a single one of them exonerates the obviously guilty Trump.
"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated."
"Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
Had Fani Willis found someone other than her boyfriend to consult on the state RICO law, we'd have been looking at a pre-election trial on direct and personal election interference felony from 2020.
Yes, I think Alito's conduct demonstrates a decidedly non-judicial temperament. I think reasonable people would perceive a higher-than-comfortable degree of bias on display under the circumstances. (I am super not interested in any conduct by any other judge. Alito's flying of those flags under those circumstances is what's at issue. Go "whatabout" to someone else.)
But the fact that there was no code of conduct controlling Alito, or his wife,* at the time, means that we need to confine our inquiries to something that broke no rule, much less any law. It's not even clear that the newly-adopted SCOTUS code of judicial conduct would prohibit these.
Now, whether that code of conduct has teeth (probably not), and whether it's broad enough to produce appropriate judicial behavior (probably not), remain to be seen. But Alito himself doesn't seem to have done anything wrong here. That's what we should consider to be the real scandal.
* Yes, codes of judicial conduct can, do, and should reach to the conduct of judicial spouses and other immediate household and family members. Less so than the judges themselves, but for things that might reasonably be perceived as the personal actions or interests of the judge? Yeah, that's properly regulable.
This thing about Biden that drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS and this is important, guys, it's IMPORTANT so I'm gonna get it out on video RIGHT NOW and get it live to you all RIGHT NOW yes I'll have the seasoned curly fries with that and a Diet Coke anyway like I was saying before what no a super sized Diet Coke anyway the thing about Biden that drives me absolutely NUTS is no that's not for you ma'am that's for all my followers on the Internet yes I'll pull forward and... Damn it, I forgot what it was. Something about Biden. [Sigh.] We'll try this again later.
Well that may be Ruby Payne's opinion but I think there's a lot of overlap in a lot of these categories. Some may be closer to the mark than others and I guess we can litigate (or re-litigate) where this chart gets it kind of right and where it doesn't. (I strongly suspect that everyone in every economic tier finds humor in sex, for instance.)
Once upon a time I suggested that class might be discerned by the degree to which one acquires money from a) entitlements, b) work, or c) capital, and that the amount of money one acquires is a different axis than the way the money is acquired, although it's probably the case that the cap for what one can make from entitlements is much lower than the cap for what one can make from having access to capital.
Today's OP seems to get at a similar idea -- the more money you have at your disposal, the more you're steered towards acquiring an ever larger endowment of capital; the more money you need for survival, the less you will be able to avail yourself of any of the incentives baked into the tax code.
On “2024 GOP Platform: Read It For Yourself”
The abortion "plank" is framed as though Dobbs was some sort of restoration of personal liberties and is framed in terms of people voting about abortion and thus deciding for themselves what to think and do about the issue.
24 out of the 50 states do not have any sort of citizen initiative. This includes many the states with the most restrictive laws about abortion out there, including Texas and almost all of the Deep South. So the idea of "people voting" sounds good but doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny. At best, the people can vote on the issue indirectly by electing pro-life or pro-choice state legislators, assuming their state legislative districts are not gerrymandered into uncompetititveness and that there aren't other ballot access issues.
And then there's the framing of Dobbs as somehow restoring a personal liberty. Dobbs restored a power to a state. I've said it before and I still think this is the right framing for U.S. law: governmental powers end where individual rights begin. Q: What thing can an individual do after Dobbs that they could not do before it? A: ....
No, people are now less able to to a thing (get abortions) than they were before, because Dobbs enlarged state powers as compared to Roe/Casey, such that a state now has the power to restrict first-trimester abortions up to and in some cases including restricting them 100%.
Maybe you think that's the right result, maybe (like the majority of Americans, or like me) you think it's a bad result, but either way, Dobbs didn't expand individual liberty. It expanded state power.
On “It’s Time For Biden To Be A Statesman”
Where is the evidence that a substitute candidate -- Harris or anyone else -- would do better than Biden? Polling numbers I've seen show that very few people do any better than Biden. In the Ipsos poll I linked to, only Michelle Obama outpolls Trump, and as we've noted elsewhere, she doesn't want to do it.
I can look back in history to 1968 and see LBJ stepping down as handing Nixon a powerful advantage. This suggests that Biden stepping down would hurt, in ways that are easily foreseeable: a chaotic, divisive convention; an admission of partisan weakness; a concession that Trump won the debate so hard it knocked Biden out of the race. It's very questionable that Democrats would gain more than they'd lose by switching horses at this point. Doubtful, in my opinion.
Democrats need to pitch that Joe Biden has been a good President and good things have happened because he's been President. Democrats need to remind people that Donald Trump was a bad President and that bad things happened because Donald Trump used to be President. Such as Roe v. Wade being overturned.
There's nothing wrong with saying "The other candidate is worse than me." Repeatedly, forcefully. That is a winning strategy. Just ask Donald Trump, who made that his strategy in the only election he's ever won.
On “A Semi-Short Explainer of Presidential Immunity Decision”
If the President cannot be held accountable for violating the law, then what good is the law?
Why should we bother to have a Congress anymore, if the President can simply do what he wants?
If the Courts are going to say the President is immune from any consequences for exceeding the law, then why do we have Courts?
A President ought to fear being held to account for exceeding his authority. A President ought to fear being charged with crimes if he commits crimes. He is, after all, tasked with the faithful execution of the laws. Far better to say that the President lacks power to violate the laws, that no criminal act is ever within the scope of Presidential power.
I suspect SCOTUS will eventually figure that out... if it's a Democratic President being indicted for something at some point in the future.
"
Notable that the collapse of the Republic is generally thought to have reached a decisive point of no return when one politician used force to illegally hang on to power after his term of office expired while he feared prosecution for flagrant abuses of power for personal gain committed while in office. And that the Republic was purportedly "restored" for public consumption but not as a political reality, and the political reality of belying that "restoration" was not particularly well concealed.
The parallels aren't exact, of course. But damn, history rhymes.
"
...So far. Give it time and the Six Mandarins will provide such cover as Judge Cannon's dilatory case management does not, in the event that Trump is not re-elected and orders the prosecution of the case against himself ended.
Which, as we now know, would be an official act of the core powers of his office, beyond the ability of Congress or the Courts to gainsay.
IIRC Trump took them when he was still President, and retained them after his term expired under... some sort of claim that they were his personal papers? Unclear what the claim is as that sort of shifted along with how many of them there were.
On “Where Do Democrats Go From Here?”
How do you feel about him after watching this?
https://www.youtube.com/live/vtc_n4Tqr8k?t=647s
On “SCOTUS Opinions on Trump Immunity, Corner Post, and Netchoice: Read Them For Yourself”
IOETRW conservatives opposed kritocracy.
On “Where Do Democrats Go From Here?”
OP: If Joe Biden stays on the ticket, will I still vote for him? Absolutely. Given the choice between a guy who is a bit slow but who helped the country recover from COVID and is a strong defender of the free world versus a who hurt the economy by launching unnecessary trade wars, cozies up to Putin, has been legally held liable for sexual assault, and who goaded his supporters into attacking Congress, I’ll take Biden any day.
Me: If my choices were Donald Trump and a bitten liverwurst sandwich that had been left out in the sun for four hours, I'm voting liverwurst and I urge you to vote liverwurst too and really, the kind of mustard they used on the sandwich just isn't important.
On “About Last Night: Debate Debacle Edition”
I agree that if it's true Biden had an off night then the campaign needs to get him out there showing energy, vibrancy, and plausibility as a person who can many important decisions. Apparently Biden had a really good rally in North Carolina today.
We need to be seeing and hearing more of that. A lot more of it. Soon.
On “Not Again: SCOTUS Has Another Abortion Ruling Leaked Early, Read It For Yourself”
But Chip, don't worry about them coming for same-sex marriage. That's settled law.
"
To me, this looks like a technical mistake rather than an intentional leak. It was accidentally posted one day before the actual release of the finished ruling with the concurring and dissenting opinions.
Note that the per curiam ruling is to dismiss, which has the effect of, for now, reinstating the preliminary injunction. Note also the 3-3-3 split (with Jackson staking out a slightly different bit of reasoning than her Sisters in the liberal bloc).
But reporting that this decision resolves the issue in Idaho is incorrect, or at best deceptive. Enforcement of the state law is enjoined for now. The issue of whether the federal law, EMTALA, pre-empts the state law is not yet formally resolved. There's no guarantee that by the time this case works its way back up to SCOTUS on full review that the Nine won't resolve the matter on a permanent basis in Idaho's favor.
The Barret concurrence, for the Roberts bloc, appears to suggest that she, the Chief and Justice Kavanaugh want to see more development of evidence since the Idaho Supreme Court put a very moderately softening gloss on the language of the state statute. That's why they voted with their more liberal Sisters in the result of letting the injunction against state law enforcement reinstate -- so that the new interpretation of the state law by the state court system can get hashed out by the District Court. Even if the state supreme court's gloss is a bit, shall we say, extra-textual.
But there's no reason to think the Roberts bloc won't work hard to find a way to reconcile the state law with the federal law. Because maybe there will be political changes at the federal level resulting in new guidance to Idaho hospitals and courts about how EMTALA applies in Idaho, depending on events scheduled to occur in about four months. (Justice Jackson writes separately to say she is NOT going to be buying THOSE moldy blueberries -- the state law and EMTALA are in direct, irreconcilable conflict.)
So for now, turn the heat down on having another abortion decision, folks. Make it look like we're actually very moderate and balanced as we approach this issue. As opposed to, say, our Brother Justice Alito, who on Page 19 writes of "The Members of this Court are not physicians and should therefore be wary about expressing conclusions about medical issues" and proceeds to spend the next three pages of his opinion doing exactly that with respect to a hypothetical situation involving a preterm prelabor rupture of membranes, ultimately saying that the Idaho law does indeed conflict with Federal law in that Federal law requires a termination in that event and Idaho law prohibits it -- and which by all reasonable predictions, his future ruling that Idaho law does indeed pre-empt the federal law and Idaho can forbid an abortion in such a circumstance.* It's as nakedly political as I can recall the Court being.
The big point being, this opinion was not leaked, and this case is not over.
* Personally, I'm of the opinion that Alito is hoping that a future HHS secretary in a Second Trump Administration will come along and relieve him of the odious duty of actually making that ruling, but it's also clear enough to me that he's prepared to render it if need be against a future Second Biden Administration.
On “The Conservative Supreme Court Takes On The Right”
I think the real turn comes in the next paragraph of Roberts' majority opinion:
Two things that I take away from this:
1. The Chief is coming all the way around the jurisprudential horseshoe to living constitutionalism here. Once an originalist concedes that there are principles that underlie the limits and balances of powers allocated in the Constitution, and it's the Court's job to apply those principles to modern laws addressing modern problems, the whole game is given away. The moose has got the muffin. The slope has begun to slip. There's no stopping it -- you're soon enough going to be "breathing life" into the words of the Constitution and holy crap you've just transmogrified yourself into William Brennan. Oh, no, Toto, I don't think we're in 1791 anymore!
2. That last line is... facially true and simultaneously risible. It's very easy to justify, or criticize, a given law by way of reference to some larger principle. It's very hard to get other lawyers to agree with you that you've done so in a proper and intellectually honest way, particularly when it happens that those abstract principles somehow always wind up favoring your client's preferred interpretation of the specific modern law. In particular, getting nine unelected mandarins to agree that a given contemporary articulation of a timeless Constitutional principle applies in this or that way as regards a given statute will probably prove a good deal less simple than the "commonplace" of which Chief Justice Roberts writes -- just as it did in this very case.
My last thought on Rahimi is that the plaintiff here is a poster boy for "Dudes Who Obviously Ought Not Have Guns." You knew he was going to wind up losing this case when the Court spent so long detailing the criminally dangerous things he had done with weapons in a [checks back to the opinion] twelve-month period culminating in firing a handgun in a fast food restaurant to resolve a dispute about a declined credit card.
"
To "write a case for the ages" implies that the case will be celebrated in years to come. But Gorsuch, more than any of his colleagues, knows that the bare meaning of the phrase simply is that it's a case that will be remembered for the duration of American law, a case that will make it into Constitutional Law textbooks.
So Dred Scott v. Sanford was a decision for the ages, just as much as Brown v. Board fo Education was. Korematsu v. United States was a decision for the ages too, and it hasn't even been overruled yet either by case or Constitutional amendment.
I'm sure Justice Gorsuch will have an opportunity to write a case for the ages. But until he realizes that the reason some cases are celebrated and other cases are condemned is that some expand liberties, and others diminish them, he seems to be fated to write a case that will be remembered for the ages the same way that cases like Bowers v. Hardwick or Lochner v. New York are.
On “From NY Mag: Freddie deBoer On Forcibly Treating the Mentally Ill”
My last encounter with someone who was pretty obviously mentally ill was peaceful, if saddening. This person's behavior demonstrated a profound distrust of basically everything and everyone. Wouldn't take a bottle of water when offered, for fear it had been poisoned. Wouldn't get in a taxi when called for fear of assassins hiding in the back seat despite wanting to go back to a trusted place in another part of town.
I was left at something of a loss for how to talk to them, how to steer them towards helpful resources, and concern not that they'd do something bad but that someone else would do something bad for them. A third party intervened and got them sent off to the "safe" location they'd named, although I questioned whether that facility would be able to help them due to lack of available beds.
Involuntary confinement under most states' current laws would not have been an option. Not violent, not a danger to self or others. Just likely to wind up huddled under a bridge or some similar place, hiding from their own shadow, obviously in need of some sort of mental health intervention that there simply isn't a lot of money allocated for (if any).
I'm not an SME. I can't even begin to imagine answers here. But this is where I saw a need recently. A bit different than Freddie's concern about the mentally ill person who stabbed an innocent, was confined for seven years, and then released. I get the distrust surrounding the release of such a person. In that case, we either allow people who are SME's to make meaningful treatment decisions, or we don't.
But the case of someone non-violent but in need? That turns out to be a very hard problem to solve, and I bet (as discussed above) there's a lot more of that kind of person at need than of people who pose imminent threats to themselves and others.
On “Hunter Biden’s Conviction”
When they tell you what they want to do, listen and believe them.
Contrary to popular jokes, most politicians at least try to fulfill most of their campaign promises. Broken campaign promises are the exception, not the norm. By all means point to [thing] to claim I'm wrong about this; but bear in mind that I'm not saying politicians never break their promises. I'm saying that they mostly at least try to keep them.
Donald Trump is not an exception to this rule. When he promises he'll try to be a dictator on day one and that he'll use the Department of Justice to take revenge on his perceived enemies, I believe him.
On “Open Mic for the week of 6/3/2024”
As I read it, that means a felon can't be an ELECTOR for a Presidential candidate. But I'll admit that the exact text of the law refers to a candidate whose name appears on the ballot, not the person who will actually hold the office.
But also bear in mind, the chances that Trump will win Washington State in 2024 are functionally zero, so this is, at least for this cycle, an academic quibble.
"
Do gotta wonder about the person who thinks: "I'll vote for Colin Powell for President and Elizabeth Warren for Vice President, yes, THAT'S the empty political signal I want to send to trivia wonks in the future who are the only ones who will care about what I'm doing here today."
On “Judging Trump’s Greek Chorus After His Verdict”
This. Right here, this.
"
IIRC back in 2016 the Republican Anointed One was to be Jeb! Bush. Some other "smart money" went to Rick Perry and Scott Walker. Had any one of them performed half as well as the Smart Guys told us they were supposed to, Trump wouldn't have had a vacuum to walk into.
On “Donald Trump Found Guilty on All 34 Counts”
I have a lot of things to say about Fani Willis and none of them are good, and not a single one of them exonerates the obviously guilty Trump.
"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated."
"Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
Had Fani Willis found someone other than her boyfriend to consult on the state RICO law, we'd have been looking at a pre-election trial on direct and personal election interference felony from 2020.
"
Hey, how ya doin' dude?
On “The Flag Flap”
David, you've changed my mind about this.
Yes, I think Alito's conduct demonstrates a decidedly non-judicial temperament. I think reasonable people would perceive a higher-than-comfortable degree of bias on display under the circumstances. (I am super not interested in any conduct by any other judge. Alito's flying of those flags under those circumstances is what's at issue. Go "whatabout" to someone else.)
But the fact that there was no code of conduct controlling Alito, or his wife,* at the time, means that we need to confine our inquiries to something that broke no rule, much less any law. It's not even clear that the newly-adopted SCOTUS code of judicial conduct would prohibit these.
Now, whether that code of conduct has teeth (probably not), and whether it's broad enough to produce appropriate judicial behavior (probably not), remain to be seen. But Alito himself doesn't seem to have done anything wrong here. That's what we should consider to be the real scandal.
* Yes, codes of judicial conduct can, do, and should reach to the conduct of judicial spouses and other immediate household and family members. Less so than the judges themselves, but for things that might reasonably be perceived as the personal actions or interests of the judge? Yeah, that's properly regulable.
On “Waterloo: 50 Years Later”
That guitar! (Okay, there are lots of great details like that.) Who says Sweden is not a cheese-producing country?
On “Trends in Social Media Commentary That Should Be Relentlessly Mocked Until They Stop”
This thing about Biden that drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS and this is important, guys, it's IMPORTANT so I'm gonna get it out on video RIGHT NOW and get it live to you all RIGHT NOW yes I'll have the seasoned curly fries with that and a Diet Coke anyway like I was saying before what no a super sized Diet Coke anyway the thing about Biden that drives me absolutely NUTS is no that's not for you ma'am that's for all my followers on the Internet yes I'll pull forward and... Damn it, I forgot what it was. Something about Biden. [Sigh.] We'll try this again later.
On “Class in 21st Century America”
Well that may be Ruby Payne's opinion but I think there's a lot of overlap in a lot of these categories. Some may be closer to the mark than others and I guess we can litigate (or re-litigate) where this chart gets it kind of right and where it doesn't. (I strongly suspect that everyone in every economic tier finds humor in sex, for instance.)
Once upon a time I suggested that class might be discerned by the degree to which one acquires money from a) entitlements, b) work, or c) capital, and that the amount of money one acquires is a different axis than the way the money is acquired, although it's probably the case that the cap for what one can make from entitlements is much lower than the cap for what one can make from having access to capital.
Today's OP seems to get at a similar idea -- the more money you have at your disposal, the more you're steered towards acquiring an ever larger endowment of capital; the more money you need for survival, the less you will be able to avail yourself of any of the incentives baked into the tax code.