One has to wonder why we would _ever_ detain someone even if they did flatly say they were going to do things that would violate their visa. Either they didn’t understand the requirements before and maybe could be corrected and let in, or they aren’t going to follow it and we should _have them leave on the next plane_. Why on earth are we holding them?
I put that in parenthesis, but it actually cannot be emphasized enough how screwed up this is, how this is just the impotent bullying you get under early fascism.
The executive has, at the border, the right to reject the admission of almost anyone who isn't a citizen or permanent resident or asylum seeker. If they're on a tourist or work visa, they can just no. There's no due process, no hearing required, they can just say 'Nope, get back on the plane'. We talked about this with Trump's Muslim ban, which was fought in court not on the grounds the power didn't exist, but that it was used in an extremely harmful way by mass rejection of visa holders and causing complete chaos, it unlawfully rejected permanent residents and asylum seekers, and that it also had discriminatory intent.
No one, absolutely no one, asserts the executive cannot just say 'Hey, you! Yeah, you! Coming here on a 45 day tourist visa. You hinted at working in this country on this tourist visa, so you have to leave!'.
That's maybe stupidly used sometimes, we should maybe have a bit more discernment, but legal.
What is almost incomprehensible except on the the grounds of 'We can harm non-Americans', is _imprisoning_ that person for several weeks. There is no possible crime to charge them for...you could maybe try 'attempting to lie on their visa application' because they probably attested they weren't going to work, but the fact they supposedly _told the authorities_ what they were doing sorta renders any sort of intent claim idiotic...they clearly didn't understand some part of the rules, so no intent!
The thing you do with those people is say 'Nope. Back on the plane!'
Unless you are just...fascism, and want to HURT foreigners because they are the designed outgroup. There actually isn't another word for this, no other explanation. If we were farther along in fascism they'd probably send these people to the camps, but they can just use immigration law, which doesn't really have the concept of rules about how long you can hold people who walk up the border and try to enter the country and they say no, because no one ever thought anyone would keep those people around!
Again, to repeat what is actually being talking about, the actual topic of discussion: this is the world that a lot of people wanted. “if you have the Wrong Politics you should be punished”, that’s what we heard was Good, that’s what we heard Ought To Happen.
The minimal example of this is showing somewhere where people with the wrong politics got punished for those politics. (Which doesn't have to literally be the thing punished, we understand pretense.)
And then, the next step would be to show that the people don't like what's happening now did like that example. (Or, at minimum, it wasn't the exact same people doing both instances!)
Is censorshp for stuff like “Fauci funded the labs that leaked Covid 19” considered “prosecution” or is it merely censorship?
I feel like you read summaries of his letter, and then people building giant conspiracies off them, and not the actual letter, which weirdly is difficult to find on any media account talking about it. Here it is: https://jcpost.com/posts/17fc484f-376a-4e91-b411-3e3835407b46
You may notice it actually says it was ultimately their decision. Just, straight up, the government didn't make them do it. It also doesn't say _anything_ about political speech near Covid-19, and in fact the only speech it calls out as places the government went too far is humor and satire.
Facebook did restrict posts about lab leaks. That is true. There is _absolutely_ no evidence that the government even vaguely hinted to do that. Zuckerberg's letter does not say it or even imply it. And, of course, that Facebook restriction started in in 2020, under Trump, and was lifted two months into the Biden administration!
So once again we are pointing at the Trump administration, although in this case it's not even true!
Is lèse-majesté being defined so narrowly that it only applies to stuff like this or does even stuff like that not count because it’s not an example of criticizing *BIDEN* and, anyways, it didn’t stick?
That _is_ someone arrested for criticizing the government, or at least mocking them. By a local sheriff.
Which is why charged were dropped, and why he rightly sued the police. And then failed, because of laws essentially saying you cannot sue the police.
So you found the first requirement, someone being punished for clear political speech, although it didn't get very far before the courts shot it down. Alright, we got one! The system did eventually work, but it was bad it happened at all.
So we can now we can ask ourselves: Who are the people objecting to the Trump's administration current fascistic behavior of detaining tourists for weeks without charge because those people don't like the Trump administration...
...and are they traditionally people who would be defending the behavior of the cops in this story?
They also have repeatedly detained people (Not deported, _detained_.) people who give the slightest indication they might be working or living in the US on a tourist visa, with several notable examples of failing to clarify anything at all. For example, a visiting tattoo artist on a tourist visa saying she was going to tattoo a friend. She meant for free. Or a non-English speaker trying to saying he was going to stay at a friend's in Las Vegas, which they took to mean he was going to _live_ in Las Vegas permanently.
There has been an extreme crackdown on white people entering the country, which a lot of people find very troubling, because it's only supposed to be brown and black people subject to this sort of irrational scrutiny. Or long detentions instead of just, as worst, refusing entry. (Oops, I said the quiet part aloud again!)
Various countries have already issued travel warnings.
(One has to wonder why we would _ever_ detain someone even if they did flatly say they were going to do things that would violate their visa. Either they didn't understand the requirements before and maybe could be corrected and let in, or they aren't going to follow it and we should _have them leave on the next plane_. Why on earth are we holding them?)
Oh, so now we see that prosecution for criticism of the government has melted away to 'prosecution for things the person who said them said were satire but the government says were election fraud'.
Neither satire nor election fraud are criticism of the government in the slightest. It doesn't even matter what the facts of the case are, or even if it's a first amendment violation.(1) It isn't about criticizing the government, at all.
But the fact this this does not even _vaguely_ fit the thing being discussed means that Jaybird wins because he gets to claim the goalposts were moved, despite the fact he, very very clearly, is the person who moved them.
In fact, this seems to be a case that conservatives love to stretch to somehow be a political prosecution, they love the idea it was brought under Biden, apparently because they don't know how time works and thinks Biden could be behind charges that were filed Jan 27, 2021, a week into his term in office and months before his Attorney General took power, and while all the USAs were still Trump appointed.
To repeat: This is a prosecution that actually happened under Trump, even if filed seven days after he left, and Trump's people were still in there and did this entire case. It seems extremely unlikely it was politically motivated.
1) For the record, neither Harvard Law, which claims it sets a troubling first amendment violation about how to treat online culture, nor the appeals courts, which has stayed the sentence pending appeal, liked the results, and I agree with them. There is very little evidence this meme mislead anyone, and he should not be prosecuted for this. Or at best, a small fine to discourage this sort of behavior...there are things that are supposed to override first amendment concerns, and making sure the actual election process is not subject to disinformation and people can vote is one of them, but this punishment seems way out of line.
But, again, this is not about criticism of the government. At all. Nor was it done by someone who who targeted him for political purposes.
Or to put it another way: The troubling part of this case is the fact it was actually satire. It is entirely constitutional under the 1st amendment for people to be prosecuted for deliberately misleading people about how the mechanical process of an election works in such a way that their vote will not count. That is not generally in dispute. If you dispute it, say so.
When you say there _is_ no real or imagined risk, you mean before 2025, right?
Or are you completely disconnected from what is happening?
Also, to point out: You would not get arrested in England for being critical of the government either. That law doesn't result in that.
It's not a good law, it's incredibly vague, but it's not used to stop disparagement of the government. It could be, but is not. It's also an outdated law that was intended for private texting and email and has ended up being applied to social media, and they'd going to revise it pretty soon.
(But Americans do not get to judge other countries by what their laws _could_ be used for, considering what that Trump is sending people without trial to overseas imprisonment using a 1798 law.)
The fun thing about how Jaybird knows this is what will happen, so doesn't have to do, is that it can be used for _anything_ and Jaybird never has to find a single example. It makes debate so simple.
They very clearly _are_ trying to erase all records of Black achievement, they're just willing to back off very specific examples that people get outraged by and call attention to.
Honestly, learning that we were funding them to the point where ceasing to fund them caused a government emergency was confusing.
Jaybird, it is not a 'government emergency'. This is a _research_ emergency.
There are research projects, some of which the American government has funded that need to operate continually. In fact, a LOT of research projects need to operate continually over the time they exist.
If you have live samples, you can't just stop funding and pick it up a week later, because things die. If you're measuring the natural world, you cannot just stop because then you have a hole in the data. Etc, etc. Honestly, it might be easier to list projects that can just be randomly paused and put on a shelf than those that can't.
And the calls for an emergency meeting (Which has not actually been decided to happen yet, these are calls by the colleges to have such a meeting) would be so Australian researchers can actually talk about those thing with the government.
This discussion would probably include some triage to figure out what can be paused, what has barely started and can be stopped without much loss, and what needs to done to salvage projects that are important. And there's likely some additional funding passed. But this is not going to break Australia's budget at all.
But Australia, unlike the US, doesn't want to moronically throw away millions of dollars and months of research because the Trump administration decided they didn't like climate research and 'transgenderism'.
No, that 50,000 number is not an AP estimate. It's statistics by Health Ministry Palestine that the WHO agrees with.
There is an 'AP estimate' that comes out, but that would be what percentage are women and children.
That 50,000 number, incidentally, is probably wrong and way too conservative. A peer reviewed survey showed that they were seriously undercounting deaths: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-underreported-study-intl/index.html
Those numbers should probably be ~40% higher, statistically. Their estimate would be ~64,260 dead way back at the end of June 2024.
The thing she says is that the media massive downplayed the virus, which, along with the idiotic claim it only spread by touch (Which was not the media's fault.), diminished trust.
But once again, talking about out failures with COVID, we somehow end up talking about the lab leak theory, a thing that is...utterly irrelevant to how we should have handled the situation. Literally, could not be the slightest bit relevant.
And there is _still_ no evidence of it. Literally the entire argument seems to be over whether it _could_ be a possible origin.
You want to know what destroys trust in society and institutions, Jaybird? It's this sort of thing. Coming up with theories, spreading them on social media, and having the media reprint them, then having other people go 'No, that's not true', and the media reprints that, and then the original people come up with some non-peer reviewer pre-print that claims it statistically must be true, and the media prints that, and then others go 'That's not right', and the media prints that.
You see the problem there? There is exactly one bad actor in that, and it's the people who started spreading a theory without real evidence. The media sorta has to report it, and the actual scientists have to say 'Look, that doesn't appear to be true', and the media has to report that.
It really is interesting to watch people talk about this and come out with complete nonsense implications. 'a romantic heterosexual resolution is just too problematic to deliver' is just hilarious. As opposed to all the...romantic non-hetrosexual resolutions that Disney has delivered over the year?
Anyway, by your definition, Disney hasn't had a traditional animated Princess movie since 2009's Princess and the Frog, which didn't do well, or possibly Tangled, the next year, which did a little better. (Although Tangled was pretty high on action and low on romance.)
Meanwhile, they were wildly successful with Frozen, which pretends to be a traditional princess movie under your definition until everything shatters into pieces. The next princess movie was Moana, which also had no romantic relationship and which _also_ did very well. Then there was Raya and the Last Dragon, which did make money, but not really as much as expected, but it was mostly because the movie repeatedly delayed by COVID and movies still were not doing good at all in March 2021 when it came out.
Meanwhile, Disney has had a lot of success with other animated movies. I don't think I need to list them, but there's a reason Inside Out got a sequel. Or The Lion King got like four.
Also, have you noticed that...KenB was literally complaining about live actions remakes of animated princess movies?
What a weird thing to use to conclude that 'Disney decided that princess movies are not cool and is failing because they moved away from a winning formula.'. Disney actually concluded the _other_ thing, that everyone would pay to see a live-action remake of traditional princess movies! (Which they were apparently wrong about.)
If you want to make a conclusion about the traditional princess movies from the dislike of the live-action remakes, it's that traditional princess movies _don't_ have drawing power. (Although my conclusion is just 'No one wants damn remakes of some of the most iconic movies ever. Stop it. Also, having a live action version of The Lion King is gibberish.')
As for the right of return: In actual reality, is extremely clear that that is going to be something that the PA is going to walk into a discussion with Israel, them saying yes and Israel saying no, and some sort of compromise will be reached. Likely payments.
I know you _think_ that's what all rejections of peace hinge on, I know you think that's why Arafat rejected the deals offered, but it's not. I want you to read this Op-Ed literally by Yasir Arafat a year after the second talks: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3024.html
In addition, we seek a fair and just solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees who for 54 years have not been permitted to return to their homes. We understand Israel's demographic concerns and understand that the right of return of Palestinian refugees, a right guaranteed under international law and United Nations Resolution 194, must be implemented in a way that takes into account such concerns. However, just as we Palestinians must be realistic with respect to Israel's demographic desires, Israelis too must be realistic in understanding that there can be no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if the legitimate rights of these innocent civilians continue to be ignored. Left unresolved, the refugee issue has the potential to undermine any permanent peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. How is a Palestinian refugee to understand that his or her right of return will not be honored but those of Kosovar Albanians, Afghans and East Timorese have been?
"We must be realistic about your concerns, and you must be realistic about ours." really sounds like "This can be figured out." not "We will never settle for anything other then the absolute!".
Meanwhile, the actual reason he rejected the agreements in 2000 and 2001 is that Palestine would not be allowed to have actual sovereignty under them, with them not allowed to have a military and Israel controlling their airspace. Also, the first proposal was insultingly stupid about territory, demanding Palestine give up 9% of territory, some of which was rather important, in exchange for a vague 1% to be defined later. The second proposal was somewhat better, but still had the sovereignty thing.
Israel thinks the PA is not up to the task. Maybe it’s the shear incompetence and corruption.
You think war is better than incompetence and corruption?
Maybe it’s the PA’s ideological support for an Israel destroying “Right to Return”(*).
Yes, it sure it weird that the PA has not pre-negotiated that demand away. I'm going to address that in a different comment.
Because that's completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about the border agreement, we are talking about stopping the war.
Are you not aware how closely the PA and Israel work together? Like, literally all the time? That's literally part of the corruption I was talking about.
Maybe it’s the paying terrorists by the number of Jews they kill.
You mean the thing the PA agreed to end a month ago as part of the ceasefire?
Israel isn’t willing to leave Hamas in power, that’s their top priority.
So Israel is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, then, right? To put them in charge?
I mean, that's the other, obvious government that could take over, and theoretically sorta legally is. Hamas was elected to run the Gaza Strip under Palestinian elections, and then seized full control of the Gaza Strip from the PA, but the PA still are the government of all of Palestine, in a theoretical legal sense. We can just sorta pretend the Hamas-Fatah civil war didn't happen, and Israel is 'fixing' it.
Like, legally, that's a grey area and no one would really have a problem with the PA ending up in control. And Fatah controls the PA, and Fatah has recognized Israel and works with them as part of the PA. They seem to be mostly honest partners, a lot of corruptions and criticized for things, but one of the things they are criticized for is letting Israel walk all over them.
So surely, that's what Israel is doing, working with the PA . Trying to put Gaza back how it was in 2003 or whatever. Now, obviously, Hamas, being a bunch of death-seeking fanatics who will never settle unless the other side is fully destroyed, will reject the idea of turning over Gaza to a bunch of people it thinks are cowards and collaborators with Israel.
So Israel will have to remove Hamas by force, but they're presumably planning to at least get the PA on board before that and say what they're planning on doing-
*is handed a note, reads it*
Sorry, this can't be right. I'll be right back.
*footsteps, door opens, closes, more footsteps, long whispered argument, door opens, closes, footsteps back*
So apparently _Hamas_ proposed handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel rejected it.
So, again, as always, my question is when do we stop pretending that Israel is looking for any outcomes that are not 'Israel owns Gaza and eventually all of Palestine and none of the annoying existing people are there anymore'?
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.)
“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.
Pardons do not even need to be signed. Or even _written down_. They are not laws, they are affirmative defenses in court.
All they have to do is be 'granted' by the president.
And everyone seems very confused about this, thinking Trump can do anything about pardons. He cannot. He can say anything he wants, he can direct the justice department to investigate anyone he wants, even if pardoned for it. He can declare them invalid. Sure, he can do that.
And the defense will walking into court, or not even 'court' but the very first hearing in front of a judge, their lawyer will silently hand the pardon to the judge, and the judge will turn to the prosecution and says 'Case dismissed with prejudice, and you are all sanctioned to the full extent I possible can, and I'm going to make you stand there while I write to the bar to have you disbarred'.
It is such incredibly obvious legal misconduct that it would be hard to conceive of a few months ago from government lawyers, but, hey, here we are. Should be funny as hell if it happens.
It's worth pointing out that there is literally no requirement that pardons _even be signed_, only that the President has granted them. There is nothing, textually, stopping the president from just issuing them verbally. This is probably a bad idea, but there's nothing stopping it.
This is because pardons are not laws.
They are merely affirmative defenses you can use in court. The best affirmative defense is indeed a signed document, but it's not invalid if it is not.
Also, it is _completely insane_ that Jaybird has decided to talk about this as if it is some reasonable legal theory Trump can operate under. Is that hows it's going to work, as we descend farther and farther into fascism and the executive keeps spewing more and more nonsense?
--
For the record, it being an affirmative defense means it is the _court_ that decides if the pardons are valid, not the president or law enforcement. Trump can indeed direct the justice department to investigate and even charge, and the second they end up in court, in front of a judge, the lawyer for the defense will hand over the pardon and say 'Here you go, the pardon. Say the words, judge', and the judge will say 'This case is immediately dismissed with prejudice. The defendant can go. Prosecution lawyers, stay here, I have to sanction you so hard literally everyone in your office who glanced at this case get disbarred.'
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I put that in parenthesis, but it actually cannot be emphasized enough how screwed up this is, how this is just the impotent bullying you get under early fascism.
The executive has, at the border, the right to reject the admission of almost anyone who isn't a citizen or permanent resident or asylum seeker. If they're on a tourist or work visa, they can just no. There's no due process, no hearing required, they can just say 'Nope, get back on the plane'. We talked about this with Trump's Muslim ban, which was fought in court not on the grounds the power didn't exist, but that it was used in an extremely harmful way by mass rejection of visa holders and causing complete chaos, it unlawfully rejected permanent residents and asylum seekers, and that it also had discriminatory intent.
No one, absolutely no one, asserts the executive cannot just say 'Hey, you! Yeah, you! Coming here on a 45 day tourist visa. You hinted at working in this country on this tourist visa, so you have to leave!'.
That's maybe stupidly used sometimes, we should maybe have a bit more discernment, but legal.
What is almost incomprehensible except on the the grounds of 'We can harm non-Americans', is _imprisoning_ that person for several weeks. There is no possible crime to charge them for...you could maybe try 'attempting to lie on their visa application' because they probably attested they weren't going to work, but the fact they supposedly _told the authorities_ what they were doing sorta renders any sort of intent claim idiotic...they clearly didn't understand some part of the rules, so no intent!
The thing you do with those people is say 'Nope. Back on the plane!'
Unless you are just...fascism, and want to HURT foreigners because they are the designed outgroup. There actually isn't another word for this, no other explanation. If we were farther along in fascism they'd probably send these people to the camps, but they can just use immigration law, which doesn't really have the concept of rules about how long you can hold people who walk up the border and try to enter the country and they say no, because no one ever thought anyone would keep those people around!
Again, to repeat what is actually being talking about, the actual topic of discussion: this is the world that a lot of people wanted. “if you have the Wrong Politics you should be punished”, that’s what we heard was Good, that’s what we heard Ought To Happen.
The minimal example of this is showing somewhere where people with the wrong politics got punished for those politics. (Which doesn't have to literally be the thing punished, we understand pretense.)
And then, the next step would be to show that the people don't like what's happening now did like that example. (Or, at minimum, it wasn't the exact same people doing both instances!)
I feel like you read summaries of his letter, and then people building giant conspiracies off them, and not the actual letter, which weirdly is difficult to find on any media account talking about it. Here it is: https://jcpost.com/posts/17fc484f-376a-4e91-b411-3e3835407b46
You may notice it actually says it was ultimately their decision. Just, straight up, the government didn't make them do it. It also doesn't say _anything_ about political speech near Covid-19, and in fact the only speech it calls out as places the government went too far is humor and satire.
Facebook did restrict posts about lab leaks. That is true. There is _absolutely_ no evidence that the government even vaguely hinted to do that. Zuckerberg's letter does not say it or even imply it. And, of course, that Facebook restriction started in in 2020, under Trump, and was lifted two months into the Biden administration!
So once again we are pointing at the Trump administration, although in this case it's not even true!
That _is_ someone arrested for criticizing the government, or at least mocking them. By a local sheriff.
Which is why charged were dropped, and why he rightly sued the police. And then failed, because of laws essentially saying you cannot sue the police.
So you found the first requirement, someone being punished for clear political speech, although it didn't get very far before the courts shot it down. Alright, we got one! The system did eventually work, but it was bad it happened at all.
So we can now we can ask ourselves: Who are the people objecting to the Trump's administration current fascistic behavior of detaining tourists for weeks without charge because those people don't like the Trump administration...
...and are they traditionally people who would be defending the behavior of the cops in this story?
...yes?
https://www.newsweek.com/border-patrol-checking-phones-social-media-messages-us-immigration-2048147
They also have repeatedly detained people (Not deported, _detained_.) people who give the slightest indication they might be working or living in the US on a tourist visa, with several notable examples of failing to clarify anything at all. For example, a visiting tattoo artist on a tourist visa saying she was going to tattoo a friend. She meant for free. Or a non-English speaker trying to saying he was going to stay at a friend's in Las Vegas, which they took to mean he was going to _live_ in Las Vegas permanently.
There has been an extreme crackdown on white people entering the country, which a lot of people find very troubling, because it's only supposed to be brown and black people subject to this sort of irrational scrutiny. Or long detentions instead of just, as worst, refusing entry. (Oops, I said the quiet part aloud again!)
Various countries have already issued travel warnings.
(One has to wonder why we would _ever_ detain someone even if they did flatly say they were going to do things that would violate their visa. Either they didn't understand the requirements before and maybe could be corrected and let in, or they aren't going to follow it and we should _have them leave on the next plane_. Why on earth are we holding them?)
Oh, so now we see that prosecution for criticism of the government has melted away to 'prosecution for things the person who said them said were satire but the government says were election fraud'.
Neither satire nor election fraud are criticism of the government in the slightest. It doesn't even matter what the facts of the case are, or even if it's a first amendment violation.(1) It isn't about criticizing the government, at all.
But the fact this this does not even _vaguely_ fit the thing being discussed means that Jaybird wins because he gets to claim the goalposts were moved, despite the fact he, very very clearly, is the person who moved them.
In fact, this seems to be a case that conservatives love to stretch to somehow be a political prosecution, they love the idea it was brought under Biden, apparently because they don't know how time works and thinks Biden could be behind charges that were filed Jan 27, 2021, a week into his term in office and months before his Attorney General took power, and while all the USAs were still Trump appointed.
To repeat: This is a prosecution that actually happened under Trump, even if filed seven days after he left, and Trump's people were still in there and did this entire case. It seems extremely unlikely it was politically motivated.
1) For the record, neither Harvard Law, which claims it sets a troubling first amendment violation about how to treat online culture, nor the appeals courts, which has stayed the sentence pending appeal, liked the results, and I agree with them. There is very little evidence this meme mislead anyone, and he should not be prosecuted for this. Or at best, a small fine to discourage this sort of behavior...there are things that are supposed to override first amendment concerns, and making sure the actual election process is not subject to disinformation and people can vote is one of them, but this punishment seems way out of line.
But, again, this is not about criticism of the government. At all. Nor was it done by someone who who targeted him for political purposes.
Or to put it another way: The troubling part of this case is the fact it was actually satire. It is entirely constitutional under the 1st amendment for people to be prosecuted for deliberately misleading people about how the mechanical process of an election works in such a way that their vote will not count. That is not generally in dispute. If you dispute it, say so.
When you say there _is_ no real or imagined risk, you mean before 2025, right?
Or are you completely disconnected from what is happening?
Also, to point out: You would not get arrested in England for being critical of the government either. That law doesn't result in that.
It's not a good law, it's incredibly vague, but it's not used to stop disparagement of the government. It could be, but is not. It's also an outdated law that was intended for private texting and email and has ended up being applied to social media, and they'd going to revise it pretty soon.
(But Americans do not get to judge other countries by what their laws _could_ be used for, considering what that Trump is sending people without trial to overseas imprisonment using a 1798 law.)
The fun thing about how Jaybird knows this is what will happen, so doesn't have to do, is that it can be used for _anything_ and Jaybird never has to find a single example. It makes debate so simple.
They very clearly _are_ trying to erase all records of Black achievement, they're just willing to back off very specific examples that people get outraged by and call attention to.
Jaybird, it is not a 'government emergency'. This is a _research_ emergency.
There are research projects, some of which the American government has funded that need to operate continually. In fact, a LOT of research projects need to operate continually over the time they exist.
If you have live samples, you can't just stop funding and pick it up a week later, because things die. If you're measuring the natural world, you cannot just stop because then you have a hole in the data. Etc, etc. Honestly, it might be easier to list projects that can just be randomly paused and put on a shelf than those that can't.
And the calls for an emergency meeting (Which has not actually been decided to happen yet, these are calls by the colleges to have such a meeting) would be so Australian researchers can actually talk about those thing with the government.
This discussion would probably include some triage to figure out what can be paused, what has barely started and can be stopped without much loss, and what needs to done to salvage projects that are important. And there's likely some additional funding passed. But this is not going to break Australia's budget at all.
But Australia, unlike the US, doesn't want to moronically throw away millions of dollars and months of research because the Trump administration decided they didn't like climate research and 'transgenderism'.
No, that 50,000 number is not an AP estimate. It's statistics by Health Ministry Palestine that the WHO agrees with.
There is an 'AP estimate' that comes out, but that would be what percentage are women and children.
That 50,000 number, incidentally, is probably wrong and way too conservative. A peer reviewed survey showed that they were seriously undercounting deaths: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-underreported-study-intl/index.html
Those numbers should probably be ~40% higher, statistically. Their estimate would be ~64,260 dead way back at the end of June 2024.
...and the point that you think the left gave the government this power is when, exactly?
Because I don't remember the government doing this before.
It sure is amazing how a bunch of people cannot tell generalized criticism by the population from government power.
...um, you did read that, right?
The thing she says is that the media massive downplayed the virus, which, along with the idiotic claim it only spread by touch (Which was not the media's fault.), diminished trust.
But once again, talking about out failures with COVID, we somehow end up talking about the lab leak theory, a thing that is...utterly irrelevant to how we should have handled the situation. Literally, could not be the slightest bit relevant.
And there is _still_ no evidence of it. Literally the entire argument seems to be over whether it _could_ be a possible origin.
You want to know what destroys trust in society and institutions, Jaybird? It's this sort of thing. Coming up with theories, spreading them on social media, and having the media reprint them, then having other people go 'No, that's not true', and the media reprints that, and then the original people come up with some non-peer reviewer pre-print that claims it statistically must be true, and the media prints that, and then others go 'That's not right', and the media prints that.
You see the problem there? There is exactly one bad actor in that, and it's the people who started spreading a theory without real evidence. The media sorta has to report it, and the actual scientists have to say 'Look, that doesn't appear to be true', and the media has to report that.
My "There will not be a civil war" t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
It really is interesting to watch people talk about this and come out with complete nonsense implications. 'a romantic heterosexual resolution is just too problematic to deliver' is just hilarious. As opposed to all the...romantic non-hetrosexual resolutions that Disney has delivered over the year?
Anyway, by your definition, Disney hasn't had a traditional animated Princess movie since 2009's Princess and the Frog, which didn't do well, or possibly Tangled, the next year, which did a little better. (Although Tangled was pretty high on action and low on romance.)
Meanwhile, they were wildly successful with Frozen, which pretends to be a traditional princess movie under your definition until everything shatters into pieces. The next princess movie was Moana, which also had no romantic relationship and which _also_ did very well. Then there was Raya and the Last Dragon, which did make money, but not really as much as expected, but it was mostly because the movie repeatedly delayed by COVID and movies still were not doing good at all in March 2021 when it came out.
Meanwhile, Disney has had a lot of success with other animated movies. I don't think I need to list them, but there's a reason Inside Out got a sequel. Or The Lion King got like four.
Also, have you noticed that...KenB was literally complaining about live actions remakes of animated princess movies?
What a weird thing to use to conclude that 'Disney decided that princess movies are not cool and is failing because they moved away from a winning formula.'. Disney actually concluded the _other_ thing, that everyone would pay to see a live-action remake of traditional princess movies! (Which they were apparently wrong about.)
If you want to make a conclusion about the traditional princess movies from the dislike of the live-action remakes, it's that traditional princess movies _don't_ have drawing power. (Although my conclusion is just 'No one wants damn remakes of some of the most iconic movies ever. Stop it. Also, having a live action version of The Lion King is gibberish.')
As for the right of return: In actual reality, is extremely clear that that is going to be something that the PA is going to walk into a discussion with Israel, them saying yes and Israel saying no, and some sort of compromise will be reached. Likely payments.
I know you _think_ that's what all rejections of peace hinge on, I know you think that's why Arafat rejected the deals offered, but it's not. I want you to read this Op-Ed literally by Yasir Arafat a year after the second talks: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3024.html
"We must be realistic about your concerns, and you must be realistic about ours." really sounds like "This can be figured out." not "We will never settle for anything other then the absolute!".
Meanwhile, the actual reason he rejected the agreements in 2000 and 2001 is that Palestine would not be allowed to have actual sovereignty under them, with them not allowed to have a military and Israel controlling their airspace. Also, the first proposal was insultingly stupid about territory, demanding Palestine give up 9% of territory, some of which was rather important, in exchange for a vague 1% to be defined later. The second proposal was somewhat better, but still had the sovereignty thing.
I'm kinda tired of addressing this.
You think war is better than incompetence and corruption?
Yes, it sure it weird that the PA has not pre-negotiated that demand away. I'm going to address that in a different comment.
Because that's completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about the border agreement, we are talking about stopping the war.
Are you not aware how closely the PA and Israel work together? Like, literally all the time? That's literally part of the corruption I was talking about.
You mean the thing the PA agreed to end a month ago as part of the ceasefire?
So Israel is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, then, right? To put them in charge?
I mean, that's the other, obvious government that could take over, and theoretically sorta legally is. Hamas was elected to run the Gaza Strip under Palestinian elections, and then seized full control of the Gaza Strip from the PA, but the PA still are the government of all of Palestine, in a theoretical legal sense. We can just sorta pretend the Hamas-Fatah civil war didn't happen, and Israel is 'fixing' it.
Like, legally, that's a grey area and no one would really have a problem with the PA ending up in control. And Fatah controls the PA, and Fatah has recognized Israel and works with them as part of the PA. They seem to be mostly honest partners, a lot of corruptions and criticized for things, but one of the things they are criticized for is letting Israel walk all over them.
So surely, that's what Israel is doing, working with the PA . Trying to put Gaza back how it was in 2003 or whatever. Now, obviously, Hamas, being a bunch of death-seeking fanatics who will never settle unless the other side is fully destroyed, will reject the idea of turning over Gaza to a bunch of people it thinks are cowards and collaborators with Israel.
So Israel will have to remove Hamas by force, but they're presumably planning to at least get the PA on board before that and say what they're planning on doing-
*is handed a note, reads it*
Sorry, this can't be right. I'll be right back.
*footsteps, door opens, closes, more footsteps, long whispered argument, door opens, closes, footsteps back*
So apparently _Hamas_ proposed handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel rejected it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-agree-to-cede-gaza-governance-to-pa-netanyahu-not-going-to-happen/
So, again, as always, my question is when do we stop pretending that Israel is looking for any outcomes that are not 'Israel owns Gaza and eventually all of Palestine and none of the annoying existing people are there anymore'?
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.)
No, Jaybird, it's the debate _you_ are choosing us to have.
If you think it's absurd, you had a chance to comment on that WHEN YOU INTRODUCED IT.
You know, I actually typed this and deleted it in another post, but there is literally no way to invalidate a pardon if the president has granted it, and I mean the word literally literally.
For the harshest example, if a president grants a pardon at gunpoint, it is still a granted pardon and can be used. It cannot be revoked or invalidated. This may seem Obviously Wrong, but it is not.
The pardon power is almost entirely absolute, exempting only impeachment or state law violations. It used to be slightly restricted by the idea we could prosecute a president who misused it, like selling pardons, until the Supreme Court said no. So now, as long as it's on a violation of Federal law, that presidential power is literally unchecked and absolute. It's even uncheckable, after the fact, by the person who used it!
"How dare people in a discussion forum point out every level of what Trump is trying to do is complete and utter bullsh*t instead of just picking one!"
Gee, I don't know, could it be that Trump _himself_ introduced two different arguments, one about the way they were signed, and one about Biden not knowing about them?
Could it be that this is, in fact, exactly how this administration operates, a gish gallop of nonsense that moves from one thing to another, constantly falling back from nonsense position to different nonsense position, and it's worth pointing out preemptive how it's _all_ nonsense from top to bottom, and in fact Trump not only does not have the legal power to question pardons, he does not even have the _ability_?
Could it be that is all extremely stupid?
There is basically nothing stopping that from happening. If you were trying to prosecute that person, you could maybe attempt to introduce doubt that had happen, like the defendant's behavior later did not indicate they thought they were pardoned. But that evidence is very circumstantial, and, as I said, presenting a pardon is an affirmative defense, which means the prosecutor has to prove it _wasn't_ issued.
It's really hard for a prosecutor to prove that certain things were not said in private between two individuals if those two individuals are saying it was, and there's no other record. I think that's sort of obvious?
The classification of documents is a process laid out under the law, and Trump did not follow it. Until he does follow it, as President, they are classified.
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn't even need to do that. Because pardons don't even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just 'granting' them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they're just...said.
The idea that the court is going to take an official government document issued and posted by the Executive Office of the President and represented by the government at the time as signed by the president, and allow that fact to be _debated in court_, is just utterly insane.
This not only is something the prosecution would have to prove (Because it's an affirmative defense), but they'd have to have all their evidence before hand. Because this is otherwise a pre-trial dismissal that will be issued instantly from the bench.
By a very very angry judge.
And if they tell the judge that they have enough evidence to demonstrate that, what would actually happen is that the defense would just get a sworn statement from Biden that he did sign the thing. The End. It's over.
This would probably make the judge _even angrier_ at the prosecution.
Pardons do not even need to be signed. Or even _written down_. They are not laws, they are affirmative defenses in court.
All they have to do is be 'granted' by the president.
And everyone seems very confused about this, thinking Trump can do anything about pardons. He cannot. He can say anything he wants, he can direct the justice department to investigate anyone he wants, even if pardoned for it. He can declare them invalid. Sure, he can do that.
And the defense will walking into court, or not even 'court' but the very first hearing in front of a judge, their lawyer will silently hand the pardon to the judge, and the judge will turn to the prosecution and says 'Case dismissed with prejudice, and you are all sanctioned to the full extent I possible can, and I'm going to make you stand there while I write to the bar to have you disbarred'.
It is such incredibly obvious legal misconduct that it would be hard to conceive of a few months ago from government lawyers, but, hey, here we are. Should be funny as hell if it happens.
It's worth pointing out that there is literally no requirement that pardons _even be signed_, only that the President has granted them. There is nothing, textually, stopping the president from just issuing them verbally. This is probably a bad idea, but there's nothing stopping it.
This is because pardons are not laws.
They are merely affirmative defenses you can use in court. The best affirmative defense is indeed a signed document, but it's not invalid if it is not.
Also, it is _completely insane_ that Jaybird has decided to talk about this as if it is some reasonable legal theory Trump can operate under. Is that hows it's going to work, as we descend farther and farther into fascism and the executive keeps spewing more and more nonsense?
--
For the record, it being an affirmative defense means it is the _court_ that decides if the pardons are valid, not the president or law enforcement. Trump can indeed direct the justice department to investigate and even charge, and the second they end up in court, in front of a judge, the lawyer for the defense will hand over the pardon and say 'Here you go, the pardon. Say the words, judge', and the judge will say 'This case is immediately dismissed with prejudice. The defendant can go. Prosecution lawyers, stay here, I have to sanction you so hard literally everyone in your office who glanced at this case get disbarred.'