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Michael's avatar

So much to comment on here but I will be disciplined and focus only on Mr. Vance's remarks on "heritage," a theme he talked about even before the election. My own ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but arrived soon thereafter. We are on the roll of members of Boston's First Congregationalist Church prior to 1670 so we've been around for a while. We also owned some of the the land now occupied by Princeton University. I imagine we might meet Mr. Vance's heritage criteria.

But other branches of our family were Hispanic and native American and were here centuries before the Pilgrims. Does 13,000 years on the continent count for something in Mr. Vance's estimation and what does Mr. Vance think of that heritage,? I'm afraid I know.

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Manqueman's avatar

Color me triggered. The time has come for me to lay out my Unified Theory of Roberts Junta Shit Pulling. (I might have written this in a previous comment but I don't so. But if I did, I apologize for being a boring, repetitive dotard.)

Re the abuse of the shadow docket: A problem the apparatchiks has to face is a lawless POTUS who, for the overwhelming most part is complying with nearly no lower court order or directive.

So were SCOTUS to issue a formal order by way of decision after full briefing and oral argument and POTUS then essentially respond by telling them to fuck off and goes on to disregard the order, well that's many magnitudes worse than the Roberts junta obliging him as they are and in the manner in which they're doing so. I'd also daresay that while there's five or six votes to give Donny his way via procedural abuses, I'm not sure there's five votes in a lot of those cases for doing so *formally*.

Another problem going the full brief/argument route is that the decision becomes precedent applicable to a D POTUS. As a cohort that puts party before law, that's an obvious no-go. So again, the answer's to limit that by giving Donny license in the manner in which they have been doing.

Please note that none of the preceding is meant as a defense of the Roberts junta.

As for the targeting of Brennan and Comey: There's a parallel with the breaking of norms which were already broken. I'm not sure the investigations (assuming that there are actual investigations and this isn't performative BS) won't turn up stuff showing some profound unfitness or bad acts. Of course, as a dotard I grew believing that the IC was seriously lacking in that I there. So I have no doubt there'd be some smoke there.

If I hadn't already gone on too much already, I'd start ranting on how not having a vigorous opposition party and establishment media not doing that watchdog thing they boast about have sort the nation...

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Patt's avatar

Great discussion with Harry Litman, Leah Litman, (no relation) Melissa Murray, and

Stephen Vladeck. Maybe the Supremes are afraid he'll defy them, so they dance around procedure instead of deciding the merits.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/supreme-court-roundup-revenge-of-the-six/id1456045551?i=1000716090193

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Manqueman's avatar

Leah and Melissa are 2/3 of the Strict Scrutiny pod which is great and fantastic. Used to listen to it regularly but then anything SCOTUS got too triggering and upsetting.

And I said (inelegantly) that avoiding an issue of Trump ignoring SCOTUS orders is in fact a consideration for the court or so I’d like to think. It’s away, too, to allow him power without giving him power. Of course, no doubt a minority on the panel would make it official.

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Patt's avatar

Yep. That's discussed toward the end of the podcast.

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Victoria Brown's avatar

David, one of the

"changes" you could

really make is to open

the Times and WSJ

articles you insert.

What's the sense of

including them if most of

us can't read them?

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Timothy Richley's avatar

Agree

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Susan Linehan's avatar

uh, isn't there a statute of limitations issue with prosecuting Brennan for stuff he did in 2017?

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McLain's avatar

John Colter honored for discovering corn dog—🤣 LOL

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