Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
I don't think anyone expects the DoJ to prevent something like this contemporaneously but now there is not even the possibility of punishment after the fact.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
What does McConnell have to do with "House speaker shenanigans?"
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
How on earth are "House speaker shenanigans" the fault of "the left?"
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity opinion, dropped this morning. In broad strokes it goes like this:
1. For those acts that are pursuant to the President's "conclusive and preclusive" authority there is absolute immunity.
2. For those acts which are official acts by the President but not covered by (1) there is a presumption of immunity that can only be overcome by showing the prosecution would pose no "dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch."
3. For those acts which are unofficial there is no immunity.
4. Those acts for which the President has immunity cannot be used as evidence to demonstrate any element of a crime for which the President would not have immunity.
I think it's just incredible that the six justices in the majority looked at the Navy-SEALs-assassinate-a-rival hypothetical and went "yep, sounds right, no liability." Roberts' majority opinion even mentions the President's orders to the armed forces as one of the things that falls under (1).
I think the way is clear. Biden orders Trump, the six justices in the majority, and let's say the next 2-3 top Republican candidates whacked (just for safety). He probably gets impeached and removed but can't go to jail (thanks SCOTUS!) Harris takes over as President and I think it's unlikely she would also get impeached. Dems don't want to hand the presidency to Mike Johnson. That gives Harris plenty of time to stack the court. Republican convention in disarray due to the deaths of their prominent candidates. Biden obviously out, he'd be ineligible anyway if impeached and removed. Dems probably dump Harris to create a clean break with Biden admin, clearing the way for Whitmer/Newsom/Pritzker/whoever.
The above is fan fiction, of course.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Onto youth. A recent tweet by a newish Twitter account, America_2100, claims a drop in support for LGBT over the past few years (2022–2023: US-wide: -7 points; Republicans: -15 points, to a 10-year low of 41%; Democrats: -6 points; "young people": -8 points). In particular, they claim Gen Z's support for gay marriage dropped by 11 points between 2021 and 2023, which is double the time span of the other stats but could indicate an ongoing decline in support. Unfortunately the tweet doesn't source the surveys it refers to beyond saying that it came from PRRI and I don't have hard data beyond a couple of anecdotes.
I wish the tweet cited its sources because the data I can find does not seem to support this. Here is Gallup in 2021 and 2023. The total US number is up 1 percentage point (71 in 2023 vs 70 in 2021). Republicans are down about 6 percentage points (55 to 49) but Democrats (83 to 84) and independents (73 to 78) are up. The age groups are not quite comparable across these two polls but taking the lowest age group (18-29 in 2023, 18-34 in 2021) support for gay marriage has increased (84 to 89). Just eyeballing the age based changes I think they are more a composition effect of how the ranges have changed but none of them show a decline.
On the other hand a PRRI report from this year does show Gen Z being mildly less supportive of LGBT rights than millennials, though the still the second-most supportive generation.
Around six in ten Gen Z adults (62%) oppose allowing a small business to refuse to provide goods or services to LGBTQ people, if doing so goes against their religious beliefs, compared with 64% of millennials, 58% of Gen Xers, 57% of baby boomers, and 53% of the Silent Generation.
...
More than two-thirds of Gen Zers (68%) support allowing same-sex couples to marry legally, while 28% oppose. Millennials have the highest support for same-sex marriage at 73%, followed by 66% of Gen Xers, 62% of baby boomers, and 57% of the Silent Generation.
Diaz v. United States
After reading the FRE at issue and the opinions in the case I think the court got this one wrong. Either the purpose of the expert witness's testimony was to be about the defendant's state of mind, which I would read 704(b) to bar, or the testimony was irrelevant and prejudicial. I guess as long as the expert doesn't say the magic words "In my opinion the defendant had intent X" they are free to imply whatever they like about the defendant's intent.
Imagine we have as a defendant a man named Charles. He is charged with intentionally killing his wife. The prosecution offers expert witness testimony to the effect of "When men named Charles kill their spouse it tends to be intentionally, rather than accidentally or negligently." That testimony would be fine under this rule, right? The testimony isn't about this Charles who is accused of killing his wife, it's about the abstract category of men named Charles who kill their spouse! Totally different!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I'm curious what you think the content of the circuit's decision would be so that SCOTUS doesn't grant cert.
If the circuit says "there exists some presidential immunity for constitutionally granted powers but Trump's conduct is outside that" do you think they grant cert?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I am not convinced. As best I can tell the court of appeals is correct that there is no precedent for criminal immunity for the president. Even if they had decided to make up some line I'm skeptical the line they made up would be one that satisfied 6/9 of the justices on the Supreme Court.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Since tomorrow is the last (so far) scheduled day for releasing opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States I wanted to take some time to contrast the court's treatment of a pair of cases this term. These cases are Trump v. Anderson and Trump v. United States. The former case is the case out of Colorado about Trump's ballot eligibility. The latter case is the case out of the DC Circuit concerning Trump's claim to presidential immunity for his actions on Jan 6th 2021. I can't compare the reasoning in the opinions of the two cases (we still don't have a decision in the immunity one) but one thing I, and other court watchers, think is suggestive is the timeline of each of these cases. I link to SCOTUSBlog above because they provide a convenient timeline that I'll reproduce here.
In the case of Anderson the petition for cert was filed on January 3rd and granted on January 5th. Oral argument was scheduled for February 8th and the decision was issued March 4th. That's 61 days from petition for cert to decision, which is incredibly quick by SCOTUS standards. The nature of the case makes this understandable. After all, it's a question about whether a major party's chosen candidate can be on the ballot in one (and perhaps many) states. The decision was also unanimous which likely goes some way to explaining the short turn around from oral argument to a decision.
In the case of United States the petition for cert was filed on February 12th and granted on February 28th. Oral argument was scheduled for April 25th and we still do not have a decision yet. Note that just the time from granting cert to oral argument is almost as long (57 days) as the entirety of Anderson, from cert to decision. This also ignores the fact that the special counsel filed a motion for cert before judgment all the way back on December 11th 2023, which SCOTUS declined. This decision is also strange. Is there any decision the District of Columbia Court of Appeals could have issued that SCOTUS would not have granted cert on? This effectively added three months to the case (the appeals court issued its decision on February 6th) for what seems like little reason. There is some expectation that this case should take longer because there is likely much more dissent among the justices as to the correct outcome compared to Anderson, but this fact does not explain actions like the long wait until oral argument or declining the petition for cert before judgement. One would think the criminal trial of an ex-president who is also a candidate would be a pressing matter but the justices don't seem to think so.
I am not the first court watcher to note that that SCOTUS seems to move quickly or slowly depending on which one seems to operate more to Trump's benefit. Nearing the end of the term and with no decision yet in the immunity case makes me take a bit more conspiratorial perspective on the whole thing though. As I mentioned above tomorrow is the last scheduled day for releasing opinions and they still have opinions outstanding in 18 cases argued this term. They have been issuing opinions at a rate of 3-4 per scheduled opinion day this term so dropping 18 of them tomorrow seems unlikely. The most likely outcome is they schedule more opinion days next week and possibly the week after but it's possible they don't issue a decision in the Trump immunity case this term. There is a rather famous case where SCOTUS did not issue an opinion in the term it was argued. Instead releasing the opinion the next term, almost a full year after it was first argued.
The conspiracy angle on this is that SCOTUS doesn't issue a decision in United States v. Trump this term, instead waiting until after the November election. This ensures no action in Trump's criminal trial before the election. It also means some control over the most direct beneficiary of their decision. Perhaps if Trump wins in November we get a sweeping ruling immunizing large swatches of conduct. Perhaps if Biden wins we get a much narrower ruling immunizing a very small sphere of conduct.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Nevertheless, I suspect the pro-life movement can find a plaintiff with standing - perhaps a Catholic mail carrier who objects to delivering abortifacients could sue under the Comstock Act (which looks like the plaintiffs' best argument on the merits). But nothing is going to be decided before the election if a plaintiff wiht standing files a new suit.
I don't see why this hypothetical mail carrier would have standing, for pretty similar reasons of attenuated causation as the doctors in this case. Even if the hypothetical mail carrier did have standing why would the remedy be to prevent mifeprestone being shipped through the mail rather than the Post Office accommodating this worker's objection and having someone else do the delivery? Think a minute about the rule implied here. "If any postal carrier has a conscientious objection to delivering X, then no postal carrier may be permitted to deliver X." That result seems absurd to me and I am skeptical the court would rule it so. I'm also not clear on how the Comstock Act is relevant here. As far as I know it is a criminal law with no civil component, so no one can sue anyone else for violations of it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
You might be interested in this Pew study of American dating from 2020. Subsequent statistics taken from the second page about single Americans.
One result that jumps out is single women over age 40 are not very interested in dating (71-29 against dating). In the 18-39 age range the interest is pretty comparable across sex. 67% of single men and 61% of single women are interested in dating. Who is single is also very stratified by age. 51% of men aged 18-29 are single while only 32% of women in the same age range are. Meanwhile 49% of women age 65+ are single while only 21% of men in the same age range are. There's an interesting asymmetry where men are more likely to be single when younger while women are more likely to be single when older. Likely a reflection of men's preference for younger partners. It also seems to indicate that if young men were willing to address the other side of this asymmetry (by dating older women) those women are largely not interested in dating them!
How do you convince a 22-year-old of either sex that their perception is mistaken, that there is value in seeking committed relationships with another person?
At least according to Pew 22 year olds of either sex seem pretty interested in forming committed relationships. More generally there's a kind of tension here. We often want young people to learn from the wisdom of their elders but it's often not clear which things from their elders are useful wisdom.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Would anyone like to explain why we shouldn’t be worried about our President kicking the bucket?
Worried in what sense? Surely it's something we, as voters, ought to take into account when deciding who to vote for. It seems relatively more likely to happen to whoever the next president is than it normally does. But it's not like we've never had a president die in office before. We have a whole constitutional amendment laying out what to do if that happens.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I am not sure I agree. Criminal punishment penalties are categorically different (jail) than civil penalties. The worst that happens to Jones is he declares bankruptcy and pays pennies on the dollar of what he owes. There is not really a get-out-of-going-to-jail equivalent.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
As far as I know there is no SCOTUS precedent capping compensatory damages in a civil case. I think partly this is for reasons I identify in my comment and partly because compensatory damages aren't supposed to be a "punishment" as such. There are, by contrast, SCOTUS cases that limit how much a jury can award in punitive damages.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
And even if he hadn't, why isn't the level of damage caused to the plaintiffs part of equation to lower the number?
It is. Generally civil trial damages are divided into compensatory and punitive components. One to compensate plaintiffs for the harm caused by the defendant. One to punish the defendant for the bad thing they did. According to the Wikipedia article most of the damages against Jones ($965M) were compensatory.
First, from what I understand, the final payment number came from Alex Jones not being willing to disclose his net worth, which allowed to the plaintiffs to imagine an infinite net worth if they wanted to. But once the books are finally displayed, does that make sense?
Why doesn't it? If you harm someone to the tune of $1M (say) it seems like justice requires you owe them $1M. Maybe they can't collect because you don't have the money but I don't see why we should pre-emptively do some injustice to the wronged party.
Isn't this institutionalized debt slavery as punishment for what is at the end of the day an civil case?
Yea, but so? If you fuck up other people's lives bad enough in a wrongful way your life might get fucked up in return. Seems fine. What's the alternative proposition? Should it be impossible for a court to order someone pay a judgemental beyond their means, no matter how bad the conduct is if it isn't criminal? That seems highly exploitable.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I have essentially no sympathy for the government. This is a problem of their own creation. "Yes your honor, we failed our constitutional obligation to ensure criminal defendants have adequate representation but the correct remedy is we can hold these people in jail forever until we get around to fulfilling that obligation."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I think the insurance case is more intuitive if you think about it slightly differently: what would the company have been worth if Thomas Connolly had exercised his option to buy his brother's shares? Does anyone dispute it would have been worth the $6.86M? The company got the life insurance payout regardless of whether it would eventually have to pay it to either brother's estate, right? So Thomas Connolly's position implies that if he bought the shares they would be worth the $5.8M but if the company bought the shares they were only worth $3M.
At the moment of Michael's death the company gained an asset with about $3M of value. Eventually the company had to pay that money to fulfill an obligation, but that fact was by no means certain.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
The idea that GPT-4 has smart-high-schooler levels of intelligence is silly. You can give it very simple logic puzzles that are syntactically similar to other logic puzzles and it will give you the wrong answer. Ex:
I am trying to take a chicken, a fox, and some feed across a river however I can only take two of them at a time. If the fox is left alone with the feed the fox will eat the feed. If the chicken is left alone with the feed the feed will eat the chicken. How can I get all three across the river?
...
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can get the chicken, the fox, and the feed across the river:
Take the chicken across the river first. This leaves the fox and the feed on the original side.
Return alone to the original side and take the fox across the river.
Leave the fox on the other side, but take the chicken back to the original side.
Leave the chicken on the original side and take the feed across the river to the other side where the fox is.
Finally, return to the original side one last time to get the chicken and bring it to the other side.
Now, all three (the chicken, the fox, and the feed) are safely on the other side of the river! The key is to never leave the chicken and the feed alone together (since the chicken will eat the feed) or the fox and the chicken alone together (since the fox will eat the chicken).
Note that the very first step violates the rules! This is because GPT-4 is not answering the question I asked it (which it does not understand) it is answering the very-syntactically-similar question in its training set.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I assume this is a typo on your part but there's an inconsistency between your Wikipedia quote and what I assume is a book cite.
Two phones inside the DNC headquarter's offices were said to have been wiretapped.[25] One was Robert Spencer Oliver's phone. At the time, Oliver was working as the executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen. The other phone belonged to DNC chairman Larry O'Brien. The FBI found no evidence that O'Brien's phone was bugged;[26] however, it was determined that an effective listening device was installed in Oliver's phone. While successful with installing the listening devices, the committee agents soon determined that they needed repairs. They plotted a second "burglary" in order to take care of the situation.[25]
...
The only actual wiretap ever found at DNC headquarters, on DNC head O'Brien's phone, was later found by the FBI when the Watergate scandal had already broke, and was so antiquated and weird that many believe it was actually planted by the DNC to be found by the FBI team, to provide proof that Nixon had tapped their phones. It was simply too old and too obvious to have been done by the actual Plumbers team.
As to motivation I don't see why "they thought it would yield intelligence useful to the campaign" is insufficient. Maybe they, themselves, didn't have a particular piece of intelligence they thought it would yield. The way you describe Liddy and Hunt make it sound like they were "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" types.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
That does seem like the same law could be applicable then.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
That's a good question actually. I'm not sure how political campaign committees are legally organized. Are they the kind of corporation that would have been covered by the relevant NY law?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I mean, the crimes are different. It is still the Biden administration prosecuting a Democratic Senator.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I am not convinced those are general as you assert. The statute also lists "meals" as an example of things that can be campaign expenditures (and therefore outside payment of which can be contributions). The question is not "does Trump have a commitment to buy clothes" its "does Trump have a commitment to buy this specific article of clothing." It's not about the category of thing being purchased, it's about the particular expenditure. I think Trump's attempts to put off paying Daniels until after the election, and his belief he wouldn't need to do so after the election, evince that he had no commitment to paying her outside the context of the then-ongoing election. In any case, this is clearly what Michael Cohen believed, and he's the one who actually committed the election crime.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Probably the most recent one is Bob Menendez (D-NJ) being prosecuted for corruption and obstruction of justice.
That's why it took 200+ years for any president to be criminally indicted. Obviously without absolute criminal immunity presidents and ex-presidents would be awash in criminal prosecutions! That's why it has been such a problem historically!
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