Rov_Scam
4hr ago
Alright, I'll bite. Your first amendment is completely pointless. Bribing a public official is already illegal in all 50 states, DC, and at the Federal level. All you've done is restate bribery laws that are lengthier yet somehow more vague than existing bribery laws. Like, why are you mentioning book deals? Politicians write books all the time, but I never heard anyone suggest that a book deal was a quid pro quo to push legislation favorable to Random House. Why do you feel the need to replace the existing court system with a special court that appears to operate more like a grand jury (whence the judge and defense attorney?) than a regular court, except it has the power to convict and sentence and no secrecy. Why the need for "plain language translators" and sanctions for trying to intentionally confuse the jury? It's the job of the attorneys and judge to present things so that the jury understands. If an attorney or expert presents confusing information the result is that the jury ignores it at best and at worst both ignores it and holds it against he side that presented it. I can think of no situation where it would be advantageous to confuse the jury.
So that's pointless. Elsewhere it's outright contradictory. You state that
"The United States shall preserve the cultural, linguistic, legal, and moral traditions established by those who founded and built this republic — rooted in Western civilization, shaped by Christian moral principles, and expressed through the English language and the common law tradition — as the core national identity into which all immigrants are assimilated.
and later go on to say
Violations by public officials — including the enactment of laws, regulations, or policies that demonstrably violate this Amendment — shall constitute a federal felony punishable by permanent disqualification from all public office and not less than ten years imprisonment.
You'd probably be interested to learn that absolute legislative immunity is a common law principle. Enacting laws is about as core a legislative duty as one can get. Furthermore, over the past 250 years, the entire modus operandi of state legislatures has been to add to or modify the common law. Things as diverse as the Uniform Commercial Code and modern procedural rules are directly at odds with the common law tradition.
But that's enough for me. I could go on, but this whole thing reads like a parody.
Rov_Scam
6hr ago
I'm not saying that leaving your phone at home makes it the perfect crime. People were convicted of crimes long before smartphones. All the things you mention, and several others, could come into play, or they couldn't, and even if they did, trying to make those arguments requires more inferences on the part of the jury than having phone GPS data putting you directly at the scene.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
I think the argument is intended to be that since you carry your phone everywhere and the phone was at home, you must have been too.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
He's part of a long line of people with no credentials who say things that sound interesting when taken out of context, but when you dive into the material you realize he's a crackpot.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
I know several pharmacists, and at least one is adamant that when it comes to OTC meds and vitamins, just get the cheapest ones you can find. If it says it has 500 IUs of Vitamin L then that's what it has, period. It's a chemical compound,.and one company's isn't any different than another's.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
If you're only trying to get the data off of it, just get a SATA to USB adapter and call it a day, or find a friend who is willing to tie up his PC for a couple days in exchange for a free hard drive. What you're describing could be any number of things and I wouldn't just start throwing parts at it if you're not going to keep the machine. The only caveat here is that you might be able to resell it if it's working, which might not be a bad idea if you consider an 80 dollar power supply a major decision. Also, what's on here that you need? I understand wanting to save his work, but unless you think you're going to look at it from time to time in remembrance, there's a good chance you'll just transfer the data to a new hard drive that will sit in a drawer for the next 50 years.
Edit: I would add that I've had two power supplies fail on me and neither of them did what you described. The machine would start to boot, then shut off. I think. It's been a while, but I don't remember any boot loops. That could still be it, just letting you know my experience.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
How does this save any time? Don't you still have to give Claude the information?
Rov_Scam
21hr ago
I mean, it isn't an organization the same way, say, the NAACP is, where there are local chapters and a national office and membership lists and a full-time staff. It's more like the Crips, where various local crews of a dozen guys will wear the colors but aren't beholden to any larger organization. This is assuming that people still identify as antifa and it isn't just an insult political opponents lob at people they don't like who presumably engage in certain practices.
Rov_Scam
21hr ago
The difference is that corruption refers to a specific set of practices, many if which are illegal and most of which violate ethics rules. Antifa is a theoretical set of political opinions that can result in illegal activity, but the activit isn't antifa in and of itself, and holding certain opinions isn't illegal.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
The first mistake was committing the crimes in the first place. The second mistake was using electronic communications to discuss their crimes. Committing them in a jurisdiction where the jury might not be as sympathetic as it could be is pretty far down the list.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Wasn't that part of Trump's argument, i.e. "I'm already rich so you can trust that I won't be corrupt"?
Rov_Scam
1d ago
I don't know that desalination capacity is really the best measure of competence. California doesn't desalinate because, most of the time, there's enough water in the mountains that can be impounded that it doesn't make sense to desalinate. Consider that California supports large-scale agriculture that the UAE doesn't have anywhere near the capacity for. Urban water use is a drop in the bucket compared to that. Desalination is energy-intensive, and brine disposal is a real problem, so it's only done when there aren't any better options.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Backstopping losses probably isn't going to make as much of a difference as they think. It's uninsurable for a reason. I carry a lot of insurance on my car, but that doesn't mean I'm going out in an ice storm. Insurance is a consolation prize for unfortunate events, not a license to take on excessive risks. "Captain, we want you to take this ship into a war zone. There's a good likelihood you'll be blown to bits, but don't worry, we'll be sure to send a ham to your widow."
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I think the allegations of black antisemitism are overplayed. Yeah, it may exist on the fringes, but one only has to look at the 2020 Georgia Senate Democratic primary to see that it isn't a huge factor. Jon Ossoff, a Jew who made his heritage part of his campaign, won overwhelmingly. I can't find exit poll numbers, but he got near unanimous support from black politicians in the state, most notably from John Lewis. Josh Stein, a practicing Jew, got nearly 70% of the vote in the North Carolina Democratic primary, running against a black guy in a state where the black vote is more important in the Democratic primary than it is in a lot of other places. It's hard to do a similar analysis for Shapiro since he never ran in a competitive gubernatorial primary, but by my calculations he got about 223,000 black votes in the general election. When Wolf ran for the first time in 2014, he got about 177,000 black votes. While the latter election had higher turnout, there's nothing in the data to suggest that blacks were especially put off by Shapiro, since he performed about as well as one would expect him to. It should be noted that blacks made up about 10% of the electorate in 2014 compared with 8% in 2022, but more blacks total came to the polls, and 92% of them voted Democrat in both elections. I don't know that any conclusions can be drawn from this, but I wanted to bring it up.
You're right that Shapiro's specific political positions may come into play when it comes to certain demographics, but that's different then saying that they'll never vote for a Jew, because they probably wouldn't vote for a Gentile who said the same things, either. And with Shapiro, you'd have to be really far to the Free Palestine side of the aisle for his comments to matter. His stance on Israel is similar to that of most Democrats: He accused Israel's military of overreaching, denounced Netanyahu, called for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, and called for an end to the war. What he refused to do was call for a unilateral cease fire without the hostages being returned, and refused to denounce Israel or Zionism altogether. The former position is now a moot point, and the latter position is likely to be held by whoever the nominee is. I agree that he's riskier on that front than a guy like Beshear, but he doesn't talk about it much and the perception of him could change when and if he's in a position where he has to talk about it more.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I hate to dig into your personal life, but what sort of academic qualifications do you have that you can describe an Ivy League law school professor as a "midwit"?
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Never? Very few. There may be some Muslims or conspiracy-minded blacks that wouldn't vote for one, but they're at the fringes of the party. If you had garden-variety Free Palestine lefties in mind, these are the same people who probably already voted for a Jew twice.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I think it goes without saying that she didn't take the traditional path. Her own candidacy in 2020 is an object lesson in this. Reasonably well-known, sort of hyped by the media, candidacy goes over like a lead balloon before any votes are cast.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Trump picked his cabinet based on loyalty more than competence. If Trump is out of office most of them would be standing on highway onramps with "Will Work for Food" signs. They may be incompetent, but they aren't so stupid as to realize that replacing a guy who won't fire them with a guy who might isn't going to be good for business. If Vance decides to end the war, then Rubio and Hesgeth at least are dead men walking, and Bondi and Kennedy are probably gone as well. If the tide actually turns against Trump to the degree that this is even a possibility, I'd expect impeachment and removal from office before any 25th Amendment shenanigans.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
As an actual Democrat, I can tell you right now that Newsom is not inevitable; in fact, I'd be rather surprised if he wins the nomination. He does not have the support of any component of the Democratic base that I can think of. Black people don't like him. Older people don't like him. Progressive young people don't like him. Moderates don't care for him. Conservatives who dislike Trump don't like him. Try finding a forum online where people keep talking him up. You won't. Maybe people from California like him. He offers absolutely nothing. Okay, he's willing to stoop to Trump's level, and seeing a Democrat do that was entertaining for a while, but the schtick has grown tiresome. He's not going to turn out the base, or any subset of the base, and his crossover appeal is nonexistent. The only reason his name keeps coming up is because he's the governor of a large state and everyone knows who he is. The nominee is probably going to be someone like Shapiro or Beshear who has shown he can appeal to moderates and hasn't accumulated much political baggage.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I'd say his chances for the nomination are lower than they were a few months ago. He has the same problem that Ron DeSantis did—he hasn't been very outspoken lately, suggesting that he wants to distance himself from Trump's policies somewhat, but he's unwilling to take a stand against him, despite being the one person in the administration that Trump can't fire. If he's not going to do that, then the least he could do is toady up to the administration to avoid being eclipsed. I'm guessing he thought that being VP would give him the inside track to the presidency; Suzie Wiles pretty much said he was a blatant opportunist. What he didn't take into consideration is that Trump likes being kingmaker as much as being king, even though his attempts at that thus far have been lacking. If the Republicans take a shellacking in the midterms, which is looking increasingly likely, then his chances of being president will be comparable to Dick Cheney's in 2008; even with the support of the president, it would be a tough row to hoe.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
The point of my comment was simply that you can't just rely on Schooner to answer the question. Schooner doesn't mention Indians at all, and the upshot is that if the person (or ship) isn't subject to the laws of the United States, the courts don't have jurisdiction over them. People advocating for the court to rule in the president's favor aren't making a principled legal argument, they're looking for an escape hatch where they can end birthright citizenship for illegal aliens but have everything else stay the same.
My guess as to what happens is the liberals on the court all agree that birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the constitution to the extent that it's long been understood to. Alito and Thomas vote to nix it. The remaining conservatives invoke the Major Questions Doctrine (which, lets not forget, only dates to 2022) to say that the EO might not be constitutional but we don't have to get that far because making a change to a longstanding policy requires congress.
As you worded your proposal:
Compare to the Federal bribery statute:
I'm not sure how what you're proposing is meaningfully different. Hell, what I excerpted is broader than your proposed law, and that's only a small, representative part of the statute. Offering payment in exchange for governmental action is the definition of a quid pro quo. Your book deal example doesn't even violate ethics rules because the deal wasn't in place at the time of the governmental action. We have these rules to begin with to prevent the corruption of the legislative process, not the corruption of the publishing industry. If the deal wasn't in place when the official cast his vote, then it couldn't have possibly influenced his decision.
What are you basing this on? Are you a litigator? Because I am, and I can guarantee you that the last thing I want to do is confuse a jury, or a client for that matter. How do you think this works, that juries are so stupid that Lawyer A will make a reasoned argument and Lawyer B will use a bunch of fancy five-dollar words that they don't understand and will do whatever he asks anyway because they think he's smarter? No, they're going to wonder what the hell he's talking about and go with A because he actually gave them a reason. To the extent that lawyers overuse technical jargon it's because for semantic reasons we have to be very careful with language in some contexts where words have very specific meanings. But we're told from the very beginning of law school to avoid using legalese any time you're dealing with the public, or the court, or really anyone, unless it's absolutely necessary.
What protections are those? What do you actually know about common law beyond it being a buzzword some conservatives like to use to contrast legal concepts they like with those they don't like? Our own constitutional protections are rooted in the idea that the common law did not contain adequate protection for the citizens; every right enumerated in the Bill of Rights addressed some deficiency in that respect. The Reconstruction Amendments took the idea further, and more recent legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act took the idea further still.
I understand your argument, but you need to consider the full ramifications. The only example I can think of of an unamendable amendment in American history was the Corwin Amendment from 1860, which would have prohibited any amendment banning slavery. Five years later, slavery would be constitutionally prohibited. The only prohibitions on amendment in the actual constitution are the prohibition on an amendment banning the slave trade prior to 1808, and the provision that there will always be equal Senate representation. The first of these is moot and the second uncontroversial, but all three examples of proposed or actual unamendability were the result of temporary political considerations that are no longer relevant. The foreclosing of the possibility of constitutional change poses two dangers: It increases the risk of violent revolution, and it leads to the very disrespect of institutions you're trying to stem. Is it consistent with democratic theory to prohibit future generations from making fundamental political choices?
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