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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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As a libertarian I would happily settle for "courts find thing unconstitutional, government officials make minor or no changes continue doing it, they go to jail".

Right now it just seems like officials get to play a game where if they lose in court they get a stern warning, and they can seemingly keep getting stern warnings forever, the only escalation might be that some people suing them start getting settlements paid with taxpayer dollars. The official in question might get fired, but only if they aren't part of a public sector union (why do we allow those again?)

For this specific case, I'm not really a fan of going after publicly elected officials. And you don't really have to in order to maintain rule of law. If Biden orders a seal team six hit on a rival and you can guarantee that everyone except Biden in that chain of command will be sent to jail or executed for carrying out the order then you can make sure the order is never carried out. My vague and bad understanding of military orders is that is mostly how things already work.

How can you make sure of that when Biden also has the pardon power?

Presidents can't pardon state crimes such as murder.