[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

But they didn't say that it does or does not violate the law. They said that biased redistricting is a non-justiciable issue that cannot be governed by law, so even should someone wish to try to limit it with legislation, lower courts are now obligated to strike any such limits down.

Not sure I follow. If it cannot be governed by law then there is no law it violates.

I will have to hear a bit more to understand how lawmakers could not make a law saying redistricting cannot be done on a political basis. What would explicitly prevent such a law?

farley3k wrote:

Not sure I follow. If it cannot be governed by law then there is no law it violates.

My understanding of non-justiciable issues are that they are not issues that can be decided by law, and laws cannot be crafted to apply to them, and any law that would try to do so is on it's face invalid. What explicitly prevents it is this supreme court ruling classifying gerrymandering as non-justiciable.

IANAL, but thats how its been explained to me.

I will have to look at it more because I can't think of anything that we can't make laws about. It just doesn't make sense to me to claim there is a subject they can't make laws about.

farley3k wrote:

I will have to look at it more because I can't think of anything that we can't make laws about. It just doesn't make sense to me to claim there is a subject they can't make laws about.

Constitution says hi? As an example, you can't make laws about, say, owning people. Every law that's been struck down as unconstitutional falls into this category.

To take a different tack, you can't make laws governing my inner experience. Thou Shalt Feel Patriotic On July Fourth, for example, is not a feasible law. Similarly, laws that are entirely unenforceable cannot be made (how do you determine the degree of patriotism I feel as I consume the 12th Bud and the 9th hot dog of the day. Is "gassy" a patriotic feeling or not?).

Again, I haven't read their opinion, or opinions on their opinion but which protected thing in the constitution would be violated by restricting laws? Because the examples you give are of laws that would violate protections guaranteed by the constitution.

farley3k wrote:

Again, I haven't read their opinion, or opinions on their opinion but which protected thing in the constitution would be violated by restricting laws? Because the examples you give are of laws that would violate protections guaranteed by the constitution.

Well then I'm not understanding your question about "subjects that you can't make laws about".

I guess I look to the Chief Justice -

he wrote. "Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void. The States, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts."

So he seems to be saying clearly that States can make laws about how redistricting is done. Are you reading that differently?

edit: now redundant : D

I don't know your phrasing was probably better.

Have you thought about running for chief justice?

farley3k wrote:

I guess I look to the Chief Justice -

he wrote. "Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void. The States, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts."

So he seems to be saying clearly that States can make laws about how redistricting is done. Are you reading that differently?

I read that the same way you do. I was referring to federal laws. Essentially they are saying "federal law cannot (to be read 'is prohibited from') address this problem, if you don't like how your state legislature is gerrymandering your districts your recourse is to elect a different state legislature who can pass laws to prevent it" which of course should be accompanied by a trollface, because the problem in question prevents that from happening.

farley3k wrote:

I guess I look to the Chief Justice -

he wrote. "Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void. The States, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts."

So he seems to be saying clearly that States can make laws about how redistricting is done. Are you reading that differently?

Yep. You can use the same terrible reasoning to overturn Roe vs Wade, and let states do as they want. Believing that as long as states do it, it's constitutional, is the problem.

Who watches the watchmen? Turns out, the watchmen aren't even watching anyone.

I feel like I remember hearing in (possibly?) Opening Arguments, that there isn’t anything that says that (let’s say) a Democratic President couldn’t ADD Supreme Court seats, to “fix” the balance that the current GOP has tried to f*ck over the country for (at least) a generation.

I could be mid-remembering all of this, though.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I feel like I remember hearing in (possibly?) Opening Arguments, that there isn’t anything that says that (let’s say) a Democratic President couldn’t ADD Supreme Court seats, to “fix” the balance that the current GOP has tried to f*ck over the country for (at least) a generation.

I could be mid-remembering all of this, though.

Correct, in that the Constitution doesn't say anything about how many justices should be on the Supreme Court. There's a law that would have to be changed, so the Senate and the House would have to go along with it, but it's not impossible, just very difficult.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I feel like I remember hearing in (possibly?) Opening Arguments, that there isn’t anything that says that (let’s say) a Democratic President couldn’t ADD Supreme Court seats, to “fix” the balance that the current GOP has tried to f*ck over the country for (at least) a generation.

I could be mid-remembering all of this, though.

There IS a thing that would stop a Democratic President from adding seats. It's name is Mitch, and it would refuse to consider Senate-confirmable justices. Again.

Tillerson reveals frustrations about Kushner working behind his back

One evening during his tenure as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was out to dinner in Washington when the restaurant owner asked if he would like to say hello to the Mexican Foreign Minister, Luis Videgaray, who also happened to be at the same establishment. As they walked to the back of the restaurant Tillerson was shocked to find Videgaray, who Tillerson did not know was in town, dining with President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The surprise encounter was revealed by Tillerson when he quietly met senior staff of Democratic chair Rep. Eliot Engel and ranking Republican Rep. Michael McCaul from the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month.
A transcript of that discussion obtained by CNN reveals Tillerson's frustrations with Kushner who sometimes seemed to act as a shadow secretary of state on many important foreign policy issues behind his back.

And the bullsh*t in NC clearly violates the 1965 voting act as it was racially motivated.

Of course the court decided in 2013 we didn't need to have that that anymore because racism isn't a problem now. Ugh.

New York City declares a climate emergency, the first US city with more than a million residents to do so

New York City officials declared a climate emergency in an effort to mobilize local and national responses to stall global warming.

It's the largest city in the US, with over 8.62 million inhabitants.
The New York City Council passed the legislation Wednesday, calling for an immediate response to the global climate crises. The bill referenced several reports on the state of global warming and its impact, imparting that extreme weather events brought about by rising temperatures demonstrates that the planet is "too hot to be a safe environment."
"The United States of America has disproportionately contributed to the climate emergency and has repeatedly obstructed global efforts to transition toward a green economy, and thus bears an extraordinary responsibility to rapidly address these existential threats," lawmakers wrote.

Interesting....

(CNN)Senate Republicans are scrambling to figure out the logistics of an unusual vote Friday that Democrats are insisting take place but most Republicans wish had happened earlier in the week so they could be gone for their July Fourth recess.
The vote is on a Democrat-authored amendment to require President Donald Trump get congressional approval before carrying out military action against Iran. Democrats pressed GOP leaders to schedule the vote Friday so the Democratic senators running for the White House could attend Thursday night's presidential debate in Miami and then return to Washington for the vote.
In another procedural twist, senators agreed that if the measure were to pass it would be applied retroactively to the National Defense Authorization Act, which was approved by the Senate Thursday.

And I can't see the below happening. I do find it comical that they're even considering it since the only reason is because they want to go home.

GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said there has even been "talk" among Republicans about having Democratic senators preside over the chamber, an almost unheard-of ceding of the gavel -- and the authority that goes with it -- to the minority. If they didn't, some Republican senators would have to stick around to oversee the session, which they don't want to do.

McConnell is many things, but being that dumb probably isn't one of them.

Maybe it's a cry for help. Will somebody save us from ourselves! Please.

Holy sh*t if they gave up the gavel they could vote for all those things the house has passed but Mitch has refused to even call for a vote the last 6 months.

Stele wrote:

Holy sh*t if they gave up the gavel they could vote for all those things the house has passed but Mitch has refused to even call for a vote the last 6 months.

I'm sure Schumer will take the gavel, do nothing with it, and politely return it.

Gremlin wrote:
Stele wrote:

Holy sh*t if they gave up the gavel they could vote for all those things the house has passed but Mitch has refused to even call for a vote the last 6 months.

I'm sure Schumer will take the gavel, do nothing with it, and politely return it.

That’s just mean, Schumer would definitely ask the Republicans if there is anything they want him to do first.

Supreme Court refuses to hear Alabama's defense of abortion ban struck down last year

The Supreme Court ducked another abortion case Friday, refusing to let Alabama defend its ban on a second-term method of abortion that was struck down last year.

The justices, who already have turned down opportunities to hear abortion cases from Louisiana and Indiana, denied the state's petition to have its ban on dilation & evacuation abortions heard next term.

Since we have several goodjers living in Portland, I was wondering how bad things got over the weekend. A lot of media outlets are covering it as some demonstrations that got a bit out of hand but nothing too crazy. But the conservative sources I read are talking about how a right wing journalist named Andy Ngo got sent to the hospital.

I’m mostly of the mind that press shouldn’t be targeted because that just opens the door for certain far right groups to attack reporters. But I don’t know Ngo enough to say whether he’s just a right leaning journalist or alt right rabble rouser pretending to be a legit news source.

Andy Ngo got hit with a vegan coconut milkshake and tried to spin it up into more. His injuries may or may not have come from getting into a fight: the timing of the photos is a bit odd. Ngo works for Quillette, an Australian very right-wing transphobic site obsessed with "campus free speech" and "the evils of critical theory and postmodernism" (and phrenology for some reason). They've published lists of journalists that Atomwaffen turned into a kill list, and overlook that Proud Boys have assaulted journalists. I guess that counts as "journalist" these days, though I would put him in a sub-Fox, sub-Breitbart tier.

They've also, in response to this incident, stirred up people to attack Snopes because...Snopes republished an Associated Press article.

In contrast, Heather Hayer's murderer got a life sentence last week.

He's definitely far right leaning. He is a journalist, although I don't have a strong opinion of who he works for. Gremlin covered that already.

Not that that means the violence is in any way warranted, obviously. It's not. If you watch the video some people attacked him someone people tried to protect him. This doesn't appear to be a beatdown.

All of that said, I don't know whether Antifa's tactics are effective. I don't personally condone violence. But they feel they are responding to a strain of virulent eliminationist political thought that's ready to run wild in America if left unchecked.

As we speak there are children locked up in cages. Sleeping on concrete. Some of which will never see their families again. Some of which have already died. Antifa believes you fight back now before we get something worse.

Regularly we have right wing nuts killing SCORES of people with automatic weapons.

We just had a situation where the Oregon legislature was unable to pass token environmental legislation because militia members in this state threatened to murder the state police. They got away with these threats.

The right frequently resorts to violence or threats of violence. And every once in a while someone like Antifa pushes back.