The Current Events, News, and Politics Thread
Make America Gangsta Again
I identify as a bear.
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Here's an excellent paper on the subject, in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=4532751 (click Open PDF in Browser at the bottom.)
In particular, their analysis spanning pages 17-34 outlines two key points:
A: Amendment 14 Section 3 is self-executing. It requires no action by any court in order to activate, and in fact many of the former Confederates who were barred from office under it had either been acquitted, pardoned, or never criminally tried in the first place.
B: The power to enforce Section 3 lies with pretty much everyone who possesses legal authority to determine the eligibility of candidates for office. Under this interpretation, individual Secretaries of State, or Governors, or State Legislatures, or State Elections Boards, could act independently to declare a potential candidate to be disqualified from appearing on a ballot in that state. EDIT: although, to be clear, any such action may (and most certainly would) be challenged before the Supreme Court of that state, and quite possibly before the US Supreme Court as well. This is my own commentary, not that of the authors of the paper.
Last edited by Joe Perez; 08-28-2023 at 10:11 PM.
Write in ballots effectively wipes out any chance for anyone, especially if the protagonist government will fail a ballot if you've managed to spell the name wrong, it's illegible, etc. Given all of the law suits that were dropped in 2020 because they lacked "standing", I wonder if half the voting population would lack "standing" if they were also required to write in their candidate's name.
I identify as a bear.
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If a person is deemed ineligible to hold public office, then write-in votes for that person would be discarded as invalid.
Again, this is all at the state-level.
“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?”
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.
There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.
It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.
It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.
It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”
Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.
It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).
All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society.
But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy.
Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.
Read the whole thing here:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/24/our-so...is-the-result/
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.
There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.
It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.
It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.
It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”
Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.
It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).
All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society.
But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy.
Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.
Read the whole thing here:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/24/our-so...is-the-result/
Boost Czar
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...-ac-rcna102252
but wait, you weren't reading ABC 7 news were you???:
https://abc7chicago.com/14th-amendme...es-s/13701025/
Plans materialize at state level
On Tuesday, Bryant "Corky" Messner, a lawyer who lives in New Hampshire, became the first person to announce concrete plans to do just that.Messner was endorsed by Donald Trump when he ran for a New Hampshire's U.S. Senate seat in 2020. Now, he says that as a veteran and a graduate of West Point, his civic duty compels him to try to keep Trump off the ballot.
"I really don't view myself as turning on Trump, as odd as that sounds," he told ABC News. "I love this country. I've served this country. I've taken an oath to this country. My sons are serving right now and I believe someone's got to step up to defend the Constitution."
Messner first announced his plans on a local radio show, NH Today, on Tuesday morning.
...New Hampshire's Secretary of State Office confirmed to ABC News that Messner met with Secretary of State David Scanlan Friday to discuss Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
"Secretary Scanlan will be conferring with the New Hampshire Attorney General and other legal counsel on this issue; however, he believes any action taken under this Constitutional provision will have to be based on Judicial guidance," Anna Sventek, communications director for Scanlan, told ABC News in a statement.
Reality: The best thing the clown show above can do at this point is jump on the Trump train and run interference. I know for Christie and Pence and Nikki Haley that their megadonors don't want that, but unless they want another 2020 it should happen. The sooner the better.