volkris @volkris@qoto.org

If @ProPublica didn't consult any "legal experts" offering a different opinion, then they really seem to be just asking those who will give you the answer they want for their sensational story.

This onesided method of investigation and reporting is really unhealthy, for the public no less.

it is, however, par for the course for that organization. They have a long history of putting out slanted stories to grab headlines.

@dishtowel

There's a long history of different presidents doing exactly that, ignoring court rulings all up and down the judicial process.

I don't know how many rulings I've read over the years where judges just shrug and said, well, I've few options beside the opinion.

That's why courts are said to be the practically weakest of the branches. They can rule, but they lack much power of enforcement of their rulings.

@gwfoto@newsie.social

Well, it's democracy.

Until you get enough voters to elect representatives to impeach a justice, the justice gets to stay.

So, try to make your arguments to your fellow voters to convince them of your perspective.

Otherwise it's subversion of the US democratic system to try to boot a legally appointed justice without the support of our representatives in Congress to do so.

@barney@mas.to

@barney@mas.to

Oh gosh, so many people are coming up with these ideas that amount to doing away with judicial independence that seem outright dangerous, more dangerous than even the current situation.

Congress threatening a Supreme Court justice to resign using blackmail? To accept that sort of behavior is to open the gate to it with all of the justices moving forward.

Don't like Thomas? Fine. there are eight other justices there in the weakest branch of government, and there are checks and balances protecting us from even bad opinions that are handed down.

But to hand Congress the power over the otherwise independent judiciary? That's a huge deal.

@gwfoto@newsie.social

@Sunny

To put it another way, BECAUSE the government falls into three branches, the 1st Branch, Congress, cannot interfere with the coequal 3rd Branch, SCOTUS. That would blur the branches.

That includes trying to enforce this sort of power over members of the other branch.

But in the technicalities, if you're interested, I'm referring to "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

The law you quote is arguably part of Congress's establishment of inferior courts, as establishment involves their rules of operation.

@Colby@mastodon.world

Well, good thing that's not what I think :)

If any justice is committing major offenses in his private life, fine, that's a matter for the police to investigate just like any other person. Justices have to obey the law just like anyone else.

However, as for their roles as justices on the Court, if a justice is doing their job so inoffensively to the job that Congress can't tell, then it's hard to justify giving Congress so much power over the judiciary that they might go fishing to find offense.

It's like, if you're doing your own job so well that your employer can't see any change in your work, then it's really none of their business what you're doing after business hours.

So far Congress is not particularly unhappy with the work of any of the justices. And therefore, they're not choosing to fire, through impeachment.

@nancylwayne

@Colby@mastodon.world

If the offenses of justices are so able to be hidden away, in other words that they are so inoffensive, then there's not really any need to impeach them in the first place.

So this is why we have this system in place, to maintain judicial independence while giving Congress the ability to impeach IF a justice does misbehave in a way that becomes substantial.

So what you're describing is a feature, not a bug, giving justices independence from undue interference in their branch from others seeking power.

Otherwise there'd be nothing to stop powerful congresspeople from hounding the nine into submission.

@nancylwayne

@gedeonm

Careful.

Regardless of what you think of how the independent judiciary is comporting itself right now, it could be so much worse should we give up and give Congress power over the Supreme Court.

I mean, Congress isn't exactly firing on all cylinders itself, and that's WITH voters' ability to fire their congressmen.

@Sunny

Keep in mind that there are two parts to the federal judiciary in the US: the Supreme Court, which is independent, and the lower courts, which Congress establishes by law.

Because the Supreme Court is independent of the Legislative Branch, it has other processes for setting its rules. THAT's what Thomas was referring to.

The judicial branch employees referred to here are just those that Congress has jurisdiction over.

Not to mention, Thomas would probably argue that those who gave him gifts did not fall under either of the two requirements you included.

@feoh

Yep, and so that's why I always emphasize #Fediverse interfaces working to give users more ability to tailor their experiences exactly as they wish.

You bring up the interest old computers, and that reminds me that I often think of it as dealing with Venn Diagrams.

Oh the poor instance owner that's looking to serve the tinkering overlap userbase but dealing with anime-lovers vs anime-haters :)

(just to choose a relatively tame example)

I think there's so much more Fediverse clients can do to let users choose for themselves what content they want in their feeds, and what they want to block.

@Colby@mastodon.world

Well then that's your answer.

If Congress doesn't have the votes to find that a Supreme Court Justice has misbehaved--if it doesn't have the votes to pierce the firewall against the independent judiciary--then it certainly doesn't have solid ground on which to dictate orders to the Judicial Branch for abstract reasons.

Separation of Powers gives Congress a specific and powerful ability to directly address problematic justices that still protects the judicial independence in general.

If those the people have elected to have that power don't see fit to use it in any particular case, well, that's the determination of the US democratic process.

@nancylwayne

@feoh

PS: and heck, instance blocking is effectively a very basic algorithm, in that it chooses for users what content they will and won't be shown based on source.

That's one way to capture this that might resonate with so many on Fediverse that came here expressing the want to leave algorithms behind.

@feoh

You have every right to block whatever instances you want. It's your instance so do what you want.

However, realize that in doing so you're putting up these walls that not only block content indiscriminately, block even good content, interfere with even good conversation threads, and most critically to me, you disempower your own instance users, yourself included, to make decisions for themselves and choose where they participate through your instance.

Again, if you weigh all of this and still choose to defederate, then that's your right and up to you.

But it's not a choice that I think should be made lightly.

Personally, I'd want us to be empowering users to participate in the content they choose while avoiding the content they choose, rather than making decisions for them with sledgehammers at the instance level.

@YourNeighbor57

I'd say today's news vs factchecking of that reporting illustrates why so many have been losing faith in reporters for a few years now.

The hyperbolic reporting vs how the institutions actually function shows the gulf that people are giving up on and turning away from.

@PixelJones @gwaldby

All of this furor over Thomas misses the nice feature of the Supreme Court that their opinions are public and their reasoning laid out for all to see.

We don't have to judge them based on personalities or messengers. We can view the arguments themselves to see whether they are solid or not.

With all of the shooting of Thomas as a messenger, there's awful little disagreement with his actual reasoning, and that silence is pretty telling to me.

@nancylwayne

No, if a Justice is misbehaving the proper response of the Congress is to impeach them.

These pieces of legislation are the wrong response since it violates the separations of powers structure of the federal government for the Legislative Branch to try to exert power over the independent Judiciary Branch like this.

Impeachment is the sole response available for very good reasons.

@TheDailyEdge

I can't see the article behind its paywall, but from what I've been hearing from them, it's more that they're looking to get back to prepandemic levels of spending.

So it's better framed as ending anomalous spending than cutting, in the face of financial turmoil that emergency spending has caused.