volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@funnymonkey I mean yes. The role of teacher and student is markedly different in a classroom.

@hosford42 fortunately that's not my whole argument.

@Wolven

@cspcypher It would have been fitting to provide the quote without specific attribution 🙂

@amgine again, that's not what the order did.

TX cannot be defying an order that didn't cover whatever it is they are doing.

@MAD_democracy @Chron @texastribune

@katrinakatrinka the attorney general is employed by the president to carry out his policies.

Remember, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," and since the power to charge is an executive power, it's vested in the president.

And heck, even an acting attorney general can submit charges without having been approved by the Senate.

We need to emphatically state that presidents are responsible for their branch and not let presidents escape accountability by blaming their employees.

@amgine No, I'm simply pointing to the Supreme Court order and what it did and did not say.

I'm not arguing anything else here.

@MAD_democracy @Chron @texastribune

@katrinakatrinka

Exactly my point.

The law is only work as far as someone will enforce them, and it's not that Trump supporters are promoting him above the law, but rather that as we've seen, no enforcement entity in any state, local, or federal jurisdiction has determined that he would be subject to penalty as per the law.

He's not above the law. The law just hasn't come down on him.

To be clear, though, it's generally up to the head of the executive branch of any government as to whether to charge someone with a crime. It's certainly the case for the federal government, so if you or I would have liked Trump to have been charged during Obama or Biden terms we should hold that against Obama and Biden.

I certainly do.

The president is in charge of the federal executive branch, including the charging of people who have broken the law.

It's very important to hold presidents accountable for the actions or inactions of their executive branch

@mousey so yeah, when it comes to social media my emphatic take is that it is entirely irrational, entirely chaotic, and all anybody can do is at most nudge it one direction or another, and most of the time that won't be successful.

It really comes down to chance. Any platform can roll the dice to see if they manage to get the sustainable ignition, the critical mass at just the right time to keep users engaging with each other and coming back.

You can load the dice, but there's no way to channel the users the way they need to be channeled into a platform.

My favorite example of this is how Facebook really sucks. It is never been anything approaching cutting edge or even interesting, and everything I've ever heard about Facebook management presenting at conferences echoes that they really don't have anything new to offer.

They were just in the right place at the right time to succeed over other projects that were just as good or better.

So that's my take on social media development. It's almost entirely chance. It is chaos by the academic definition of chaos.

@codinghorror @jwz

@katrinakatrinka

Firstly, that legal idea is not factually true, not that Trump supporters are particularly familiar with the facts.

Even as president Trump was and is subject to state and local laws. He should have been charged already if local, state, or federal governments believed him to have broken those laws.

But from what I hear from so many Trump supporters, they're not trying to shield him from legal accountability for what he did. They honestly just don't believe he did it.

And for better or worse the circuses (multiple) that have sprung up around his legal challenges already have fed into that perception.

But again, the way our legal system works there have been numerous governments in positions to try him for these allegations, and they haven't. So by law, with him being subject to our laws, he's not ducking any laws so far.

@joeinwynnewood it's simply not true that Republicans got exactly what they wanted.

If nothing else compare this bill to the one that the House passed a while ago.

The differences show pretty starkly that Republicans did not get exactly what they wanted, and that dailykos.com is not anything approaching a reliable source of information.

@Devilstower

@mousey The reason I ask is because the two contexts have very different elements around them, very different incentives.

Most importantly, a social media platform requires critical mass. If you are the only person on a social media platform then it's worthless.

But medical decisions are very different. Individuals can benefit from making different choices, so very different approaches to selling it to them.

Yes, you might reply, vaccinations and such do have communal impacts and I recognize that 🙂 but still, it's easier to sell a person on getting a vaccination when they themselves will derive a benefit directly from having it regardless of the communal dimension of it.

There are other differences as well, but this is just one to illustrate the difference between the two contexts.

@codinghorror @jwz

@amgine but that's not in compliance with the SCOTUS ruling since the SCOTUS didn't rule that.

Which is exactly my point.

The court did not and could not have made such a ruling. It doesn't have that authority.

@MAD_democracy @Chron @texastribune

@katrinakatrinka

You're conflating two different things, though, and I would say that if you listen to Trump supporters they end up going the opposite way from your conclusion.

There's a difference between voting for somebody versus finding them guilty of breaking the law. If voters want to elect a felon, well he's still been subject to the law, is just that for whatever reason the voters still wanted to vote for the criminal.

So those are two different things.

But, when I listen to mainstream conservatives talk about the legal penalties I don't hear them saying that he shouldn't pay. I hear them saying that he will have to pay, showing that he is subject to law, even if they don't think the law was fairly implemented.

What I'm hearing when I listen to mainstream conservatives on the matter that you are bringing up is that Trump is absolutely subject to law, and the law is being used against him, therefore they should vote for him.

(To be clear, I think that's stupid)

So in the end I think examples like these actually go the other way from your conclusion. It ends up being BECAUSE Trump supporters recognize that he is subject to law that they want to elect the guy to fix the laws that he is subject to.

Again, I repeat, I think that's a really antisocial, arguably corrupt approach, but that's what I'm hearing from them.

@darulharb

In reality, the Supreme Court has all sorts of choices here. There are a ton of different things it could do since it is operating within the context of the judicial system. It could even invent brand new things never seen before.

It needs to be emphasized that the question before them is a question of how courts should operate. It's not a question of, I don't know, whether Congress can pass a law restricting the freedom of speech about endangered species opinions of the executive branch. That gets a bit more thorny.

But here the question is directly one of whether the courts can or cannot consider certain complaints against Trump. That is 100% within the wheelhouse of the Supreme Court.

What should it do? Honestly, whatever the justices think is right. If they don't want to get involved in this they are fully within their right to ignore the case entirely. Maybe they think the lower court got it right, maybe they just want to punt.

But at this point this is completely up to the majority of the nine.

@mousey are you asking what works for social media or for health policy?

They are very different problems.

@codinghorror @jwz

@amgine Yeah, Abbott is absolutely playing political games, since he is a politician, and that's part of his job 🙂

Although I really wish we would all push back on some of these oversized claims about what he's doing. When we say things like he's thumbing his nose at the supreme court we are playing into his hands, building him up to his supporters, when really he's not being nearly that much of a champion for them.

As for the arrest and charge, he's no different from any other person in the country.

The federal government can issue and arrest warrant and take him into custody, and his position has governor is absolutely no shield against that.

That is, assuming he actually has violated federal law, which I'm not sure he has.

@amgine Well you might be fully aware of this, but for anyone else coming across it, a lot of people don't realize just how limited the judicial branch is, by design.

By design they are a branch with limited authority, limited jurisdiction in the US system of government.

A lot of people get frustrated by what the courts do or don't do without realizing that the courts lack authority or jurisdiction to go farther.

All part of the checks and balances in the US system.

@MAD_democracy @Chron @texastribune

@katrinakatrinka

Based on everything I hear, everybody agrees that laws do and should apply to everyone.

The problem is that different people have different ideas about what the laws are in the first place and in the second place what has happened that the laws should apply to.

But do you have a specific example in mind saying otherwise?

@keefeglise you say that, but I had a lot of trouble coming across a bluesky code.

In any case, I think the real turning point is going to be the addition of missing features to that platform. The developers over there say a bunch of features are in the works, and they have been surprisingly slow to emerge, but once they do it will be a much better platform for users than it is now.

I think that's really what a lot of users are waiting on.

@jupiter_rowland