volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@stevesilberman It wasn't a stolen seat. She was confirmed and appointed just as the process was set up.

Yes, Obama failed in his duty to fill the vacancy with a nominee that the Senate found compelling, but we need to remember to hold him accountable for that in the history books.

He left the vacancy for the next administration to fill fair and square, which is a big reason to hold presidents accountable for not putting forward those nominees.

@cafechatnoir it's a definitional thing.

By definition the president is the one who earned the requisite votes.

A person can claim whatever trappings of the office they would like, without the votes, by definition they are not president. You could even be sitting in the important chair in the Oval Office, but if you have not been voted in, you're still not president, and not being president you don't have the authority to issue orders.

That's one reason people got so overblown about the idea that Trump wouldn't leave office. No, he doesn't have that option. We don't leave it up two individuals to decide for themselves whether or not they are president.

By definition, this is how the office works. Anything happening outside of that definition is not the presidency.

@jayalane No, this case involved an incident that was not a routine part of the IVF process, and the court went through that exact distinction in its ruling.

@erin

@gkmizuno agreed, that is the question I'm working with too. As far as I can tell guilt under USC would satisfy the core complaint that the Court had here, but I don't think it's clear.

@McPatrick but keep in mind that it is the Constitution itself that limits the issues that the Supreme Court can take on.

They wouldn't be acting to protect the Constitution should they so exceed the constitutional bounds of their offices, they would be violating their oaths.

And just because they may have violated the rules in one place doesn't make it not unconstitutional in a different place.

@cafechatnoir No one can get into office without votes, though.

@Nonilex No that's not quite what the ruling said.

It's not that Congress is solely responsible for enforcing the amendment but that Congress gets to lay out how enforcement will happen, Congress can authorize courts to enforce it, for example. Or congress can authorize or even require states to enforce it.

But, the court said that the lower court can't skip that democratic process and act without legal authority.

@SteveThompson this is missing the issue that the case hinged on.

Even if the 14th amendment had crystal clear language, what wasn't clear, according to the court, was whether it applied to Trump. That's a legal matter that they said was up to our elected officials to write rules around.

The language is clear but the application is not, and that was the problem.

@popcornreel States can do plenty.

It's just that state courts can't apply federal law without legal authority.

@agrinova It didn't, though, since that's not how an appeals court works.

That question was not before the court, so it could not have answered it even if it wanted to.

Really, these questions are importance are for voters to decide, not for a court.

@Hyolobrika

Thanks. Bookmarked!

@gkmizuno I would have to reread the opinion, feel free to paste me an excerpt saying otherwise, but as far as I remember had Trump been found guilty of a federal charge of treason or insurrection, that would entirely resolve the Court's complaint about Congress needing to pass a law.

That guilty verdict would come as a result of the laws that Congress has already passed.

The problem here is that Trump was being found guilty of something outside of any federal law by a state court.

At least, it would resolve the matter that the court addressed, it would bring up some deeper questions, but it would resolve this one.

@christianschwaegerl I just listed different ways that the amendment can be applied even without a federal law.

It just can't be applied by a state looking to decide unilaterally without legal authority.

Yes, the law can be applied. It is not effectively nullified because it is still in effect, even if this one effect didn't pass muster.

If the people we elect to Congress decide that Trump is fine even considering the amendment, that doesn't mean the amendment is nullified, it means the Democratic process determined that it didn't apply.

And so let's stop electing idiots to Congress.

@Hyolobrika I'd be interested in learning about those proposals.

My concern is that it's like trying to bolt wings onto a car to make it fly instead of starting from scratch with an airplane fuselage: I think the platform is fundamentally not adapted for it, so I'm skeptical that those additions would work in an elegant way.

But I'm interested!

@wjmaggos

@wjmaggos I agree with recognizing that it works, although there are complaints ranging from efficiently issues through feature issues that I think arise directly from that web-based foundation.

Just to name one thing, complaints people have about difficulty in migrating between instances can be mitigated but never truly resolved simply because the web server approach binds users to servers, and there's really no way around that.

@Hyolobrika

@gkmizuno I'll say it again but I fear we are going in circles:

There is no paradox since the court found that the situation you describe is not legally possible. There cannot be an insurrectionist in office the way you describe because the law would not recognize the person as an insurrectionist in the first place.

@christianschwaegerl

No, not nullified. Just because the judicial branch lacks authority doesn't mean the other two branches can't apply the amendment.

From Congress refusing to accept EC ballots listing Trump for the sake of the 14th amendment through executive agencies refusing to recognize Trump's authority due to the 14th, the amendment is certainly not null.

It's just that the court found that the state court lacked legal authority to make the determination which the still existing 14th amendment still provides to the Congress to give that power to the court should it wish.

It is BECAUSE the 14th is still in force, not null, that the Supreme Court recognized congressional ability to write such legislation.

@gkmizuno correct, the question before the court was more open ended, whether the state court erred.

And the court found that yes, the state court was in error because it lacked the legal authority to conclude that Trump is an insurrectionist with regard to ballot access and the 14th amendment.

And so, without the legal finding of being an insurrectionist, there's no paradox of an insurrectionist being in office, because legally the person would not have been found to be an insurrectionist.

The person in office is simply the person in office, as far as the law is concerned, again regardless of what you are I might think about whether the person is or is not an insurrectionist.

But it's the resolution of the situation you're thinking of.

@wjmaggos

Well for what it's worth, my opinion, just an opinion, is that the platform was held back by engineering decisions that came out of a web server world, where everything was focused on servers instead of users.

If you look at the technologies underneath ActivityPub, it looks like developers grabbed a bunch of off-the-shelf web technologies and cobbled them together. Lots of http and webfinger and web certificates, etc.

They could have started more from scratch, but this is the direction they went, and for better or worse, it's going to be a server oriented platform because it was built on server oriented technologies.

I think it was a case of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail 🙂

@Hyolobrika

@McPatrick ps: let me add that this kind of thing happens in legal proceedings all the time

It's just standard for the us legal system, not some special carve out for Trump.