volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@coupland No, the reason it's about example is that it misses the actual argument.

The argument is not that a president can do whatever he wants with impunity. The argument is that a president operating legally within his legal authority can't be personally sued for his execution of the office. The suit has to be against the office, not the individual.

So presidents can't assassinate political rivals with impunity because that wouldn't be a legal part of carrying out the office. The example just doesn't apply.

@artemesia You're talking as if this is all up to the Supreme Court, but it's absolutely not. Checks and balances in the US system adamantly don't give them such unilateral authority.

The court can only work with what is brought in front of them by others, executive branches and petitioners. They play such an enormous role in this whole process, including the timeline.

And they can't name their own successors. If we elect people who approve the nominees that they would prefer, well, we get the government we vote for.

You're right that the Supreme Court might not care to rush these cases, as is their prerogative, but even that leaves all sorts of other action ranging from other executive actions in governments throughout the country through other court actions, where lower courts do have the ability to push back on a Supreme Court that is moving too slowly.

But mainly, should the court kick a case back on a technicality than that speaks to problems with the case itself. Again, something the court doesn't have unilateral authority over.

@GottaLaff

@darulharb That's not quite what happens in these cases.

It's not that the lower court put the Supreme Court on a clock, but rather that the lower court offered the professional courtesy of restraining themselves to give things time to work out more peacefully.

Heck, if you really want to view it in terms of the Supreme Court, this is the lower court offering them more time to consider the case rather than feeling the need to act at that very second should they want to.

The Supreme Court has wide latitude to act if it wants to regardless of the lower court. But the lower court is making it easier on everybody by delaying its own ruling for a bit.

@TruthSandwich@mastodon.cloud Oh no, the thing is, not everyone is anti-abortion.

I know plenty who are proudly pro-abortion.

@mimarek

@mimarek importantly, this doesn't actually have much impact on the specific question before the Court.

The question before the Supreme Court is not whether such studies have scientific merit. The Court is not in a position to weigh in on scientific questions. It's not their job.

The question before the Court is whether legal processes were followed, regardless of the science the processes may have considered.

Were the corrects public notices issued? Did the right officials sign the right forms? Were timelines properly indicated in the public record? Those are the sort of questions the Supreme Court will grapple with in their review, and none of it has anything to do with scholarly publication.

@hankg Why not judge the product for its own costs and benefits instead of trying to judge it based on personalities of promoters?

You might just find that it's simply better.

@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.