I’m not going to argue that the details don’t matter, they do. But what’s occupying my mind right now is how many senators, judges, and generals away are we from Obama falling out of a window if he tried, and no one facing any consequences? It seems the current Supreme Court thinks that Trump could order it and be immune because it falls under his executive authority.
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I have a hard time believing that 5 Justices on this Supreme Court would find that an order to assassinate a political rival would be an “official act” for which Trump would have presumptive immunity. Thomas and Alito might go along with that, but I honestly can’t see Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett going along with that. That being said, I’m sure there are already people trying to whisper in Roberts’s ear that he should retire now so that Trump can name the next Chief Justice. I have very little respect for Roberts, but he was on the right side of Obergefell, Comstock, and Sebelius. If Trump gets to name his replacement, I would expect that person to make Alito look like a radical leftist.
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I mean, he’s already trying to use executive orders to overturn constitutional amendments and test everyone’s loyalty. Just because Democrats never packed the courts doesn’t mean the GOP won’t. And uncooperative justices have the disadvantage of only serving for life. Every member of congress, every judge, everyone working for the federal government should be looking at this proposal, on top of everything else, and saying, “Oh fuck no, not ever.” Everything needs to be resisted now. Before it’s too late.
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Well a judge has already issued an injunction against the order limiting birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court may eventually side with Trump on this, but I would be surprised. Again, I’m pretty sure Thomas and Alito will go along with it. We know the three liberals won’t. I’m also pretty confident that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett will rely on Wong Kim Ark and other established cases and reject Trump’s EO, but I could be wrong. But if those three do that, Roberts will follow suit, because he just likes to be on the majority.
The time to really panic will be in two years. If Republicans can manage to expand their majorities in the House and Senate, we will be fucked. Especially if they end up with 60 seats in the Senate. At that point, they will pass all kinds of bullshit. And they will expand the size of the Supreme Court and pack it with MAGA Nazis (Magazis?). I am not despairing yet. Depressed and scared, but not despairing. We aren’t cooked yet. And a lot can change in two years.
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The GOP only needs a simple majority to confirm a supreme court justice.
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So, anti-Semitism has been an issue here in Australia recently. I don’t mean “pro-Palestinian marches”, which the usual suspects have been claiming are anti-Semitic. I don’t mean “there’s going to be a protest outside this synagogue” which doesn’t end up going ahead, but a gang of pro-Israel thugs (and members of the alt-right liveblogging twitterati) turn up to defend it anyway, and end up beating up a guy walking past wearing a keffiyeh, who turns out to be Jewish himself, and who was the only person arrested.
I mean the synagogue fifteen minutes walk away from my house which was burned down. Or the arson attacks in Sydney which featured “Fuck the Jews” and swastikas in red paint.
The Liberal Party is, naturally, outraged. They’re mainly outraged, it seems, at how little the Labor party is doing about it apparently. Like how at a press conference, the Labor MP didn’t have anything to say. The Jewish local member, whose offices not that far away had also been recently firebombed, and who couldn’t speak at the time because he had laryngitis, and who had arranged for his statement to be read by a Liberal senator also present until the leader of the Liberal party personally intervened to stop it.
(For those outside Australia, the Liberal party is not “liberal”, it’s economically neo-liberal to a fault, and socially a schizophrenic mix of libertarian, reactionary conservative verging on theocratic, and authoritarian. You know, like the Republicans or the Tories, both of which they have cordial associations with, and all their think-tanks have overlapping memberships and funding sources.)
So anyway, George Brandis is a former Liberal senator, who once held the position of Attorney-General. He’s currently in a retirement sinecure of “Professor of National Security” at the Australian National University.
Here’s George now, with the Liberals in opposition and the targets of hatred being Jewish:
To which the reaction in these parts from people with a memory is: Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool. This is George eleven years ago when he was Attorney-General, his party was in power, and the targets of hatred were Aboriginal.
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Yes, but they need 60 to change the Judiciary Act to add more Justices to the Supreme Court. None of the liberal Justices are going to step down over the next four years. They only way to pack SCOTUS is to add more seats.
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What if one or two develop medical issues that force them to step down?
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That’s always a possibility, of course, but there’s absolutely nothing we can do about that today. But that’s another reason why it will be important to flip the Senate back in two years.
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Historically, the party in power takes a shellacking in the midterms. And this particular party is already making a dog’s breakfast of the whole governing thing, so there is that. There is also the question of whether there will be elections, of course. But I hold onto hope.
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Under Fiji’s Civil Aviation Authority, airlines have the power to make a passenger leave an aircraft if their behaviour is deemed as “disruptive” with cabin crew given the “right to take measures they think reasonable to prevent the passenger from continuing that behaviour”.
Mind you it’s difficult to do that without depressurizing.
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Needs more President Roslin.
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OMFG…
It keeps getting worse…
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Then he should know how unfit he is for the job. FFS - don’t float that you might vote for him if it’s that much of a conflict for you - just quietly recuse & be elsewhere.
This just encourages the Republicans.
But the voters will remember you couldn’t do your job and didn’t protect them.
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