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US Politics: Mail and Managers for Mitch


Tywin Manderly

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10 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

This is an old debate and one that wont be decided here, but the constitution was written at a different time and its text reflects realities of those times (similar to many religious texts). Myself and others find ludicrous the ways those original words are interpreted in a modern context. "Pork is bad" for instance was probably good advice for times where food hygiene was terrible, but makes less sense today.

Thats probably a superficial analysis but also the gist of it.

Then amend the document or start over.  Don't claim we can make it say anything we want.  That means having the document in the first place is useless.  If you want to claim having a written Constitution is a waste of time that's perfectly legitimate.  But to pretend like it doesn't exist... that's bizarre.

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3 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Sorry. @Ser Scot A Ellison for quoting a random post of yours  to get your attention.

But I was wondering, as a fellow southerner, how you convince others that the Civil War was actually about slavery, and not about State's Rights.

The methods I've been trying haven't been working as well as I've hoped.

You will never convince them because it's their religion.

However, tell them to read the works of the firebreathers in the years leading up to Secession.  It's ALL about slavery as their god-given righteous right, and abolition is from satan.  Hell, just to put it all in one place so they don't have to go looking for the works and sources, tell them to read The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry.  It all in there, all of it, every current of history and development from the earliest colonial era to 1863, every figure, black and white, with extensive quotes from them all, with complete sourcing and references of titles, authors and footnotes, so anyone can easily look up for more reading of a particular person and work for verification.

But it won't matter.  They don't want facts, so they call it all partisan or fake or -- 'so what?'

 

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35 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Why is "textualism" idiotic? 

If the text used in a foundational document is unimportant to its interpretation and use why does the text exist as anything more than a suggestion anyway?  Shouldn't that give you pause when thinking of important civil rights protected and defined in text?  Without textualism any foundational document is essentially written in sand.

They should be. The document must evolve with the times. Jefferson said so himself.

Plus the document itself is poorly written in many ways. Just look at the Second Amendment.

And lest we forget, Scot, that I have caused you to rethink about the concept of rights verse privileges. If they are merely privileges, then they’re already written in sand.  

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13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Then amend the document or start over.  Don't claim we can make it say anything we want.  That means having the document in the first place is useless.  If you want to claim having a written Constitution is a waste of time that's perfectly legitimate.  But to pretend like it doesn't exist... that's bizarre.

Oh come on this is a total straw man.

So there's no ambiguity in the Constitution?  Never been any ambiguity about what certain phrases mean? 

Never been any changes in the world the Revered Object failed to anticipate?  

I think we all know that arguments against originalism do not claim that you can make the Constitution say anything you want.  

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16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

They should be. The document must evolve with the times. Jefferson said so himself.

Plus the document itself is poorly written in many ways. Just look at the Second Amendment.

And lest we forget, Scot, that I have caused you to rethink about the concept of rights verse privileges. If they are merely privileges, then they’re already written in sand.  

I do not recall this conversation.  Could you please elaborate?  The items set out in the "Bill of Rights" and in further amendments like the 14th and the 19th Amendments are clearly stated to be "rights".  Are they not?

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16 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Oh come on this is a total straw man.

So there's no ambiguity in the Constitution?  Never been any ambiguity about what certain phrases mean? 

Never been any changes in the world the Revered Object failed to anticipate?  

I think we all know that arguments against originalism do not claim that you can make the Constitution say anything you want.  

It isn't a strawman.  If we can "interpret" the document without reference to the text (all textualism states is that the text of the document should control its meaning) then the document itself does not control its application.  

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Totally separate argument, but is the US constitution not democratically illegitimate anyway? There was no democratic input into its creation, several classes of people were barred from every having any democratic input, and although it has subsequently been ammended, it was ammended through the application of its own rules, which were themselves illegitimate. And it definitely had no democratic input from anybody alive today. I'm not sure why anyone would consider themselves morally bound by it.

Sure, in practical terms you can't just ignore it, because lots of other people with power will still try and enforce it in some way (whether in good faith or otherwise). But if you want to do something good, and the constitution says you can't, and changing it isn't a realistic option, then trying to get around it in some way seems like a totally legitimate tactic from my point of view.

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8 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I do not recall this conversation.  Could you please elaborate?  The items set out in the "Bill of Rights" and in further amendments like the 14th and the 19th Amendments are clearly stated to be "rights".  Are they not?

If rights can be taken away, were they ever rights to begin with? American citizens of Japanese descent probably didn’t think so as they were being thrown out of their homes, which is ironic because this country was founded in part due to disputes over property rights.  

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7 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Totally separate argument, but is the US constitution not democratically illegitimate anyway? There was no democratic input into its creation, several classes of people were barred from every having any democratic input, and although it has subsequently been ammended, it was ammended through the application of its own rules, which were themselves illegitimate. And it definitely had no democratic input from anybody alive today. I'm not sure why anyone would consider themselves morally bound by it.

Sure, in practical terms you can't just ignore it, because lots of other people with power will still try and enforce it in some way (whether in good faith or otherwise). But if you want to do something good, and the constitution says you can't, and changing it isn't a realistic option, then trying to get around it in some way seems like a totally legitimate tactic from my point of view.

The first paragraph is an interesting point.  However, if true the Articles of Confederation are no more legitimate and (arguably) the Union itself would be a nullity. 

Practically speaking people of all political strips, where it serves their purposes, seek to end run the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.  

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

If rights can be taken away, were they ever rights to begin with? American citizens of Japanese descent probably didn’t think so as they were being thrown out of their homes, which is ironic because this country was founded in part due to disputes over property rights.  

Practically, that is true, legally, the SCOTUS was careful in the internment cases to limit their impact by noting the unusual circumstances and the deference given to the elected government and the military it controls during a "time of war". 

I've always been underwhelmed by that limitation because if the Constitution can be set aside for "emergencies" (which is when most abuses of power are going to take place) then the protections listed are not protections at all.

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2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It isn't a strawman.  If we can "interpret" the document without reference to the text (all textualism states is that the text of the document should control its meaning) then the document itself does not control its application.  

This is incorrect in any reference I've ever seen to textualism.  Textualism states that a document should be interpreted by its original meaning.  Don't make me quote Wikipedia or Scalia here.  

No one is claiming we can interpret a document with[out] the document.  You're getting into some absurdist shit here.

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2 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Dershowitz has also joined the impeachment trial team. He is supposed to be this towering intellect, but being from the sciences I have no way of judging (so was Scalia, maybe them legal folks have a different way of defining intellect). Anyway, since he also defended Epstein and OJ, I am going to assume that means Trump is guilty.

With regards to Scalia, one of his old college classmates who went on to become a figure in the Democratic Party, (I think Mondale, but I could be wrong) put it roughly like this: “Everyone says how brilliant Scalia was. He wasn’t smart enough to be able to tell that a black man in the South during the 50s and 60s might not be getting a fair shake during a trial, so how bright could he have really been?”

I’m perfectly fine with those being the last words on Scalia’s brilliance. They’re certainly much classier words than I’d use in his place. (Unless we’re using a very perverse definition of brilliance, sort of like in the movie Thank You for Smoking, when the main character notes that the tobacco company scientist who has been doing technically scientifically valid studies on cigarettes for decades and has somehow found a way not to link smoking to cancer. [Or maybe addiction, I forget which] This causes the main character to proclaim what a genius the scientist is. In that sense, I can genuinely say that Scalia’s legal arguments were brilliant.)

Dershowitz is a very prominent defense lawyer who seems magnetically drawn to defending some of the biggest scumbags around. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, everyone needs a defense and every lawyer needs work. I do hope some news networks will stop treating him like an unbiased legal expert and notice how he coincidentally always seems to be in the bag for Republicans on any given issue. (Also there’s some extra stink around Dershowitz right now because one of Epstein’s victims accused Dershowitz of being an Epstein client, although I haven’t heard of that getting any traction.)

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2 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Trump is tweeting support for Sanders, which leads me to believe he must have some internal polling data that suggests he can beat Sanders. handily (or he got a look at the opposition research). At the same time, the Ukraine scandal occurred because he was worried about Biden's chances.

I dont know if the above holds though. No matter how good the internal pollster, there is still tremendous uncertainity in the outcomes.

The Republicans are stirring things up to distract from Impeachment, cause chaos with the D's candidates, and they're hoping that the D candidacy/impeachment crossover can be stirred up to their advantage. 

Carlson's been defending Bernie, too. A new investigation was just launched into Comey. Pence wrote a piece to convince D's to buck their party calling it a mark of independence and courage (probably targeted to Sanders and Klobuchar who can pull across parties and Trump would love to claim bipartisan aquittal), and then McCarthy was a bit more direct below.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mccarthy-pelosi-impeachment-articles-sanders-iowa-caucuses

 

This NBC piece has it about right. With impeachment, the Rs are creating any mess they can and Ds can't fall for it. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/bernie-sanders-supporters-shouldn-t-fall-republicans-impeachment-conspiracy-ncna1116576?yptr=yahoo

 

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30 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

This is incorrect in any reference I've ever seen to textualism.  Textualism states that a document should be interpreted by its original meaning.  Don't make me quote Wikipedia or Scalia here.  

No one is claiming we can interpret a document with the document.  You're getting into some absurdist shit here.

What you are calling "textualism" I would call "originalism" that goes a step beyond "textualism" and says that the document needs to be interpreted as the original drafters intended the document to be interpreted.  Textualism, in my view is simply that the words have their ordinary meanings.  

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Practically, that is true, legally, the SCOTUS was careful in the internment cases to limit their impact by noting the unusual circumstances and the deference given to the elected government and the military it controls during a "time of war". 

I've always been underwhelmed by that limitation because if the Constitution can be set aside for "emergencies" (which is when most abuses of power are going to take place) then the protections listed are not protections at all.

Seems like you answered this for yourself. Just accept that with many things in life, we like to lie to ourselves.

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45 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

With regards to Scalia, one of his old college classmates who went on to become a figure in the Democratic Party, (I think Mondale, but I could be wrong) put it roughly like this: “Everyone says how brilliant Scalia was. He wasn’t smart enough to be able to tell that a black man in the South during the 50s and 60s might not be getting a fair shake during a trial, so how bright could he have really been?”

I don’t think it can be Mondale. My former professor is older than Scalia and they didn’t go to any of the same colleges.

But to the point, there are a lot of brilliant conservatives. Problem is empathy is in short supply for them.

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48 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Dershowitz is a very prominent defense lawyer who seems magnetically drawn to defending some of the biggest scumbags around. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, everyone needs a defense and every lawyer needs work. I do hope some news networks will stop treating him like an unbiased legal expert and notice how he coincidentally always seems to be in the bag for Republicans on any given issue. (Also there’s some extra stink around Dershowitz right now because one of Epstein’s victims accused Dershowitz of being an Epstein client, although I haven’t heard of that getting any traction.)

Dershowitz likes to point out he voted for HRC.

An Epstein victin claimed she had been forced to have sex with Dershowitz, who then claimed she was a liar. She has sued him for defemation, and he has counter-sued her for defamation, claiming, among other things, she was encouraged to bring the lawsuit by her (apparently renowned) lawyer David Boies. Boies has now also sued Dershowitz for defamation.

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12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Seems like you answered this for yourself. Just accept that with many things in life, we like to lie to ourselves.

Here's the thing, any government "protection', any "liberty interest", any "right" exists only in human imagination.  They are abstract concepts.  By this logic nothing is safe and nothing is certain.  We can do anything.

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33 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What you are calling "textualism" I would call "originalism" that goes a step beyond "textualism" and says that the document needs to be interpreted as the original drafters intended the document to be interpreted.  Textualism, in my view is simply that the words have their ordinary meanings.  

Right exactly.  Weighing in late here, but one cannot both say that "words have meaning" when you like the result and "words have whatever meaning is expedient" when you don't like the result (btw, originalists do this all.the.time., so it's both sides woo hoo).  For a legal right or obligation to have meaning you need to have a consistent understanding of that right or obligation (which is why stare decisis is a thing).  Canons of statutory construction, including looking at legislative history to resolve ambiguities, exist for a reason.  

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