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US Politics: Elections, Defections, Insurrections, Oh My!


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12 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

As always, the advice should always be: never, ever talk to cops.

Exactly. Just remember:

All Cops Are Bastards 

and go from there.

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But those liberal activist judges!!!

Also, more fun news. A federal court struck down California’s law setting age limits for purchases of semiautomatic guns. I’m sure the SC will make that the law of the land soon as well. We’re so F’d.  

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1 hour ago, KalVsWade said:

As always, the advice should always be: never, ever talk to cops.

Always a good opportunity to share:

 

 

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2 hours ago, Fez said:

Again bad ruling, but not apocalyptic (yet).

Good god you guys!  The water doesn't stop heating unless the heat's closed down.  It just keeps heating to the boil.  

Today's hearing is all abut the DOJ.

Which includes SCOTUS in various ways, such as functioning as prosecution in cases involving the Federal government.

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A scenario to contemplate:

A 'Left' group makes a major march or has a large demonstration somewhere over a topic the Right finds highly offensive. So highly offensive, in fact, they stage a countermarch or demonstration same place, same time. In fact, several state and federal level politicians are present - with those on the Right all being ardent second amendment fans.

Then...something happens. A fight, maybe. Or a fire. Or...well, it could be any of a number of things. Then the bullets start to fly - as it turns out that...call it anywhere from several dozen to a couple hundred people on both sides of this fiasco were *LEGALLY* doing the concealed carry thing. Call it several hundred shots fired.  Heck, make it even more interesting, say a couple of the attending politicians - including of course the second amendment advocates - get hurt or killed in the crossfire.

And when the mess lands in court, both sides cite the SC's recent rulings.

To me, this does not appear all that implausible a scenario.

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Good god you guys!  The water doesn't stop heating unless the heat's closed down.  It just keeps heating to the boil.  

Keeping the outrage at 100% at all times helps no one. It's just exhausting and leads to apathy. Need to pick your battles. To me, this is just another in a long line of terrible gun rulings that doesn't actually change all much in terms of facts on the ground.

I am far more outraged at the continued lack of consequences for the attempted coup leaders.

ETA: Or, actually, was that in reference to the Miranda ruling? Same thing though. It sucks, but Miranda still exists; there's just fewer consequences for cops violating it. Previously it was just almost impossible to win a Miranda violation civil case, now you can't even file one.

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This is anything but speculative or abstract for us in this state. People everywhere are targeted, and a lot of it isn't even random -- the Tops supermarket massacre of local African Americans in Buffalo just last month was a prime example.  The guy carefully planned the attack, literally to target African Americans, drove several times from a long ways away where he lived, to reconnoiter, then came with his guns and killed.  These killings are occur even in the subways.  Open carry in bars and entertainment venues will put the kill rate up even higher, from random and from those targeting specifically.

You should be listening to the DOJ hearing testimonies of today, if you think pretending things aren't awful is useful.

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20 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This is anything but speculative or abstract for us in this state. People everywhere are targeted, and a lot of it isn't even random -- the Tops supermarket massacre of local African Americans in Buffalo just last month was a prime example.  The guy carefully planned the attack, literally to target African Americans, drove several times from a long ways away where he lived, to reconnoiter, then came with his guns and killed.  These killings are occur even in the subways.  Open carry in bars and entertainment venues will put the kill rate up even higher, from random and from those targeting specifically.

You should be listening to the DOJ hearing testimonies of today, if you think pretending things aren't awful is useful.

I'm not saying gun violence isn't real. What I am saying is that as a result of this ruling, New York will have gun restrictions similar to such states as: Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine.

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Federal Authorities Search Home of Trump Justice Dept. Official

Meaning Jeffrey Clark, who with Eastman and Giuliani led the charge to change the election on the basis of the fake fake, who is the subject of a great deal of today's testimony, 

This is the news about 4 hours ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-justice-dept.html

Quote

 

Federal investigators carried out a predawn search on Wednesday at the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, in connection with the department’s sprawling inquiry into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, people familiar with the matter and an associate of Mr. Clark said.

It remained unclear exactly what the investigators may have been looking for. But Mr. Clark was central to President Donald J. Trump’s unsuccessful effort in late 2020 to strong-arm the nation’s top prosecutors into supporting his claims of election fraud, and the search suggested that the criminal investigation could be moving closer to Mr. Trump.

The law enforcement action at Mr. Clark’s home in suburban Virginia came just one day before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol held a hearing examining Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department after his election defeat. ....

 

Plus, let's hear it for Vought and Homelander:

Quote

“All because Jeff saw fit to investigate voter fraud,” said the associate, Russ Vought, who runs the Center for Renewing America, where Mr. Clark is a senior fellow. “This is not America, folks. The weaponization of government must end.”

 

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Or perhaps you could just point out that Jeffrey Clarke is no Homelander  so Vought has to do better than that?

BTW -- the legal experts in the matters of the gun laws disagree with all of you who think the SCOTUS ruling on bans on guns and open carry in NY is no big thing, might possibly become a big thing but is no big thing, merely putting NY in line with some other states. They are all agreed that all the gun control laws are in their sights.  Except, you know, maybe, if you happen not to be a white xtian male nationalist fasicst.  Which latter, the experts are quite afraid to say out loud, but they do hint around the edges, particularly if they happen to be African Americans who are legal scholars.

This has been a very bad for the US rule of law, despite the DOJ having done its sworn duty to the constitution a year and a half ago.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/miranda-warnings-supreme-court-alito-kagan.html
 

Quote

 

The Supreme Court took the first steps toward overruling Miranda v. Arizona on Thursday, declaring that suspects have no constitutional right to receive the famed Miranda warnings when they’re taken into custody. Its 6–3 decision in Vega v. Tekoh ensures that many suspects who are denied these warnings will have no legal recourse, even if they are wrongly convicted. Justice Sam Alito’s opinion for the court lays the groundwork for a more direct assault on Miranda itself, barely concealing the conservative majority’s contempt for the decision.

Vega revolves around the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination, which bars a defendant from being “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” For much of American history—and especially in the Jim Crow South—law enforcement officers coerced confessions from suspects using intimidation or outright violence. (These confessions were frequently false.) Courts were supposed to assess whether confessions were “voluntary,” but the secrecy of interrogation rooms, combined with the massive power imbalance between police and suspects, made this task impossible. In 1966, the Supreme Court tried to resolve this problem with Miranda, which required police to warn suspects that they have the right to remain silent and to access an attorney. The majority hoped that suspects would quickly acquire counsel, who would ensure that law enforcement did not coerce (or beat) a confession out of their client.

Over the last few decades, the Supreme Court has steadily retrenched from Miranda’s promise while purporting to uphold its bottom line. Most famously, in 2000’s Dickerson v. U.S., Chief Justice William Rehnquist reaffirmed the ruling, explaining that it had become “part of our national culture.” But Rehnquist called Miranda a “constitutional rule,” a prophylactic measure that demands more than the Fifth Amendment actually requires. As Justice Antonin Scalia correctly pointed out in his Dickerson dissent, this ruling creates a puzzle: If Miranda warnings are not a constitutional right, where does the Supreme Court get the authority to demand them?

SCOTUS has danced around this question for more than two decades, but Vega put it front and center. Terence Tekoh alleges that he was interrogated in police custody without receiving Miranda warnings. During his interrogation, he wrote a confession that was used against him at trial (though he was acquitted). Tekoh filed suit under a law that allows individuals to sue in federal court when the police violate “a right secured by the Constitution.” He alleged that law enforcement infringed on his Miranda rights by soliciting and submitting an un-Mirandized confession.

Alito, writing for the conservative justices, rejected this argument in a brusque opinion that bristles with contempt for Miranda. “A violation of Miranda,” he declared, “is not itself a violation of the Fifth Amendment.” It is, rather, a “judicially crafted rule,” and before expanding or contracting it, the court must weigh “the benefits and costs” of altering its scope. Here, the “balance of interests” leans against extending Miranda: Doing so, Alito averred, would require a federal court to adjudicate a question “that had already been decided by a state court,” creating “unnecessary friction” between state and federal judiciaries.

The most important part of Alito’s opinion, however, isn’t this analysis; it’s a drive-by attack on Miranda and Dickerson, much of which is relegated to a footnote. The assertion that SCOTUS can impose “prophylactic rules” on states and federal courts, the justice wrote, is “a bold and controversial claim of authority.” Whether the Supreme Court even “has the authority to create constitutionally based prophylactic rules that bind both federal and state courts,” he continued, “has been the subject of debate among jurists and commentators.” For support, he cited various critics of Miranda—including Scalia’s dissent in Dickerson. Alito then added ominously that whatever the merits of Miranda, “for the purpose of deciding this case, we follow its rationale.” ....

 

 

 

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