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Posts posted by bolverk
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14 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:
Under that argument, legal aliens, that is permanent residents, those on student or H1B or other visas, etc. all count on the census.
Those without legal status do not.
Given that there wasn't much conception of someone unlawfully present at the time of the founding, it seems to me to be a legit question to pose.
I think the answer should probably be "persons are persons," legal, illegal, citizens, aliens, men, women, children, slaves, free people, the whole lot. Not dogs, cats or hamsters. Still worth asking though.
Thank you for explaining what you're saying in a way I can understand the distinction you were making. Like others, I still disagree that their argument has any merit if one were simply looking at the "plain language" of counting all persons in a state and using that to apportion the number of reps.
While I can "get" the rationale for saying something along the lines of "those people cain't vote so why should they count?", I'd say the counterargument is that representatives are bound by a responsibility of representing ALL of their constituents -- voters and non-voters alike -- as they make the rules that govern all of society which, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, includes undocumented workers as it did once did for women and non-property owners before the suffrage was expanded. Hell, even going back the 3/5 compromise, the slaves whom many considered not to be actually "human" got counted and represented.
Now, I'm pretty sure that you would likely come down on the side of saying we should be counting all persons living in a state and your position is more of a legalistic thought exercise that the Trump administration just may have a point, but I'm saying strictly as a layman that their argument is basically a bunch of bullshit.
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3 minutes ago, RPM said:
That and as Churchill famously stated, if the island falls, the Empire will carry on the fight until victory. Even though much of the empire has been liberated, I can't help but think they would go all in, especially Canada and Australia. Possibly India.
Not to mention they also got a big assist from FDR (directly) and Stalin (indirectly).
Off topic, I do sort of admire the Irish a bit for staying out of defending England from a pure resentment/hatred standpoint but remaining neutral after D Day is still a bad look.
/ending thread derail
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4 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:
Actually, they're not arguing that non-citizens don't count.
Just those whose status here is not lawful.
Given that the constitution says not much about immigration or citizenship, it's a legit question. Granted, their motives for asking the question are geared to disenfranchisement or underrepresentation, but it's still a legit question.
Huh? Can you expand on what you mean there, because I'm not following what you're saying. Also, I'm not a constitutional legal scholar. If, as the article states, that their case is based on Trump's memo which reads:
In July, Mr. Trump issued a memorandum taking a new approach. “For the purpose of the reapportionment of representatives following the 2020 census,” the memo said, “it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.”
“Current estimates suggest that one state is home to more than 2.2 million illegal aliens, constituting more than 6 percent of the state’s entire population,” the memo said, apparently referring to California. “Including these illegal aliens in the population of the state for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated.”
then, their entire argument is that undocumented residents shouldn't be used to apportion seats. What am I not getting?
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1 minute ago, DigglerontheHoof said:Now we all we need is our Olenna Tyrell.
Obligatory

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3 minutes ago, RPM said:
He's really King Joffrey at this point. We all know how that ended.
I've long argued he's some combination of Chauncey Gardiner, Ignatius J. Reilley, and King Joffrey.
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2 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:
Well, they've got a pretty long history of flirting with disaster. To read how high up moles from both the Nazis and the Sov-Coms managed to rise in Britain, you have to wonder that they still exist as an independent country at all.
The answer can only be the Channel for the last 1000 years. Before then, the Anglo Saxons, Vikings, and Normans got them pretty good, but they finally figured out having a bunch of boats is a good thing when you're an island.
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14 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:
We really need to send the Queen a nice apology note explaining we didn't mean it, we clearly don't deserve to be governing ourselves, and sorry about all the fuss.
I sometimes have wondered if we wouldn't have ultimately been better off going the route of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for independence, but then my populist anti-monarchy sentiments get the better of me and say "Fuck the King/Queen." Moreover, I think the UK is about to be in worse shape than we are, since it appears we've hopefully somewhat course corrected while they're still driving full speed toward the cliff.
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Bump
They're back in front of the Supreme Court arguing that only US citizens should be counted in the apportionment of congressional seats. With all the other fuckery going on, this one has just as much, in not more, long lasting consequences. On the face of it, they don't seem to have a case if using the "plain language" of the Constitution, and changing the process would be a clear example of Republican "judicial activism."
Supreme Court Takes Up Trump Plan to Exclude Unauthorized Immigrants in Redistricting
The administration’s efforts, which are subject to practical hurdles, would upset a constitutional consensus and could shift political power from Democratic states to Republican ones.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday on President Trump’s efforts, in the final days of his presidency, to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the calculations used to allocate seats in the House.
If the court rules for the administration, it would upend the agreement that the census must count all residents, whatever their immigration status, and could shift political power from Democratic states to Republican ones.
But the case is riddled with practical complications. Census Bureau officials have said they cannot produce the required data until after Mr. Trump leaves office in January. Even if they do, it is not clear that congressional officials would accept what they may view as flawed calculations, and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. may try to reverse course once he takes office, prompting further litigation.
The core question in the case — who counts for purposes of congressional reapportionment — is fundamental and largely untested.
The Constitution requires congressional districts to be apportioned “counting the whole number of persons in each state,” using information from the census. To that end, a federal law requires the president to send Congress a statement setting out the number of representatives to which each state is entitled after each decennial census. In the past, those statements have been based on a count of all residents.
SpoilerIn July, Mr. Trump issued a memorandum taking a new approach. “For the purpose of the reapportionment of representatives following the 2020 census,” the memo said, “it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.”
“Current estimates suggest that one state is home to more than 2.2 million illegal aliens, constituting more than 6 percent of the state’s entire population,” the memo said, apparently referring to California. “Including these illegal aliens in the population of the state for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated.”
Removing undocumented immigrants from the count would most likely have the effect of shifting seats to states that are older, whiter and typically more Republican.
Mr. Trump ordered Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, to provide him with two sets of numbers, one including unauthorized immigrants and the other not. It was not clear how Mr. Ross would derive the second set of numbers, as last year the Supreme Court rejected his efforts to add a question on citizenship to the census.
The case before the court, Trump v. New York, No. 20-366, was brought by two sets of plaintiffs, one a group of state and local governments and the United States Conference of Mayors, and the second a coalition of advocacy groups and other nongovernmental organizations.A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the new policy violated federal law. Two other courts have issued similar rulings, while one said the dispute was not ripe for consideration.
In an unsigned opinion in the case from Manhattan, the panel said the question before it was “not particularly close or complicated.”
“The secretary is required to report a single set of figures to the president — namely, ‘the tabulation of total population by states’ under the ‘decennial census’ — and the president is then required to use those same figures to determine apportionment using the method of equal proportions,” the panel wrote, quoting the relevant statutes.
Much of the panel’s opinion concerned whether the plaintiffs had suffered the sort of injury that gave them standing to sue. It concluded that the new policy made it less likely that undocumented immigrants and others would participate in the census, harming its accuracy.
But the counting is over, and that theory of standing is now open to question. In the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs argued that they also had standing because they would be hurt by the revised apportionment. Jeffrey B. Wall, the acting solicitor general, responded that this second theory was speculative and premature, as Mr. Trump has not acted.
On the core question in the case, the administration told the justices that the term “persons in each state” can be understood to require “a sovereign’s permission to remain within the jurisdiction.”
In response, Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, representing state and local governments, said the administration was asking the court to endorse a stunning departure from the nation’s traditions. “Since the founding,” she wrote, “the population base used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives has never excluded any resident based on immigration status.”
In a separate response, groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union said the administration’s new policy violated the federal statute and the Constitution.
“The president does not have ‘discretion’ to pencil out persons included in the actual enumeration to create a separate apportionment base of his own liking,” the brief said.
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How influential is Bill Buckley's National Review in Republican circles these days? I'm asking because this OpEd is rather scathing.
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There was some speculation about Trump firing Esper in order to get a yes-man in the job who would do Trump's bidding in these last months without pushing back on risky military actions with specific consternation over a potential attack on Iran.
And Trump continues to oust others with extensive national security expertise in his last months in office. One can't help but question his motives and what (if anything) he's got up his sleeves.
QuoteTrump administration removes experts from Defense Policy Board
(CNN)Several high profile members of the Defense Policy Board were removed on Wednesday by the Trump administration, in yet another purge of longstanding foreign policy experts and national security establishment figures in the final days of the Trump era, according to three defense officials.
Members who were suddenly removed include former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger, former ranking member of the House Intelligence committee Jane Harman and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, two of the officials said.
The Defense Policy Board is an outside advisory group of former high profile national security officials who "provide the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, independent, informed advice and opinions concerning matters of defense policy in response to specific tasks from the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense," according to their website.
"As part of long-considered changes, we can confirm that several members of the Department's Defense Policy Board have been removed. We are extremely grateful for their dedicated service, commitment, and contributions to our national security. Future announcements for new members of the board will be made soon," the third official said.
The first two officials said the members removed also included former Chief of Naval Operations, retired Adm. Gary Roughead, former chief operating officer at the Pentagon Rudy De Leon and former Bush deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch II.
Foreign Policy first reported the removals.
Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who made an unannounced trip to Bahrain and Qatar Wednesday nearly a week after announcing US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan would be further reduced, said in a statement Thursday, "I am grateful to the departing board members, many of whom have served for decades."
"As we adapt the Department for great power competition, I look forward to naming new board members in the coming days," Miller said.
After Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper earlier this month, the Pentagon made sweeping changes in leadership and removed several most senior officials, replacing them with perceived loyalists to the President. The move fueled alarm among military and civilian officials who were concerned about what could come next.
The new appointments include retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, now a top Pentagon official, who once called former President Barack Obama a terrorist leader and suggested that a former CIA director was using a Cicero quote to activate a sleeper agent to kill Trump. Kash Patel, former aide to Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California, is chief of staff to Miller and leading Pentagon transition efforts with the incoming Biden-Harris administration.
Ezra Cohen-Watnick was also named to a new post and will be the acting under secretary of defense for intelligence. Cohen-Watnick gained notoriety in March 2017 for his alleged involvement in providing intelligence materials to then-House Intelligence Chairman Nunes, who went on to claim that US intelligence officials improperly surveilled Trump associates.
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Happy Thanksgiving!
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Didn't see this posted but yet another example of Trump going scorched earth on his way out the door.
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Ed Norton thread. Worth a read.
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Yet another example of them going scorched earth on the way out the door:
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The following two reflect my thoughts for y'all having forgotten the following two.


At least someone remembered fuck-that!-upchuck-tech chick
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14 minutes ago, Tuco said:
The counterpoint is that lowering the barriers to entry, by making the races smaller, will encourage greater participation and draw more people. More people means better choices.
Well, yeah, and the barrier of entry for an effective small town mayor to a rep is much lower.
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This issue first came up on my radar a few years ago due to an Op-Ed in the NYTimes, I believe. Since then, I've been following the issue and am fully supportive of expansion. A little while ago, I came across this research article that discusses the optimum size for Congressional Districts and provides some comparisons.
@Huckleberryand some of the other numbers guys, I'd like to hear your feedback on this:
http://statchatva.org/2017/11/15/u-s-house-districts-are-colossal-whats-the-right-size/
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Quote
Mr. Trump announced the decision on Twitter, writing in an abrupt post that Mr. Esper had been “terminated.”
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Two White House officials said later on Monday that Mr. Trump was not finished, and that Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, could be next in line to be fired. Removing these senior officials — in effect decapitating the nation’s national security bureaucracy — would be without parallel by an outgoing president who has just lost re-election.
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At the Pentagon, Mr. Esper’s departure means that Mr. Miller would — if he lasts — see out the end of the Trump administration. Defense Department officials have privately expressed worries that the president might initiate operations, whether overt or secret, against Iran or other adversaries during his last days in office.
“In my experience, there would only be a few reasons to fire a secretary of defense with 72 days left in an administration,” Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan and a former Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said in a statement.
“One would be incompetence or wrongdoing, which do not seem to be the issue with Secretary Esper,” she said. “A second would be vindictiveness, which would be an irresponsible way to treat our national security. A third would be because the president wants to take actions that he believes his secretary of defense would refuse to take, which would be alarming. Whatever the reason, casting aside a secretary of defense during the volatile days of transition seems to neglect the president’s most important duty: to protect our national security.”
@Monstercan go fuck his own face.
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Yep. Got a shit load of HS "friends" today dramatically proclaiming their switch to Parler because it's not "censored" and is a safe haven for "free speech."
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Here's another way to think of it in simplistic terms. Let's say you drive from Wichita Falls to San Angelo to San Antonio to Victoria to Galveston. During just about the entire drive, in almost every place on your left Trump lost support and on your right he gained support.

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On 11/5/2020 at 12:47 PM, JimmyJames said:
My initial post on this was wrong. DFW did fine.
What turned this into a big Republican win instead of a toss up as predicted by the polls was the Hispanic vote. Heavy movement all over the state in favor of trump. Hispanics breaking heavy for trump with greater turnout all over the state turned this from a toss up to an easy Republican win. I had assumed the opposite.
I spent a little time this morning to update this map with more complete results.

It obviously shows how much better Trump did along the border from Brownsville up to El Paso and extending into the Permian Basin. I point out the Permian because of the oil thing and how Dems didn't really make up a lot of ground in Harris County. Moreover, Houston's suburban counties didn't shit leftward nearly as much as those in North and Central Texas.
Just as notable was the almost uniform leftward shift in the Hill Country (though Chip effin' Roy still somehow won by a larger margin, so this map simply shows a repudiation of Trump and not Republicans).
One other more subtle shift away from Trump can be seen in almost all the smaller core metro counties (except for those along the border and Permian Basin). Potter Co. (Amarillo), Lubbock, Wichita, Taylor Co. (Abilene), Tom Green Co. (San Angelo), Bowie Co. (Texarkana), Gregg Co. (Longview), Smith Co. (Tyler), McClennan Co. (Waco), Bell Co. (Temple/Killeen), Brazos Co. (College Station/Bryan), and Victoria Co. all subtly shifted away from Trump. Now, obviously, Biden didn't win these, but they reflect the larger national trend of metro areas being more Dem friendly...maybe.
But, again, core metro counties that moved toward Trump are either along the Border or are mostly oil dependent: El Paso, Webb Co. (Laredo), Hidalgo (McAllen/Edinburg), Cameron (Brownsville/Harlingen), Nueces (Corpus), Ector (Odessa), Midland, and Jefferson (Beaumont/Port Arthur).
I'm not sure if I'm adding anything to the discussion, but these are the notable aspects I've taken away from the 2020 presidential map in Texas.
Edit: One final point, Hill Co. (Hillsboro) is the only one stretching from Bexar all the way up the I-35 corridor to the Oklahoma border where Trump's support increased, which supports the "Blue Spine" theory for how Texas is trending.
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Supreme Court conservatives appear ready to OK Trump’s census citizenship question
in Cloak Room
Posted · Edited by bolverk
And the undocumented do pay taxes.
Curiosity about how the Founding Fathers viewed US Citizenship lead me down a small rabbit hole on Wikipedia (yeah, I know) on the Naturalization Act of 1790 and the multiple modifications which followed. It appears that it was granted pretty freely after a period of time of residence and having a "good moral character."
This gets to the crux of the history in pretty short manner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
None of this, however, goes back to the counting of all the people in the US and the question of counting Indians. Here's the history on that: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/summer/indian-census.html Basically, the "Indians not taxed" clause for the count excluded those who were "living among us," they were counted. The instructions read:
1890 is when we started to count all Natives.
So, yeah, that clause shouldn't be one that would be relied upon to not include illegal aliens, because they do indeed live among us and are part of our communities.