Jump to content

Stilicho

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    689
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Stilicho

  1. Serious question: how much difference is there between the Twitter experience and the Truth Social experience right now?
  2. "I prefer to die with a bottle of wine, without the comforts of religion." - Ray Wylie Hubbard
  3. Sort of feels like that's the world these maniacs really want. It's not about protection, it's about killing folks that you don't like. If we can try to force everyone in society to believe that they need a gun, then we can have a bunch of duels like in the movies, and the guy that wins in the movie is the good guy / doesn't do time for murder. Somehow, if each party is carrying a gun, that makes the killing "fair". Also, @DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt's explanation is just as plausible and much simpler: it's all just make-believe cowboys v. indians bullshit to these people.
  4. One way or another, I would really like to shit on this man's grave before I shuffle on off this mortal coil.
  5. Reboot of the Heaven's Gate origin story.
  6. Bill Maher is the Joe Rogan of Dennis Millers. You can arrange those name in any order that you like and the conclusion remains the same.
  7. That these morons are blowing themselves up in homemade rockets to try and prove the point is about as close to real-time Darwinism as it gets. Facts and science don't matter to these people. They openly reject all of that. It's all about belonging to something "different" with "secret knowledge" that makes you better, more blessed, or more enlightened than the next person. We don't seem to have much luck at reasoning with the willfully ignorant.
  8. But this is how the tough guy in the movie I watch does it!
  9. The fucking worst historians.
  10. Originalism is a deliberate interpretive choice. It's not the only the means of interpreting constitutional text and its relatively new compared to other forms of interpretation (Brennan / T. Marshall "living constitutionalism"). It really hit the legal mainstream under Reagan, championed by Scalia. To interpret the Constitution under originalism is to disregard most, if not all, historical and legal context that has occurred in this country since its ratification. It seeks to enshrine law and the definitions of terms in the Constitution perpetually in 1783 or 1865 (ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments). There is no evidence, that I've run across, that any of the Federalists or drafters of the constitution were under the illusion that the Constitution was a static document. J. Marshall directly states that it is not, and since Madison wrote the damn thing, you think he would've argued the point in Marbury. He didn't. In practice, originalism does not seek to protect civil rights. The only civil rights that originalism has successfully "protected" have been 2A rights (which are relatively new in historical interpretation) and putting its thumb on the religion side of the state / religion scale. I can assure that modern 4th Amendment jurisprudence does not reflect 1783 realities, for example. How the hell could it? Most civil rights, as we know them, have been derived by judicial interpretation of the 14th Amendment (substantive due process). There are problems with the way the Court has defined those rights and where they "come" from (the first substantive due process case was actually Dred Scott), but originalism works against substantive due process, not with it. It's a legal response to the recognition of all sorts of civil rights under the 14th Amendment in the post-WWII era. It was "invented" strictly as a means of limiting constitutional scope and protections. It's a more educated Rush Limbaugh telling you the Constitution doesn't technically offer protections because they are not enumerated verbatim. That's not what the Constitution was, is, or was ever intended to be. At least not to my eyes. Scalia, and others, have argued that it is meant to force legislative responsibility back on Congress, rather than have the judiciary be the final arbiter of what can be interpreted out of the 14th Amendment. In other words, Congress should pass laws or Constitutional amendments codifying interpretations of civil rights, so that they cannot be taken away by later Court opinions (like... abortion). That sounds nice in theory, but we have used the Court as a political proving ground going all the way back to Marbury. The amendment process is more or less dead in our current political gridlock (ERA been on the block for... 40ish years now?). It would be nice if we relied on judicial interpretation less, but its been baked into the system so to speak. There was never in any real chance that the federal government would suddenly become better legislators because a few hardcore conservative justices decided to be pedantic dicks about everything and go out of there way to make life for many Americans harder than it needs to be, and it's already hard enough for a lot of folks. Originalism is the trickle-down economics of constitutional interpretation. It's spun up bullshit to keep certain interests in power perpetually. The shinejob that the Founders never intended the Constitution to be interpreted in a context outside of their own is a marketing ploy to conservatives to make them feel better about fucking people over legally. Finally, the ultimate irony of originalism and its prohibition on substantive due process is that gets tossed out the window by Scalia, its chief proponent, when he goes looking for constitutional protections for the 2nd Amendment in Heller and and for religion in Hobby Lobby. Like every other weapon in the conservative's limited arsenal, it is not meant to be equitable. It's just another power grab under shoddy veneer.
  11. Yeah. Fuck that dude. Too many of these conserva-fuck justices are obsessed with their legacy, especially in the legal field. Going to be a real pleasure watching his burn down with the rest of them.
  12. He certainly lending the size of his platform to some specific voices / interests. Hard to argue that he's not aware of that, at least on some level.
  13. As a law student, having gotten a peak behind the curtain, I don't have a lot of faith in SCOTUS. Most of that can be tied directly to the "originalism shift" and the lack of any... logic of reasoning to a lot of Supreme Court caselaw. That being said, if the Sotomayor, Kagan, et al. have been on the take, stand them up and try them right alongside the fundamentalists. If ever there's been this much concerted push from the public, Congress, and President calling for Supreme Court reform, I cannot remember it. Unless it was the conservative flip post-Miranda, which was before my time anyhow. In any event, this is the best shot the country has had at forcing some rules on these motherfuckers. I hope folks keep digging.
  14. I can't be the only one thinking that this place should be pitched as the location for the 2024 RNC, right? Fucking beach concert with Kid Nugent, free margarita hot tub with MTG, mudwrestling with SHS. Just some good ol' fashioned conservative Christian fun(damentalism)!
  15. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-county-commissioner-recorded-talking-lynching-black-resident-rcna80470 Well, I'll be damned. One of the racist shitheels in McCurtain County has been forced out. Shit gets worse when you realize the mayor of Idabel is black and these guys had all worked together on the last round of tornado damage. Still waiting on the sheriff. You know you've fucked up when the Oklahoma Sheriff's Association is trying to distance itself from your actions.
  16. These are the digital versions of all those goddamn Dale Earnhardt plates people mount in their living room.
  17. This is the part that I don't get. Yeah, it sucks that we're not going to see the lying fucks squirm on the stand, but was there really an "a-ha" moment coming at the end of this? Was anyone that actually watches Fox or their shittier, fascist(ier?) competition for news really going to admit that they'd been duped? These people weren't going to stop being Christian fundamentalist assholes just because Tucker Carlson admits on the stand that he hates Trump. Feels like the battle lines to this thing have been drawn. Who the hell is claiming to be a "neutral voter" that can be swayed one way or the other on the basis of whether Sean Hannity thinks Trump is full of shit?
  18. Correct. McCurtain County is West Arkansas / River Rat territory. It's Deliverance. Nothing on that recording was surprising if you've ever been around those fucking mutants. County officials are currently trying to flip the script and accuse the reporter of breaking state recording laws. Stitt called for their resignation, but I'll be fucking shocked if anything of import happens.
  19. You'd be surprised (you will absolutely NOT be surprised) to learn that many of them actually believe we are zombies. Apparently, the vaccine rewired our brain and turned us into socialists or trans-folk or both. The family gathering at Easter this year was... something.
  20. Sort of the long game of all the gun violence anyhow.
  21. You reckon more or less than buying a case of beer just to film yourself throwing it away? If we can come up with a consistent point system, there's probably some money to be made off of these fucks.
×
×
  • Create New...