Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Thread

[Brisketexan 104226]

1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

And we know the nomination is going to be confirmed. 

So if anything is ever going to come of this, stricter proof of perjury is going to be required.

Otherwise it's just partisan poo-flinging.

First, you and I both know that they could have him on tape, saying "yeah, I really perjured myself there.  Here's the cite to my testimony, and here's the document that proves I was lying," and it would matter......0%

So, the only thing that matters is your last statement -- it's all partisan poo-flinging. The confirmation process is now meaningless.  I say we dispense with it, like we've chucked out the rest of our democracy.

[TwiceHorn 31085]

Just now, Brisketexan said:

First, you and I both know that they could have him on tape, saying "yeah, I really perjured myself there.  Here's the cite to my testimony, and here's the document that proves I was lying," and it would matter......0%

So, the only thing that matters is your last statement -- it's all partisan poo-flinging. The confirmation process is now meaningless.  I say we dispense with it, like we've chucked out the rest of our democracy.

Well, if there is solid proof of perjury during the confirmation, as discussed waaaay above, he is subject to criminal prosecution (I believe I read that he was referred earlier during his DC Circuit confirmation) and to encouragement to resign by the other justices.

[suddenly shaggy 929]

Stricter proof of perjury isn't the problem. There is no level of proof that would deter this confirmation. He could drop his pants, shit on the table, wipe with the flag, leave the entire mess in front of himself and lie the rest of the time about having done any of it and it wouldn't matter. 

[retread 2951]

Quote

 6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

A thousand times this.My kingdom for a SCOTUS nominee with some real-world, local level in the trenches trial experience.  Having been out in the real world, with real people, informs the shit outta your legal perspective

I really enjoyed the RBG doc on CNN. She's an amazing woman.

For the lawyers in here, what is your opinion of her compared to the other justices. I'm not a lawyer or a legal historian, so I'd like to hear your opinions.

Edited September 7, 2018 by retread

[TwiceHorn 31085]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

First, you and I both know that they could have him on tape, saying "yeah, I really perjured myself there.  Here's the cite to my testimony, and here's the document that proves I was lying," and it would matter......0%

So, the only thing that matters is your last statement -- it's all partisan poo-flinging. The confirmation process is now meaningless.  I say we dispense with it, like we've chucked out the rest of our democracy.

The confirmation process has been pretty meaningless for quite a while now.  It occasionally operates successfully (Pickering) and comes close pretty often (Priscilla Owen). 

[TwiceHorn 31085]

1 minute ago, suddenly shaggy said:

Stricter proof of perjury isn't the problem. There is no level of proof that would deter this confirmation. He could drop his pants, shit on the table, wipe with the flag, leave the entire mess in front of himself and lie the rest of the time about having done any of it and it wouldn't matter. 

No it is, because if it's actually true, there are other remedies.

[Brisketexan 104226]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

No it is, because if it's actually true, there are other remedies.

Oh.  Your faith in the rule of law is quite misplaced.

[woohorn 1131]

Kavanaugh called birth control as abortion inducing pill. 

Can't believe you didn't get called out for this lie.

"Speaking of the form necessary to get a religious exemption from the mandate, Kavanaugh said, “they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objecting to.”

[TwiceHorn 31085]

31 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh.  Your faith in the rule of law is quite misplaced.

We shall see. 

[Nivek 16771]

Or like the hildabeast that has lied many times but nothing happened to her or Obama lies that he got away with?
.

Hildabeast? Did you ride without a helmet or are you a child?

[jettrink 42]

30 minutes ago, Nivek said:

Hildabeast? Did you ride without a helmet or are you a child?

Is that badmofo?  Just kidding.

[SubliminalHorn 6622]

3 minutes ago, jettrink said:

Is that badmofo?  Just kidding.

It is about time for his sundowning to start

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13530]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/judge-brett-kavanaugh-should-be-impeached-for-lying-during-his-confirmation-hearings.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru

 

During the hearings on his nomination to the D.C. Circuit a few months after the Miranda news broke, Kavanaugh actively hid his own involvement, lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee by stating unequivocally that he not only knew nothing of the episode, but also never even received any stolen material.

Even if Kavanaugh could claim that he didn’t have any hint at the time he received the emails that these documents were of suspect provenance—which I personally find implausible—there is no reasonable way for him to assert honestly that he had no idea what they were after the revelation of the theft. Any reasonable person would have realized they had been stolen, and certainly someone as smart as Kavanaugh would have too.

But he lied.

Under oath.

 

[EMAWesome 101]

Using Slate articles to make a point is as credible as using Alex Jones to make your point.  Slate makes MSNBC look like Breitbart on the political spectrum.

[hobbes2702 12769]

4 hours ago, Mole said:

I'll ask the perjury thing again. Someone connect the dots like I'm 5 years old. All I've seen is an implication and wink, wink, nudge, nudge. If he lied we should have both a clear statement of the lie from him (an actual quote) and clear evidence demonstrating that it (his actual quote) is a lie. There's no ulterior motive here; I just want to see it clearly demonstrated. This is much more important than fake white power signs or another pointless abortion debate.

https://mobile.twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/1037829310076211200

 

Seems pretty perjury-ish

[suddenly shaggy 929]

1 hour ago, EMAWesome said:

Using Slate articles to make a point is as credible as using Alex Jones to make your point.  Slate makes MSNBC look like Breitbart on the political spectrum.

Counterpoint: You are a well known troll on here and no one gives a fuck what you think. 

[TwiceHorn 31085]

56 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/1037829310076211200

 

Seems pretty perjury-ish

I mean it proves he may have had some knowledge of something relating to Pryor.  He's bcc'd on it. 

Further, Kuhl, a failed 9th Circuit nominee, was part of the meeting as well. 

Perjury-ish is about the best you can do with that.

There may be more.  There needs to be more.

[jimmyjazz 45428]

3 hours ago, woohorn said:

 

 

Can't believe you didn't get called out for this lie.

"Speaking of the form necessary to get a religious exemption from the mandate, Kavanaugh said, “they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objecting to.”

 

He was speaking about Priests for Life's application for exemption from the mandate, and clearly seems to agree with their stance.  It provides color on his perspective on Roe V Wade, birth control, etc.  Nobody "lied".

[RayDog 682]

2 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

Using Slate articles to make a point is as credible as using Alex Jones to make your point.  Slate makes MSNBC look like Breitbart on the political spectrum.

Kavanaugh's own emails say he has a "mole" who is "spying" on the Democrats. He is guilty and should be impeached. 

[Brian Fantana 6652]

3 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

Using Slate articles to make a point is as credible as using Alex Jones to make your point.  Slate makes MSNBC look like Breitbart on the political spectrum.

Counterpoint: Eat shit.

[EMAWesome 101]

10 hours ago, suddenly shaggy said:

Counterpoint: You are a well known troll on here and no one gives a fuck what you think. 

Here we have a sighting of a healthy everyone who doesn't agree with me is a troll asauros in it's natural habitat.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13530]

Here we have a sighting of a healthy everyone who doesn't agree with me is a troll asauros in it's natural habitat.

Well, you made a false equivalency between self-avowed performance artist Alex Jones and Slate, so....

[EMAWesome 101]

Would you prefer I said Breitbart instead of Alex Jones?  My point is that if you were playing Augusta National and went as far left as Slate is your ball would end up in South Carolina.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

If General Mattis wrote an article for Slate, should it be deemed not credible because it was in Slate?

[Brian Fantana 6652]

He secretly hates Mattis, trust it fam

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13530]

30 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

Would you prefer I said Breitbart instead of Alex Jones?  My point is that if you were playing Augusta National and went as far left as Slate is your ball would end up in South Carolina.

I'd prefer you read the article, being the author has fairly extensive first-hand knowledge on the subject, and make specific objections if you have any.

[Brian Fantana 6652]

I'd like to share this excellent FB post from an old high school buddy of mine:

How safe is Roe v. Wade?

First, let's set out some basic true things, which are either fact or as good as.

1. Brett Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.
2. Brett Kavanaugh probably does not like the Roe v. Wade decision.
3. Justices Alito and Thomas are also reliably against the decision and would not have been in its majority.
4. Justices Roberts and Gorsuch are more on the fence.
5. Roe v. Wade is probably safe as the law of the land.

You need to accept 5. Because you are going to have to accept 1. You are not going to be happy about it. Kavanaugh is a pretty shitty SCOTUS choice, truth be told, but not because of his judicial philosophy (it does not materially differ in large respects from the justice he is replacing) or the way he would likely vote on cases (again, no so different from Kennedy). But he is not a reason for doom and gloom.

The first reason why (5) is probably true is that at this point, Roe is settled law. Many, many other cases have relied upon it. Roe's location of privacy rights within the "penumbra" of the Fourth Amendment has long rankled hardcore formalists, because no right to privacy exists within the Fourth Amendment's text. But then again, neither does the exclusionary rule, and you'd be branded a heretic for suggesting to lawyers that the exclusionary rule is judicial activism. To overturn Roe casts doubt on a long line of cases further down the chain, well beyond the narrow arena of women's right to determine what to do with their own bodies. To undo a half-century of privacy jurisprudence in a fit of pique to ban abortions is insanity; a normally conservative, deliberative body like the Supreme Court is not overly given to make such pronouncements.

Second, overturning Roe would not have Kavanaugh's desire effect. If the desire is to prohibit abortion, then overturning Roe does not achieve that. At most, if Roe were overturned, each state could determine for itself whether to permit or prosecute abortion. Texas and South Carolina almost certainly would; California and New York would sooner burn to the ground. What this would do is create 50 bad solutions to the issue, and the existence of the interstate privileges and immunities clause (i.e., the "comity" clause) would further muck the issue up. Essentially, the "comity" clause says State A cannot discriminate against citizens of State B. It's what allows a Kansan to cross the state line into Colorado and buy all the fucking pot Colorado will sell him. Colorado has no right to forbid a Kansan from purchasing a product that it sells to Coloradans. Kansas might still criminalize the possession of that pot once back across the border, but a Kansan could stand on the Colorado side of the line, puff a joint in front of a Kansas state trooper, sober up, and then merrily drive home to his house in Kansas without breaking a single law.

Extrapolate that to abortion. Texas and Oklahoma criminalize abortion. Louisiana and New Mexico do not. Texans wishing to obtain an abortion travel to New Mexico or Louisiana, obtain the procedure, and come home. Texas cannot do shit about it; if Texas attempts to prosecute a Texan for criminal conduct that occurred outside the geographic confines of Texas, the indictment is void and the conviction would violate due process.

Traditionally, the comity clause has meant that when one state permits a thing, other states will have to soon follow or risk losing their citizens. The one notable exception has been Las Vegas, but even that is being chipped away by casinos on reservations and underground, grey-market "poker clubs" and "game rooms." So overturning Roe at most makes every liberal state in the US a sought-after travel destination for abortion procedures. Right-to-choose groups would fund a network of homes for women to stay in, and providers to perform the procedures, in violation of the laws of the states that would prohibit it. It wouldn't stop abortion in conservative states; it would simply mean a loss of doctors, clinics, and money spent in-state as people traveled. So overturning Roe is a largely-symbolic gesture that will have no perceptible effect on the availability of abortions in the US.

Third, a court must have a case in controversy to issue a ruling. The Supreme Court cannot just stand up and say, "we polled everyone internally, and five of us think Roe was wrong, so we've overruled it." A case has to be brought up through the courts of a state or the federal system that invokes Supreme Court jurisdiction in some manner. As a basic prerequisite, there must be a compensable injury suffered by a person to bring the case. Since abortion is currently legal and the free choice of the woman who receives it, there is no one who could be a plaintiff in a case seeking to overturn Roe. Who, after all, would be injured by an abortion?

The only viable legal method would be for a state to pass a fetal personhood bill, and to then create a cause of action whereby someone, other than the mother, could file a suit as next-of-kin of the aborted fetus claiming a tort by the mother. Presuming a state were ballsy enough to pass a bill like that, and a right-to-life group were somehow willing to find and fund a plaintiff to bring a suit on those grounds, it would still have to make it through either an entire state court system or the federal system in such a way that the Supreme Court were invited to rule upon the broader issue of whether Roe was correctly decided.

A second, probably non-viable legal method of challenge would be for a state to pass an obviously unconstitutional law banning abortion and force a pro-choice group to file for an injunction. The problem here is that the principles upon which equitable relief might be granted (i.e., the injunction against an obviously-unconstitutional law) would not necessarily permit the Court to rule that the state had a right to ban abortion; they don't. A state cannot enact an unconstitutional law and then use a suit against the state to cross-argue on appeal that it had a right to act the way it did. They do not, and the Court does not entertain naked requests to overrule prior precedent.

Fourth, and finally, Roe is not the last-decided case on the issue of abortion rights. Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Griswold v. Connecticut also speak to the issue, and in fact, Casey provides the clearest test for when the Supreme Court can overrule its prior precedent. As a matter of constitutional power, the Supreme Court theortically can ALWAYS overrule prior precedent. As a matter of custom and law, however, it generally refuses to do so unless the four-factor test from Casey is met: there must be a change the facts or the perception of facts; the decided case cannot be socially relied upon by other courts or other laws; and the legal principle at issue must have become "intolerable."

A good example of how this shakes out in practice is the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas, which found within the nebulous "right to privacy" that consenting adults had the right to engage in homosexual sexual acts in the privacy of their own homes. Prior to 2003, in 1986, the Supreme Court decided in Bowers v. Hardwick that there was no constitutional right to engage in homosexual behavior. By 2003, however, the "facts or perception of facts" had changed and the legal principle at issue, forbidding sexual acts between consenting adults in private, had become "intolerable." Of special note, however, was the lack of social reliance on Bowers -- states that continued to have laws like Texas's "anti-sodomy law" (gag) on the books very rarely enforced them. In fact, and I can say this because I'm privy to facts about Lawrence that didn't make it into the law books, the Texas prosecutors were not terribly keen on prosecuting Lawrence, but political considerations made them do it... which was fine by Lawrence, because the case was set up, much like the Scopes Monkey Trial, to test an obviously unconstitutional law.   

Importantly, no legal scholars think that the Court, any iteration of it, save perhaps nine Ghosts of Robert Bork, would overrule Roe. Planned Parenthood v. Casey gave the Court just the opportunity to do that, and the Court declined, stating that Roe was now the settled law of the land. 

Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and maybe Roberts are not the barely-majority of the Court to go against Roe, Griswold, or Casey. To do so would be to cast aside one of the long-standing norms of the Supreme Court, which is that precedent is only overruled at great length and after massive shifts in public opinion against a case arise -- Plessy v. Ferguson. Bowers v. Hardwick. These are the types of cases that get overruled under the Casey standard. 

Which is not to say that Kavanaugh, with his views on an imperial presidency, plaintiff's rights, and criminal defendant's rights is not going to be an abysmal asshole of a Supreme Court justice in many ways. HOWEVER, and I'm stressing this here, ALMOST ALL OF THEM ARE. Pick a constitutional right, and I'll tell you a case where I think at least some of the current nine have dropped the ball on it. And that's probably for the best; radicals on the Supreme Court should worry you ten times more than a radical in the White House, and a trillion times more than a radical in Congress. Congress is the place for radicalism, for bold change. The executive is the place for measured deliberation but bold action. The Supreme Court is the place for guarded and careful moves only, because of the typical finality of its pronouncements. 

Knowing all of that, and seeing the character of Kavanaugh, I do not think he will join Justices Warren or Burger or Holmes in the halls of the greats. But neither do I perceive him to be as out-of-his-depth as Thomas or as clearly-unfit as Alito. And despite Thomas's nigh-thirty years of service on the Court and Alito's just over a decade, they have done no more ill to the constitutional fabric of the United States than any other justice. After all, some of our more recently-decided cases which cause consternation (such as Citizens United, which is probably correctly decided given the current state of the law), were not done by Thomas and Alito alone, and it would be foolhardy to speculate that those decisions would have been decided differently by judges appointed by more liberal administrations.

The reason why is the capstone of this entire argument: a judge's political position is not a reliable indicator of how he or she will rule on a given argument, because judges (the good ones, at least) do not often substitute their personal feeling for the law. The only one in recent memory who often does that (besides Alito, who, again, lacks the required level of legal reasoning ability to sit in the bench he's in) was Justice Scalia, who was probably the smartest, or second-smartest, justice during my lifetime (Ginsburg is either his better by inches, or only trails Scalia by inches). While Scalia was also a vain, bloated, and corrupt bag of garlic-scented dicks, he was also a keen, penetrating, and insightful legal mind. His opinions, even when he reaches a spurious conclusion, are often hard to argue with from within the legal reasoning framework. You might call them on the wrong side of history, or grossly immoral, but improper legally one cannot often do. However, he was also one of the more nakedly political judges, and it would sometimes show within his somewhat-caustic writing style and in his dissents (notably, when he knew he wasn't making the law, he felt more willing to find his soapbox).

That is the role I foresee for Kavanaugh, without, however, Scalia's panache or wit. Kavanaugh, joined by Alito and Thomas, is going to author some conservative firebrand opinions that will one day be looked upon with a mix of horror and disgust, as grandchildren's children ponder what Americans during the turn of the 21st century were thinking when they elected a senile carnival barker to the highest office and allowed him to name judges picked by pudgy, unattractive white guys in conservative think-tanks.

But the damage to our constitutional fabric by such choices will be minimal, if apparent at all. Because the Constitution, and our Supreme Court jurisprudence, is made of far sterner stuff than Brett Kavanaugh.

[TwiceHorn 31085]

20 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

I'd like to share this excellent FB post from an old high school buddy of mine:

 

 

Pretty good post. You can quibble with parts of it, but Kavanagh =/= automatically outlawed abortion in a swift and linear path. 

 

I get and actually respect objections to his juridical philosophy. I don't agree with big chunks of it myself. 

But the man is not Satan incarnate and much of this is plain hysteria. 

 

I am quite disappointed at his level of kowtowing to Trump.

Edited September 8, 2018 by TwiceHorn

[bad_teammate 13115]

Slate hires serious journalists. There is zero equivalence.

I cannot think of a left-wing equivalent for either Breitbart or Inforwars.

[Anastasis 23329]

Slate hires serious journalists. There is zero equivalence.
I cannot think of a left-wing equivalent for either Breitbart or Inforwars.

Daily kos or mother jones for Breitbart. Nothing comes close to the public access supplement pusher.

[bad_teammate 13115]

Fuck off. Mother Jones is an amazing, award-winning publication filled with real, trained, and experienced journalists doing actual investigative reporting in a time of talking head pundits.

"Goldsmiths, PENs, NMAs, James Beards, oh and ASME's Magazine of the Year 2017... yeah that's basically the same as the place whose Editor-in-Chief's experience was being friends with Andrew Breitbart in college."

Your both-sides head is so far up your ass you can't see reality.

[HenryJames 65848]

 

[Anastasis 23329]

25 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Fuck off. Mother Jones is an amazing, award-winning publication filled with real, trained, and experienced journalists doing actual investigative reporting in a time of talking head pundits.

"Goldsmiths, PENs, NMAs, James Beards, oh and ASME's Magazine of the Year 2017... yeah that's basically the same as the place whose Editor-in-Chief's experience was being friends with Andrew Breitbart in college."

Your both-sides head is so far up your ass you can't see reality.

OK, forget MJ. Go with Daily Kos than. 

[AngryDragon 270]

2 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

I'd like to share this excellent FB post from an old high school buddy of mine:

 

 

Kavanaugh's true purpose is to try to keep Trump out of legal jeopardy.

[suddenly shaggy 929]

5 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

Here we have a sighting of a healthy everyone who doesn't agree with me is a troll asauros in it's natural habitat.

There are plenty of posters that I disagree with that are not trolls, but legitimate posters expressing legitimate opinions. You are not one of them. You are an obvious troll and have a long history of it.

You may think you are passing and playing it cute by denials like this one, but you are fooling no one. Go fuck yourself. 

[EMAWesome 101]

6 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

Slate hires serious journalists. There is zero equivalence.

I cannot think of a left-wing equivalent for either Breitbart or Inforwars.

Of course you can't.

[EMAWesome 101]

3 hours ago, suddenly shaggy said:

There are plenty of posters that I disagree with that are not trolls, but legitimate posters expressing legitimate opinions. You are not one of them. You are an obvious troll and have a long history of it.

You may think you are passing and playing it cute by denials like this one, but you are fooling no one. Go fuck yourself. 

 I know at least one person I am fooling.  

[suddenly shaggy 929]

Yourself

[hobbes2702 12769]

8 hours ago, Anastasis said:

 

Daily kos or mother jones for Breitbart. Nothing comes close to the public access supplement pusher.

 

Missed your reply. Carry on

Edited September 8, 2018 by hobbes2702

[bad_teammate 13115]

19 hours ago, Anastasis said:

OK, forget MJ. Go with Daily Kos than. 

Daily Kos is a partisan blog. It doesn't have an overtly hateful and bigoted agenda. It doesn't send "reporters" out to harass and confront people.

15 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

Of course you can't.

Can you? Name names.

Edited September 9, 2018 by bad_teammate

[Buzzrock 14859]

 

Not one rich person has ever gone to prison and poor people are jailed at birth. It’s science.

[jimmyjazz 45428]

20 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Not one rich person has ever gone to prison and poor people are jailed at birth. It’s science.

 

Come on, you're better than that. 

The for-profit prison industry is incredibly lucrative, and many companies rely on a cheap prison labor to manufacture their goods.  It is a fact that the prison industry could not sustain itself if it had to pay a going wage for many of the internal services provided by inmates.  The fact that external, for-profit corporations also make money off those prisoners is just icing on the cake.

Per capita incarceration rates have tripled in a little over 30 years.  The poor bear most of this.  The war on drugs is partially responsible, and most likely has caused a chain reaction that explains the biggest correlation to incarceration -- single parent households.  Ward and June Cleaver's kids somehow have managed to escape this burden.  Hmmm.

[bad_teammate 13115]

Our criminal justice system is essentially designed to make sure the rich do not have to suffer consequences. They sometimes do, but anyone attempting to deny that you can buy your way out of most trouble in America is either a liar or a moron.

[Anastasis 23329]

[David Dennison 18487]

2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

Our criminal justice system is essentially designed to make sure the rich do not have to suffer consequences. They sometimes do, but anyone attempting to deny that you can buy your way out of most trouble in America is either a liar or a moron.

The state exists to protect the elite.

It's always been that way.

The hope is that democracy can move the state in a more egalitarian direction.

[bad_teammate 13115]

17 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

The state exists to protect the elite.

It's always been that way.

The hope is that democracy can move the state in a more egalitarian direction.

Private ownership of property is an inherently statist concept.

[Incredulity 11440]

2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

Private ownership of property is an inherently statist concept.

Fuuuuuck.  

Any asshole who denigrates private property ownership should be deported to Venezuela.

[bad_teammate 13115]

7 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Fuuuuuck.  

Any asshole who denigrates private property ownership should be deported to Venezuela.

It's only denigration if you think states are bad.

(like idiot libertarians do)

[David Dennison 18487]

13 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Fuuuuuck.  

Any asshole who denigrates private property ownership should be deported to Venezuela.

He didn't denigrate it, he merely stated a fact. Private property is, in fact, a statist concept because it requires the power of the state to protect it on a national scale. Without the state, private property would not be available to the masses.

[Incredulity 11440]

2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

He didn't denigrate it, he merely stated a fact. Private property is, in fact, a statist concept because it requires the power of the state to protect it on a national scale. Without the state, private property would not be available to the masses.

The context of the preceding posts, state=elite, is the basis of my post.

Newsflash: Our system is one of the only ones in the world that allows someone of no means to make the rules.