duncan_bayne

That was a power that the court effectively granted to itself in Marbury v. Madison, in 1803.

Jesus that does go back a while.

... reads ...

Huh. I always sort of assumed, as a non-American, that that was the one of the main purposes of the Supreme Court.

It does seem like a good idea, though, to have some court responsible for deciding the Constitutionality of laws.

Since FDR stacked it to push through the New Deal, if not earlier.

Your friendly reminder that the Democrats helped to set up the levers of power that Trump and his fascist ilk are now cheerfully pulling.

Surface of the ocean? So, no chance of randomly arriving at submarine-crushing depths?

Hell yes. In fact I'd probably pay for the experience 🤣

I'm in Australia (and before that, New Zealand). So I'm in the same boat - seems lofty, but I'm really hopeful that it happens!

We're not as isolated as you might think, though. The MAGA movement has, sadly, helped to shape the development of our own right-wing parties here. I don't just hope that the US gets it shit together for their sake - they're corrupting our politics as well.

Bonus points for hitting all categories in a single sentence.

I'm still hoping that, if the Democrats win the next election (and, if there is a next election!) that the US is able to do some serious soul-searching and reject things like ...

• Military action without a declaration of war by Congress.
• Executive orders to push through legislation that's otherwise unconstitutional.
• Court-stacking.

Administrations on both sides have done this since FDR and the New Deal (and possibly before; I don't know). They've been setting the scene for someone like Trump to come along and continue the tradition with some astoundingly vile abuses of power.

Instability in my WIndows NT 4 development machine. I'd been using Linux as a hobbyist for several years, but switched to it at work so I had a machine that didn't crash every few hours.

You don’t win elections by appealing to your opponents.

If there is just one lesson non-Republicans should take from Trump winning two elections, it should be this one!

Your suffering is not a KPI

Some days I doubt that.

I did this some time ago - I have a very heavily filtered Mastodon feed, and a carefully curated RSS feed - both mostly around tech news, and as little to do with LLMs as possible.

Don't regret this for a minute from a mental health perspective, especially when something happens like this.

Speaking as a non-American with an interest in politics and philosophy: I really hope that if (if!) you have free elections again, and if the Democrats win, that you start taking your Constitution seriously for the first time in a century.

That means no more going to war without Congressional approval. No more extrajudicial executions of American citizens. No more commerce clause loopholes to regulate that which clearly shouldn't be a matter for the Federal govt. to regulate. No more executive orders as an end-run around Constitutional limitations, instead of Constitutional amendments.

Someone will always argue that it's just pragmatic politics. That you couldn't have had the New Deal, or the EPA, or Obamacare, or the War on Terror, whatever, without court-stacking, executive orders, illegal invasions, etc.

But you know what? Every time you did that, every time you got what you wanted despite the Constitution and laws in the way, you weakened the system, and you weakened respect for it amongst voters and their elected representatives.

In the end, you got Trump and MAGA wielding power that you helped to normalize.

Please don't make that mistake again.