Taking off dress shoes
kryptonianCodeMonkey
joined 2 years ago
They need to investigate if there is any laws from 1842 that they can use to selectively punish brown people that angered them for the audacity of existing in front of their eyes during their precious football game and being flipping the bird to Trump and his ilk in doing so. They need to investigate if there is an incredibly narrow line they can draw after the fact to punish "vulgarity" that does not allow their opponents to easily throw that back in their faces for their absolute blatant hypocrisy. I imagine that will take considerable investigation for this particular brand of stupid bullshit to complain about.
The fascists need a central figure to rally around though. A power vacuum might make them implode on themselves. Obviously, as VP, Vance would take the presidency. But Trump's minions all ass kiss because he's so easy to manipulate into getting what they want themselves. Vance will either need to behave the same way, or his cabinet might fall apart. Also Vance doesn't have the cult. No one in particular does but Trump. And there's plenty of in-fighting going on already. Maybe they pull themselves together and maintain the momentum. But, at the very least, Trump's death would be messy for the remaining administration.
Discrimination against trans people is a plain violation of the Constitution's equal protection clause and is a form of illegal sex discrimination.
You're kind of making my point. The right would argue that they're not discriminating on sex because sex differs from gender identity (and frankly, they'd be correct about that even by the definition of transgenderism). Had the law not been written to protect discrimination based on "sex", among other traits and categories, we wouldn't be arguing over what "sex" means in terms of the law and gender identity. That's what I'm saying about over specificity.
Like you said, it should already be covered under current sex based discrimination, but it's not. And so "You need to explicitly ban discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression." If the language had been more broad to begin with and not set such narrow areas of protection, they could already be covered by default if not explicitly excluded, so we wouldn't need to add more protections in the first place.
I'm not saying that adding explicit protections is bad in itself though, but it shouldn't JUST include the protections that are relevant now and leave open discrimination where we can't even predict in the future. It will just move the goal post and we'll keep playing constitutional whack a mole with bigots for generations.
No shit. He literally doesn't believe in germ theory. He's a moron.
Hello? Nena? You're not gonna believe this... 🎈
"It's all over and I'm standin' pretty In this dust that was a city If I could find a souvenir Just to prove the world was here And here is a red balloon I think of you, and let it go"....
Such a surprisingly depressing song if you've only heard the original and you don't speak German
Right. Over specificity in establishing rights and protections is how we end to with trans people being denied rights and how we have to argue semantics about who is actually protected by the law. The same thing happened for gay and lesbian people, and could happen again as protections for discrimination against some sexual orientation(s) are not explicit in some cases, and open to reinterpretation by bad actors in SCOTUS. Even if you cover that gap now, the it may not help the next group that falls along the fringe or entirely outside of those specific protections when they're targetted in the future. It should be written to be broad in protection and specific in exemption (where necessary), not the other way around.
Just like a grand jury will typically indict a ham sandwich, a GOP voter will typically approve of a ham sandwich if their is an R next to its name. Then again, I would rate Sandwich, Ham (R) higher than Trump too, so...
Eh, Not entirely. Trump is a symptom, for sure. But he has also set an example with unexpected political success that has inspired many right wing leaders and candidates into emulating him in ways that they would have otherwise been more reticent to do before.
And like it or not, it has been popular enough that surprisingly far right candidates have found themselves winning elections all over the world. I think the appeal is simply the "reform" aspect of it, the rejection of the recent norms and the status quo that the right finds distasteful, whereas the left has been coasting off the general social progress from the naughties to mid-2010s and so reformist candidates on the left have held less appeal for some. I do not think that so many would have taken such an extreme rightward divergence from the norm all at once without the example that Trump set. He's inspired the right to embrace the far right and avoid centricism except as occasional mouth service when convenient.
That being said, that example has been set and the damage is done. Trump having an aneurysm tomorrow would change very little. The right now realizes that they can utilize cult mentality and vitriol, shift further and further right and sweep elections with it.
A new example needs to be set.
Except they're not highlighting that as something to correct. They are celebrating that outcome.
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Grand jury indictments are required for felony charges to make it to trial, including felonies like murder/involuntary manslaughter.
Indictments are a very low bar (probable cause). In this case, it seems clear to me from everyone's accounts that, at minimum, this was a reckless homicide where the mishandling of a firearm resulted in someone's death, and therefore probable cause existed to indict, so this is very clearly a poor decision on the jury's part if the charge was manslaughter. I'm not sure if they tried to seek an indictment for involuntary manslaughter or murder though. Murder is a higher bar.
However this isn't necessarily a done deal. Double jeopardy does not apply to grand juries' "no bill" (i.e. the decision not to indict), so the prosecutor can gather more evidence or plan a different approach and try again. If, for example, they attempted to get an indictment for murder and failed, they could try again for manslaughter. This is really only news if the prosecution decides to stop trying to indict.