So? They can still refuse to seat him. Not that they will. Seems a silly technicality. You end up with a two step process of seating and then removing instead of directly not seating.
The seemingly silly technicality being the Constitution’s Qualifications of Members Clause.
Besides, if congress refuses to seat him what will the SC do? Arrest or fine congress for contempt?
Courts have been defied before. An example is President Lincoln denying Chief Justice Taney's ruling that Lincoln unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus. The court ruled only Congress has that power.
In which RTrent defends force as arbiter of the rule of law, and compares Lincoln’s situation (including Taney’s ruling as a federal circuit judge) to that of the 118th Congress.
So? They can still refuse to seat him. Not that they will. Seems a silly technicality. You end up with a two step process of seating and then removing instead of directly not seating.
The seemingly silly technicality being the Constitution’s Qualifications of Members Clause.
The Constitution’s Qualifications of Members Clause is subject to interpretation.
An overwhelming majority of congress, composed mostly of lawyers and with the excellent legal resources available to them, took a different view. Whereupon Powell took it to the courts and in 1969 the SC ruled in his favor. (I wonder if this SC would have done the same).
If Powell accepted the congressional denial of being seated, that is, if he did not go to the courts, then in the absence of a judicial ruling the qualification interpretation would likely still be as congress then saw it.
The reality is to a large extent our constitution is what courts interpret it to be. The qualification of members being so. The abortion ruling has shown us stare decisis is now of less relevance. That is, anything may be subject to change.
To me the court's ruling makes sense. But as I wrote, I can also see it subject to be changed.
I would imagine that if Congress refused to seat Santos, he would have standing to sue. I doubt it would even get to SCOTUS, as I can't imagine the federal court he sued in (I guess that would the District of Columbia Circuit Court?) ruling against him. And if Congress were to appeal, I have a hard time imagining any higher court even taking the case, much less reversing a ruling supporting him.
Your citing of the overturning of Roe argues against the view that courts easily and arbitrarily overturn precedent, as that ruling was the culmination of a half-century long campaign, which suggests it's not common or easy to get a precedent overturned. And that was for an issue that had been a top priority for many voters and one of our two main parties -- hardly the case for the issue of Congressional seating of representatives.
Congress could, I suppose, defy the courts and refuse to seat Santos. But why would it trigger such a grave constitutional crisis when it could accomplish the same by simply allowing him to be seated and then expel him? Again, your choice of analogy seems to undercut your argument here -- Lincoln was acting at a time of ongoing dire constitutional crisis, his choice was to try to pick the least worst option. I don't see how that's the same as encouraging Congress to purposely trigger a constitutional crisis.
In short -- sure, many things are possible, but they're not equally likely.
This is all moot. The chances that a GOP-majority House will move to expel a member of their caucus are ZERO. Santos could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Ave and Republicans would do nothing.
I would imagine that if Congress refused to seat Santos, he would have standing to sue. I doubt it would even get to SCOTUS, as I can't imagine the federal court he sued in (I guess that would the District of Columbia Circuit Court?) ruling against him. And if Congress were to appeal, I have a hard time imagining any higher court even taking the case, much less reversing a ruling supporting him.
Your citing of the overturning of Roe argues against the view that courts easily and arbitrarily overturn precedent, as that ruling was the culmination of a half-century long campaign, which suggests it's not common or easy to get a precedent overturned. And that was for an issue that had been a top priority for many voters and one of our two main parties -- hardly the case for the issue of Congressional seating of representatives.
Congress could, I suppose, defy the courts and refuse to seat Santos. But why would it trigger such a grave constitutional crisis when it could accomplish the same by simply allowing him to be seated and then expel him? Again, your choice of analogy seems to undercut your argument here -- Lincoln was acting at a time of ongoing dire constitutional crisis, his choice was to try to pick the least worst option. I don't see how that's the same as encouraging Congress to purposely trigger a constitutional crisis.
In short -- sure, many things are possible, but they're not equally likely.
I don't know if congress defying the courts would have been a grave crisis. We've survived previous constitutional crisis'.
For example, a primary constitutional mandate is that after our decennial census that congress reapportion. In 1921 the Republican congress refused to do so when the 1920 census showed a major population shift to urban areas which would have hurt them. To me that is a "graver" crisis than refusing a court order on seating a member. Yet, here we are with that being all but forgotten. Same with refusing to seat Santos. Hue and cry (maybe stoked more by social media) but to be largely forgotten in 10 or 20 years.
As for overturning precedent. It wasn't the half century campaign as much as the installation of a right wing religious court. If this court were installed three years after Roe v Wade you can be sure they would have at that point in time overturned. Just as EPA regulations and rules which were OK are now due for "revision."
I gave Lincoln as an example, being best known. There are other examples of defiance or threats of defiance such as Jefferson ignoring the Embargo Act ruling.
This is all moot. The chances that a GOP-majority House will move to expel a member of their caucus are ZERO. Santos could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Ave and Republicans would do nothing.
Per my first comment on this:
So? They can still refuse to seat him. Not that they will.
“Having seen the redwoods with the boys by day, sampled dim sum last evening, and overdosed nights on San Francisco movies (Bullitt, Vertigo, the underrated Zodiac), I’m headed home tonight. A terrific trip, which I won’t forget.
“In the coming days you’ll find a new thread on Twitter, along with a two-part article here at TK explaining the latest #TwitterFiles findings. Even as someone in the middle of it, naturally jazzed by everything I’m reading, I feel the necessity of explaining why it’s important to keep hammering at this.
“Any lawyer who’s ever sifted though a large discovery file will report the task is like archaeology. You dig a little, find a bit of a claw, dust some more and find a tooth, then hours later it’s the outline of a pelvis bone, and so on. After a while you think you’re looking at something that was alive once, but what?
“Who knows? At the moment, all we can do is show a few pieces of what we think might be a larger story. I believe the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald Trump to get elected, and whose subjugation and takeover by a furious combination of politicians, enforcement officials, and media then became a priority as soon as Trump took office.
“These next few pieces are the result of looking at two discrete data sets, one ranging from mid-2017 to early 2018, and the other spanning from roughly March 2020 through the present. In the first piece focused on that late 2017 period, you see how Washington politicians learned that Twitter could be trained quickly to cooperate and cede control over its moderation process through a combination of threatened legislation and bad press.
“In the second, you see how the cycle of threats and bad media that first emerged in 2017 became institutionalized, to the point where a long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election. Requests for moderation were funneled mainly through the FBI, the self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).
“The company leadership knew as far back as 2017 that giving in to even one request to suspend this or that set of accused “hostile foreign accounts” would lead to an endless cycle of such demands. “Will work to contain that,” offered one comms official, without much enthusiasm, after the company caved for the first time that year. By 2020, Twitter was living the hell its leaders created for themselves.
“What does it all mean? I haven’t really had time to think it over. Surely, though, it means something. I’ve been amused by the accusation that these stories are “cherry-picked.” As opposed to what, the perfectly representative sample of the human experience you normally read in news?
“What does he mean by “favorable examples”? Take a quote like this, from FBI agent Elvis Chan telling Yoel Roth at Twitter “possible violative activity” reports from the intelligence community will come via the Bureau, while a DHS agency will handle the home front.
“We can give you everything we're seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,” he wrote. “CISA will know what is going on in each state.”
“Who wouldn’t pick that cherry? Also, is the implication that another email exists somewhere telling Roth he won’t be getting requests from the “USIC” by way of the FBI? Come on now. This is just silly. It may be early to say exactly what these passages mean, but the emails say what they say, not something else. Let’s at least try to stop lying for a while, see what happens. How bad can it be?
“Alright, signing out from the Bay. Thanks, everyone, and see you again from back home”.
Can't wait to see him report on how Musk handles requests from major investors Qatar and Saudi Arabia! Musk is providing that, in the interests of transparency and to avoid cherry-picking, right?
“Having seen the redwoods with the boys by day, sampled dim sum last evening, and overdosed nights on San Francisco movies (Bullitt, Vertigo, the underrated Zodiac), I’m headed home tonight. A terrific trip, which I won’t forget.
“In the coming days you’ll find a new thread on Twitter, along with a two-part article here at TK explaining the latest #TwitterFiles findings. Even as someone in the middle of it, naturally jazzed by everything I’m reading, I feel the necessity of explaining why it’s important to keep hammering at this.
“Any lawyer who’s ever sifted though a large discovery file will report the task is like archaeology. You dig a little, find a bit of a claw, dust some more and find a tooth, then hours later it’s the outline of a pelvis bone, and so on. After a while you think you’re looking at something that was alive once, but what?
“Who knows? At the moment, all we can do is show a few pieces of what we think might be a larger story. I believe the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald Trump to get elected, and whose subjugation and takeover by a furious combination of politicians, enforcement officials, and media then became a priority as soon as Trump took office.
“These next few pieces are the result of looking at two discrete data sets, one ranging from mid-2017 to early 2018, and the other spanning from roughly March 2020 through the present. In the first piece focused on that late 2017 period, you see how Washington politicians learned that Twitter could be trained quickly to cooperate and cede control over its moderation process through a combination of threatened legislation and bad press.
“In the second, you see how the cycle of threats and bad media that first emerged in 2017 became institutionalized, to the point where a long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election. Requests for moderation were funneled mainly through the FBI, the self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).
“The company leadership knew as far back as 2017 that giving in to even one request to suspend this or that set of accused “hostile foreign accounts” would lead to an endless cycle of such demands. “Will work to contain that,” offered one comms official, without much enthusiasm, after the company caved for the first time that year. By 2020, Twitter was living the hell its leaders created for themselves.
“What does it all mean? I haven’t really had time to think it over. Surely, though, it means something. I’ve been amused by the accusation that these stories are “cherry-picked.” As opposed to what, the perfectly representative sample of the human experience you normally read in news?
“What does he mean by “favorable examples”? Take a quote like this, from FBI agent Elvis Chan telling Yoel Roth at Twitter “possible violative activity” reports from the intelligence community will come via the Bureau, while a DHS agency will handle the home front.
“We can give you everything we're seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,” he wrote. “CISA will know what is going on in each state.”
“Who wouldn’t pick that cherry? Also, is the implication that another email exists somewhere telling Roth he won’t be getting requests from the “USIC” by way of the FBI? Come on now. This is just silly. It may be early to say exactly what these passages mean, but the emails say what they say, not something else. Let’s at least try to stop lying for a while, see what happens. How bad can it be?
“Alright, signing out from the Bay. Thanks, everyone, and see you again from back home”.
so Taibbi is saying he doesn't know what any of it means. But it doesn't seem to have stopped him from implying that it means something nefarious.
“Having seen the redwoods with the boys by day, sampled dim sum last evening, and overdosed nights on San Francisco movies (Bullitt, Vertigo, the underrated Zodiac), I’m headed home tonight. A terrific trip, which I won’t forget.e self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).
You know, it sounds like that guy had a really awesome time in SF which is interesting since you are always trying to depict The City as some sort of liberal dystopian nightmare. Perhaps, the time has come for you to accept that every nugget you find while picking through the garbage (the National Review) is not gold. Sometimes its just cat litter.
“As if to put to rest forever all of those ticklish inquiries about Providence, the grave and trying moment in which we now find ourselves has brought with it a hero capable of rivaling any other. Her name is Vice President Kamala Harris, and she is to the nugatory platitude what Michelangelo was to the marble block: All challengers flee before her, all pretenders quit their thrones at the mere mention of her name. Listen carefully and one can hear the desperation as the most accomplished rattlebrains in America issue condign sighs of dismay.
“How talented is Harris? Talented enough to make the inanities uttered by her rival Pete Buttigieg sound substantive, concise, and apprehensible. Talented enough to make Dan Quayle seem like Pericles. Talented enough to make Marjorie Taylor Greene remind one of top-form Jane Austen. Never, in the field of human rhetoric, has an experiment in political growth been such a spectacular and unmitigated bust.
“To the uninitiated, Harris’s exquisite bromides may seem all to run together, like The Ring Cycle or Ulysses. And yet, as the Eskimo is able to distinguish between 400 types of snow, so the experienced Harris-watcher will learn to differentiate between the many innovative ways in which she is able to convey that she has no damned idea what she’s talking about. The key, counterintuitively, is to look not at what Harris says — that is fruitless — but at what her tone and vocabulary say about the vibe for which she’s aiming. When discussing energy, Harris has in mind a vague, albeit wholly unanchored, futurism. Thus we get sentences such as, “That’s why we’re here today — because we have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.”
“On foreign policy, Harris wishes to project a sobriety that is half-Churchill-in-the-House-of-Commons and half-Brutus-delivering-his-funeral-oration, but, because she has not done the reading and rarely knows where she is, she ends up sounding like a punch-drunk Napoleon at the opening of a suburban toy store. “I am here,” Harris said last week, an ersatz frown rippling awkwardly across her face, “standing here on the northern flank, on the eastern flank, talking about what we have in terms of the eastern flank and our NATO allies, and what is at stake at this very moment — what is at stake this very moment are some of the guiding principles . . .” On medicine, she, well, who knows, frankly? “This virus,” she has said. “It has no eyes.
The guy tries so hard to sound brainy, with “nugatory platitude,” references to Pericles and Joyce, and the like, only to end up, if mtierney’s copying and pasting can be trusted, misspelling the name of Jack Paar.
The guy tries so hard to sound brainy, with “nugatory platitude,” references to Pericles and Joyce, and the like, only to end up, if mtierney’s copying and pasting can be trusted, misspelling the name of Jack Paar.
Condign sigh.
And with minimal fact-checking, it turns out that what he really sounds like is a smug, resentful racist.
“As if to put to rest forever all of those ticklish inquiries about Providence, the grave and trying moment in which we now find ourselves has brought with it a hero capable of rivaling any other. Her name is Vice President Kamala Harris, and she is to the nugatory platitude what Michelangelo was to the marble block: All challengers flee before her, all pretenders quit their thrones at the mere mention of her name. Listen carefully and one can hear the desperation as the most accomplished rattlebrains in America issue condign sighs of dismay. ... On medicine, she, well, who knows, frankly? “This virus,” she has said. “It has no eyes.
And while this virus touches us all, let’s be honest, it is not an equal opportunity offender. Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.
This is not a coincidence. It is the effect of structural racism.
Of inequities in education and technology, health care and housing, job security and transportation.
The injustice in reproductive and maternal health care. In the excessive use of force by police. And in our broader criminal justice system.
This virus has no eyes, and yet it knows exactly how we see each other—and how we treat each other.
And let’s be clear—there is no vaccine for racism. We’ve gotta do the work.
If the author of that piece is as smart as he wants us to think he is, then he knows what she actually said in the speech where she used the phrase, "This virus has no eyes".
A good New Year's resolution would be to not post articles like that, from lying racists spreading misinformation, here on MOL.
By the way, my prior post was the mild version of my response. Just stay away from the National Review, the racist smugness of William F. Buckley is alive and well there.
The guy tries so hard to sound brainy, with “nugatory platitude,” references to Pericles and Joyce, and the like, only to end up, if mtierney’s copying and pasting can be trusted, misspelling the name of Jack Paar.
Condign sigh.
That was my QUOTE — no connection to NR. Should have been obvious, I would think, since the sentence was not included in the quoted material from NR. However, sigh, I recognize defensive sniping. Just imagine how much fun you would be having if the veep were a Republican!
Nohero, you believe the verbiage from Harris requires translation? And that is OK? She is a heartbeat from the presidency!
Speaking of NR, when was censorship embraced on MOL? It is still a free country, and I would not deprive others who prefer, let’s say, the mainstream liberal media, and The Under-Armpit Gazettes out there.
Nohero, you believe the verbiage from Harris requires translation? And that is OK? She is a heartbeat from the presidency!
Speaking of NR, when was censorship embraced on MOL? It is still a free country, and I would not deprive others who prefer, let’s say, the mainstream liberal media, and The Under-Armpit Gazettes out there.
No, I believe that posting about her speeches should at least be honest about what she actually says, and not take snippets to present a false picture of it.
The example I used, shows that the excerpted phrase was from a discussion of structural racism, not medicine (as the National Review writer had falsely claimed). If you want to defend posting racist lies for the purpose of character assassination, good luck to you on that.
That was my QUOTE — no connection to NR. Should have been obvious, I would think, since the sentence was not included in the quoted material from NR.
My mistake. I lost track of the quotation marks after “It has no eyes.
I’m left to consider what the author’s tone and vocabulary say about the vibe for which he is aiming. That, plus what nohero and, possibly, the Eskimos have to say about the diatribe’s facts.
Speaking of NR, when was censorship embraced on MOL? It is still a free country, and I would not deprive others who prefer, let’s say, the mainstream liberal media, and The Under-Armpit Gazettes out there.
We're not censoring you, we are just laughing at you when, on a daily basis, you metaphorically soil yourself by quoting such a dubious source. If you lie in the sewer, you are going to get covered in ####.
Censoring would be if you weren't allowed to post links to the NR. Your links are still there. Apparently, though, you feel you should be immune from criticism, but that's not how free speech works.
The guy tries so hard to sound brainy, with “nugatory platitude,” references to Pericles and Joyce, and the like, only to end up, if mtierney’s copying and pasting can be trusted, misspelling the name of Jack Paar.
Condign sigh.
And with minimal fact-checking, it turns out that what he really sounds like is a smug, resentful racist.
“As if to put to rest forever all of those ticklish inquiries about Providence, the grave and trying moment in which we now find ourselves has brought with it a hero capable of rivaling any other. Her name is Vice President Kamala Harris, and she is to the nugatory platitude what Michelangelo was to the marble block: All challengers flee before her, all pretenders quit their thrones at the mere mention of her name. Listen carefully and one can hear the desperation as the most accomplished rattlebrains in America issue condign sighs of dismay. ... On medicine, she, well, who knows, frankly? “This virus,” she has said. “It has no eyes.
And while this virus touches us all, let’s be honest, it is not an equal opportunity offender. Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.
This is not a coincidence. It is the effect of structural racism.
Of inequities in education and technology, health care and housing, job security and transportation.
The injustice in reproductive and maternal health care. In the excessive use of force by police. And in our broader criminal justice system.
This virus has no eyes, and yet it knows exactly how we see each other—and how we treat each other.
And let’s be clear—there is no vaccine for racism. We’ve gotta do the work.
If the author of that piece is as smart as he wants us to think he is, then he knows what she actually said in the speech where she used the phrase, "This virus has no eyes".
A good New Year's resolution would be to not post articles like that, from lying racists spreading misinformation, here on MOL.
I have a word for people who take half-sentences out of the context of an entire speech.
The guy tries so hard to sound brainy, with “nugatory platitude,” references to Pericles and Joyce, and the like, only to end up, if mtierney’s copying and pasting can be trusted, misspelling the name of Jack Paar.
Condign sigh.
That was my QUOTE — no connection to NR. Should have been obvious, I would think, since the sentence was not included in the quoted material from NR. However, sigh, I recognize defensive sniping. Just imagine how much fun you would be having if the veep were a Republican!
Nohero, you believe the verbiage from Harris requires translation? And that is OK? She is a heartbeat from the presidency!
Speaking of NR, when was censorship embraced on MOL? It is still a free country, and I would not deprive others who prefer, let’s say, the mainstream liberal media, and The Under-Armpit Gazettes out there.
nobody has ever said you have no RIGHT to post content from the NR (although the publication itself might take issue with you taking columns from behind their paywall and posting them here).
You've been asked not to rely on dishonest arguments, badly written to support your ideas. It makes you look bad, if that makes any difference to you.
“nobody has ever said you have no RIGHT to post content from the NR (although the publication itself might take issue with you taking columns from behind their paywall and posting them here).”
fYI, I am a subscriber to both the National Review and TNYT.
Another pearl from ML1…
“You've been asked not to rely on dishonest arguments, badly written to support your ideas. It makes you look bad, if that makes any difference to you.”
Who is the arbiter of good prose here? Not you, I suspect.
“nobody has ever said you have no RIGHT to post content from the NR (although the publication itself
Ok, this is a bit too much. I myself have said that you "shouldn't quote the NR" and that you "can't quote the NR and be taken seriously" but I don't believe that anyone has told that you are prohibited from quoting the NR.
Please either cite the post in question or just admit that you made this assertion up.
The seemingly silly technicality being the Constitution’s Qualifications of Members Clause.