anon_
2d ago
It's not interpretation (good/bad) of a regular law, it's interpretation (good/bad) of the constitutional assignment of powers.
It makes a huge difference. A bad interpretation of a law can be corrected by the political branches. So the stakes are quite different.
anon_
2d ago
If we're looking at individual provisions to hate, the senior citizen tax cut is an egregious transfer of wealth from the productive/fertile segment of society to the geriatric. It is, by any standard of new conservatism, an absolute disaster. If anything, we ought to tax the geriatric to give to young folks that may actually have kids and generate wealth.
Then again, it's hard to evaluate this in the broader context of a huge bill stuffed with hundreds of other provisions. Taken in isolation, it's awful, how the entire cake is baked together into a single must-pass thing is just a failure of our political process to actually deliberate and legislate.
anon_
2d ago
I don't think it was done to the Nazis qua being a Nazi, it was done because they materially lied about it during naturalization.
If some guy was admitted in a process during which they knowingly presented a doctored birth certificate claiming to be 15 when they were really 22, I think it would be totally fine to go back and revoke it. Saying otherwise is invited gaming an already extremely gameable immigration system with the idea that if you perpetuate a fraud, tough luck it's just done.
That seems like a fine precedent, and one that's sufficiently cabined not to be applicable to just anyone the President pisses off.
anon_
2d ago
Basically, the weight of history and legal precedent is that naturalized citizens absolutely can be denaturalized and expelled from the country for a variety of reasons, substantially at the discretion of the executive.
I think the point about discretion here is more nuanced. Yes, the Executive has the discretion on who to go after (same as most other fields) but they can't just invent any grounds they want.
As always, it helps to start right with the US Code rather than all the news articulate.
8 U.S.C. § 1451 provides, in relevant part, for revoking naturalization "on the ground that such order and certificate of naturalization were illegally procured or were procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation" and 1424 prohibits "advocating or teaching opposition to all organized government, or advocating (A) the overthrow by force, violence or other unconstitutional means of the Government of the United States or of all forms of law; or (B) the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or officers (either of specific individuals or of officers generally) of the Government of the United States or of any other organized government, because of his or their official character; or (C) the unlawful damage, injury, or destruction of property; or (D) sabotage; or (E) the economic, international, and governmental doctrines of world communism or the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship".
This covers a lot of cases (and indeed, I don't think anyone seriously objects to denaturalizing someone that willfully lied during their application) but it doesn't give the Executive that much discretion to determine the grounds for denaturalization completely freeform.
anon_
6d ago
Fully agree with all this, except I'd kinda put more (relative) on 1/3. In particular, there's studies that untrained individuals are not great at matching photos to people, especially grainy ones and many of them were using stolen identities of people vaguely co-ethnic to them.
Another take on the conclusion is that there is no actual system in place for verifying someone's identity in a way that works when applied by clueless or look-the-other-way very-mildly-complicit employers.
One of my coworkers suggested the simplest way would be that when you start work and do the I9 process, the government goes back and verifies with you via an independent means.
anon_
7d ago
That’s very different than a cross subsidy. A cross subsidy would mean the Medicaid stuff pays more than its prorated share of the staff and building usage. Given bottom barrel Medicaid rates I doubt that.
Maybe there’s a different take that their non Medicaid services aren’t enough volume to pay fixed costs and so the medicaid stuff fills out volume. But that’s a weak argument because literally every purchase from any entity whatsoever pays a share of fixed costs. It proves way too much.
anon_
7d ago
The CEO of Glenn Valley Foods was shocked to find ICE carting away a dozen of his workers even though he participated fully in E-Verify.
From the point of view of an employer, I dunno what to tell him. If we want employers to be part of an enforcement system, we need to have some assurance that if they do the work, it will actually result in not hiring ineligible workers. This is a guy that provides significant training and value to employees -- the exact kind of person we want to incentivize to hire legals. Instead he's going back and using the same E-Verify system that sucks in the first place.
anon_
7d ago
effectively nullifying the condition Congress put in place
This is not true. Congress when creating conditions gets to create both the rule and define the process by which it is enforced. That is their prerogative. They can chose whether it can be enforced by {individual plaintiffs bringing suit in Federal court} and/or {the HHS secretary decides and can withhold the money} and/or {any other enforcement scheme}.
Now if the statement is that Congress passed a law with no reasonable enforcement mechanism, I don't think that's terribly controversial. Indeed they do that all the time, which is comparable (after a fashion) to not passing the law at all. But they are entitled by Art I to do so, at least in the sense that there isn't a judicial remedy if they don't provide for one.
anon_
7d ago
If the strep throat screening cost $10K to provide, then not. The question seems to be whether it's a cross-subsidy.
anon_
7d ago
Immigration via refugee resettlement and other humanitarian programs are a small proportion of the increase in the immigrant population since 1965.
One faction (my faction, I suppose to acknowledge my obvious bias) of the anti-immigration camp is that while the {parole-in-place, resettlement, credible-fear and temporary protected status, etc...} are a small proportion of numbers but a huge proportion of problematic and highly net-negative immigrants as compared to the Sergeys and Elons of the world. You could call them selectivists but really it's absurd to thing that we even need to characterized "we don't need 100K Haitians" as selectivity.
I expect that when the anti-immigration camp was totally out of the zeitgeist in the preceding decade they didn't have to reconcile what they really meant because there was a strong external enemy and they were out of power anyway. Now the farmworker thing has crystalized the division and someone is going to have to mediate it.
It was easy to be against the Obama/Biden policies, it's harder to find one that satisfies the entire coalition.
anon_
8d ago
my lawyer was ineffective for not investigating childhood abuse that might’ve been raised at sentencing
anon_
8d ago
I understand and agree to that.
I don’t think it materially changes my point about the types of claims raised on appeal. His claim is weak, or even very weak, but it’s at least the right kind of claim.
anon_
8d ago
Indeed. And since Reagan made a set of rules and it led to the golden age of the 90s, that’s exactly the right lesson.
anon_
8d ago
Yes, I get that.
I must have written exceptionally poorly for so many folks not to actually get my point.
anon_
8d ago
Indeed. I don't disagree.
But at the very least the core of his appellate claim is on a relevant (to the TX legislature) factual matter about what happened. It might be weak, but at least he's arguing the right actual thing.
That alone puts it far ahead of the majority of far-less-defensible capital appeals that are about everything else.
anon_
8d ago
I think we should all pray that the US suffer many more disastrous times as bad at that awful period from 1988-2001.
anon_
8d ago
I think testing finding DNA evidence under the victim's fingernails that matches a guy convicted of rape would probably be fairly weighty evidence. Of course, to be weighed against everything else. Of course, that's a just-so manufactured scenario.
In this case, the perp confessed he was there to rob the victim and his co-conspirators went inside and murdered her instead. This appeals doesn't challenge his overall guilt for what happens, only whether he actually killed the victim or not. And that's relevant because the TX legislature (not a federal judge) specifically made that a precondition for the death penalty.
In other words, there is an actual factual question about what exactly this guy did.
anon_
8d ago
The fact that they let the nationwide injunction stand for another 30 days is likewise indicative of this.
anon_
8d ago
Gutierrez v. Saenz - Criminal Procedure. A lurid murder case gives rise to a pretty boring dispute about death-row inmates' standing to request post-conviction testing of DNA evidence. I can't really figure out the nuances of the Texas law at issue or the procedural history, but it looks like the Sotomayor-led majority thinks Gutierrez has standing; he has a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest in the ability to request post-conviction DNA testing, even though the prosecutor apparently has both the right and the express intention to refuse that request in this case.[...] My read: SCOTUS lets a death-row inmate file a doomed, pointless post-conviction motion that doesn't have any hope of success but will probably delay his execution for a few more years (Gutierrez was convicted in 1998).
Alternative read: An enormous amount of capital appeals has been about everything except whether the defendant actually murdered someone. This Court in particular has had little patience for endless appeals regarding mental capacity, culpability, IQ, age, execution methods, history of abuse/neglect and all the other sentencing-phase stuff.
But now they are signaling that they are amenable to something like DNA that can (theoretically) be relevant to the actual verdict. The message seems to clearly tell the appellate folks what not to focus on.
anon_
8d ago
"Nationwide" or "universal" injunctions have been part of the playbook for activists' (especially progressive activists) lawfare for a long time. The idea is to find some sympathetic plaintiff who would be affected by a statute or executive action you don't like, shop around the whole country until you find a judge who agrees with you, and then get that judge--before the case has even been tried--to indefinitely prevent the government from applying the challenged law/regulation/action to anyone, anywhere in the country.
Oh short political memories. This was also the playbook of conservative activists, especially given that there are single-judge districts in the 5^th circuits with some very conservative jurists. You don't even have to shop them, you can 100% pick. And there were at least a dozen such nationwide injunctions against Biden-admin policies: Texas v. U.S (twice!), Louisiana v US, GA v US, NE v US Top Cop v Garland. Which was fair turnabout given Trump I given Obama (remember DACA and the DOL persuader rule, probably not) and so forth.
When there's next a D administration, it's gonna be short memories again, and everyone will trade places around a merry-go-round of pretending to be actually concerned about procedural matters. It's predictable and would be distressing except that I suppose we're all just numb to it now.
[ FWIW, if you care about my actual thoughts on the merits, I think the decision is fine. I would probably sign mostly onto Kav's concurrence which joins the opinion in full. ]
anon_
8d ago
Again, you can wish for a different Bruen.
how the Second Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century represented a critical tool of constitutional interpretation (internal quotes removed)
And
Second, we looked to “19th-century cases that interpreted the Second Amendment” and found that they “universally support an individual right” to keep and bear arms.
Bruen isn't a decision that grants you, personally, the precise 2A jurisprudence that you want.
I think refusing to have an opinion is fine, but it seems reasonable enough for any nation to declare that 'death to {nation}" is beyond the pale.
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