Ohio
I did a little digging on NGram, and found some interesting things. First, look at this graph. I for one, have never heard someone wish me a "Prosperous New Year", and yet looking through this has a sudden uptick in popularity during the early 1900's and then seems to drop off entirely.
While "Happy Holidays" certainly becomes popular after WWII, there are pre-WWII instances like this one from 1937 which has a "Happy Holidays and Prosperous New Year." A quite early one is this one from 1921, although this one seems to support a Jewish origin for the term - since Liberman is a common Ashkenazi surname.
However, I have also found entries like this one from a 1904 Christian periodical.
I'm inclined towards a hypothesis that "happy holidays" has been an existent but uncommon greeting since at least 1904, it likely caught on in the Jewish community pre-WWII, and then was popularly adopted from the Jewish community's usage after WWII, based on this investigation. So while a Christian origin for the phrase isn't unlikely, a Jewish origin for its popularization is fairly likely.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 For more information please reread this post
5mo ago
How could the Court determine whether a tax crosses the constitutional line without deciding where the line is?
Same way Potter Stewart could determine that The Lovers wasn't pornographic.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
5mo ago
Yes, if a Republican wins the white house they will very likely also win full control of the legislature.
The GOP already holds the reps of course. Not by a big margin, but you wouldn't expect to lose it while winning the presidency. Meanwhile they need to pick up 2 seats in the Senate. One is near-guaranteed in West Virginia, with a bunch of other vulnerable seats available in places like Ohio, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and maybe even New Jersey at a stretch if the Bob Menendez issue plays out in a helpful way. On the flip side the most vulnerable seats the Republicans are defending are... Texas and Florida.
hydroacetylene
5mo ago
Ohio was a swing state up until ‘16, it’s now red maga country but not exactly social conservative HQ. More populist.
charles
5mo ago
Cleveland has always been deeply blue. The Dem primaries are the local elections in most cases. The outer suburbs not as much, but what conservatives are there are mostly fiscal conservatives. A lot of boomer former hippies that became good earners in their middle age and and suddenly cared about taxes. Substantial gerrymandering of the state as a whole has produced a state house that doesn't accurately reflect the beliefs of the people in Ohio. Even the rural north eastern counties voted Yes on both issues. That area is historically more Catholic than Evangelical and many of them are only culturally Catholic and aren't really motivated politically by their religious beliefs.
Ohio is one of the more heavily gerrymandered states in the country. It's slightly moderately red, but not heavily red like the Ohio GOP supermajority would suggest. Probably could've legalized recreational marijuana back in 2015 if the Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative (Issue 3) didn't have language in the amendment that would've enshrined a marijuana oligopoly in the Ohio constitution.
EDIT: strikethrough adverb
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I think it is less an Ohio thing and more a marijuana/abortion thing. My recollection is those two issues also passed as ballot measures in some other pretty red states last year.
reactionary_peasant
5mo ago
What's up with Ohio? I know next to nothing about the place, but I lumped it in with places like Iowa and Nebraska. Has the been a shift or was it always this way? A quick Google suggests maybe Cleveland and Columbus have gotten bluer?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Election night thread?
Reading accounts like this make me glad to live in a state that (1) mails everyone a ballot every election and (2) also mails everyone a voters guide a week or more in advance of any election. I get text of initiatives, statements for and against, candidate statements, all kinds of stuff delivered to my door well in advance of having to make a decision.
Election logistics aside, the actual elections were pretty boring. Bunch of state level judges (electing judges is dumb as hell) running unopposed. About half the local races also involved candidates running unopposed. The other half were against incumbents who'd been in the position a decade and would probably win in a landslide. No initiatives or ballot measures or anything interesting.
Looking outside my own state, Bolts has a massive round up of stuff to watch tonight. Big ones so far:
-
Andy Beshar wins re-election as governor of Kentucky.
-
Ohio passes Issue 1 and Issue 2. Enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution and legalizing marijuana respectively.
-
Dems projected to control Virginia Senate, denying Youngkin a trifecta.
-
Loudoun County School Board looks likely to be won by Democratic Party endorsed candidates.
KMC
6mo ago
All emphasis mine.
The very first paragraph from South Carolina.
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Further reading, though I'm tempted to just copy the whole thing
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
It's not slavery, it's about reneging on the deal you previously made. None of the slave states would have joined the union in the first place without the concessions they received, concessions intended to prevent the North from controlling the South. Those concessions were systematically undermined and ignored for decades until finally it was obvious that the North never intended to perform on the duties it committed to, and never intended to respect the limits of the federal government.
South Carolina did not agree to be ruled by New York, South Carolina agreed to form a Union with New York under the condition that New York is obligated to return slaves to South Carolina. If New York doesn't want to do that, it's up to them to dissolve the Union, but instead they simply ignored the constitution and the agreement they had made with the free and independent states of the South in order to impose their rule.
I'm tired of people lying about it. The South was right to secede, and they have every justification to do so. They stuck a deal which was ignored and undermined for 80 years, until finally they had had enough and left.
And then Lincoln conquered them and forged the American Empire, and now we don't hear about the Free and Independent State of South Carolina, or These United States.
The Civil War was about federal conquest of the continent.
From Texas:
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
...
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation.
...
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons-- We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.
HlynkaCG
old man yelling at clouds
6mo ago
Rousseau was born significantly after slavery in the US started.
Yes, and the New Klu Klux Klan (IE the group most people think of when they hear "KKK" today) was founded over a century after Rousseau's death, so there is no contradiction. We don't need to speculate about their motivations or political sympathies because they were quite open about them. One of those things that you won't read on Wikipedia because it's inconvenient to the narrative but is readily apparent when you consume media from the period was that the KKK was; A) considered very progressive and left-wing by their contemporaries, B) much more influential in the north (Indiania, Ohio, Illinois) than they were in the south, and C) closely aligned with the Democratic Party.
Like I said above, the sort of Rousseauean son of a plantation owner who would have called themselves a "Social Democrat" or "National Socialist" and donned a white hood to engage in a spot of sectarian violence back in the 1920s, is largely indistinguishable (both ideologically and demographically) from the Rousseauean sons and daughters of Wall Street and .com billionaires who don black hoodies to engage in sectarian violence today.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
Does this remind you of anyone?
I am glad to hear the Governor call it desert -- it is desert -- it is pretty good desert.
It is good to be back again in Nevada and get a chance to see things again. It seems to me they look a lot better than they did a few years ago and as you know, your Government in Washington knows that this State is on the map which is something. Some administrations didn't know it was on the map. And, I have been very glad that your State administration, from your Governor down, work so well with all of us on the other side of the continent. We have had real cooperation from the State Government. We have not had any dissention or cross words, and when all of us decided things had to be done, they have been done.
You people know I am water conscious -- although not a strict prohibitionist --
When I was down on the Ohio River the other day I told them I would catch bigger fish than grew in Ohio, though I don't think I will get anything that tastes better to eat than Nevada trout -- the Senator gave me some Nevada trout for lunch -- it was delicious.
It is good to see you all and I hope to get back here again some day. I hope some day to come in an automobile and stay longer and get to know you better.
It is good to see you.
I elided the header, which specified that these were
People like to feel listened to. They like to feel part of a conversation, and be reminded that the person is a real human rather than an unfeeling automaton. The kind of performance which successfully conveys that humanity doesn't always translate so well to a recording or especially a transcript. In the 30s, FDR was winning over the populace with informal remarks and fireside chats. Today, a politician can still cultivate that relationship with his base. But every casual remark is a risk. It will be carefully catalogued, preserved in cheap and ubiquitous recordings, and mined for any advantage. When a detractor watches a 15-second clip on evening TV, there is no suspension of disbelief. None of the casualness with which we'd listen in person. It's not just "two screens." It's one team watching a screen, and one holding a conversation.
Mewis
6mo ago
The latest craze on Youtube? A guy called Sam Sulek. Sam Sulek is a 21 year old bodybuilder and mech eng. student from Ohio who has, over the past six months, gone from about 50,000 to over 1.7 million subscribers. I've heard dudes at work that don't lift mention him, either. He is, for his age, ridiculously large, and has already attracted accusations of not being 'natty' (i.e. he's using PEDs). Regardless of how he gets his gains, his appeal, however, seems pretty genuine. Unlike the deluge of overedited, attention-grabbing garbage on Youtube, Sulek's videos are lightly edited and mostly show him driving to, working out in, and then driving back to the gym with occasional meals, while he provides a kind of stream-of-consciousness of his thoughts on training and diet. There's very little groundbreaking stuff here, his videos are nearly entirely unscripted (like his workouts themselves) and Sulek saves all his intensity for his lifting. In fact he comes off as a fairly charismatic, positive, intelligent student. More than that, though, his videos scratch a desire for society and friendship. Commenters describe them as relaxing, and Sulek as authentic, but really what they are is parasocial. Sulek isn't acting as a coach or source of information or salesman (though he does have a deal with Hosstile), but more as the lifting buddy that millions of people wish they had. And though it can hardly be any good for my very poor self-esteem and body image issues, it's difficult to stop watching.
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
But yes, words can certainly be used to intimidate, threaten, or encourage violence.
Those first two are fair, but silencing someone to prevent that last one is, generally speaking, beyond the pale in the US.
The right to advocate for violence, in the abstract, especially at a later date, has been ruled to be constitutionally protected speech in both Brandenburg v Ohio and Hess v Indiana.
And all of those things can make it quite difficult to run a trial.
I mean, yeah? But we, as a country, haven't generally been optimizing for ease of running a trial. We have, generally, been optimizing for not allowing speech to be suppressed. Do you have an argument for why now is the time to pivot?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
I've been considering a longer effort-post on the topic to tie it in with other conversations about "credible accusations", but since we're doing this today, I just want to mention my favorite Jim Jordan subplot is his putative involvement in the Ohio State wrestling sex abuse scandal:
The Ohio State University abuse scandal centered on allegations of sexual abuse that occurred between 1978 and 1998, while Richard Strauss was employed as a physician by the Ohio State University (OSU) in the Athletics Department and in the Student Health Center. An independent investigation into the allegations was announced in April 2018 and conducted by the law firm Perkins Coie.
In July 2018, several former wrestlers accused former head coach Russ Hellickson and U.S. representative Jim Jordan, who was an assistant coach at OSU between 1987 and 1994, of knowing about Strauss's alleged abuse but failing to take action to stop it. Jordan has denied that he had any student-athlete report sexual abuse to him.
The report, released in May 2019, concluded that Strauss abused at least 177 male student-patients and that OSU was aware of the abuse as early as 1979, but the abuse was not widely known outside of Athletics or Student Health until 1996, when he was suspended from his duties. Strauss continued to abuse OSU students at an off-campus clinic until his retirement from the university in 1998. OSU was faulted in the report for failing to report Strauss's conduct to law enforcement.
So, the scandal is that some wrestlers got groped by a physician 30 years ago and the claim is that Jim Jordan "knew about it" and failed to put a stop to it. Of course, none of them bothered to mention that Jordan knew about it until a few decades later when he became a rising figure in the Republican Party. What's the available evidence on the matter?
In June 2018, at least eight former wrestlers said that reported that then-coaches Russ Hellickson (head coach, 1986–2006) and Jim Jordan (assistant coach, 1987–1995) were aware of the abuse by Strauss but failed to put a stop to it.[37][38][39] Jordan's locker was adjacent to Strauss's, and while he was assistant wrestling coach, he created and awarded a "King of the Sauna" certificate to the member of the team who spent the most time in the sauna "talking smack".[40]
Former wrestling team members David Range,[41] Mike DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts asserted that Jordan knew of Strauss's misconduct. Yetts said, "For God's sake, Strauss's locker was right next to Jordan's and Jordan even said he'd kill him if he tried anything with him".[42] No wrestlers have accused Jordan of sexual misconduct, but four former wrestlers named him as a defendant in a lawsuit against the university.[43][44][45] Several former wrestlers, including ex-UFC fighter Mark Coleman, allege that Hellickson contacted two witnesses in an alleged attempt to pressure them to support Jordan the day after they accused Jordan of turning a blind eye to the abuse.[46][47]
So, basically, "come on, he had to have known". With the standard of "credible accusations" applied to Kavanaugh and Jordan, I find it hard to believe that anyone could be truly innocent. The necessary ingredient for a scandal appears to be finding someone willing to say that a few decades ago he must have known that something bad for going on. Seriously, how the hell is anyone supposed to defend against that allegation? What can you even say other than, "uhhh, no I didn't"?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
7mo ago
So someone potentially could just say "I acquired this through a private sale when I was driving through Ohio" and good luck refuting that.
By Federal law, you can't legally buy a gun privately in a state you don't reside in. (This law should be overturned by Bruen but of course it will not be.)
Excellent overview. DVROs can also be imposed as part of a standard practice whenever someone is charged with a DV crime. Defendants are then placed in an awkward position if they're asked whether they're following the court's order. There was court in Washington state that issued a ridiculously long and thorough decision on this issue, ruling that this type of practice was a clear violation of the defendant's right not to testify against themselves.
I'm in a state with universal background checks, and virtually all the guns that get recovered from crime scenes had been reported stolen eons ago. If the cops find a non-stolen gun, they nominally have the ability to retrace its journey by using the serial number to look up the FFL paperwork. In practice, they tend to find absurdly long gaps in the record. The guy with the gun can just say his uncle gave him the gun years ago, and it's near impossible for a prosecutor to refute that. The "family member" transfer exceptions are a huge loophole since a cousin can gift a gun to their cousin who gives it to their cousin etc. and even if that happened 100 times it would still be perfectly legal. Also, most states don't have universal background checks! So someone potentially could just say "I acquired this through a private sale when I was driving through Ohio" [Edit: woops, I was wrong about this h/t @The_Nybbler] and good luck refuting that.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
7mo ago
Predicting you'll be arrested is not generally admission of guilt to a crime. You can be wrong, after all! Also note how Epps caveats his comments with "peacefully" immediately after the "We need to go into the Capitol" part. 18 USC 2102(a) requires the riot in question involve violence or threats of violence. Calling for entering the Capitol peacefully would seem to be the opposite of that. I've never been a federal prosecutor but I wouldn't love bringing charges under 18 USC 2101 just on the basis of what's in the video. As @huadpe notes in a parallel comment the speech would also have to pass the test from Brandenburg v. Ohio (and apparently nobody has been charged with incitement). I am not sure speech the previous night for violence the following day is sufficiently "imminent" under Brandenburg.
Rov_Scam
7mo ago
I practiced title law for a decade and did bankruptcies as well for a couple years and this simply isn't true. It's true for mortgages (at least in some states; I've heard of non-recourse states but Pennsylvania is not one of them) but in that case there are two separate transactions—the note, where the borrower agrees to pay the money back, and the mortgage itself, which collateralizes the property. If the collateral doesn't raise sufficient funds to cover the note, then yes, the borrower is still responsible for the difference. But tax sales are different.
In every state I'm familiar with (well, at least in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia), property taxes aren't assessed in personam, or against the owner, but *in rem(, against the property itself. Technically speaking, the property owes the tax. Most of the time, the owner is the one paying the tax, but, strictly speaking, he isn't personally responsible for it. I'm going to stick to Pennsylvania law here to avoid complicating things too much, but if the tax isn't paid for a certain number of years, it will go to auction. The minimum bid at the auction will be the tax owed, and once the property is sold, the tax lien disappears. One thing a tax sale definitely does not do is extinguish other liens. Some people look at the low minimum bid prices and think they've uncovered a treasure trove of cheap properties, and while deals can certainly be found, unless you know what you're doing you could find out that the property you just paid $2,000 for has $100,000 worth of liens on it you'll need to pay immediately to avoid another foreclosure. The exception is that if the property doesn't sell at the tax auction for the minimum bid, the liens will then be stripped and the property will go up for "free and clear" sale. Realistically, though, the only properties that get this far are garbage properties that no one wants for any price—small, landlocked parcels, property that doesn't come with the building that's on it, uneconomically small lots in fully-developed areas, etc.
There are a couple quasi-exceptions, but they aren't common. If a life-tenant doesn't pay property taxes they could be sued for waste by the remaindermen, though I've never heard of this happening (most life tenants are a thousand years old and the remaindermen are their children who will probably just pay the tax themselves if the life tenant can't afford it, and life tenancies are rare to begin with. The other one is that in some states, Pennsylvania and New Jersey among them, bankruptcy courts have ruled that tax sales can be considered fraudulent transfers subject to clawback, under the theory that the minimum-bid nature of the sale doesn't attempt to get market value. This would be pretty unusual to begin with, as I can't imagine a situation where someone would rack up enough debts to make bankruptcy worth it but somehow not mortgage their home in the process, AND still be delinquent on their tax bill. And even if it were to happen, the consequences would affect the buyer, not the bankrupt person; the concern is that the tax sale doesn't realized the actual market value of the house. Of course, a trustee's auction probably wouldn't do that either, but it would at least come closer.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence.
The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks. The restriction is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates currently only met by the metropolitan Albuquerque. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the temporary ban.
Violators could face civil penalties and a fine of up to $5,000, gubernatorial spokeswoman Caroline Sweeney said.
The summary, if anything, understates the brazenness. There's a delightful video of the release press conference that starts out with Grisham highlighting the emergency order as a state-wide message to "start arresting people", and "just arrest everyone", and goes downhill from there to outright state intent to violate her oath of office! For an order she does not expect criminals to obey. The order declares the city off-limits for public carry, nearly exactly mirroring a specific hypothetical from Bruen.
I went to bed on this last night after trying to find a way to discuss it at a deeper level than 'boo, outgroup', and I'm still hard-pressed this morning. It's not like this is some unique and novel approach: I've written before on the prolonged efforts to provide massive resistance to Breun, or to otherwise violate the law, exploiting the nuances of standing and court timelines. Federal administrations have played footsie with overtly unconstitutional or illegal actions at length as delaying tactics over any coherent principle for matters as serious as the rental economy and as trivial as cancelling Easter. There were even a few efforts from the Red Tribe in early COVID days.
There's some tactical and logistic discussions that can be had, here. Most obvious, there's a ton of fun questions involved when the state can throw around multi-thousand dollar fines against people with no more warning or notice than a press conference late Friday night, should it ever come to that, though it's not clear that the specific stated punishment here matters. There's no evidence that the shooters in any recent murders motivating this order were carrying lawfully. There will almost certainly be open carry protests by mid-week, a completely foreseeable result that someone who actually worried about bunches of lawful gun carry causing violence would at least have planned around; the people going should plan around what happens if and when they're arrested and cited, but it's not clear that will actually happen.
The Bernalillo County police have already stated that they have not been charged with enforcing this: a sufficiently cynical reader should expect that the state police may not consistently 'enforce' the order either rather than tots-unrelatedly harassing the hell out of anyone who disobeys it.
Grisham signed a law abolished qualified immunity in some cases, but the precise text of that law and the New Mexico constitution make this unlikely to apply in the specific nexus of carry. The 11th Amendment makes federal 1983 lawsuits particularly complex, and unlikely to be renumerative or punishing.
They're also pretty boring. So I'm going to make a few predictions. Maybe I'll be wrong! Hopefully!
Grisham will not be impeached for a very simple reason. She will not be indicted, and I think it's more likely than not she never pays in her personal capacity. There will be no grand jury leaking embarrassing details, or FBI investigations doing the same, whether honestly or fraudulently established. New Mexico allows citizen grand juries, and it won’t matter Grisham will not be frog-marched before a tipped-off news media for a predawn raid, nor will we have arrest mugshots on national or local news. There won't be a long series of supposedly-unbiased news programs calling her a fascist, no baldly coordinated smear campaign to distract from someone else's failures, nor will some random employee become a minor celebrity by breaking the law to embarrass her and then claiming prosecution persecution. There will not be a New York Times article or The View segue fearful about how this undermines reasonable public health policy, nor will Lawrence Tribe be writing a characteristically incoherent argument about how this disqualifies her from any future elected office.
We will not have an injunction today, or a temporary restraining order the same day as a complaint was filed, to mirror the DeWine overreach linked above. The courts will not make a final determination before the order expires, even if the order extends beyond the thirty-day window. If the courts issue a TRO or preliminary injunction before the policy expires, people will still be harassed for carry, and no one will find themselves in jail for contempt of the court's order, even and especially if they Tried To Make A Message out of their disobedience. There will be a perfunctory mootness analysis when asking whether the state will do the same thing again, and in the unlikely even that threshold and standing can be achieved, the courts will instead notice that no colorable relief can be granted.
We will instead have taught a city's portion of gun owners that they can and should violate the supposed law, at length; that the government will quite cheerfully do the same and get away with it; and that the courts will shrug their shoulders and ponder what can you do thirty days later. And that is what happens if they are lucky.
Rov_Scam
8mo ago
To take your arguments one by one:
So like Barack Obama in 2008? Or 2012? (when Democrats worried absentee voting would drive old-people votes which harmed them).
I don't remember this. I do remember some kerfuffle where the Obama campaign sued Ohio because they passed a law giving the military three extra early voting days, and the conservative media tried to spin it as him trying to restrict military votes when the lawsuit sought to give the rest of the population the same early voting window as the military. Obama's been pretty consistent about "more voting, not less".
Or Trump whining about it for months before the election as the scheme was being ramped up by executive fiat in explicit contravention to election laws across dozens of states?
I clearly limited my argument to before 2020. And the states that ramped up mail-in voting by executive fiat weren't ones that were at issue in the 2020 election. Only 5 states changed absentee voting requirements through executive action—less than half a dozen, not dozens—and among them, three are clearly red states controlled by Republicans (Alabama, Arkansas, and West Virginia), one (Kentucky) is a red state with a Democratic governor, and one (New Hampshire) is left-leaning with a Republican governor. There was no clear liberal pattern here.
There are dozens of high profile examples over the last 2 decades...
I don't know about dozens, but I'll admit there are a few. But I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove. Everything involves tradeoffs. Suppose, for the sake of argument, it were conclusively proven that voter fraud could be eliminated entirely if we limited voting to polling places in major cities. The ultimate effect of this, of course, would be that the rural vote would be rendered entirely irrelevant and elections would have a decidedly partisan lean, probably to the point that our politics would realign entirely. If these now disenfranchised voters complained, I'd respond that people who find it too inconvenient to drive a couple hours to vote obviously aren't motivated enough to deserve any say in government, and people who can't afford the trip obviously don't have enough "skin in the game" to deserve a say in government. If the primary goal is the elimination of fraud, why wouldn't this be an ideal solution? We both know the answer to this question. The question isn't whether fraud exists, it's whether it has enough of a practical effect to make additional restrictions worthwhile.
Each time mail-in or absentee voting legislation has been passed, this was discussed repeatedly with additional security requirements and conditions because of those concerns.
No, it wasn't. I live in Pennsylvania. When mail-in voting passed in 2019 the biggest issue about the bill was that it also eliminated the straight ticket option, which led to some Democrats voting against it in protest. It otherwise passed unanimously, and was quickly signed by the governor. Every single Republican voted for it, including arch-election truthers like Doug Mastriano. I'm sure you can find some concerns if you look hard enough, but as someone who lived in the state, I don't recall it coming up once, and this is a politically diverse state with the largest legislature in the country. Similarly, in Michigan, the biggest criticism of Prop 3 wasn't that it expanded mail-in voting but that it was making something that should have been a legislative item into a constitutional one.
No one is arguing mail-in voting is inherently "unconstitutional."
I was writing this on my phone at work so I apologize. The OP said that it "violates every principle of Democracy", which I misinterpreted. Feel free to substitute the correct language.
We're not talking about millions of votes needing to swap, but ~40,000 in any of 5 different states
Well, no. Flipping one state wouldn't have been enough to turn the election in favor of Trump. At best he would have needed to flip two, provided they were Michigan and Pennsylvania. Realistically he needs to flip three. And if he goes the flip 2 route then he needs about 80,000 votes in PA and over 100,000 in MI, at least double the 40,000 you mentioned. What's the largest mail vote fraud scheme you can find? How about the average? Remember what I said about tradeoffs?
if a single one did something as simple as requiring canvassing hundreds of thousands of votes which had no signed chain of custody receipts (and no election officials have yet been charged despite this being a crime in multiple states like AZ).
Ah, yes, the old "the previous five audits we requested didn't find anything, but if we do a sixth one we're pretty sure the whole edifice will come crashing down because a televangelist saw something in a viral video that PROVES that Biden and the Democrats committed MASSIVE FRAUD by forging hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots under the cover of night but being too dumb to think of forging chain of custody receipts along with them". I'm sure the Kraken will finally be unleashed.
If two people raced bikes all over France and then the loser tested positive for PEDs, do you think they should both get a do-over race or otherwise we're not talking about "principles"?
Are the PEDs supposed to be a stand-in for fraud, or for mail-in ballots generally? If they're a stand-in for mail-ins generally, then they aren't a banned substance and there's no problem; you can't claim a race was unfair just because you don't like the rules. If they're a stand-in for fraud, then you do get to win the race, but I don't see what this has to do with the election—in one case you found actual evidence of cheating, and in the other you didn't, you just argued that the rules made it easier to cheat. What you're suggesting is more analogous to a race where PEDs are banned and your opponent never tested positive, but you want to rerun the race because you're pretty sure he cheated but can't actually prove it.
The Federal Government is currently abusing laws made 150 years ago in response to the Civil War as well as stretching interpretation of other laws way past their breaking point...
Well, what do you think a more appropriate charge would have been. If organizing a plot to take over the Capitol building in order to prevent the lawful transfer of power of a democratically elected president so that it will remain in the hands of the guy who lost isn't seditious conspiracy, what is exactly? What line do you think he needs to cross? And how is the jury biased? Unless you're arguing that he didn't actually do what the government said he did, there's no room for bias here. Jury nullification isn't something you can expect from any jury, and isn't something you should expect in this case unless you seriously think attempts to overthrow the government should be legal.
Do you follow election disputes/protests over "local judges and clerks," closely?
lol, I'm a lawyer. I deal with these people all the time, and yes, it makes a difference. I not only follow them closely, I follow them closely in counties and even states where I don't live and can't vote. If you want I can fill you in on the drama in West Virginia's First Circuit judicial retention election, or tell you about the recurring pissing match between the current and former Recorders of Deeds in Westmoreland County, PA.
So I've seen the recent news on Reddit that some shoplifting and pregnant black single mother of 2 was shot dead by police somewhere in Ohio after she tried running one of the officers on site over with her car in the mall's lot. I suppose this has great potential to turn into culture war fodder, but again, unlike in 2020, Trump isn't in office and Bernie's defeat at the Democrat primaries is also a thing of the past, so I'm not sure. Anyway, this instantly reminded me of the rather similar incident that sparked the recent outbreak of riots and vandalism in French urban zones. And then it occurred to me that I haven't actually heard of any similar culture war fodder incident from the past. Not one. Is this maybe some sort of bizarre new trend, or is my memory failing me, or is this just a weird coincidence?
Nantafiria
8mo ago
The United States are still pretty empty, and a skilled farmer can still get land at both trivial price and effort to practice his craft. It is also hard work that you do in places of solitude after a half-decade or so of learning your craft as an absolute nobody, which is why the people fantasising about frontiers aren't growing beets off in Ohio right now: things stop being romantic when you have to put in sweat and effort for them.
Wait, do countries consider using nuclear subs for anti-shipping?
I was under the impression they exist as deep stealth nuclear deterrents rather than offensive weapons.
Edit: I was thinking of the Ohio-class dedicated ballistic missile subs. The rest of the US SSNs are outfitted for a bunch of roles, including torpedoes.
How about "Calling for the genocide of Jews is disgusting and distasteful in the extreme, but it is absolutely protected speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio and does not in itself constitute prohibited bullying or harassment." That's what I would say if I was leading a public university and being grilled. The University of Pennsylvania guarantees students "The right to freedom of thought and expression", so I'd say something like "...but it is expression permitted under the University of Pennsylvania Code of Student Conduct." Harvard, however, has no such out.
More options
Context Copy link