2024 Primary Elections.

Can these mofos find and kill (or at least shut down and put in prison) the assholes behind all the spam calls that make answering the phone pointless today?

Like don’t we own the airwaves these calls are using and thus have jurisdiction?

I have my phone set up so that all calls from unknown numbers go straight to voicemail.

My niece did that to my phone - at my request. Took me forever to figure out how to turn it off when I was looking for a job.

Trivia Question for the room:

The largest donor to RFK Jr’s super PAC donated just as much money ($15m to each) to what other presidential candidate’s super PAC?


https://www.usnews.com/news/top-new...idential-run-garners-mega-trump-donor-support

Wannabe Grover Cleveland?

(with apologies to Cleveland)

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/07/haley-wins-nevada-primary-that-nets-no-delegates-00140036

Trump wasn’t on the ballot, BTW.

Williamson ends 2024 primary challenge to Biden

Some former staffers of hers have some thoughts about this.



https://x.com/timxoc/status/1755430196373565598?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

https://wapo.st/4buKpBl

Can’t say I’m surprised.

My guess would be they cite section 5 of the fourteenth amendment.

Infuriating that Roberts is just like "What if Red states remove Biden from the ballot" as though partisan retaliation is inevitable and impossible to distinguish from legitimate disqualifications.

Better just make all crime legal if that's how they want to play it.

Biden has provided aide and comfort to our enemy by giving Iran money and not securing the border. Anyway, they got Kagan and KJB on board, it’s all over except the tears.

If you sincerely think that's true and you care about your country, you should be pursuing that regardless of anything going on with Trump.

If you consciously understand you're making shit up to justify partisan retaliation for what's happened to Trump, then you're a terrible person and I hope you get a papercut on your ballsack.

All right, @Steal Your Face, I'm gonna make your argument for you, because watching you flail and run around in circles is just getting to be too much.

First:

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was enacted 150 years ago in response to a very specific moment in our history, one that has not been repeated since then.

The circumstances of that moment were extraordinarily clear. It wasn't merely a dispute over who was rightfully in control of the government; the seceding states literally created their own government and engaged in a prolonged armed conflict that cost 365,000 loyal Americans their lives. As disgusting as January 6 was, it simply cannot be compared to the Civil War in magnitude. If the South Carolina rebels had simply seized control of Fort Sumter and been driven away later that same day, and that had been the end of it, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would never have been written. And because we can't ask the drafters of the 14th Amendment precisely what situations they intended it to apply to, we have to look at the one situation we know they intended it to apply to, and then ask if the present situation rises to the same level.

Second:

Although these is very little Section 3 case law that doesn't involve the Civil War, there is one case we can examine for precedent, and that case supports the idea that, in a situation less clear than that of Confederate leaders, the presence or absence of a criminal conviction actually is a deciding factor in whether somebody can be barred from holding office. Early in 1919, socialist and anti-interventionist Victor L. Berger was convicted of violating the Espionage Act because of his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I. He had been elected to Congress in November 1918, but when he tried to claim his seat, Congress refused to seat him, citing Section 3. His district elected him again in 1919, and Congress again refused to seat him. Then in 1921, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction. He won elections to Congress in 1922, 1924 and 1926, and was seated after each of those elections. It is clear that, in the one non-Civil War case we have available to us, Congress felt that a valid criminal conviction was necessary to keep someone from holding office under Section 3.

Third:

The judicial branch is the ultimate interpreter of legal questions in the United States, and Section 3's applicability to any individual has not been adjudicated since 1869. It is absurd to argue that Section 3 can automatically be presumed to apply when it has not been adjudicated in more than 150 years. For context, the last time any court issued a ruling about somebody's eligibility under Section 3 was 27 years before Plessy v. Ferguson. There are many, many reasons why we should not want a 150-year-old precedent to simply be presumed valid without a thorough judicial review.

Fourth:

In a democracy, barring extremely cut-and-dried situations such as a person not having attained the minimum legal age for the office they are seeking, the starting presumption should always be in favor of granting voters the maximum possible range of choices. Therefore, the bar for excluding someone from the ballot should be set extraordinarily high, and when there is legitimate ambiguity as to whether a Section 3 disqualification applies, the court should always err on the side of allowing the person on the ballot rather than excluding them.

It really isn't that difficult, section 5 is the enforcement clause of the amendment and it says that congress have the power to enforce it. It's up to Congress to decide qualification, not the states. It would be absurd for Congress to allow former confederate states to disqualify candidates they didn't like. It's a federal election, not a state or local election.

https://x.com/wildstein/status/1756387153850806500?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

Lest anyone forget Kim is the guy who after everything died down on Jan 6 felt he had to something. Pictures of him picking up garbage left over from the "tourist's" visit went viral. I'm glad to see him get a leg up, even temporarily, on someone who seems to think they're entitled to high office.

https://x.com/mondairejones/status/1756485018225185005?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

It went a little unnoticed but Bill Maher slipped in that Chris Sununu was a nepo-baby when he recently appeared on his show.

Whenever I hear Sununu speak I think he is the poster child for “but her emails” and “Biden has dementia.”

https://bsky.app/profile/mattbinder.bsky.social/post/3kl6nwg4uo72a

https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1756863615590695111?s=20



One of the replies:

RFK Junior is SANE, I tell you!

Dude, I just gave you four good arguments, rooted in case law and backed up by solid logic. Why jump right back to a bullshit one?

The reason it's bullshit, incidentally, should be obvious as soon as you apply even the most basic level of critical thinking to it. If the language in Section 5 (and the similar language in many other amendments) meant that the amendment could only go into effect if Congress passed a law enforcing it, then by refusing to pass enabling legislation, Congress would have the power to nullify any Constitutional amendment it doesn't like.

https://bsky.app/profile/ericcolumbus.bsky.social/post/3kl72zlgdhf2j

False, this has nothing to do nullifying constitutional amendments. Congress already has the ability to nullify amendments, it's called the amendment process. Congress did this once already with the 18th amendment. As for case law, there's already been case law in Griffin case of 1870. There's been law review papers written about it. In the following University of Minnesota paper they rightly point out that section three wrests power away from the states to decide who's qualified. As I said above, it would be absurd for former confederate states to have that power which is why it's in Congress' hands.

https://constitutionalcommentary.li...nd-section-three-of-the-fourteenth-amendment/

As for section 5 goes do you know what shall means in legal terms? It mean you must do something, therefore sections 3 and 5 are tied together. Why would they put in an enforcement clause if it wasn't?

Huh? No.

Congress has precisely zero power to unilaterally amend the Constitution.

The 21st Amendment, which overturned the 18th, was proposed by Congress but did not go into effect until it was ratified by the required number of states, just like all the other amendments.

"Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment" doesn't mean "sure, we ratified this amendment, but unless Congress passes a law saying it's valid, we'll say LOL OK, we just did that for funsies."

FF's history classes didn't overlap with civics at all.