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https://x.com/katiephang/status/1763619058145259633?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg
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BIG news!
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âAdvisesâ
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9-0, not disqualified.
Nailed it
Look at all that optimism!
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Maybe we werenât that far off after all.
https://x.com/mjs_DC/status/1764720657055490517?s=20
Maybe they GOT something on timing. Or maybe nothing. 
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If you have an urge to nod your head in agreement for 3-5 minutes, here you go:
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Been saying this for awhile.
And yeah, he hit all the points except one: How unlikely it is (because of the map) that the Democrats hold the senate after this election.
They are 100% losing WV, which means holding on to Ohio, Montana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and the presidency just to get to 50-50 with a VP tiebreak.
The recent Strict Scrutiny podcast covering the bump stock case is infuriating. I hadnât realized how broad the prohibition against machine guns actually is. Not only are machine guns banned, but machine guns are defined as:
any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.
Listening to clips of the oral argument was infuriating, and somehow the court is going to rule that bump stocks are legal. Rather than saying, âThese accessories are obviously designed to mimic the function of banned firearms, and therefore are correctly bannedâ, I think the court is going to end up ruling that, ACTUALLY, banning machine guns was unconstitutional to begin with.
I have been perplexed as to why wasnât their position from the get go.
I think that I have asked this before, but I forgot the answer. Given their interpretation of the 2A, do the conservatives think there is anything wrong with a citizen just building and owning their own nukes? Can I have my own tank?
Conservatives now? Or Conservatives in Name Only, like Antonin Scalia?
Allow me to have a conversation with Scaliaâs opinion in Heller :
We may as well consider at this point (for we will have to consider eventually) what types of weapons Miller permits.
[Miller is the 1939 case holding that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and bear a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun.]
Yes, yes, very predictive. We do have to consider what types of weapons might be permitted and what type might be prohibited. Go on.
Read in isolation, Millerâs phrase âpart of ordinary military equipmentâ could mean that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.
Thatâs true. So if we want to prohibit the Melkersons of the world from owning tactical nukes, how can we make that prohibition acceptable? Surely tactical nukes are useful in warfare, so they must be protected, right?
We think that Millerâs âordinary military equipmentâ language must be read in tandem with what comes after: â[O]rdinarily when called for [militia] service [able-bodied] men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.â 307 U. S., at 179.
Oh, ok. What exactly is your point? Can Melkerson own a nuke or not?
We therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.
We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those âin common use at the time.â 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of âdangerous and unusual weapons.â
So looking back at the Heller opinion, it actually seems like it offers a great deal of latitude to regulate firearms:
- If something was not in common use at the time of the 2nd amendment, or
- If a weapon is not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes
it can be regulated. No nukes for the Melkersons.
But somehow, even though bump stocks meet both of those criteria AND seems to be plainly included in the definition of machine guns in the National Firearm Act, SCOTUS is going to overturn the ban. Itâs preposterous. They might as well just overturn the above language from Heller in the process, but I think that this case isnât even being decided on 2nd Amendment grounds. (Or at least I think the petitioners didnât argue from a 2nd Amendment perspective.)
Hereâs NRA coverage, including some quotes from the oral argument:
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Thanks for breaking it down.
This makes it seems like the decision ought to be open and shut, but unfortunately that is not how things are playing out.
I think itâs open and shut, but hereâs the steelman version of the other side:
This is not a case about the 2nd amendment. This is a case about the overreach of administrative power. If Congress wanted to ban bump stocks, they could have done so. Indeed, there have been efforts to introduce legislation that would ban bump stocks, but those efforts failed. So the administration, rather than accepting that this was not the will of the people, did an end around - they had the ATF simply declare that bump stocks do fall under the definition of a machine gun, despite having concluded exactly the opposite in 2010.
This is just one more of a long line of executive efforts to accomplish things through administrative agencies that can only lawfully be enacted through legislation. [This is the overarching goal of the conservatives - to get rid of the Chevron deference idea that administrative agencies can make decisions about how to interpret and implement often-ambiguous legislation.]
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There is no more perfect distillation of the Dems âWashington Generalsâ mentality than thinking it is too mean to old judges to pressure them to retire to slow Americaâs decent into fascism.
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No you need to blackmail them into retiring. If we could give Kennedy and son some truth serumâŚ
The more I study ethics, the more I think the âgood guysâ canât have a strictly utilitarian outlook. Some values are simply incommensurable, some things simply canât be given up for more money. However, I think itâs easy to fall into the trap of thinking that everything is incommensurable, and thus to end up over-valuing all norms, like not asking justices to retire. Here the reason we would be asking them to retire is not that we are seeking to get more money (or other material benefits), but to protect the very values that we say are so important.
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Got the senate. Got the presidency. For fucks same donât pull an RBG.
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