Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

And read pages 4-5 of the 303 opinion to see what facts were stipulated. Pretty important.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I was going to ask if this means an ultra-strong Catholic website designer could refuse to provide service to a Catholic/Jewish wedding because he's against marrying outside the faith. Seems to imply he could.

[iam416]

As long as the designer otherwise serves people w/o discrimination and the belief is sincerely held, then -- yes -- absolutely. Gorsuch's opinion really wrecks Sotomayor's dissent. It's what you would expect when you have the law AND facts on your side.

As a pratical matter, this general issue was a big concern when there was a concerted effort to refuse service to AAs. In 2023, there's a huge marketplace for weddings and gads of website designers and cake-makers to serve every population. In fact, it's likely a market advantage. The actual need to compel everyone to bend the knee to Prog ideas and swear loyalty to them is absolutely unnecesarry. That's the practical reality/

[iam416]

The student loan cases split. One case -- no standing -- it wasn't even close. The other case -- standing and the loan forgiveness unconstitutional.

[Dr. Strangelove]

As long as the designer otherwise serves people w/o discrimination and the belief is sincerely held, then -- yes -- absolutely. Gorsuch's opinion really wrecks Sotomayor's dissent. It's what you would expect when you have the law AND facts on your side.

As a pratical matter, this general issue was a big concern when there was a concerted effort to refuse service to AAs. In 2023, there's a huge marketplace for weddings and gads of website designers and cake-makers to serve every population. In fact, it's likely a market advantage. The actual need to compel everyone to bend the knee to Prog ideas and swear loyalty to them is absolutely unnecesarry. That's the practical reality/

I haven't read the full opinion, but my takeaway is that Gorsuch's drawing a distinction between a "creative" business and serving a mundane, routine product. I mean, a business owner can't refuse to serve coffee to a couple once he finds out they're inter-faith and he's against that.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The student loan cases split. One case -- no standing -- it wasn't even close. The other case -- standing and the loan forgiveness unconstitutional.

I still think it's kind of dubious to grant Missouri standing to sue on behalf of Mohela but meh. The program was always sketchy. Not much invested in this one either. It's cynical but the real purpose probably always was to drive 2024 turnout among the young.

The case that got unanimously tossed was a joke. Anyone could stop any govt program where they don't qualify.

[iam416]

I haven't read the full opinion, but my takeaway is that Gorsuch's drawing a distinction between a "creative" business and serving a mundane, routine product. I mean, a business owner can't refuse to serve coffee to a couple once he finds out they're inter-faith and he's against that.

Right. This is a First Amendment issue, so you need to have the State compelling expressive speach. All of that was stipulated as fact for purposes of the appeal. That is to say, you can't argue it -- for purposes of the Court's decision, operating her website was expressive, putting messages conerning gay marriage up on her website was expressive, she had sincerely held belief to the contrary and the State told her to fuck off. Those were (some of ) the facts that everyone agreed to.

AND...she served gays folks for any other type of webpage creation. Also stipulated. So, her only "discrmination" was in a single context.

This really should have been unanimous.

[iam416]

I still think it's kind of dubious to grant Missouri standing to sue on behalf of Mohela but meh. The program was always sketchy. Not much invested in this one either. It's cynical but the real purpose probably always was to drive 2024 turnout among the young.

The case that got unanimously tossed was a joke. Anyone could stop any govt program where they don't qualify.

Correct. I think once you get past the MOHELA standing issue, Roberts has the better of the argument, but Kagan is no fool. So, it's a spirited argument on "modify...etc". But, the real issue, IMO, was standing. Even viscerally you have two reactions (IMO) -- it doesn't really seem like MOHELA is injured AND it doesn't really seem like The Chairman can actually do this. So, I'm way more sympathetic to the standing argument.

[Jeff Buchanan]

In a surprisingly frank statement to a WAPO reporter from the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, it "pisses him off" that western officials are pointing out Ukraine's slow pace of advances while those countries are slow to provide promised weapons. He also notes that without air superiority along the front, putting forces where they are vulnerable to Russian air attack is a very risky undertaking. "We aren't asking for 120 F-16s; were not going to attack the world. All we need are a few of these aircraft to confront Russian aviation assets being deployed against our forces."

What this tells me is that the Russians are using fixed and rotary wing aircraft in more close air support missions than they have in the past. That is because when they did this earlier in the war, they suffered unacceptable losses of those assets from mobile air defense systems deployed by Ukraine. They also had a rash of friendly fire incidents because they had difficulty with the C2 required to integrate air power into ground operations. Clearly, they've gotten better at that.

The F16 is more than capable of engaging both fixed and rotary wing aircraft in the current battle space. It really would not require many of them to make a huge difference in the potential for success of the ongoing counter-offensive operations. The MIG-29 is an air-superiority, not a ground attack aircraft. It carries no bombs. It's not the best platform to engage Russian attack helos flying nap of the earth profiles (below 200 feet AGL) either. If Russian pilots are operating their SU27 and MIG-34 ground attack aircraft in very low altitude ingress and egress profiles, those too would be hard for the MIG-29s to engage. MIG-29s lack the weapons systems for a true look-down-shoot-down capability. The F16 does have that capability along with a good record of employment in ground attack roles in Serbia during that conflict there. Bring on the F-16s. Given the F16 training of Ukrainian pilots at a number of places, it would not be hard to deploy these aircraft fairly quickly.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Right. This is a First Amendment issue, so you need to have the State compelling expressive speach. All of that was stipulated as fact for purposes of the appeal. That is to say, you can't argue it -- for purposes of the Court's decision, operating her website was expressive, putting messages conerning gay marriage up on her website was expressive, she had sincerely held belief to the contrary and the State told her to fuck off.

AND...she served gays folks for any other type of webpage creation. Also stipulated. So, her only "discrmination" was in a single context.

This really should have been unanimous.

I don't know if you caught this but just in the past 48 hours there's been chatter that the website designer may have simply fabricated a "gay request" in order to get the lawsuit rolling. Reporters contacted the person she claims made an inquiry to make a gay marriage site and he claims to have never heard of this woman and is straight and married.

Could turn out to be false too but it's an interesting wrinkle.

[iam416]

I don't know if you caught this but just in the past 48 hours there's been chatter that the website designer may have simply fabricated a "gay request" in order to get the lawsuit rolling. Reporters contacted the person she claims made an inquiry to make a gay marriage site and he claims to have never heard of this woman and is straight and married.

Could turn out to be false too but it's an interesting wrinkle.

Yeah, I'm not even sure she needed to fabricate it. Colorado hadn't actually enforced anything against her, either, but they stipulated that they would. She's trying to start a business or run a business and she can reasonably forsee that she might have an issue with the CADA. She has, IMO, a better standing case than MOHELA did WITHOUT an actual gay wedding request.

In other words, should she have to invest more money, get her business more fully developed and wait until she actually has to deny a gay wedding request? Or can she resolve her ambiguous future sooner rather than later.

[iam416]

And, just re-reading the cases, the website artist is PLANNING ON ENTERING the wedding business. She hasn't even done so yet -- mostly because of the uncertainty created by CADA. So, there's no way she would have alleged a gay wedding request. She only alleges that IF she enters that business she faces a threat of enforcement.

So, yeah -- that rumor is hot fucking dogshit as it pertains to the case.

[Dr. Strangelove]

And, just re-reading the cases, the website artist is PLANNING ON ENTERING the wedding business. She hasn't even done so yet -- mostly because of the uncertainty created by CADA. So, there's no way she would have alleged a gay wedding request. She only alleges that IF she enters that business she faces a threat of enforcement.

So, yeah -- that rumor is hot fucking dogshit as it pertains to the case.

The story about "Stewart" is on Pg. 218 of the original petition to the Supreme Court which is actually part of the 10th Circuit decision. I don't see it in this particular filing but supposedly this "Stewart"'s contact information was in a lower court filing. Reporters contacted this dude for the first time and he acknowledged his contact info was all correct but he'd never heard of this woman, this site, and isn't gay. Maybe he's lying, maybe the lady' lying, I dunno. Sounds irrelevant to the case. But it was just odd I thought.

24145 Cover.pdf (supremecourt.gov)

[Dr. Strangelove]

RIP Alan Arkin, btw. Great actor.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oh in much less consequential legal news, the Notorious MTG and a handful of other dumb twatwaffles lost in Appeals Court trying to sue Pelosi over House covid mask rules from two years ago. Unanimous decision written by Rao, the most Trumpian member of the DC circuit.

I know these people aren't paying for this bullshit themselves so rich donors, whoever you are, quit flushing money down the toilet trying to get Federal courts to rewrite Congressional rules. It ain't gonna happen.