Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

Talent ..... I found the rejoinder you disagreed with, "when a dysfunctional legislature is unable to pass laws that resolve the big questions of the age, the courts bear a special responsibility, lest justice itself be poisoned,' inconsistent with what I thought the point the author was trying to make - namely, "If the justices take it upon themselves to cut through legislative knots, using their power maximally, they will transform themselves into an all-powerful unelected third chamber, with grave implications for America."

It was a strange sentence to lead off the one that followed.

[iam416]

I agree. I wasn’t sure what to make of it in the overall context.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Less Roe v. Wade. More Joe Cocker and CGTV flatulence of the mouth...

[CGVT]

Less Roe v. Wade. More Joe Cocker and CGTV flatulence of the mouth...

Just don't post that picture of your wings that you posted last night again.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Touchè

[THE_WIZARD_]

Wait...I misspoke. What I meant to say is you are a pedantic, pontificating, pretentious bastard, a belligerent old fart, a worthless steaming pile of cow dung, figuratively speaking.

Sorry CGVT.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Ukraine:

• NB DSL's post on Lukashenko - nobody wants to be aboard a sinking ship.
• There are anywhere from 500 to 5000 civilians and Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the Mariupol steel factory depending on what source you're reading. The steel factory is a maze of tunnels and bunkers built after 2014 and in response to the likelihood that Russia would invade at some point and take that city first. It is here where civilians are hiding and the Azov Battalion is defending. Bringing the steel factory saga to a "decisive end" (in Putin's terms) has to be Putin's #1 play right now.
• While Mariupol is strategically important, there is no way that the Russian Army can fully occupy and control the ruble that is left let alone occupy and rebuild it to some sort of functionality that will aid Russian exports and through the sale of them improve the Russian economy in the short term. Still, the saga is getting a lot, if not too much, press. It's serving as pure propaganda for Putin who will use the "decisive end" to Ukrainian (Nazi, according to Putin) resistance in Mariupol on May 9th's Victory celebration in Moscow.
• The important things going on are the successes the Ukrainian forces are having in and around Kharkiv in the N and Kherson in the S. The Russians claimed they had captured Kharkiv and Kherson early in their campaign. That was far from assured and what is going on now - the block by block, city by city Ukrainian and partisan forces are liberating these places from Russian occupation and control. Meanwhile Russian advances stay stalled along the two main axis of attack: SE from Izyum toward Donbas and through Mariupol to Odessa
• As Ukrainians clear out Russian soldiers from Kharkiv and surrounds ruble and dead civilians remain as markers of the Russian Army's brutality in Ukraine's second largest city.
• Ukrainian forces continue to make inroads toward Kherson with Russian forces retreating from check-points when these are attacked. That says a lot about Russian soldiers and their willingness to defend territory their commanders have assigned them to. It also indicates that the Russian Army can't provide and coordinate the resources(artillery and attack air) to back the soldiers up so that they can defend themselves against Ukrainian counter attacks that are almost always small, well armed and trained groups.
• I see no value and a lot of damage being done to western interests in these articles alleging that US intel is being fed to the Ukrainians to directly facilitate killing high ranking Russian officers. Alleging that in this war would be like alleging the Allies were actually going to storm the beaches of Normandy instead of Calais where the Germans were beefing up defenses and thought the Allies would land.
• Zelenski announced today that Ukrainian forces would not start offensive operations until late June, early July. The reason is said to be to allow western arms to get positioned. At the same time and separately, Ukrainian officials stated that Russian attacks on infrastructure are not impeding the flow of western arms to the front in E Ukraine. It's hard to beleive they aren't as Ukraine's rail system, a prime mover of supplies to the Donbas front, is powered by electricity. Power stations along the rail line are being taken out with cruise missiles. No telling how quickly they are being repaired. Downside for the Russians is the high expenditure rate of these arms with a reportedly impaired capacity to build new ones.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I agree. I wasn’t sure what to make of it in the overall context.

In the full article, the authors put a lot of blame on what we know is judicial activism, on a dysfunctional congress. IMO, that's a factor for the judicial system jumping in but not the only one. I don't think the Brits understand how destructive the progressive movement in the US is. The article does recognize what's going on - it's pollicization - in the US Supreme Court but overlook why "jumping in" has become an attractive alternative for the judicial system to, they think, act in this way to not "poison justice."

We'd probably agree that the entire US judicial system has gotten away from interpreting the law as it is written. Instead, the judges/justices within in it are making rulings based on popular or personal interpretations of what is right. That's some bad shit, right there. There are exceptions, of course, but the trend (IMO) is not in a good direction.

[iam416]

I actually wouldn’t agree with that. There was a time when the Supreme Court was very activist (led by Justice Brennan), but that has been considerably reigned in. For example, it used to be that Courts would use the purpose and legislative intent of a STATUTE to interpret it as they saw fit. Now they start and mostly end with the words (an enduring legacy of Scalia). That’s “textualism” and it’s pretty much won.

With the Constitution it’s still a fight between “originalism” + “textualism” and “living Constitution” + “textualism”. But, even so, liberal justices still have to deal with originalism.

So, I definitely think Courts try to avoid legislating way more than they used to.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Textualism won out (though Scalia would prob credit Black, not himself). But the Court could use people like Brennan and Douglas who were geniuses as well. Even if a Douglas was a shitbird.

[iam416]

Scalia may credit Bork, but Scalia was the one on the big stage. The kids these days call it being an "influencer." Fucking kids.

Textualism won out because it's extremely intellectually sound. To every point against there is, I think, an much better rejoinder.

As for geniuses and such, I happen to think pretty highly of some of the members of the Court. And, TBH, genius on the Court isn't worth much, IMO, if it's not a humble genius. Brennan, for sure, thought he new best for everyone. I'd rather have Harriet Miers.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Sounds like Russia may have lost another big ship

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-russias-admiral-makarov-warship-26889015

[Jeff Buchanan]

Russia hosts an informal meeting at the UN Security Council on Friday. it will seek to discuss such hot topics as Ukraine’s fighters turning to “medieval barbarism” and the Western media’s “selective blindness”. Such Security Council discussions, known as “Arria-formula” meetings, are common affairs, designed to allow countries to discuss important things in private. But they are not often like the one Russia will host, where its representatives will lie out their asses about Ukrainian forces committing war crimes.

For Russia, the point is to make as much almost laughable (if Ukrainians weren't being killed by these fucks) noise as possible. Having such bull-shit emanate from the UN gives it importance when it's posted on social media and gobbled up by the uninformed. AAll part of Putin's disinformation campaign ...... meanwhile he's losing a war of many symbolic events: along with the sinking of the Moskva and the news DSL posted above, the Russians cannot get at the Azov Battalion and force their surrender or kill them all. They've suffered the loss of 12 general officers and their military operations at a tactical level are beset by all kinds of problems that from a western perspective have been largely unexpected..... welcomed by the Ukrainian army.

[Da Geezer]

Roe v Wade was one of at least a dozen huge decisions since the Warren days where the Liberals on the court made a purely ideological decision and then performed a creative writing exercise to shoehorn into the Constitution. Ponder that as you realize that the latest Supreme Court Justice can’t define what a womanis.

Let’s pray that this decision holds and is also the first of many that reestablishes the Constitution as the governing document of the United States.

Amen. But let's also consider the protests that are planned at the residences of the Justices. Will that affect future rulings that attempt to address the unconstitutional activism of the SC from 1965-2019?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Russia has little hope of accomplishing much more without mass mobilization, which they are at least publicly swearing they will not do. Some people claim they are preparing for it in secret though. We'll see on Monday if the rumors about some big announcement are true.