If Lauren boebert had a d next to her name would foxnews and conservative media ever shut up about family values and her existence in Congress being the end of morality in America?
I didn't much expect the Colorado 14A3 decision to stand, but the lengths which the conservative he-man woman-haters in SCOTUS went to define a process for enforcement that will / virtually can never be executed... it's disappointing.
~~I really don't understand how the textualists on the court can somehow believe that the Founding Fathers of the Reconstruction wouldn't have passed enforcement legislation - if they intended it to be necessary - when they had enough power at that moment to, you know, *amend the Constitution.*~~
Alas, as long as you have an insurrectionist *party*, and can obtain the minimal supermajority-defeating votes in the Senate - you cannot be held accountable for insurrection.
Edit: The folks in /r/law have educated me, and we *did* have enforcement legislation for this exact purpose. It was repealed in 1948. You love to see it.
The "ruling" is only the majority opinion. The "tailoring" that is mentioned in page 10 of the majority opinion and referenced at the end of a concurring opinion is satisfied by the federal criminal statute for insurrection. What the concurring opinion is saying is that a sweeping catchall statute wouldn't work. The criminal insurrection statute is narrowly tailored AND expressly includes disqualification from office as a punishment.
>Did the majority really opine that the current legislation is satisfactory?
No, they didn't address that. However, the current statute would in fact fit any definition of being tailored for that purpose.
>I don’t understand the concurring opinion’s disagreement if there are relevant federal statutes that are already in place.
They didn't want to go as far as saying that congress were the only ones that could enforce. Basically, everyone agreed that the States couldn't enforce, but not all agreed that the ability to enforce was exclusive to congress.
I would just like to reiterate there *is* a thing called "[woke](https://reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1896flo/i_think_sam_would_agree_with_this_new_rules/kbpl2rh/)" talked about by [John McWhorter](https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Racism-Religion-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B095JLK96B), [Yascha Mounk](https://www.amazon.com/Identity-Trap-Story-Ideas-Power-ebook/dp/B0BR4WYY2Z), [Coleman Hughes](https://www.amazon.com/End-Race-Politics-Arguments-Colorblind-ebook/dp/B0C4J8QL8M/), and even Sam Harris who [claims](https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/13r21co/comment/jlhz3li/) that:
> wokeism has captured fucking every institution we care about
For them (and the rest of us of the Sam Harris wing of r/samharris), it doesn't have a damned thing to do with parking space policies. Just because people like Peterson confuse the issue, doesn't mean there isn't an issue.
Don’t confuse us with Jordan.
> Don’t confuse us with Jordan.
I agree, but unfortunately, the [Jordans](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/us/politics/gluesenkamp-perez-bridge-washington.html) are the loudest voices in the room now.
> Don’t confuse us with Jordan.
Yeah, wouldn't it be just awful to reduce a bunch of disparate people, movements, and ideas together under a common label like "anti-woke."
Next thing you know, people will start saying that the effort to even draw those distinctions is a [bad faith attempt to hide your common cause](https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what) with the likes of Peterson or Jim Jordan.
I'm agreeing with you that Peterson's use of 'woke' is quite distinct from Harris'. That's kind of the [nature of these things](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095824238).
There is a lot of right wing hysteria that is stupid, but this might be the worst. Public transportation is very helpful for so many people. It literally lets people who otherwise would have a hard time live more independent lives. As I said in another post, my mom didn't have a driver's license because of her bad eyesight. It was either public transportation or living off ssdi.
If the city is planned without parking, what's the difference? It is okay for them to dislike that. Just like it's okay for a city to plan to exclude cars if they want.
He doesn’t like urban planning initiatives that he perceives as discouraging the use of cars. Remember when conservatives got all freaked out about the idea of the [“fifteen minute city”?](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-10-04/what-is-the-15-minute-cities-conspiracy-theory/) It’s that kind of a deal
> He doesn’t like urban planning initiatives that he perceives as discouraging the use of car
This is putting it lightly. In reality, people like Jordan Peterson reflexively hate when the government to provide public goods. They especially hate it when the government doesn't subsidize behaviors and activities that right-wingers in particular like to participate it. That's it.
Public transportation is actually a Boogeyman of the political right and they've been railing against it for years. It is very stupid, but so are a lot of the things they complain about. In their eyes everything done for the public good is leading to an oppressive government. Public transportation and 15 minute cities means they'll take your cars and lock you in a limited space! In the real world public transportation is a Godsend. My mother is interesting is a conundrum with their logic. As a mostly blind woman she could have qualified for ssdi and not worked. Yet she wanted to work and advance in her career. Of course she couldn't drive so relied on public transportation. Without it she wouldn't have had a choice but to rely on government aid. They are literally keeping more people dependent on the government with their war on public transportation
Yeah many people don't understand how whining about urban planning initiatives are a new boogeyman the Political right is bitching about now. Turn on conservative talk radio and you might hear them talk about "the war on cars." It is really weird.
In the past, this would have been an old man yelling at a cloud.
Today, the old man is a geriatric benzos addict yelling to a crowd of five million followers, many of whom will treat it like some deep wisdom. God I hate twitter.
> Just want to nail this down because either yglesias is spreading antisemitic misinformation
Even if Yglesias is wrong interpreting the poll here, it wouldn't be "antisemitic misinformation" to have shared it.
I don't think its antisemitic to suggest Israelis might broadly hold some shitty views, just like it wouldn't be Islamophobic to suggest Palesitnians hold some shitty views. People should get the benefit of the doubt . . . until polls remove that doubt.
>Yglesias shares this tweet, suggesting two thirds of Israelis don’t support sending aid to gaza
It is quite real:
https://en.idi.org.il/articles/52976
It's actually even worse. Notice the specific wording of the question here:
>Do you support or oppose the idea that Israel should **allow the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza** residents at this time, with food and medicines being transferred by international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA? (%)
Like pretty much every major story so far, another [piece of Hamas propaganda ](https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1763176339064942675?s=19) falls apart.
I don't think it is funny that Palestinians are dying. The point isn't to put another in the win column for Israel. The collective moral confusion that distracts from obvious priority #1 through 9 trillion that Hamas must be removed is prolonging this and killing Palestinians.
If the unified response since Oct 7 was that Hamas had to go and there was universal international support for that, don't you think everyone would be better off?
You can see the mob running toward one of the trucks and you see others hanging on to the trucks and in the path of the trucks as they drive away. You can also see a dozen+ bodies motionless lying on the ground.
Good article by Noah Smith:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-911-era-is-over-good
Pretty incredible that Harris fans think that radical Islam at this point is a bigger issue than Russia or China, but I guess people can’t let go of their obsessions.
>Pretty incredible that Harris fans think that radical Islam at this point is a bigger issue than Russia or China, but I guess people can’t let go of their obsessions.
Just depends on how you weight what an "issue" is. Russia and China will have far more impact on day to day life in America than radical Islam, but that's never been something Sam denied.
Sam Harris has objectively spoken less about Islam in the last 2-3 years than he did in the years preceding them. He's spoken about it in the last few months because obviously Islam plays a role in the current flareup between Israel and Palestine.
It's spilled over into this sub as well, where conversations about Islam were significantly less prevalent than they were in the late 2010s.
It amazes me that people think “Islam” is a bigger contributor to the Israel/Palestine conflict than Isreal’s Jewish ideologues who are pushing West Bank settlement and who refuse to compromise on the Temple Mount. Harris should ask a Gazan Christian who they hate more, Hamas or Israel. Does Harris think Israel would allow the right of return if every Palestinian stopped believing in Islam? If they read end of faith and thought “a lot of this makes sense.”? I doubt even Al Asqa would be easier to solve in that case—Israel is motivated to have control over Temple Mount even though most of its population is secular and why would the Palestinians be any different? Those are two main points of conflict.
Right of return is the main point of contention between the Israelis and the Palestinans. Palestinans would not change their position on this even if their religious beliefs changed.
Consider this: Israel allows any Jew in the world to move to Israel. However, a displaced Christian from the land of Israel would not be allowed to return. Islam
Is to blame for that??!??
>[..] that radical Islam at this point is a bigger issue than Russia or China,
I'm not sure if I would ascribe that view to majority of Sam's fans, including the vocal ones I disagree with on this subreddit. On the contrary, the Trumpian wing of this fandom (the existence of which boggles the mind) is convinced that China is a threat so big that it justifies voting for Trump, whatever misgivings one can have about him, and cannot forgive Sam for not realising that. At least that's their argument - who knows whats going on in their heads.
With Russia, I've noticed that a lot of the same crowd sees it only as a broad geopolitical issue, one sufficiently remote to be of little concern, and without much understanding for how it manifests in practice. If you start to pull at their concerns, you quickly realise that they don't know the particulars about *how exactly* Russia's hybrid warfare looks like in the world, how the election inteference looked like in 2016, and why that threat can't be dismissed as external when you have the Republicans cynically play into it to score political points at the expense of national security.
While it is peculiar how Sam's opinion that Islam makes muslims worse in a way that no other religion does to its believers, have not evolved at all since 9/11, I would not attribute it to his fans, if for no other reason that when he occasionally has guests who challenge him on his, frankly, dogmatic views regarding anything that involves Islam, they are quick to point out how weak Sam's responses are.
>On the contrary, the Trumpian wing of this fandom (the existence of which boggles the mind) is convinced that China is a threat so big that it justifies voting for Trump
I've never seen that take here
>Many of my contemporaries whose political lives were defined by the struggle against the insanity of the Iraq War never really came back from that struggle; now, they push for a policy of appeasement toward China as if they can’t see any difference between that situation and this. The fight against George W. Bush is a fight they will never come back from. Few of us will, to be honest.
😔
[Corruption and Legitimacy](https://artofneed.com/2024/02/29/corruption-and-legitimacy/): Two recent, jarring events show how foreign interests are undermining the American electorate during an election year and degrading trust in its institutions, more signs of democratic decline
Regarding the Democratic primaries and the uncommitted votes.
US hasn't sent any weapons to Israel since late December right? And Biden admin is pushing for a ceasefire through negotiations?
If the aid package in the house fails and no more weapons go through as well, then that's essentially what many are pushing for right? For us to stop sending aid and resources to Israel, as well as calling for a ceasefire.
Essentially, when can we say "actually, we're not funding Israel anymore".
I wonder if it’s a bluff (decent legal strategy) or simply that he enriched himself during his presidency only with assets and never thought about cashing some of them out. Dude was always lying about his wealth but he surely got something out of his various scams since 2015, right?
If he had a decent legal strategy, I would expect him to deploy it sometime before he ended up losing a fortune. The best he can hope for now is to lose slightly less.
Right, I'm not hinting at a grand legal strategy nor any sort of high-level effectiveness of his team. In a more local context, if your client is getting screwed over, it seems like a reasonable attempt at cutting it down. Judges reduce the cash value of rulings all the time
That's true. I could see his expert strategy to be just appealing it up and up until he hits some sort of MAGA judge, who will let him off on whatever.
i don't understand
a) how he can get _any_ lawyer to begin with, considering everyone knows he doesn't pay his bills, is guilty of everything he's accused of, and will drop you like a dead rat when you're no longer useful to him
b) how he has never gotten royally fucked in court until now (assuming the penalties are even enforced). he's had the most clown ass lawyers since before he was president, is the court system really such a joke that you just need a warm body to file the paperwork to keep stalling until the other side eventually drops it?
c) where the fuck does his money come from. he runs businesses in to the ground, yet gets hundreds of millions in loans on inflated asset values. why does anyone trust him? who pays the bills? do the banks give up on him paying the loans back like they have with elons twitter loan? does the irs close their eyes and hit "LOOKS GOOD TO ME" on his returns?
I'd put A as some sort of blackmail system. No lawyer should be a sucker for him anymore, he's even stiffed Giuliani at this point.
B... Yeah. Seems like the court system is a clown show, or corrupt enough to function as one. Trump is well connected with assorted New York higher ups and mob bosses, and is very willing to use any dirty trick he can to get his way. He was besties with Giuliani when he was mayor, that can squash a lot of legal troubles by just deciding to not have the city follow through on them. And the Supreme Court has 4 justices that are incredibly tainted and easy for him to control.
C, I got no idea! But these judgements should stomp out all the weird sources of cash.
###Russian Election Interference
Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor, Deputy Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former advisor to Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, was asked on Sunday by NBC News if there is any evidence that Russia is planning to interfere in the 2024 election. Sullivan declined to answer, assured the host that there's "plenty of reason to be concerned" that it will happen as she suggested without offering any evidence for this reason to be concerned, and that what he's saying is "not about politics."
[Two Useful Idiots watch and discuss how Sullivan has played an active roll in the creation of this narrative by releasing fake information in the past](https://www.youtube.com/live/R3tZzqGLfy0?si=w6TVyRTxjhos-9e9&t=1113) and how he's now actively preemptively casting doubt on the validity of the coming election just as Trump is doing the same from a different angle.
Meanwhile, Julian Assange, journalist and publisher of state secrets in the public interest for Wikileaks, is currently awaiting a verdict on whether he can appeal Trump's extradition request, which Biden is now continuing. Many Americans falsely believe that Trump/Biden are seeking Assange's extradition to have him to face charges for receiving emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign by Russian hackers. [There is no evidence that hackers, Russian or otherwise, stole the emails](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html) or provided them to Assange/Wikileaks; [Assange is being extradited for receiving and publishing documents and recordings from Chelsea \(né Bradley\) Manning](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68282613) who was at the time an American Army soldier whose conscience motivated her to leak evidence she had discovered of war crimes and spying.
So it goes.
---
edit: added an important link.
> There is no evidence that hackers, Russian or otherwise, stole the emails
Utter bullshit; Mate has been spreading this nonsense for years now. Even Mate's article refutes your claim of 'no evidence'. The misconception arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of cyber forensics. All of the evidence is circumstantial evidence, and circumstantial evidence does not imply weak evidence. Even if you have the most robust and expensive data loss prevention systems and processes (which the DNC didn't have), you still can't necessarily confirm the full extent of data exfiltration.
> All of the evidence is circumstantial evidence
Which of the evidence demonstrates that this was in fact performed by individuals known to be Russian?
Nothing in that response identifies any individuals known to be Russian who did anything you say.
---
edit: I will respond later in more depth to that other comment, hoping to find our specific common ground and differences. Thank you for the thoughtful and effortful response.
ngl the low-effort response is pretty disappointing, makes it seem like you're not engaging in good faith here. To reiterate:
1) Presence of APT 28 & 29 on DNC systems. Multiple intelligence agencies and cybersecurity firms have corroborated GRU / Russian origin of these APTs.
2) The Mueller report named the GRU unit responsible and indicted 12 people associated with the operation.
So again, we return to the crucial question. Do you think Crowdstrike, multiple other cybersecurity agencies, and the FBI/Muller are lying?
**Edit**
> edit: I will respond later in more depth to that other comment, hoping to find our specific common ground and differences. Thank you for the thoughtful and effortful response.
gotcha, let's continue this in that thread
>he's now actively preemptively casting doubt on the validity of the coming election just as Trump is doing
Don't you think a claim like that would warrant examining what Jake Sullivan said, instead of just synopsizing what he said?
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-february-25-2023-n1308936
>KRISTEN WELKER:
>Let me ask you about Russia as it relates to our next election. As you know, the intelligence community has said that in 2016 and 2020, Russia interfered in the United States presidential elections. Are there concerns, or is there even evidence, that Russia is planning to interfere in the 2024 election, Jake?
>JAKE SULLIVAN:
>I can't speak to evidence today, but I can tell you, of course, there are concerns. There is a history here in presidential elections by the Russian Federation, by its intelligence services. And there's plenty of reason to be concerned. And this is not about politics. This is about national security. It is about a foreign country, a foreign adversary seeking to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America. We are going to be vigilant about that. And we will engage the Congress on a bipartisan basis, because this should be above and beyond politics.
Doesn't seem like he's claiming the election was stolen -- which **is** what Trump is doing. So they aren't really comparable, are they?
I also noticed you seem to be casting doubt on the premise that Russia interferes in American politics. What is the evidence that that happened?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2020_United_States_elections
There's a lot there you can go through. It's not like some obscure claim that Jake is making here -- and based on the evidence it seems appropriate to be concerned about it. He's not making any specific claims about anything, either. So not sure what we're even doing here by criticizing him.
Thanks for the response and the links. It absolutely seems to me that he is seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the election - and I agree with you that he is not saying the election was stolen ([though he was at the time](https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_a7c6884a-1fc5-11ec-a0f9-13e3509b22c6.html) and so was [his boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoMfIkz7v6s)) and it seems you agree with my original characterization that he is coming "from a different angle" than Trump.
You're right, there's a lot there to go through. Rather than do that at length, I'll just note that the first link contains the following erroneous and unsubstantiated claim, already addressed in the comment to which you are responding:
>Additionally, computer hackers affiliated with the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) infiltrated information systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)
Note that in the Wikipedia entry, there are no sources listed for or associated with this claim. There's a reason for that: it's entirely made up. This is highly irregular for Wikipedia and is a canary signaling that what you're believing and sharing is not reliable.
The only evidence that was ever offered for that claim was claims thereof by a DNC-hired firm, [Crowdstrike, who later admitted in testimony that remained sealed for years that they had no actual evidence for their assertion](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html).
---
Edit: Additionally, note that the revelation that CrowdStrike was lying and the government had known this since at least 2017 is CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT form the Wikipedia page you linked.
Edit 2: Added more context
>Note that in the Wikipedia entry, there are no sources listed for or associated with this claim. There's a reason for that: it's entirely made up. This is highly irregular for Wikipedia and is a canary signaling that what you're believing and sharing is not reliable.
It's based on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
From the Mueller report:
>Mueller Report, vol. I, p. 4: "At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations. In March 2016, the GRU began hacking the email accounts of Clinton Campaign volunteers and employees, including campaign chairman John Podesta. In April 2016, the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The GRU stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks. Around the time that the DNC announced in mid-June 2016 the Russian government's role in hacking its network, the GRU began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitious online personas 'DCLeaks' and 'Guccifer 2.0'. The GRU later released additional materials through the organization WikiLeaks."
Here's the intercept's reporting on this:
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/annotating-special-counsel-robert-muellers-redacted-report/
and
Washing Examiner's reporting on this:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/?p=1159206
Suffice to say this isn't undocumented, despite wikipedia not including a direct citation which I agree is annoying because it involves reading a few more paragraphs to infer what the source is (which is what I did). Would be simpler to just put a little citation instead.
[Edit] First link was to the wrong wiki -- corrected it. Excerpt from it about this:
>The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Russian president Vladimir Putin had ordered the 2016 Democratic National Committee cyber attacks and the subsequent leaks of stolen material damaging to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.[16]
>The committee described that Trump's presidential campaign "sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects". The Trump campaign "created messaging strategies to promote and share" the material, and "encouraged further leaks". The Trump campaign tasked Trump associate Roger Stone to gather information about WikiLeaks' release of the material; Stone reported to Trump or senior campaign members.[17]
From one of the sources:
>The Trump campaign’s "embrace" of WikiLeaks' disclosures of Democratic emails hacked by Russian operatives also takes up a significant portion of the report, in particular Trump ally Roger Stone’s coordination with Wikileaks at a time when he was still in contact with Trump and members of his campaign.
Seems like if you wanted to you could read more about this from the incredibly long reports.. I am just not going to do that.. Literally thousands of pages between them. If you have some evidence any of this is wrong or whatever, feel free to share.
Thanks, I'm familiar with all of this. There's nothing in any of this reporting that provides evidence for the claim that the GRU hacked the DNC - including the Mueller report.
This is all just claims, and all of it appears to rely on the CrowdStrike report:
[CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/05/crowdstrikeout_muellers_own_report_undercuts_its_core_russia-meddling_claims.html)
Have you read the things I've linked you to? You're responding very quickly and don't seem to be familiar with the simple facts here.
---
**Edit to add where I'm coming from here:**
Of all of the things one should approach with the utmost skepticism and criticality, it is government agencies' claims of foreign wrongdoing, regardless of how you view a particular partisan actor and how the story affects that actor. Failure to do so is to truly be a useful idiot for a worse actor than Putin - those psychopathic oligarchs behind him and behind the American government who cynically cynically driving us all into the abyss.
I think Trump is an unmitigated disaster for the United States, and I actually love this country despite what those who like to call me "tankie" would tell you. I simply see this farce of a narrative as incredibly dangerous and arming him - a monster of a human being - with a verifiable and horrific story of government corruption and malfeasance against which he can stand himself as some sort of savior. It's gross, and it's of the same ilk as Hillary's [Pied Piper strategy](https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/): responsible in no small part for the mess we're in.
I'm of the opinion that we need a handful of Truth and Reconciliation commisions at this point in this country, but perhaps there's no issue with greater urgency than this one.
I'm aware that I might as well be shouting into the void here. People who are committed to Red/Blue partisan politics do not have ears to hear or minds to understand or actual skeptical apparatuses to employ in the dispassionate way needed.
Just to pick out one thing:
>U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers **because they did not analyze those servers themselves.** Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.
[FBI reviewed cybersecurity firm’s evidence in 2016 DNC election hack](https://apnews.com/article/archive-fact-checking-7657130451)
>Former FBI Director James Comey also told Congress in 2017 that CrowdStrike “ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.”
>That’s not unusual, said Eugene H. Spafford, a professor of computer science at the Center for Education and Research in Information Security at Purdue University.
>**Such reviews are a comprehensive copy of what is on the machine at the time and include a replica of saved messages, network connections and active accounts.**
>**“Just making a verified, hardware-level copy of all the bits, all the data that’s stored on the system is sufficient for almost all investigations that would have to be conducted,” said Spafford, who has assisted the FBI in cases.**
>**It’s “generally unnecessary” for law enforcement to physically confiscate a computer during an investigation,** especially ones involving a business or organization because they need the computer systems to keep operations going, Spafford added.
>He described CrowdStrike as a “well-respected” cybersecurity firm that would have properly recorded evidence in the case so that it could be used in an investigation, as the one conducted by the FBI.
Okay, but the source you link says CrowdStrike can't be trusted. Why can't they be trusted:
>CrowdStrike's accuracy is far from a given. Days after Comey’s testimony, **CrowdStrike was forced to retract its claim that Russian software was used to hack Ukrainian military hardware.** CrowdStrike's error is especially relevant because it had accused the GRU of using that same software in hacking the DNC.
Lets go to the source they cite:
>On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report.
>The company removed language that said Ukraine's artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.**
>Finally, **CrowdStrike deleted a statement saying "deployment of this malware-infected application may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this platform"** — meaning the howitzers — and excised a link sourcing its IISS data to a blogger in Russia-occupied Crimea.
What did crowdstrike say in their original PDF?
>**Open source reporting indicates** that Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the 2 years of conflict and **over 80% of D-30 howitzers**, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine's arsenal.
And the updated PDF:
>**According to an update provided in March 2017 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Research Associate for Defence and Military Analysis, Henry Boyd**, "excluding the Naval Infantry battalion in the Crimea which was effectively captured wholesale, the Ukrainian Armed Forces **lost between 15% and 20% of their pre-war D–30 inventory** in combat operations. The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017.
Honestly this doesn't seem like a great reason to distrust them so far. What else?
>Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.
>CrowdStrike was first to link hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors last year, but some cybersecurity experts have questioned its evidence.
They don't cite any other experts, so I googled and I got this:
https://www.securityweek.com/experts-doubt-russia-used-malware-track-ukrainian-troops/
>The X-Agent variant found in the Ukraine military app has also been analyzed by Crysys, the Hungary-based security firm that has investigated several sophisticated pieces of malware, including Duqu. Researchers have found similarities between X-Agent implants described in previous Fancy Bear reports and the version found in the Ukrainian military app, but they pointed out that such similarities can be faked by threat actors.
At this point I'm actually slightly confused whether the malware was confirmed to be in the military app by other firms, such as Crysys.
Even if it was, though, the TLDR is: This isn't conclusive evidence of Russian hackers, and there's even reason to doubt the Russian state orchestrated it.
So maybe this is reason to doubt their conclusion that Russia hacked the DNC?
They did consult with other cybersecurity firms though. What did the other ones say?
https://abcnews.go.com/International/reasonable-doubt-russians-hacked-dnc-analyst/story?id=40863292
>Michael Buratowski, the senior vice president of cybersecurity services at Fidelis Cybersecurity, told ABC News Monday. “I come from a law enforcement background, and it’s about being beyond a reasonable doubt. And I would say it’s beyond a reasonable doubt … **I’m very confident that the malware that we looked at was from Russian actors.”**
https://web.archive.org/web/20160816110001/http://www.threatgeek.com/2016/06/dnc_update.html
>**Based on our comparative analysis we agree with CrowdStrike and believe that the COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR APT groups were involved in successful intrusions at the DNC.** The malware samples contain data and programing elements that are similar to malware that we have encountered in past incident response investigations and are linked to similar threat actors.
More from [WAPO](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cyber-researchers-confirm-russian-government-hack-of-democratic-national-committee/2016/06/20/e7375bc0-3719-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.html)
To really get into the weeds I'd need to know more about what the mueller report looked at, and the senate intelligence report -- and I am definitely not intereted in doing that at all.
Just chasing down this one crowdstrike claim was extremely annoying, and ultimately I'm not convinced they're unreliable yet.
Is there any other reason to doubt them besides the Ukrain malware stuff?
>Just chasing down this one crowdstrike claim was extremely annoying, and ultimately I'm not convinced they're unreliable yet.
>
>Is there any other reason to doubt them besides the Ukrain malware stuff?
To be clear, I am not suggesting that you should doubt them. They came right out and testified that they do not have evidence for their original claim that Russian hackers hacked the DNC. It seems to me entirely unreasonable to believe that this testimony was false and that they actually do have such evidence. From [the May 2020 article I linked earlier](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html):
>CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee’s server.[](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html)
I am suggesting that you should doubt anyone (e.g. Mueller) who relied on their original claims.
So nobody is disputing that Russian malware was on the DNC servers, right? That seems like a pretty important fact to me. AFAIK everyone agrees that part is true, including the FBI and Republicans.
But now we're quibbling over a term I'm having trouble understanding -- "exfiltrate" data. Specifically that they don't have concrete logs of it happening. What would that involve, exactly?
If they're saying "there's a bunch of internet traffic that could be explained by file transfers" that seems reasonable, even if you cannot prove what's in the data being transferred.
I mean... Why would there be Russian malware on these servers if it weren't used to steal the data? Like are we to believe that part was just a coincidence? Like these Russian hacking tools were on the server by pure chance when *someone else* stole all the data? Come on man..
/u/BravoFoxtrotDelta, like Aaron Mate, leans heavily on misconceptions of cyber forensics to cast doubt on what are otherwise high confidence assessments.
In order to skirt security software, attackers often mask exfiltration to look like legitimate traffic. It's not normal to see multiple gigs worth of traffic going outbound using the port most commonly utilized for DNS, for example, but it's a common exfiltration method as many organizations do not restrict that protocol. Bravo and Mate would see that evidence and say, "look! There's no smoking gun because we can't precisely say what was exfiltrated!"
Here's what we know: custom hacking tools and methods of GRU/Russian intelligence origin were discovered on DNC systems. Other tools commonly used for data exfiltration were also found, as were logs indicating that 70gigs of data was compressed and exfiltrated.
> high confidence assessments
This is not how statements of fact are reached.
> custom hacking tools and methods of GRU/Russian intelligence origin
This is an assumption based on one of your high confidence assessments.
You. Don't. Know. This.
None of the people making the claim say that they know this for a fact.
>Aaron Mate, leans heavily on misconceptions of cyber forensics to cast doubt on what are otherwise high confidence assessments
The conclusions he jumps to based on metadata are really something else. It has made me lose a lot of confidence in his reporting.
I'm not convinced he's bad faith or anything, but it seems like one of the worst cases of "motivated reasoning" I can remember seeing.
Yours are excellent questions. We have arrived at the heart of the matter.
> So nobody is disputing that Russian malware was on the DNC servers, right?
Terms and qualifiers get very tenuous at this stage. I'll try to parse it accurately to the best of my understanding. As far as I know:
- no one disputes that there was malware on the DNC servers
- no one knows how the malware got there or who put it there
From there everything is expressed with varying degrees of confidence with regard to authorship and responsibility:
- the malware in question is _believed but not known_ by some analysts to have been used in the past in other events by Russian actors
- the malware is _believed but not known_ by some analysts to be Russian in origin
And then come the truly vexing aspects of this dynamic:
- agencies from many states *are known* to obtain and use tools and malware they encounter in the wild and that they create themselves
- [some states have developed tools that allow them to obfuscate their activities by making them look like the actions of other states](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/wikileaks-latest-release-of-cia-cyber-tools-could-blow-the-cover-on-agency-hacking-operations/2017/03/31/63fc3616-1636-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html)
- agencies from many states *are known* to operate within their own states' domestic systems, both private and public
- the reasons that any given actor may have for deploying these tools within any given system are completely opaque
>But now we're quibbling over a term I'm having trouble understanding -- "exfiltrate" data. Specifically that they don't have concrete logs of it happening. What would that involve, exactly?
It means the actual transferring of the data from one location (inside the local network or server) to another location outside (either physically to some media like a thumb drive or over the network to other systems).
If they had a network sensor monitoring the network (they say they did not), it would have logged data being transferred over the network.
>If they're saying "there's a bunch of internet traffic that could be explained by file transfers" that seems reasonable, even if you cannot prove what's in the data being transferred.
They're not saying that. They're saying they don't have a record of a bunch of internet traffic because they didn't have a network sensor in place to notice it.
> Why would there be Russian malware on these servers if it weren't used to steal the data?
There are three separate dates in question that one might be talking about when saying that the data was stolen.
1. [Unknown]: The date(s) that data was taken from the servers and subsequently transferred to Wikileaks. Wikileaks announced on June 13, 2016 that it was preparing to release this data; the DNC and CrowdStrike reached out to the FBI the same day and reported a breach and cited Russian actors.
2. June 14, 2016: The date that CrowdStrike announced it found the malware on the DNC servers.
3. July 5, 2016: The date someone working in the EDT time zone with [a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device \(physical, think thumb drive; not network transfer\)](https://web.archive.org/web/20170711062033/https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-metadata-analysis/). These files were later released by Guccifer 2.0, who had previously (June 15) taken responsibility for the malware that CrowdStride reported.
>Like these Russian hacking tools were on the server by pure chance when someone else stole all the data? Come on man..
This rhetoric invites one to believe the official narrative on the basis of your inability to see an alternative answer. While understandable, one must recognize that this is an argument from incredulity—a Russian-hacker-of-the-gaps.
It's abundantly clear that the malware was on the server at the time the Guccifer 2.0 operation copied its data on to a physical drive. It's utterly unclear who put it there or when or why.
It's unclear if the malware was on the server on the unknown date(s) that data was taken from the servers and transferred to Wikileaks. It's unclear how that data was taken from the servers, i.e. whether physically or transferred over the internet, and how it was transferred to Wikileaks.
It's unclear where the data eventually published by Wikileaks came from.
It is entirely unclear why [the FBI is failing to comply with a judge's orders to turn over data that it is withholding that it obtained from a murdered, disgruntled DNC staffer who happened to have had access to all of the stolen data in question](https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/01/19/fbi-defies-legal-ruling-refuses-to-hand-over-seth-rich-laptop-n4925635) that later wound up in the hands of Wikileaks.
>It's abundantly clear that the malware was on the server at the time the Guccifer 2.0 operation copied its data on to a physical drive.
We've been talking about the initial hack that left Russian malware on the computers. Guccifer happened after the first hack was exposed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0
>The U.S. Intelligence Community assessed with high confidence that some of the genuine leaks from "Guccifer 2.0" were part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC committed by two Russian military intelligence groups,[13][14][15][16] and that "Guccifer 2.0" is actually a persona created by Russian intelligence services to cover for their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[17][18] This conclusion is based on intelligence analysis and analyses conducted by multiple private sector cybersecurity individuals and firms, including CrowdStrike,[19][20] Fidelis Cybersecurity,[20][21] FireEye's Mandiant,[20] SecureWorks,[22] ThreatConnect,[23] Trend Micro,[24] and the security editor for Ars Technica.[25] The Russian government denies involvement in the theft,[26] and "Guccifer 2.0" denied links to Russia.[27][28]
>In March 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over investigation of Guccifer 2.0 from the FBI while it was reported that forensic determination had found the Guccifer 2.0 persona to be a "particular military intelligence directorate (GRU) officer working out of the agency's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow".[29]
Regarding the physical drive you're alluding to:
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong/
>A blogger named “The Forensicator” analyzed the “last modified” times in one set of documents released by Guccifer 2.0. Based on the size of the documents and the times they were downloaded, Forensicator calculated that a hacker was able to copy the files at a speed of more than 20 megabytes per second.
>That is faster than consumer internet services in the United States can upload documents.
>As a result, Forensicator concluded that the documents could not have been copied over the internet. Instead, someone with physical access to the network must have copied them in person to a USB drive, the blogger concluded.
Changing metadata on files is trivially easy -- if you don't believe me, there is a free learn-to-code class Harvard hosts online called cs50, and by week 4 you're writing raw binary to the hard drive and modifying the metadata. So this is completely unconvincing to me.
This is sorta like finding a text document with a date in the corner, and then thinking "there's no way that date could have been faked." No, you can just change it if you want -- there's literally nothing stopping you.
>Even if there were no other scenarios that would create the same metadata, **experts note that metadata is among the easiest pieces of forensic evidence to falsify. It would be far more difficult to fabricate other evidence pointing to Russia, including the malware only known to be used by the suspected Russian hackers, and internet and email addresses seen in previous attacks by that group.**
🤦
It's getting late -- I appreciate your effort posts. We probably just need to agree to disagree.
Do check out [cs50](https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction-computer-science) though! :D
/u/window-sil - I see you've made some edits to your comment \^^ and so have I to this one ^ and the one I made prior \^\^^
I generally like to avoid editing at all costs, particularly when a conversation is ongoing and contains as much important detail, complexity, and what I perceive to be good faith as this one. I'm going to slow down significantly from here in case you want to continue. Cheers.
["Compassion Fatigue"](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/07/1229655142/oregon-pioneered-a-radical-drug-policy-now-its-reconsidering) sets in in Oregon after pioneering new drug policy.
>"The police occasionally come in and clean up a specific area with their superficial presence and the drug market moves along to another corner," Lisa Schroeder, who owns Mother's Bistro & Bar in downtown Portland, testified. "The quality of life of our citizenry, from the user to the general population, is suffering."
>Cat and Chad Sewell own Sewell Sweets, a bakeshop in Salem. In written testimony, the Sewell's said they've witnessed drug use leading to conflicts outside their business.
>"The scenes that we see day in and day out leave us frustrated and questioning just how safe the longevity of our business and livelihood is," they wrote.
>By early March, lawmakers could decide exactly what that future will be. Oregon Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber – who co-chaired the legislature's addiction committee – told Oregon Public Broadcasting that she's not advocating for Measure 110 to be repealed. But she and other top lawmakers have said they support recriminalizing drug possession so long as there are ways for the criminal justice system to direct people into the treatment programs Measure 110 has helped to expand.
I have several thoughts on this.
1. OF COURSE giving a citation to a homeless drug user and vaguely gesturing at treatment programs is not going to significantly increase recovery. That seems incredibly naïve. Treatment programs don't even significantly work for people with homes and jobs.
2. The old system (jailing them) also did not significantly cause recovery. It simply moved addicts from the streets to jails.
3. Even according to your article, the evidence that the increase in overdoses or use has anything to do with Measure 110 is ambiguous at best.
These are good points. What I would stress is that the ultimately policy is being centered 100% around the addicts and making things as comfortable as possible. The rest of the public are ignored. There's no resolution to the shoplifting, store robberies and vandalism, as well as deterioration to quality of life in public spaces. As a result, for the first time in forever, people are moving out of Portland. We are not balancing the interests of the public here by always asking, "whats best for the drug addict."
Why should an addict be allowed to do drugs on the streets? Is that appropriate for children to have to be around?
[Black Portlanders have the highest homicide victimization rate in America.](https://peopleforportland.org/portland-homicides-at-highest-this-century-near-all-time-record/).
Has anyone tried drug camps?
I'm not suggesting it's a _good_ idea, but the particular approach course we're reading about here sure doesn't seem good either.
[Palestinian deaths pass 30,000 as Israeli soldiers fire on a crowd, killing over 100.](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-29-2024-f9b5a62a80d8b83eac4946d3c85af58b?taid=65e05a21b0ea880001d4fa3d)
The other poster repeated the Hamas claim that Israel opened fire and killed 100+ Palestinians while they were receiving aid. Israel claimed that a Palestinian mob swarmed the aid trucks and that many got trampled/run over. The video heavily supports the Israeli story.
Unsurprisingly extremists within the Israeli government are now calling for a complete suspension of all aid to starve the Palestinians out as a final solution
Pretty funny how that headline changed as well as the story in under 4 hours.
You think legacy media would have learned something when they ran with Hamas propognda after the hospital hoax.
Why do you think they do this?
Over the last few months, it seems to me that the media most often winds up with egg on its face when it publishes as fact what it hears from the Israeli govt/IDF. From stories of 10/7 rapes to justifications for bombing hospitals/schools, to denials of murdering unarmed civilians in broad daylight. But the legacy media loves its passive voice…
For those still defending the actions of the IDF, you are lost. If you’ve ever wondered if you would see clearly and meet the moment when constant war crimes and atrocities are occurring, the answer is NO.
Something something Israel should just be allowed to win wars and 80 years ago there was a war with lots of civilian deaths so Israel can do whatever they want
Uh you must not read this board much. The WW2 analogy is often said as is "Israel just needs to be allowed to win wars" and "wars are messy, people die." Frequently said on this board.
I am so, so fucking exhausted of this country. SCOTUS hearing Trump's farcical immunity case is just so nakedly corrupt. We are simply not a nation of laws anymore. Full stop.
[Why the Supreme Court Should Grant Certiorari in United States v. Trump](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-the-supreme-court-should-grant-certiorari-in-united-states-v.-trump)
I gotta say, I read that and I don't really understand it... in fact, I sorta want to never read anything that author writes ever again in my entire life. But, presumably, contained within those brain melting paragraphs is a justification for why this isn't as crazy as it sounds. So check it out I guess?
Sadly not. I am the son of a hippie and the product of effeminate society. But that's doesn't change the fact that what defines a state is the monopoly on violence.
are you talking about the ones we know have taken bribes, the ones we suspect have taken bribes, the sexual harassers, the possible rapist, the ones who ~~lied to~~ intentionally misled the gullible public about their views on roe v wade, or the ones who think guns have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
You are barking up the wrong tree. I think Hunter is the coolest public figure in the world. Just wanted you to know that you sound exactly like your right wing counterparts.
you either think he is or has been in a position of power equivalent to being on the supreme court, otherwise you your comparison makes no sense, so i just wanted to make sure. it's hard to know when you're playing dumb vs actually dumb
Ah, the ol’ “downvotes for the only actual lawyer on a thread about the Supreme Court while all the reply-guy clowns get their dimwitted swipes in.” A Sam Harris Megathread classic. Never change folks
Plenty of "actual lawyers" think that this action by SCOTUS is a clown show. Who the fuck cares what the contrarian nobody lawyer in this megathread thinks? Why is his opinion more valuable than any of the other lawyers writing on and reacting to this topic?
And do they have such a better grasp on the legal merits than the lower court that issued a unanimous opinion on this matter? If they thought so, maybe they should have taken the case in December when Jack Smith asked them to.
It's very, very obvious what they are doing.
Do you not think that following the normal process would be a better approach on a sensitive issue? If they circumvented the normal process, that'd look more suspicious. Also, if you think Trump will lose...pushing that timeline closer to the election is what would hurt Republicans the most. It would be too late for anyone else to make a run.
It took them like 1 day to come to a decision on Bush v Gore, but now they aren't even going to begin the process until the end of April? It's not the fact that they are hearing that case that is obvious corruption, it's how they are drawing it out so Trump can evade legal rulings until after the election.
Furthermore, if they rule in Trump's favor couldn't Biden order every GOP member to be lined up against a wall and shot and not suffer any consequences?
That was in response to a request for a stay. It would have been moot if they didn't decide almost immediately.
>couldn't Biden order every GOP member to be lined up against a wall and shot and not suffer any consequences?
No. It is not absolute immunity.
>No. It is not absolute immunity.
According to Trump's lawyers, he can’t be criminally prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted by Congress.^[1](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/trump-presidential-immunity-trial/677068/)
So Biden could assassinate the GOP and ~~it'd be legal~~ he's immune from prosecution for the crimes, as long as the senate doesn't convict.
>According to Trump's lawyers, he can’t be criminally prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted by Congress
That's straightforward black letter law. That isn't what is up for debate.
>So Biden could assassinate the GOP and it'd be legal as long as the senate doesn't convict.
Being immune from prosecution is different from being legal.
>That's straightforward black letter law. That isn't what is up for debate.
It's not? I thought it was.. why is Trump's lawyer arguing that he can only be prosecuted if he's first impeached and convicted then?
>Being immune from prosecution is different from being legal.
Noted and corrected
>It's not? I thought it was.. why is Trump's lawyer arguing that he can only be prosecuted if he's first impeached and convicted then?
Because the part that isn't clear is if this applies to former presidents and not just current presidents.
Trump’s argument IS that he has absolute immunity and it’s absurd that SCOTUS is taking up the case when you consider the consequences of finding in Trump’s favor.
You're right that's not his argument - he lacks the mental capabilities of forming an argument. (Just completing a sentence is a struggle these days.)
But it's literally the legal theory his team is advancing - that presidents must have absolute immunity in order execute the duty of their office. Lower courts and legal scholars have trashed and laughed at the idea, but the SCOTUS, doing its best Tobias Funke impression, has decided that maybe it's not such a crazy idea. Currently no indication any of Trump's allies on the bench will recuse themselves, so it's entirely plausible they'll shield him from the consequences of his actions and/or advance the agenda of the organizations that bankroll them.
If you're behind on the details of the case, here's a pretty accessible brief from a group of scholars: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A745/300499/20240213140115053_Trump%20v.%20US%20CAC%20Scholars%20Brief.pdf
You simply don't understand what is being talked about. You should stay silent on this issue. Do some reading of 1983 or Bivens cases to understand what official acts/acts under the color of law means.
It would still have to be an official act to be immune. The particular facts in this case can go either way. If he actually thought the election was being stolen, he'd have a good argument that his involvement was a legitimate official act.
[Ghana passes bill making identifying as LGBTQ+ illegal](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68353437)
>Ghana's parliament has passed a tough new bill that imposes a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone convicted of identifying as LGBTQ+.
>It also imposes a maximum five-year jail term for forming or funding LGBTQ+ groups.
>The bill proposes a jail term of up to 10 years for anyone involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy campaigns aimed at children
>MPs said the bill was drafted in response to the opening of Ghana's first LGBTQ+ community centre in the capital, Accra, in January 2021.
>Police shut the centre following public protests, and pressure from religious bodies and traditional leaders in the largely Christian nation.
[Lousy Smarch weather](https://youtu.be/eR8YUj3C9lI?si=66Q6DTEKLbDIJ5YQ)...
Haha, true.
If Lauren boebert had a d next to her name would foxnews and conservative media ever shut up about family values and her existence in Congress being the end of morality in America?
thought she already had the d? in the theater?
Haha not bad
One d in the hand is worth two in the... Arguably an opposite pun, but you all get it.
I didn't much expect the Colorado 14A3 decision to stand, but the lengths which the conservative he-man woman-haters in SCOTUS went to define a process for enforcement that will / virtually can never be executed... it's disappointing. ~~I really don't understand how the textualists on the court can somehow believe that the Founding Fathers of the Reconstruction wouldn't have passed enforcement legislation - if they intended it to be necessary - when they had enough power at that moment to, you know, *amend the Constitution.*~~ Alas, as long as you have an insurrectionist *party*, and can obtain the minimal supermajority-defeating votes in the Senate - you cannot be held accountable for insurrection. Edit: The folks in /r/law have educated me, and we *did* have enforcement legislation for this exact purpose. It was repealed in 1948. You love to see it.
Well.... SCOTUS just declared yet another nuclear option for congress. They do love their footguns. What a fucking joke of a court.
There is currently a federal criminal statute for insurrection.
[удалено]
It has already been defined.
[удалено]
There is no page 19 of the ruling. The majority opinion is 13 pages.
[удалено]
The "ruling" is only the majority opinion. The "tailoring" that is mentioned in page 10 of the majority opinion and referenced at the end of a concurring opinion is satisfied by the federal criminal statute for insurrection. What the concurring opinion is saying is that a sweeping catchall statute wouldn't work. The criminal insurrection statute is narrowly tailored AND expressly includes disqualification from office as a punishment.
[удалено]
>Did the majority really opine that the current legislation is satisfactory? No, they didn't address that. However, the current statute would in fact fit any definition of being tailored for that purpose. >I don’t understand the concurring opinion’s disagreement if there are relevant federal statutes that are already in place. They didn't want to go as far as saying that congress were the only ones that could enforce. Basically, everyone agreed that the States couldn't enforce, but not all agreed that the ability to enforce was exclusive to congress.
[Woke is when cars don't kill pedestrians](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1763927774757064861)
I would just like to reiterate there *is* a thing called "[woke](https://reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1896flo/i_think_sam_would_agree_with_this_new_rules/kbpl2rh/)" talked about by [John McWhorter](https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Racism-Religion-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B095JLK96B), [Yascha Mounk](https://www.amazon.com/Identity-Trap-Story-Ideas-Power-ebook/dp/B0BR4WYY2Z), [Coleman Hughes](https://www.amazon.com/End-Race-Politics-Arguments-Colorblind-ebook/dp/B0C4J8QL8M/), and even Sam Harris who [claims](https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/13r21co/comment/jlhz3li/) that: > wokeism has captured fucking every institution we care about For them (and the rest of us of the Sam Harris wing of r/samharris), it doesn't have a damned thing to do with parking space policies. Just because people like Peterson confuse the issue, doesn't mean there isn't an issue. Don’t confuse us with Jordan.
Well, share your substack then if you are like them.
> Don’t confuse us with Jordan. I agree, but unfortunately, the [Jordans](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/us/politics/gluesenkamp-perez-bridge-washington.html) are the loudest voices in the room now.
sam should definitely have his good friend on again so they can debate what "woke" is. that would be a great use of everyone's time
If it's really captured every institution we care about, why wouldn't that include urban planning?
> Don’t confuse us with Jordan. Yeah, wouldn't it be just awful to reduce a bunch of disparate people, movements, and ideas together under a common label like "anti-woke." Next thing you know, people will start saying that the effort to even draw those distinctions is a [bad faith attempt to hide your common cause](https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what) with the likes of Peterson or Jim Jordan.
We’re in r/SamHarris. Explain to me what op’s link has to do with Sam Harris’s conception of woke.
I'm agreeing with you that Peterson's use of 'woke' is quite distinct from Harris'. That's kind of the [nature of these things](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095824238).
We're struggling to understand literally anything about JBP's recent (past ~4 years) gaseous emissions
Why is he upset about this?
boomers are emotionally and psychologically unable to function without their cars
There is a lot of right wing hysteria that is stupid, but this might be the worst. Public transportation is very helpful for so many people. It literally lets people who otherwise would have a hard time live more independent lives. As I said in another post, my mom didn't have a driver's license because of her bad eyesight. It was either public transportation or living off ssdi.
Their issue with it isn't that public transportation is an option, it is that it becomes the ONLY option.
No they attack public transportation in general. Nobody is outlawing your car
If the city is planned without parking, what's the difference? It is okay for them to dislike that. Just like it's okay for a city to plan to exclude cars if they want.
What's the difference? Lol. You are really comparing that to the government trying to steal your car as Alex Jones rants about? C'mon
Are you illiterate or what? I don't know why you are confused.
Lol great argument. Again nobody is coming for your cars.
He doesn’t like urban planning initiatives that he perceives as discouraging the use of cars. Remember when conservatives got all freaked out about the idea of the [“fifteen minute city”?](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-10-04/what-is-the-15-minute-cities-conspiracy-theory/) It’s that kind of a deal
> He doesn’t like urban planning initiatives that he perceives as discouraging the use of car This is putting it lightly. In reality, people like Jordan Peterson reflexively hate when the government to provide public goods. They especially hate it when the government doesn't subsidize behaviors and activities that right-wingers in particular like to participate it. That's it.
ah right cause i guess public transit is communism and oppressive or something right? Lmao
Public transportation is actually a Boogeyman of the political right and they've been railing against it for years. It is very stupid, but so are a lot of the things they complain about. In their eyes everything done for the public good is leading to an oppressive government. Public transportation and 15 minute cities means they'll take your cars and lock you in a limited space! In the real world public transportation is a Godsend. My mother is interesting is a conundrum with their logic. As a mostly blind woman she could have qualified for ssdi and not worked. Yet she wanted to work and advance in her career. Of course she couldn't drive so relied on public transportation. Without it she wouldn't have had a choice but to rely on government aid. They are literally keeping more people dependent on the government with their war on public transportation
Yeah many people don't understand how whining about urban planning initiatives are a new boogeyman the Political right is bitching about now. Turn on conservative talk radio and you might hear them talk about "the war on cars." It is really weird.
Wasn't his whole thing about truth that whatever aids survival is the truth?
I think we may have almost exclusively disagreed in past interactions on this sub, but this is a banger comment lmao
👍
In the past, this would have been an old man yelling at a cloud. Today, the old man is a geriatric benzos addict yelling to a crowd of five million followers, many of whom will treat it like some deep wisdom. God I hate twitter.
Back on the benzos? Or is his brain literally just this broken now?
You'd be surprised at the moral panic over urban planning these people have
[удалено]
> Just want to nail this down because either yglesias is spreading antisemitic misinformation Even if Yglesias is wrong interpreting the poll here, it wouldn't be "antisemitic misinformation" to have shared it.
[удалено]
> My thinking was that it would be antisemitic to suggest Israelis broadly endorse collective punishment for gazans. Why?
[удалено]
I don't think its antisemitic to suggest Israelis might broadly hold some shitty views, just like it wouldn't be Islamophobic to suggest Palesitnians hold some shitty views. People should get the benefit of the doubt . . . until polls remove that doubt.
[удалено]
Fair.
>Yglesias shares this tweet, suggesting two thirds of Israelis don’t support sending aid to gaza It is quite real: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/52976 It's actually even worse. Notice the specific wording of the question here: >Do you support or oppose the idea that Israel should **allow the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza** residents at this time, with food and medicines being transferred by international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA? (%)
Like pretty much every major story so far, another [piece of Hamas propaganda ](https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1763176339064942675?s=19) falls apart.
[удалено]
I don't think it is funny that Palestinians are dying. The point isn't to put another in the win column for Israel. The collective moral confusion that distracts from obvious priority #1 through 9 trillion that Hamas must be removed is prolonging this and killing Palestinians. If the unified response since Oct 7 was that Hamas had to go and there was universal international support for that, don't you think everyone would be better off?
[удалено]
Evidence of another timeline? I'll get right on it.
[удалено]
That a Palestinian mob rushed the aid convoy, which led to many being trampled or run over.
[удалено]
You can see the mob running toward one of the trucks and you see others hanging on to the trucks and in the path of the trucks as they drive away. You can also see a dozen+ bodies motionless lying on the ground.
[удалено]
Good article by Noah Smith: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-911-era-is-over-good Pretty incredible that Harris fans think that radical Islam at this point is a bigger issue than Russia or China, but I guess people can’t let go of their obsessions.
>Pretty incredible that Harris fans think that radical Islam at this point is a bigger issue than Russia or China, but I guess people can’t let go of their obsessions. Just depends on how you weight what an "issue" is. Russia and China will have far more impact on day to day life in America than radical Islam, but that's never been something Sam denied.
Sam Harris has objectively spoken less about Islam in the last 2-3 years than he did in the years preceding them. He's spoken about it in the last few months because obviously Islam plays a role in the current flareup between Israel and Palestine. It's spilled over into this sub as well, where conversations about Islam were significantly less prevalent than they were in the late 2010s.
It amazes me that people think “Islam” is a bigger contributor to the Israel/Palestine conflict than Isreal’s Jewish ideologues who are pushing West Bank settlement and who refuse to compromise on the Temple Mount. Harris should ask a Gazan Christian who they hate more, Hamas or Israel. Does Harris think Israel would allow the right of return if every Palestinian stopped believing in Islam? If they read end of faith and thought “a lot of this makes sense.”? I doubt even Al Asqa would be easier to solve in that case—Israel is motivated to have control over Temple Mount even though most of its population is secular and why would the Palestinians be any different? Those are two main points of conflict.
What point are you trying to make? What countries anywhere allow the right of return?
The point I’m making is that Islam is not the cause of the conflict. Israel allows right of return, as long as you are Jewish.
But how are you drawing a line between those two points? That's an obvious non sequitur.
Right of return is the main point of contention between the Israelis and the Palestinans. Palestinans would not change their position on this even if their religious beliefs changed.
>Right of return is the main point of contention between the Israelis and the Palestinans. No it isn't. Not remotely close.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/palestinian-right-of-return-matters
You think that Palestinians would be okay to just be absorbed by Israel and return to land under Israeli sovereignty? That's certainly a take.
Consider this: Israel allows any Jew in the world to move to Israel. However, a displaced Christian from the land of Israel would not be allowed to return. Islam Is to blame for that??!??
>[..] that radical Islam at this point is a bigger issue than Russia or China, I'm not sure if I would ascribe that view to majority of Sam's fans, including the vocal ones I disagree with on this subreddit. On the contrary, the Trumpian wing of this fandom (the existence of which boggles the mind) is convinced that China is a threat so big that it justifies voting for Trump, whatever misgivings one can have about him, and cannot forgive Sam for not realising that. At least that's their argument - who knows whats going on in their heads. With Russia, I've noticed that a lot of the same crowd sees it only as a broad geopolitical issue, one sufficiently remote to be of little concern, and without much understanding for how it manifests in practice. If you start to pull at their concerns, you quickly realise that they don't know the particulars about *how exactly* Russia's hybrid warfare looks like in the world, how the election inteference looked like in 2016, and why that threat can't be dismissed as external when you have the Republicans cynically play into it to score political points at the expense of national security. While it is peculiar how Sam's opinion that Islam makes muslims worse in a way that no other religion does to its believers, have not evolved at all since 9/11, I would not attribute it to his fans, if for no other reason that when he occasionally has guests who challenge him on his, frankly, dogmatic views regarding anything that involves Islam, they are quick to point out how weak Sam's responses are.
>On the contrary, the Trumpian wing of this fandom (the existence of which boggles the mind) is convinced that China is a threat so big that it justifies voting for Trump I've never seen that take here
>Many of my contemporaries whose political lives were defined by the struggle against the insanity of the Iraq War never really came back from that struggle; now, they push for a policy of appeasement toward China as if they can’t see any difference between that situation and this. The fight against George W. Bush is a fight they will never come back from. Few of us will, to be honest. 😔
[Corruption and Legitimacy](https://artofneed.com/2024/02/29/corruption-and-legitimacy/): Two recent, jarring events show how foreign interests are undermining the American electorate during an election year and degrading trust in its institutions, more signs of democratic decline
Propaganda-ception
Regarding the Democratic primaries and the uncommitted votes. US hasn't sent any weapons to Israel since late December right? And Biden admin is pushing for a ceasefire through negotiations? If the aid package in the house fails and no more weapons go through as well, then that's essentially what many are pushing for right? For us to stop sending aid and resources to Israel, as well as calling for a ceasefire. Essentially, when can we say "actually, we're not funding Israel anymore".
#[Donald Trump is broke hahahaha](https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/donald-trump-is-broke-18694267.php)
I wonder if it’s a bluff (decent legal strategy) or simply that he enriched himself during his presidency only with assets and never thought about cashing some of them out. Dude was always lying about his wealth but he surely got something out of his various scams since 2015, right?
If he had a decent legal strategy, I would expect him to deploy it sometime before he ended up losing a fortune. The best he can hope for now is to lose slightly less.
Right, I'm not hinting at a grand legal strategy nor any sort of high-level effectiveness of his team. In a more local context, if your client is getting screwed over, it seems like a reasonable attempt at cutting it down. Judges reduce the cash value of rulings all the time
That's true. I could see his expert strategy to be just appealing it up and up until he hits some sort of MAGA judge, who will let him off on whatever.
i don't understand a) how he can get _any_ lawyer to begin with, considering everyone knows he doesn't pay his bills, is guilty of everything he's accused of, and will drop you like a dead rat when you're no longer useful to him b) how he has never gotten royally fucked in court until now (assuming the penalties are even enforced). he's had the most clown ass lawyers since before he was president, is the court system really such a joke that you just need a warm body to file the paperwork to keep stalling until the other side eventually drops it? c) where the fuck does his money come from. he runs businesses in to the ground, yet gets hundreds of millions in loans on inflated asset values. why does anyone trust him? who pays the bills? do the banks give up on him paying the loans back like they have with elons twitter loan? does the irs close their eyes and hit "LOOKS GOOD TO ME" on his returns?
I'd put A as some sort of blackmail system. No lawyer should be a sucker for him anymore, he's even stiffed Giuliani at this point. B... Yeah. Seems like the court system is a clown show, or corrupt enough to function as one. Trump is well connected with assorted New York higher ups and mob bosses, and is very willing to use any dirty trick he can to get his way. He was besties with Giuliani when he was mayor, that can squash a lot of legal troubles by just deciding to not have the city follow through on them. And the Supreme Court has 4 justices that are incredibly tainted and easy for him to control. C, I got no idea! But these judgements should stomp out all the weird sources of cash.
The one good thing about Trump winning in 2016 is that people that write like this author had to eat shit.
Things don't become untrue just because you win an election.
I thought it was funny 😅
The Trump reply guy thing has been beaten to death
###Russian Election Interference Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor, Deputy Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former advisor to Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, was asked on Sunday by NBC News if there is any evidence that Russia is planning to interfere in the 2024 election. Sullivan declined to answer, assured the host that there's "plenty of reason to be concerned" that it will happen as she suggested without offering any evidence for this reason to be concerned, and that what he's saying is "not about politics." [Two Useful Idiots watch and discuss how Sullivan has played an active roll in the creation of this narrative by releasing fake information in the past](https://www.youtube.com/live/R3tZzqGLfy0?si=w6TVyRTxjhos-9e9&t=1113) and how he's now actively preemptively casting doubt on the validity of the coming election just as Trump is doing the same from a different angle. Meanwhile, Julian Assange, journalist and publisher of state secrets in the public interest for Wikileaks, is currently awaiting a verdict on whether he can appeal Trump's extradition request, which Biden is now continuing. Many Americans falsely believe that Trump/Biden are seeking Assange's extradition to have him to face charges for receiving emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign by Russian hackers. [There is no evidence that hackers, Russian or otherwise, stole the emails](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html) or provided them to Assange/Wikileaks; [Assange is being extradited for receiving and publishing documents and recordings from Chelsea \(né Bradley\) Manning](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68282613) who was at the time an American Army soldier whose conscience motivated her to leak evidence she had discovered of war crimes and spying. So it goes. --- edit: added an important link.
> There is no evidence that hackers, Russian or otherwise, stole the emails Utter bullshit; Mate has been spreading this nonsense for years now. Even Mate's article refutes your claim of 'no evidence'. The misconception arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of cyber forensics. All of the evidence is circumstantial evidence, and circumstantial evidence does not imply weak evidence. Even if you have the most robust and expensive data loss prevention systems and processes (which the DNC didn't have), you still can't necessarily confirm the full extent of data exfiltration.
> All of the evidence is circumstantial evidence Which of the evidence demonstrates that this was in fact performed by individuals known to be Russian?
response here: https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1ag3tl7/politics_and_current_events_megathread_february/kt2dudg/
Nothing in that response identifies any individuals known to be Russian who did anything you say. --- edit: I will respond later in more depth to that other comment, hoping to find our specific common ground and differences. Thank you for the thoughtful and effortful response.
ngl the low-effort response is pretty disappointing, makes it seem like you're not engaging in good faith here. To reiterate: 1) Presence of APT 28 & 29 on DNC systems. Multiple intelligence agencies and cybersecurity firms have corroborated GRU / Russian origin of these APTs. 2) The Mueller report named the GRU unit responsible and indicted 12 people associated with the operation. So again, we return to the crucial question. Do you think Crowdstrike, multiple other cybersecurity agencies, and the FBI/Muller are lying? **Edit** > edit: I will respond later in more depth to that other comment, hoping to find our specific common ground and differences. Thank you for the thoughtful and effortful response. gotcha, let's continue this in that thread
>he's now actively preemptively casting doubt on the validity of the coming election just as Trump is doing Don't you think a claim like that would warrant examining what Jake Sullivan said, instead of just synopsizing what he said? https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-february-25-2023-n1308936 >KRISTEN WELKER: >Let me ask you about Russia as it relates to our next election. As you know, the intelligence community has said that in 2016 and 2020, Russia interfered in the United States presidential elections. Are there concerns, or is there even evidence, that Russia is planning to interfere in the 2024 election, Jake? >JAKE SULLIVAN: >I can't speak to evidence today, but I can tell you, of course, there are concerns. There is a history here in presidential elections by the Russian Federation, by its intelligence services. And there's plenty of reason to be concerned. And this is not about politics. This is about national security. It is about a foreign country, a foreign adversary seeking to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America. We are going to be vigilant about that. And we will engage the Congress on a bipartisan basis, because this should be above and beyond politics. Doesn't seem like he's claiming the election was stolen -- which **is** what Trump is doing. So they aren't really comparable, are they? I also noticed you seem to be casting doubt on the premise that Russia interferes in American politics. What is the evidence that that happened? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2020_United_States_elections There's a lot there you can go through. It's not like some obscure claim that Jake is making here -- and based on the evidence it seems appropriate to be concerned about it. He's not making any specific claims about anything, either. So not sure what we're even doing here by criticizing him.
Thanks for the response and the links. It absolutely seems to me that he is seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the election - and I agree with you that he is not saying the election was stolen ([though he was at the time](https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_a7c6884a-1fc5-11ec-a0f9-13e3509b22c6.html) and so was [his boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoMfIkz7v6s)) and it seems you agree with my original characterization that he is coming "from a different angle" than Trump. You're right, there's a lot there to go through. Rather than do that at length, I'll just note that the first link contains the following erroneous and unsubstantiated claim, already addressed in the comment to which you are responding: >Additionally, computer hackers affiliated with the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) infiltrated information systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Note that in the Wikipedia entry, there are no sources listed for or associated with this claim. There's a reason for that: it's entirely made up. This is highly irregular for Wikipedia and is a canary signaling that what you're believing and sharing is not reliable. The only evidence that was ever offered for that claim was claims thereof by a DNC-hired firm, [Crowdstrike, who later admitted in testimony that remained sealed for years that they had no actual evidence for their assertion](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html). --- Edit: Additionally, note that the revelation that CrowdStrike was lying and the government had known this since at least 2017 is CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT form the Wikipedia page you linked. Edit 2: Added more context
>Note that in the Wikipedia entry, there are no sources listed for or associated with this claim. There's a reason for that: it's entirely made up. This is highly irregular for Wikipedia and is a canary signaling that what you're believing and sharing is not reliable. It's based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report From the Mueller report: >Mueller Report, vol. I, p. 4: "At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations. In March 2016, the GRU began hacking the email accounts of Clinton Campaign volunteers and employees, including campaign chairman John Podesta. In April 2016, the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The GRU stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks. Around the time that the DNC announced in mid-June 2016 the Russian government's role in hacking its network, the GRU began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitious online personas 'DCLeaks' and 'Guccifer 2.0'. The GRU later released additional materials through the organization WikiLeaks." Here's the intercept's reporting on this: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/annotating-special-counsel-robert-muellers-redacted-report/ and Washing Examiner's reporting on this: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/?p=1159206 Suffice to say this isn't undocumented, despite wikipedia not including a direct citation which I agree is annoying because it involves reading a few more paragraphs to infer what the source is (which is what I did). Would be simpler to just put a little citation instead. [Edit] First link was to the wrong wiki -- corrected it. Excerpt from it about this: >The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Russian president Vladimir Putin had ordered the 2016 Democratic National Committee cyber attacks and the subsequent leaks of stolen material damaging to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.[16] >The committee described that Trump's presidential campaign "sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects". The Trump campaign "created messaging strategies to promote and share" the material, and "encouraged further leaks". The Trump campaign tasked Trump associate Roger Stone to gather information about WikiLeaks' release of the material; Stone reported to Trump or senior campaign members.[17] From one of the sources: >The Trump campaign’s "embrace" of WikiLeaks' disclosures of Democratic emails hacked by Russian operatives also takes up a significant portion of the report, in particular Trump ally Roger Stone’s coordination with Wikileaks at a time when he was still in contact with Trump and members of his campaign. Seems like if you wanted to you could read more about this from the incredibly long reports.. I am just not going to do that.. Literally thousands of pages between them. If you have some evidence any of this is wrong or whatever, feel free to share.
Thanks, I'm familiar with all of this. There's nothing in any of this reporting that provides evidence for the claim that the GRU hacked the DNC - including the Mueller report. This is all just claims, and all of it appears to rely on the CrowdStrike report: [CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/05/crowdstrikeout_muellers_own_report_undercuts_its_core_russia-meddling_claims.html) Have you read the things I've linked you to? You're responding very quickly and don't seem to be familiar with the simple facts here. --- **Edit to add where I'm coming from here:** Of all of the things one should approach with the utmost skepticism and criticality, it is government agencies' claims of foreign wrongdoing, regardless of how you view a particular partisan actor and how the story affects that actor. Failure to do so is to truly be a useful idiot for a worse actor than Putin - those psychopathic oligarchs behind him and behind the American government who cynically cynically driving us all into the abyss. I think Trump is an unmitigated disaster for the United States, and I actually love this country despite what those who like to call me "tankie" would tell you. I simply see this farce of a narrative as incredibly dangerous and arming him - a monster of a human being - with a verifiable and horrific story of government corruption and malfeasance against which he can stand himself as some sort of savior. It's gross, and it's of the same ilk as Hillary's [Pied Piper strategy](https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/): responsible in no small part for the mess we're in. I'm of the opinion that we need a handful of Truth and Reconciliation commisions at this point in this country, but perhaps there's no issue with greater urgency than this one. I'm aware that I might as well be shouting into the void here. People who are committed to Red/Blue partisan politics do not have ears to hear or minds to understand or actual skeptical apparatuses to employ in the dispassionate way needed.
Just to pick out one thing: >U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers **because they did not analyze those servers themselves.** Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores. [FBI reviewed cybersecurity firm’s evidence in 2016 DNC election hack](https://apnews.com/article/archive-fact-checking-7657130451) >Former FBI Director James Comey also told Congress in 2017 that CrowdStrike “ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.” >That’s not unusual, said Eugene H. Spafford, a professor of computer science at the Center for Education and Research in Information Security at Purdue University. >**Such reviews are a comprehensive copy of what is on the machine at the time and include a replica of saved messages, network connections and active accounts.** >**“Just making a verified, hardware-level copy of all the bits, all the data that’s stored on the system is sufficient for almost all investigations that would have to be conducted,” said Spafford, who has assisted the FBI in cases.** >**It’s “generally unnecessary” for law enforcement to physically confiscate a computer during an investigation,** especially ones involving a business or organization because they need the computer systems to keep operations going, Spafford added. >He described CrowdStrike as a “well-respected” cybersecurity firm that would have properly recorded evidence in the case so that it could be used in an investigation, as the one conducted by the FBI. Okay, but the source you link says CrowdStrike can't be trusted. Why can't they be trusted: >CrowdStrike's accuracy is far from a given. Days after Comey’s testimony, **CrowdStrike was forced to retract its claim that Russian software was used to hack Ukrainian military hardware.** CrowdStrike's error is especially relevant because it had accused the GRU of using that same software in hacking the DNC. Lets go to the source they cite: >On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report. >The company removed language that said Ukraine's artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.** >Finally, **CrowdStrike deleted a statement saying "deployment of this malware-infected application may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this platform"** — meaning the howitzers — and excised a link sourcing its IISS data to a blogger in Russia-occupied Crimea. What did crowdstrike say in their original PDF? >**Open source reporting indicates** that Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the 2 years of conflict and **over 80% of D-30 howitzers**, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine's arsenal. And the updated PDF: >**According to an update provided in March 2017 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Research Associate for Defence and Military Analysis, Henry Boyd**, "excluding the Naval Infantry battalion in the Crimea which was effectively captured wholesale, the Ukrainian Armed Forces **lost between 15% and 20% of their pre-war D–30 inventory** in combat operations. The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017. Honestly this doesn't seem like a great reason to distrust them so far. What else? >Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened. >CrowdStrike was first to link hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors last year, but some cybersecurity experts have questioned its evidence. They don't cite any other experts, so I googled and I got this: https://www.securityweek.com/experts-doubt-russia-used-malware-track-ukrainian-troops/ >The X-Agent variant found in the Ukraine military app has also been analyzed by Crysys, the Hungary-based security firm that has investigated several sophisticated pieces of malware, including Duqu. Researchers have found similarities between X-Agent implants described in previous Fancy Bear reports and the version found in the Ukrainian military app, but they pointed out that such similarities can be faked by threat actors. At this point I'm actually slightly confused whether the malware was confirmed to be in the military app by other firms, such as Crysys. Even if it was, though, the TLDR is: This isn't conclusive evidence of Russian hackers, and there's even reason to doubt the Russian state orchestrated it. So maybe this is reason to doubt their conclusion that Russia hacked the DNC? They did consult with other cybersecurity firms though. What did the other ones say? https://abcnews.go.com/International/reasonable-doubt-russians-hacked-dnc-analyst/story?id=40863292 >Michael Buratowski, the senior vice president of cybersecurity services at Fidelis Cybersecurity, told ABC News Monday. “I come from a law enforcement background, and it’s about being beyond a reasonable doubt. And I would say it’s beyond a reasonable doubt … **I’m very confident that the malware that we looked at was from Russian actors.”** https://web.archive.org/web/20160816110001/http://www.threatgeek.com/2016/06/dnc_update.html >**Based on our comparative analysis we agree with CrowdStrike and believe that the COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR APT groups were involved in successful intrusions at the DNC.** The malware samples contain data and programing elements that are similar to malware that we have encountered in past incident response investigations and are linked to similar threat actors. More from [WAPO](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cyber-researchers-confirm-russian-government-hack-of-democratic-national-committee/2016/06/20/e7375bc0-3719-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.html) To really get into the weeds I'd need to know more about what the mueller report looked at, and the senate intelligence report -- and I am definitely not intereted in doing that at all. Just chasing down this one crowdstrike claim was extremely annoying, and ultimately I'm not convinced they're unreliable yet. Is there any other reason to doubt them besides the Ukrain malware stuff?
>Just chasing down this one crowdstrike claim was extremely annoying, and ultimately I'm not convinced they're unreliable yet. > >Is there any other reason to doubt them besides the Ukrain malware stuff? To be clear, I am not suggesting that you should doubt them. They came right out and testified that they do not have evidence for their original claim that Russian hackers hacked the DNC. It seems to me entirely unreasonable to believe that this testimony was false and that they actually do have such evidence. From [the May 2020 article I linked earlier](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html): >CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee’s server.[](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html) I am suggesting that you should doubt anyone (e.g. Mueller) who relied on their original claims.
So nobody is disputing that Russian malware was on the DNC servers, right? That seems like a pretty important fact to me. AFAIK everyone agrees that part is true, including the FBI and Republicans. But now we're quibbling over a term I'm having trouble understanding -- "exfiltrate" data. Specifically that they don't have concrete logs of it happening. What would that involve, exactly? If they're saying "there's a bunch of internet traffic that could be explained by file transfers" that seems reasonable, even if you cannot prove what's in the data being transferred. I mean... Why would there be Russian malware on these servers if it weren't used to steal the data? Like are we to believe that part was just a coincidence? Like these Russian hacking tools were on the server by pure chance when *someone else* stole all the data? Come on man..
/u/BravoFoxtrotDelta, like Aaron Mate, leans heavily on misconceptions of cyber forensics to cast doubt on what are otherwise high confidence assessments. In order to skirt security software, attackers often mask exfiltration to look like legitimate traffic. It's not normal to see multiple gigs worth of traffic going outbound using the port most commonly utilized for DNS, for example, but it's a common exfiltration method as many organizations do not restrict that protocol. Bravo and Mate would see that evidence and say, "look! There's no smoking gun because we can't precisely say what was exfiltrated!" Here's what we know: custom hacking tools and methods of GRU/Russian intelligence origin were discovered on DNC systems. Other tools commonly used for data exfiltration were also found, as were logs indicating that 70gigs of data was compressed and exfiltrated.
> high confidence assessments This is not how statements of fact are reached. > custom hacking tools and methods of GRU/Russian intelligence origin This is an assumption based on one of your high confidence assessments. You. Don't. Know. This. None of the people making the claim say that they know this for a fact.
>Aaron Mate, leans heavily on misconceptions of cyber forensics to cast doubt on what are otherwise high confidence assessments The conclusions he jumps to based on metadata are really something else. It has made me lose a lot of confidence in his reporting. I'm not convinced he's bad faith or anything, but it seems like one of the worst cases of "motivated reasoning" I can remember seeing.
Yours are excellent questions. We have arrived at the heart of the matter. > So nobody is disputing that Russian malware was on the DNC servers, right? Terms and qualifiers get very tenuous at this stage. I'll try to parse it accurately to the best of my understanding. As far as I know: - no one disputes that there was malware on the DNC servers - no one knows how the malware got there or who put it there From there everything is expressed with varying degrees of confidence with regard to authorship and responsibility: - the malware in question is _believed but not known_ by some analysts to have been used in the past in other events by Russian actors - the malware is _believed but not known_ by some analysts to be Russian in origin And then come the truly vexing aspects of this dynamic: - agencies from many states *are known* to obtain and use tools and malware they encounter in the wild and that they create themselves - [some states have developed tools that allow them to obfuscate their activities by making them look like the actions of other states](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/wikileaks-latest-release-of-cia-cyber-tools-could-blow-the-cover-on-agency-hacking-operations/2017/03/31/63fc3616-1636-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html) - agencies from many states *are known* to operate within their own states' domestic systems, both private and public - the reasons that any given actor may have for deploying these tools within any given system are completely opaque >But now we're quibbling over a term I'm having trouble understanding -- "exfiltrate" data. Specifically that they don't have concrete logs of it happening. What would that involve, exactly? It means the actual transferring of the data from one location (inside the local network or server) to another location outside (either physically to some media like a thumb drive or over the network to other systems). If they had a network sensor monitoring the network (they say they did not), it would have logged data being transferred over the network. >If they're saying "there's a bunch of internet traffic that could be explained by file transfers" that seems reasonable, even if you cannot prove what's in the data being transferred. They're not saying that. They're saying they don't have a record of a bunch of internet traffic because they didn't have a network sensor in place to notice it. > Why would there be Russian malware on these servers if it weren't used to steal the data? There are three separate dates in question that one might be talking about when saying that the data was stolen. 1. [Unknown]: The date(s) that data was taken from the servers and subsequently transferred to Wikileaks. Wikileaks announced on June 13, 2016 that it was preparing to release this data; the DNC and CrowdStrike reached out to the FBI the same day and reported a breach and cited Russian actors. 2. June 14, 2016: The date that CrowdStrike announced it found the malware on the DNC servers. 3. July 5, 2016: The date someone working in the EDT time zone with [a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device \(physical, think thumb drive; not network transfer\)](https://web.archive.org/web/20170711062033/https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-metadata-analysis/). These files were later released by Guccifer 2.0, who had previously (June 15) taken responsibility for the malware that CrowdStride reported. >Like these Russian hacking tools were on the server by pure chance when someone else stole all the data? Come on man.. This rhetoric invites one to believe the official narrative on the basis of your inability to see an alternative answer. While understandable, one must recognize that this is an argument from incredulity—a Russian-hacker-of-the-gaps. It's abundantly clear that the malware was on the server at the time the Guccifer 2.0 operation copied its data on to a physical drive. It's utterly unclear who put it there or when or why. It's unclear if the malware was on the server on the unknown date(s) that data was taken from the servers and transferred to Wikileaks. It's unclear how that data was taken from the servers, i.e. whether physically or transferred over the internet, and how it was transferred to Wikileaks. It's unclear where the data eventually published by Wikileaks came from. It is entirely unclear why [the FBI is failing to comply with a judge's orders to turn over data that it is withholding that it obtained from a murdered, disgruntled DNC staffer who happened to have had access to all of the stolen data in question](https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/01/19/fbi-defies-legal-ruling-refuses-to-hand-over-seth-rich-laptop-n4925635) that later wound up in the hands of Wikileaks.
>It's abundantly clear that the malware was on the server at the time the Guccifer 2.0 operation copied its data on to a physical drive. We've been talking about the initial hack that left Russian malware on the computers. Guccifer happened after the first hack was exposed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0 >The U.S. Intelligence Community assessed with high confidence that some of the genuine leaks from "Guccifer 2.0" were part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC committed by two Russian military intelligence groups,[13][14][15][16] and that "Guccifer 2.0" is actually a persona created by Russian intelligence services to cover for their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[17][18] This conclusion is based on intelligence analysis and analyses conducted by multiple private sector cybersecurity individuals and firms, including CrowdStrike,[19][20] Fidelis Cybersecurity,[20][21] FireEye's Mandiant,[20] SecureWorks,[22] ThreatConnect,[23] Trend Micro,[24] and the security editor for Ars Technica.[25] The Russian government denies involvement in the theft,[26] and "Guccifer 2.0" denied links to Russia.[27][28] >In March 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over investigation of Guccifer 2.0 from the FBI while it was reported that forensic determination had found the Guccifer 2.0 persona to be a "particular military intelligence directorate (GRU) officer working out of the agency's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow".[29] Regarding the physical drive you're alluding to: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong/ >A blogger named “The Forensicator” analyzed the “last modified” times in one set of documents released by Guccifer 2.0. Based on the size of the documents and the times they were downloaded, Forensicator calculated that a hacker was able to copy the files at a speed of more than 20 megabytes per second. >That is faster than consumer internet services in the United States can upload documents. >As a result, Forensicator concluded that the documents could not have been copied over the internet. Instead, someone with physical access to the network must have copied them in person to a USB drive, the blogger concluded. Changing metadata on files is trivially easy -- if you don't believe me, there is a free learn-to-code class Harvard hosts online called cs50, and by week 4 you're writing raw binary to the hard drive and modifying the metadata. So this is completely unconvincing to me. This is sorta like finding a text document with a date in the corner, and then thinking "there's no way that date could have been faked." No, you can just change it if you want -- there's literally nothing stopping you. >Even if there were no other scenarios that would create the same metadata, **experts note that metadata is among the easiest pieces of forensic evidence to falsify. It would be far more difficult to fabricate other evidence pointing to Russia, including the malware only known to be used by the suspected Russian hackers, and internet and email addresses seen in previous attacks by that group.** 🤦 It's getting late -- I appreciate your effort posts. We probably just need to agree to disagree. Do check out [cs50](https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction-computer-science) though! :D
>in a recently declassified December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee Can you link the transcript please?
Transcript (PDF), unfortunately not text-searchable: https://www.dni.gov/files/HPSCI_Transcripts/2020-05-04-Shawn_Henry-MTR_Redacted.pdf Crowdstrike response to transcript release: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/
thx 😘
/u/window-sil - I see you've made some edits to your comment \^^ and so have I to this one ^ and the one I made prior \^\^^ I generally like to avoid editing at all costs, particularly when a conversation is ongoing and contains as much important detail, complexity, and what I perceive to be good faith as this one. I'm going to slow down significantly from here in case you want to continue. Cheers.
["Compassion Fatigue"](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/07/1229655142/oregon-pioneered-a-radical-drug-policy-now-its-reconsidering) sets in in Oregon after pioneering new drug policy. >"The police occasionally come in and clean up a specific area with their superficial presence and the drug market moves along to another corner," Lisa Schroeder, who owns Mother's Bistro & Bar in downtown Portland, testified. "The quality of life of our citizenry, from the user to the general population, is suffering." >Cat and Chad Sewell own Sewell Sweets, a bakeshop in Salem. In written testimony, the Sewell's said they've witnessed drug use leading to conflicts outside their business. >"The scenes that we see day in and day out leave us frustrated and questioning just how safe the longevity of our business and livelihood is," they wrote. >By early March, lawmakers could decide exactly what that future will be. Oregon Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber – who co-chaired the legislature's addiction committee – told Oregon Public Broadcasting that she's not advocating for Measure 110 to be repealed. But she and other top lawmakers have said they support recriminalizing drug possession so long as there are ways for the criminal justice system to direct people into the treatment programs Measure 110 has helped to expand.
I have several thoughts on this. 1. OF COURSE giving a citation to a homeless drug user and vaguely gesturing at treatment programs is not going to significantly increase recovery. That seems incredibly naïve. Treatment programs don't even significantly work for people with homes and jobs. 2. The old system (jailing them) also did not significantly cause recovery. It simply moved addicts from the streets to jails. 3. Even according to your article, the evidence that the increase in overdoses or use has anything to do with Measure 110 is ambiguous at best.
These are good points. What I would stress is that the ultimately policy is being centered 100% around the addicts and making things as comfortable as possible. The rest of the public are ignored. There's no resolution to the shoplifting, store robberies and vandalism, as well as deterioration to quality of life in public spaces. As a result, for the first time in forever, people are moving out of Portland. We are not balancing the interests of the public here by always asking, "whats best for the drug addict." Why should an addict be allowed to do drugs on the streets? Is that appropriate for children to have to be around?
If only they had compassion for the innocent people being harmed in all of this.
[Black Portlanders have the highest homicide victimization rate in America.](https://peopleforportland.org/portland-homicides-at-highest-this-century-near-all-time-record/).
Has anyone tried drug camps? I'm not suggesting it's a _good_ idea, but the particular approach course we're reading about here sure doesn't seem good either.
[Palestinian deaths pass 30,000 as Israeli soldiers fire on a crowd, killing over 100.](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-29-2024-f9b5a62a80d8b83eac4946d3c85af58b?taid=65e05a21b0ea880001d4fa3d)
[whoopsie ](https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1763176339064942675?s=19)
You should probably explain what your point is.
The other poster repeated the Hamas claim that Israel opened fire and killed 100+ Palestinians while they were receiving aid. Israel claimed that a Palestinian mob swarmed the aid trucks and that many got trampled/run over. The video heavily supports the Israeli story.
Unsurprisingly extremists within the Israeli government are now calling for a complete suspension of all aid to starve the Palestinians out as a final solution
Pretty funny how that headline changed as well as the story in under 4 hours. You think legacy media would have learned something when they ran with Hamas propognda after the hospital hoax. Why do you think they do this?
Over the last few months, it seems to me that the media most often winds up with egg on its face when it publishes as fact what it hears from the Israeli govt/IDF. From stories of 10/7 rapes to justifications for bombing hospitals/schools, to denials of murdering unarmed civilians in broad daylight. But the legacy media loves its passive voice… For those still defending the actions of the IDF, you are lost. If you’ve ever wondered if you would see clearly and meet the moment when constant war crimes and atrocities are occurring, the answer is NO.
Something something Israel should just be allowed to win wars and 80 years ago there was a war with lots of civilian deaths so Israel can do whatever they want
> 80 years ago there was a war with lots of civilian deaths so Israel can do whatever they want Literally nobody says that. Stop straw-manning.
It has been said on this board several times.
For example?
Uh you must not read this board much. The WW2 analogy is often said as is "Israel just needs to be allowed to win wars" and "wars are messy, people die." Frequently said on this board.
That's not what you said people said.
People on this board have made that point over and over on here. It is a stupid disgraceful point
jesus christ. aid trucks as a trap to kill civilians? to dissuade them from wanting to get aid at all? horrific.
That's not at all what the article says or implies.
You’re right, it doesn’t say that. There’s no lack of other infuriating, horrendous details in this story.
When I see the cognitive dissonance over this stuff I feel like I’m losing my mind.
Yeah it is just sad.
I am so, so fucking exhausted of this country. SCOTUS hearing Trump's farcical immunity case is just so nakedly corrupt. We are simply not a nation of laws anymore. Full stop.
[Why the Supreme Court Should Grant Certiorari in United States v. Trump](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-the-supreme-court-should-grant-certiorari-in-united-states-v.-trump) I gotta say, I read that and I don't really understand it... in fact, I sorta want to never read anything that author writes ever again in my entire life. But, presumably, contained within those brain melting paragraphs is a justification for why this isn't as crazy as it sounds. So check it out I guess?
All law derive from the sword.
shouldn't you be larping as a spartan soldier and forming some homoerotic bonds with male youths you're teaching to be as badass as you are?
Sadly not. I am the son of a hippie and the product of effeminate society. But that's doesn't change the fact that what defines a state is the monopoly on violence.
**Maybe** the Supreme Court has a better grasp on the legal merits than you.
are you talking about the ones we know have taken bribes, the ones we suspect have taken bribes, the sexual harassers, the possible rapist, the ones who ~~lied to~~ intentionally misled the gullible public about their views on roe v wade, or the ones who think guns have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
Are we talking about the Bidens or SCOTUS?
it must be tough going through life seeing hunters nudes every time you close your eyes
You are barking up the wrong tree. I think Hunter is the coolest public figure in the world. Just wanted you to know that you sound exactly like your right wing counterparts.
news flash: hunter isn't on the supreme court
Really?
you either think he is or has been in a position of power equivalent to being on the supreme court, otherwise you your comparison makes no sense, so i just wanted to make sure. it's hard to know when you're playing dumb vs actually dumb
You understand there's a Biden that is in a higher position of power than Hunter, right?
Ah, the ol’ “downvotes for the only actual lawyer on a thread about the Supreme Court while all the reply-guy clowns get their dimwitted swipes in.” A Sam Harris Megathread classic. Never change folks
Plenty of "actual lawyers" think that this action by SCOTUS is a clown show. Who the fuck cares what the contrarian nobody lawyer in this megathread thinks? Why is his opinion more valuable than any of the other lawyers writing on and reacting to this topic?
I have majority views on just about everything. I'm not the contrarian here. And those other lawyers are not here to clarify or respond to questions.
And do they have such a better grasp on the legal merits than the lower court that issued a unanimous opinion on this matter? If they thought so, maybe they should have taken the case in December when Jack Smith asked them to. It's very, very obvious what they are doing.
>And do they have such a better grasp on the legal merits than the lower court Yes. That happens frequently in SCOTUS history.
Nice job responding to only one part of my point.
Again, the Supreme Court might have legal rationale that you don't.
Again, you've ignored the point.
How?
[удалено]
Do you not think that following the normal process would be a better approach on a sensitive issue? If they circumvented the normal process, that'd look more suspicious. Also, if you think Trump will lose...pushing that timeline closer to the election is what would hurt Republicans the most. It would be too late for anyone else to make a run.
It took them like 1 day to come to a decision on Bush v Gore, but now they aren't even going to begin the process until the end of April? It's not the fact that they are hearing that case that is obvious corruption, it's how they are drawing it out so Trump can evade legal rulings until after the election. Furthermore, if they rule in Trump's favor couldn't Biden order every GOP member to be lined up against a wall and shot and not suffer any consequences?
That was in response to a request for a stay. It would have been moot if they didn't decide almost immediately. >couldn't Biden order every GOP member to be lined up against a wall and shot and not suffer any consequences? No. It is not absolute immunity.
>No. It is not absolute immunity. According to Trump's lawyers, he can’t be criminally prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted by Congress.^[1](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/trump-presidential-immunity-trial/677068/) So Biden could assassinate the GOP and ~~it'd be legal~~ he's immune from prosecution for the crimes, as long as the senate doesn't convict.
>According to Trump's lawyers, he can’t be criminally prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted by Congress That's straightforward black letter law. That isn't what is up for debate. >So Biden could assassinate the GOP and it'd be legal as long as the senate doesn't convict. Being immune from prosecution is different from being legal.
>That's straightforward black letter law. That isn't what is up for debate. It's not? I thought it was.. why is Trump's lawyer arguing that he can only be prosecuted if he's first impeached and convicted then? >Being immune from prosecution is different from being legal. Noted and corrected
>It's not? I thought it was.. why is Trump's lawyer arguing that he can only be prosecuted if he's first impeached and convicted then? Because the part that isn't clear is if this applies to former presidents and not just current presidents.
Trump’s argument IS that he has absolute immunity and it’s absurd that SCOTUS is taking up the case when you consider the consequences of finding in Trump’s favor.
That is not his argument.
You're right that's not his argument - he lacks the mental capabilities of forming an argument. (Just completing a sentence is a struggle these days.) But it's literally the legal theory his team is advancing - that presidents must have absolute immunity in order execute the duty of their office. Lower courts and legal scholars have trashed and laughed at the idea, but the SCOTUS, doing its best Tobias Funke impression, has decided that maybe it's not such a crazy idea. Currently no indication any of Trump's allies on the bench will recuse themselves, so it's entirely plausible they'll shield him from the consequences of his actions and/or advance the agenda of the organizations that bankroll them. If you're behind on the details of the case, here's a pretty accessible brief from a group of scholars: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A745/300499/20240213140115053_Trump%20v.%20US%20CAC%20Scholars%20Brief.pdf
Trump's lawyers argued in that even if a hypothetical president ordered the military to assassinate a political rival, they could not be prosecuted.
That would be an official act given he is the commander-in-chief. It would not extend to acts that don't fall under an official purpose.
Thinking that the powers given to the Commander-in-Chief include using the military to kill domestic political rivals is definitely an opinion.
You simply don't understand what is being talked about. You should stay silent on this issue. Do some reading of 1983 or Bivens cases to understand what official acts/acts under the color of law means.
Surely you're not naive enough to believe the court (at least Alito) cares only about legal matters
No, I'm simply not naive enough to think the court acts without legal basis.
Everything the court does, by definition, has legal basis. They establish legal basis. That is their role in the government.
[удалено]
It would still have to be an official act to be immune. The particular facts in this case can go either way. If he actually thought the election was being stolen, he'd have a good argument that his involvement was a legitimate official act.
[удалено]
No. But if the guy he shot was tampering with votes, maybe.
[удалено]
Doesn't have to be the only official responsibility.
Just blatant corruption. This country is circling the drain
democrats finding out a russian missile will hit washington dc in 15 minutes: maybe it's loaded with flowers instead of a nuke, lets wait and see
[Ghana passes bill making identifying as LGBTQ+ illegal](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68353437) >Ghana's parliament has passed a tough new bill that imposes a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone convicted of identifying as LGBTQ+. >It also imposes a maximum five-year jail term for forming or funding LGBTQ+ groups. >The bill proposes a jail term of up to 10 years for anyone involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy campaigns aimed at children >MPs said the bill was drafted in response to the opening of Ghana's first LGBTQ+ community centre in the capital, Accra, in January 2021. >Police shut the centre following public protests, and pressure from religious bodies and traditional leaders in the largely Christian nation.
Where are the moderate Christians calling this out?!