Now the SCOTUS will take it up and sit on it till November
I'm doubtful they'll sit on it. As you said, they already indicated a lack of desire to pick it up last time Trump submitted an appeal to them on this basis. I'm pretty sure everyone is expecting a repeat performance here. Remember the rule of four would apply here and I'm sure Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Roberts would do exactly the repeat as before.
There's just not the numbers to play petty favors for Trump here.
Hey OP, I think you're focusing on specific use cases of broader issues.
Globally speaking, energy is about 25% of all CO₂ emitted into the air. Farming and agriculture is another 25%. Industry is 20% and transportation is about 15%. So in just those four categories we're talking about 85% of all CO₂ emitted.
So when you indicate:
We have semi trucks burning diesel to bring pet food and pet supplies to all parts of the world.
That's transportation.
We devote some amount of farm land and livestock to feeding those pets
That's farming.
We have big box stores for pets
That's both energy (for power) and industry (concrete).
So I just wanted to point that out. Now I also wanted to address something else.
It’s interesting when people suggest to reduce global human population
Rich people suggest this and poor people think it sounds good because they believe that the reduction is not including themselves. We have a TON of resources on this planet. We just do not have enough resources on this planet for the current distribution system. That's the key point here.
Population reduction should be viewed in the same manner on how humanity did the horse population reduction. The second we invented the car, horses were no longer useful, so we got rid of a ton of them. As we continue to progress in technology, we render a lot of people no longer useful through no fault of their own. So there's a few folk out there recommending we do the same to them as we did horses.
Now where that lies on your ethical meter, you know, I'm not here to judge. Humanity is a spunky bunch. But just remember that the folks indicating population decline as a viable answer, if you're not pulling eight or nine figures a year, you're in that group up for consideration for culling.
But back to your point. I mean the pet thing is indeed an interesting take on the four factors of climate change. Indeed an interesting take on them for sure. I don't have hard numbers on the CO₂ emissions for pet ownership, but they do indeed contribute to the big four. I cannot imagine that they account for a single percent of any of the big four's underlying values. 900 million dogs do sound like a lot but it's actually pretty small in terms of footprint on the environment. The big thing is that the vast majority of those dogs globally are not living high CO₂ producing lives. Just a few of them are. Same with cats. The vast majority are feral beasts. Wrecking diversity of various ecological areas for sure, but not exactly producing massive amounts of CO₂.
Which ecological impact is something that's a different topic than climate change but the two do sometimes overlap each other. But they are two different studies at the end of the day.
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
— 18 USC § 2383
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
— 18 USC § 2384
The US Constitution gives state legislatures power to choose Electors – full stop.
Well that was talked about. Kagan and Alito both touched on plenary power and the degrees that applies to Colorado's assertion. But in all that was debated Colorado couldn't find de facto application. Kagan even asked if there was any method that didn't rely de novo. The argument keep getting into "well this is so unique". And that's when it headed into how State's executed elections post 1860 but pre 1880.
The thing is, even if there was an application to the novel assertion of federalization here… I mean you heard it right there towards the end, "this is a feature not a flaw". The Court's couldn't be remedy to enforce uniformity. I mean just look at Colorado here for a second. You have three cases in the State plus SCOTUS, that's four hearings. Multiply that by fifty and by three or four major parties that have codified ballot access in the various States. The court's couldn't handle that and elections would become "who has enough money for litigation?" Which is kind of the opposite of "having less money in elections".
And then there comes from that a desire of "Well then Congress could come up with some limit as to what can be litigated before the courts for elections" and then boom, as indicated "how's that different than where we're at?" If the idea is that eventually some de facto appears by Congress, why allow novel approach now with the expectation that we'll get law later when we can equally say why not wait for law today and allow novel to come later based on that?
And Colorado couldn't find a specific reason why the order should or shouldn't be reversed outside of "well State's rights!" And that's what prompted the question of "well how plenary is plenary to join Article II to 14A S3?"
And another thing that you said in a different comment is:
but that a state could decide to repeal its popular vote in the legitimate way
No. Or at least I don't think so because doing so would be really hard to justify. Article IV, Section 4. Now the degree can vary because as it was before that only land owners could vote. But then the Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed the frontier folk the ability to vote. The thing is a vote is always required BUT the definition of who it applies to is up to the State, except that 15A, 19A, and 26A further limit the restrictions that States can apply.
But given Art. II S.1 one could literally read:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…
But in all States the manner is defined by the State's Constitution meaning that the Citizens would have to vote to amend their process to give up their right to vote and even then, it's possible such is a violation of Art. IV S.4. It would absolutely be a Court case. But it's highly unlikely that SCOTUS would permit a State in the Union to operate on a system that denied voting to everyone outside of the political process as that's kind of the whole premises of the Revolutionary War and that specific part of the Constitution. They would need to include at least ONE person not a sworn officer of the State and given the restrictions of 15A, 19A, and 26A I don't see how they uphold 14A S1 and keep on the correct side of those other amendments. It would be difficult to say, this one person over the age of 18 is cool to vote AND still uphold 14A S1 equal protection and deny OTHER 18 year olds. It would definitely be an exercise.
States have rights, but SCOTUS is the first place to tell someone, "No right is absolute". And multiple justices brought that up plenty of times with the perceived plenary that Colorado attempted. I would love Colorado's reading, but SCOTUS has a point, Colorado needs to define a line in the sand and not just be like "Well that's what SCOTUS is here to do, draw lines". I mean given the track record recently, I don't think we should let SCOTUS draw lines. And yeah, funny time for them to suddenly adopt that mantra. But that's the thinking I agree with, which is why WV v EPA was such bullshit in my opinion. But I cannot think both WV v EPA was bullshit and Colorado is correct here. That just doesn't jive. I get inconsistent SCOTUS is frustrating, but at least questioning where that line is from Colorado is the correct move, not leaving it up to SCOTUS to dictate.
And just to make clear. This doesn't mean, "Oh no the Constitution has a defect and thus we're helpless Trump is going to surely win now!" It means that when we come across unclear parts of the Constitution, we don't obtain clarity easily or within a very short period of time. We have always known this. This is the part that should have you all upset about those Senators that didn't disqualify Trump during his second impeachment.
We all knew, that the Senate kicking the can, kicked it into a darker alley with less illumination on what exactly we're all supposed to do. We knew when they punted on that, it was going to get murky on how to hold Trump accountable for what he did. That should have been the most upsetting part.
And so here we are. We're having to do the murky part. It's not going to be easy, there are no slam dunks, you will hear "de novo" a lot because all of this is new ground, Congress was supposed to handle this and didn't. So now we're going to have to go the very frustratingly long path. No court wants to hand a nuke to the Republicans but every bad call that the court's could make can potentially just wreck things. That's how big a deal all of this is. One bad call and we are bad footing.
So yes, I get it, SCOTUS hasn't inspired the greatest of confidence. You'll hear no argument about that from me. But yesterday's en banc hearing, that was not on display. I'm giving credit where credit is due, this is something that was being talked about very carefully yesterday by the Justices. I know everyone wanted a slam dunk, but this shit ain't it. There's going to be no slam dunks with this issue. So anyone convinced of such, really needs to get a firm grasp of reality of what's in front of us. Trump's bullshitty lawyers likely think this is all a joke, but the rest of the system is not laughing. This is serious stuff. There's not going to be any easy answers.
Okay I'm going to say it. This is a really bad opinion piece on what actually happened yesterday. The biggest thing that stood out was this.
The court wanted to disagree and was desperate to find a way to restore Trump to the Colorado ballot without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump committed an insurrection or not
SCOTUS is not a fact finding court in this case. I don't think I can say this enough and geez has this been some very basic facet that lots of people have missed: "Did Trump commit impeachment or not? The Supreme Court DOES NOT RULE ON THAT."
The best way to think of what came before SCOTUS yesterday was this question: "Does Colorado have authority to execute section 3 of the 14th Amendment?" That's the question. Not, "did Trump commit treason?" I don't know why this continues to be a missive for commentators on this case. What's being argued is how much power is indeed vested into States for their election. This is why when the question was actually asked "did Trump commit insurrection?" Justice Jackson spoke and then that was the last anyone heard about it. Because it's a moot point for what is before the court.
I get we want to toss this treasonous slime ball into jail. But every case that exists with him isn't boiling down to this aspect. There are times when we have to have separate cases to establish different things that eventually build up to that. We've not really had something like this before and so new things need good foundations. So a treasonous President is going to spawn lots of SCOTUS cases that ask questions about the foundations of different arguments.
Left to their own devices, the justices went fishing, looking for an argument that could plausibly allow them to exit the case, since Mitchell did not provide them one
If you listened to the Justices yesterday, you could tell in their voice that none of them felt comfortable with the entire case in general. Because this has massive ramifications. For all the justice that people want, a bad call with poor foundations makes it insanely easy for future people to rampantly abuse this. Multiple times various justices hinted at how Florida is just chomping at the bit to charge Biden with treason and how even if they know they'll lose, they'll use every method of litigation to drain his election funds. And SCOTUS gave every hint that Congress does not have the Judicial setup to handle that and likely because of the political ramification, Congress would just kick the can until we're literally fighting each other.
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish
— Article III Section 1 US Constitution
Congress gets to mold the Court system as they see fit and SCOTUS was indicating, the Courts cannot do this "feature of federalization" that Colorado was attempting to indicate. That States should be allowed to apply limitations as they see fit and have the Courts figure out the collateral damage. And it's highly likely that Congress wouldn't act to fix it so that the Court could. And so bad faith actors would absolutely wreck the election process. And what they were looking for was a reason why they should believe otherwise. That Congress would enact something to punish bad faith actors, or setup the Courts to handle this, or create procedures that could be litigated at the State level, or literally anything outside of the one thing in Title 18 that's for criminal treason.
I get that nobody likes that answer. It shitty to see that most Justices easily see that Trump did indeed commit treason and that the various Courts are just left with "oopsie Congress forgot to give anyone any power to do anything about it."
And yeah, let's talk about Bush v Gore, because that sounds outright like the same thing.
Here, Bush indicated that different counties in Florida were using different methods for the recount because of the hanging chad issue. Here it was the 14th Amendment Section 1, Equal Protection Clause. SCOTUS had ruled that the various counties couldn't come up with various standards for a recount, that there needed to be a common standard, to which Florida and Gore couldn't come to single standard for the recount. It wasn't a question of "who won Florida" it was a question of "how do we have a unified standard for which a recount of this nature can be done?" And the answer was (and this is the part that was controversial) we couldn't and still make the "safe harbor" date. The "safe harbor" date and ensuring we made it was the biggest debate point. To which for those still sour about that, you have The Electoral Count Act of 1887 to thank for putting SCOTUS into that position.
All the anger that gets directed to SCOTUS, and some of it is rightly so, Elections have a lot of Congress induced defects. Keep that in mind.
I putting all my beans on meth futures.
"Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power!"
— something, something Arch BTW
Do you know who Bryan Lunduke is? That's what this video is about.
If that name happens to not ring a bell, you aren't missing anything.
"The Columbus Police Department was conducting a welfare check on a subject following a report of potential self-harm," Nebraska State Patrol said in a press release.
"Mission Accomplished"
He also denied Trump’s request for sanctions and criticized Trump’s attorneys for first making the motion for a mistrial in front of the jury during Carroll’s cross-examination when they had known about the deletion of messages for over a year
To give context. Carroll’s attorney had indicated long before this started that the initial death threats were deleted and gave Trump’s team the fair chance to raise objections then. Trump’s team was silent during the entire period. Fast forward to today like a few clicks past a year in length of time.
Trump’s team: We’d like to file a mistrial!
For those wondering, no, you don’t get to sit on something for over a year and then finally bring it up that you have an issue with it.
This is the second time this question was tossed at SCOTUS. SCOTUS denied hearing the motion the first time around before the trail even began. I've yet to hear a convincing argument on why the high court would change their mind on the matter.