steintr.bsky.social
Antitrust lawyer, computer nerd, long-suffering Mets/Jets fan
Watching NYC area weather via WatchedSky: 🌩️👀 xEqdwWB2srp6
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Which is ... ironic ... given that Cuomo's most notable use of party political power was to work w/the IDC to give the institutional GOP control of the NYS State Senate. So yeah, I guess it's true that he knows how to wield political power, so long as you're sure he'd do it to actually benefit Dems.
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Unfortunately, yes. WH staff in that type of role historically haven't appeared (due to claims of executive privilege), and I doubt *this* Congress is going to break new ground on that.
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This is one of those cases where the periods in the abbreviation "U.S." would be helpful for disambiguation...
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The 2025 version of the Unstoppable Force vs. Unmovable Object problem.
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Ah, missed that. Thanks.
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If it's Cuomo, there's then the question of whether WFP will cross-endorse (unlikely?) or endorse their own candidate (perhaps one of the progressive Democratic candidates who didn't win the primary), creating a potential 4-way general (with the Mayor and the GOP nom). And there's no RCV in the GE.
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If there’s one thing that everyone agreed on at the time, it was the First and Second Banks of the United States 
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My 5 YO crashes parties at the local NYC playground all the time, but he's not going to be deterred by the need for an invite. :)
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Imagine there's a set of voters who would all prefer Lander, Mamdani, Myrie, Ramos, Stringer, and A. Adams to Cuomo. If half of them rank in that order (with Adams unranked), and the other half do the same thing but flip Stringer & Adams, half the ballots will be exhausted before the final round.
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It's true that telling people to fill their ballot would go a long way towards avoiding this problem, but it's not perfect. An "uncapped" RCV system in theory entirely avoids the vote splitting concern, but I think there's a residual issue due to NYC's 5-candidate cap.
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I suspect this is one of those posts that sounds crazy/like hyperbole if you weren't actually paying attention to NYS politics during those years. But it's really true, I promise!
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Also, the whole history of Cuomo & the IDC calls into question whether he's on "our" side for any definition of "our" other than "his own."
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But that means you need to *both* have a distinctive affirmative platform and a non-generic D ID. Osborn in KS took that so far as not accepting a D nomination, but that's probably not generalizable. (Or at some point you end up with a third party that enters "coalition" w/ the Senate Dems.)
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The trick is in making your brand be "not generic Democrat" while not making being "anti-Democrat" so much of your identity that it gets in the way of the party governing when it has a majority. Perhaps trying to do it on 1-2 issues would work, but for, e.g., Sinema it seemingly became reflexive.
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A reminder that there's at least some legal time period more ridiculous than the modern US copyright term. (Although given Rose's age when he was banned, life + 99 is generous relative to the set of lives-in-being at the time.)
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So quaint. (I assume the actual answer is something between "nobody read the FVRA", "inherent authority," and "we think the Library of Congress is, in fact, an 'executive agency' under the FVRA", perhaps citing the GAO carve-out in the latter case.)
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It's the legal standard for bribery. Is it also the legal standard for the broader noun "corruption"? (Which isn't an offense under federal law at all.)
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What about the obstruction statutes? 18 USC 1505 ("whoever corruptly . . . influences" an agency proceeding); 1512(b) ("whoever . . . corruptly persuades" a witness). It's obviously a different statutory purpose, but illustrates that even the legal definition depends on context.
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Unfortunately, they will likely get a blanket pardon, even if the President doesn't risk pardoning himself.
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That's why it's important not only to not rank your disfavored candidate, but ensure your ballot is full with candidates you prefer. (Recalling that there were more exhausted ballots than Adams' MOV.) But within those constraints, you should be able to show relative preference. What am I missing?
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Perhaps I'm missing a nuance here, but I thought RCV eliminated that risk. If Z and L are eliminated before M & C, then all that matters is how many people ranked M above C, not whether that was originally a 1, 2, or 3 ranking. The risk is that sufficient Z/L/M voters rank C above the other Z/L/M.
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*removed. He most definitely was impeached, for a variety of reasons including but not limited to the Tenure of Office issue.
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And as was discussed at length in the context of the first Trump impeachment, it's not as if you need to have a statutory hook if a majority of the House and 2/3 of the Senate believe the President has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, even political ones.
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Yes - I agree they thought it was constitutional, but the Act was as I see it downstream of the severe (in my mind justified) policy disagreement between the Radical Republicans and President Johnson. The latter would have been the real reason for the removal, not his removal of Stanton per se.
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Overruling Chada is probably fairly high on the list of constitutional amendments that could do the most good but are at least potentially politically attainable. (Because, unlike, say, abolishing the Senate or the EC, it doesn't have a clear partisan or geographic valence.)
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Also, random semi-related plug, this was a very good and enlightening read.
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/251429...
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If Johnson had been impeached, I'm not sure the strict reading of the Tenure of Office Act would have been the reason. And even that statute aligned the Secretaries' terms with those of the Pres, so while it limited the Pres's removal power, it didn't remove a later President's appointing power.
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But Congress being able to, for example, assign a 10 year term to, e.g., SecDef or SecState and effectively deprive a President from being able to appoint core executive officers also seems problematic from a policy perspective.
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It's certainly an interesting historical example, with the "precedent" being established only by a tied Senate vote in the First Congress, which suggests at best mixed views of the constitutional question at the time.
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As one who practices before/counsel clients re: the FTC, I'm a fan of Humphrey's Executor, but the multi-member distinction doesn't really make much sense. And even if it survives, I assume the Court would invalidate an attempt to convert a single officer into a multi-member body to evade Seila Law.
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Agreed. Just pointing out that it would get dinged on a good substantive cite check. And FWIW, under Seila Law, I'm not sure how Congress could have done anything differently, other than going back and removing all of the Librarian's executive functions (making her more similar to the Architect).
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Even if that's the right result as a matter of law (and I'm certainly no expert either), the court played a bit fast and loose with that "Id." citation, given 2 USC 136 doesn't mention removal at all. At best it's an implied power.
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In the absence of a statutory good cause provision, doesn't that go hand-in-hand? Other than Article III judges, I can't think of any other Presidential appointees that aren't removable (perhaps with cause). (And Congress can't be the removing authority, other than through impeachment.)
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Fair enough. I don't think this is sane-washing so much as suggesting a possibility that the image was chosen to advance his stated goal. But it was an offhand comment not really worth futher debate. To each their own.
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My point is just the mistake is the President trying to convert May 8 into an overall victory celebration - that's the historical anachronism, but having aggresively and wrongly decided to do that, using a Pacific image isn't inconsistent with *his* concept for the "holiday."
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I don't think it's necessarily an error --- if he wants May 8 to (for whatever reason) commemmorate the end of the entire war, then one of the most iconic images of the war in the Pacific makes perfect sense.
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For the full effect, you need to consider that the Knicks actually had the first lead (3-0) only to have their only points removed by video replay. They literally went backwards...
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True, but the power to remove is an important stick for ensuring policy alignment. (Compare the outcomes of Barr/Berman from Trump I & Bove/Sassoon from Trump II.) If the statute puts the (D)AG in the position of having to personally supersede the Interim USA, I'm not sure that's scalable.
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But this DOJ has to believe that statute is unconstitutional, right? After all, if the power to direct prosecutions is a core executive function (Trump v. US, Dellenger v. Bessent), I assume they'd argue that Cong violates the Vesting Clause if it vests the appointment of prosecutors in the courts.
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(The latter may well be another example of a distortion of the research funding process, but unfortunately there are plenty of examples of that in this Administration.)
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Agreed, but particularly with the govt already having funded initial mRNA development, there's still a significant difference between "we won't approve any new mRNA vaccines" & "we're going to direct NIH funding to developing new non-mRNA alternatives." Both bad, but the first would be worse.
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FWIW, I think the phrasing of that quote is a bit confusing. The rest of the article suggests that placebo testing would be required, but not the no mRNA part. The article describes that as NIH investment in developing a non-mRNA platform, which might be wasteful but isn't the same as an mRNA ban.
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At least, that seems to be the implication of the unitary executive theory. And even if that is beyond existing precedent, Seila Law suggests that the President could call the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, express his desire to see such an investigation, and then fire him/her for not doing so.
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Directing the outcome is different because Congress prescribed an objective standard for tax exemption, which is clearly within its legislative power; the President can't override that any more than he can unilaterally increase or decrease the amount of tax due.
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I am almost certainly not someone who know the theory better than you, but I think the answer would be yes? The Comm'r can direct IRS employees to conduct such investigations, and the Comm'r's discretionary authority to do that is part of the Executive Power. Hence, it is vested in the President.
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Of course, 0 senators per state also satisfies the Equal Suffrage Clause, so I don't see why "The Senate shall be composed of 100 Senators elected through a proportional representation system, w/o regard to state of residence" would violate Article V. (Putting aside the state ratification issues.)
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I agree with this wholeheartedly (and think even an Article V convention would be insanely dangerous under current or foreseeable political conditions), but I seem to be having a filter bubble issue --- what is this (or Will's post) supposedly responding to?
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And let's be real --- these almost certainly aren't being reviewed by OLC for "form and legality," notwithstanding 28 C.F.R. § 0.25(b), so we shouldn't be surprised by drafting issues.
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I agree that "haul-em-off-in-chains" is probably the intended effect, whether or not justified by the text. As to whether the confusion is purposeful, I suspect it's more reckless: they simply don't care, b/c these aren't intended to be enforced as such, so long as the intended message is conveyed.