ddmaxwelljr.bsky.social
This place is better than the other. Public Defender, so cops (and prosecutors) make me uneasy. Used to army, but not JAG. Row for fun. Soccer, too.
263 posts
221 followers
570 following
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I am dumber and more confused for having read this.
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That is the worst news report I may have ever read. It’s not even the jargon. Knowing the jargon doesn’t help at all in trying to figure out wtf actually happened. All we get is one AF guy got shot in the hand and another one is dead somehow, and local LE was involved for some reason.
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“First, kill all the lawyers.”
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Exactly!
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It’s the idea that what these workers do doesn’t count when it is in fact vital. We are losing so much talent and experience that it will take decades to rebuild our government capacity.
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That’s why this whole thing is so disgusting. Musk and Trump see federal workers as freeloaders, sucking on the government teat, rather than the dedicated public servants they are. This has almost nothing to do with how much they make. That just compounds the tragedy.
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Also, why most government workers accept lower pay is so they can serve the country. The people being laid off perform vital services for you and me. Sure there is more job security, but in my experience they are driven by the chance to serve.
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All of the institutions that were the foundation of our democracy have lost the trust of Americans on both sides of the spectrum. I am not sure our politics is capable of taking this on. This will be a massive project. It may be decades, if ever, before we can undertake it.
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This like 1000x. If the opposition party (Dems, if it still exists by that name) ever regains power, it is going to have to rebuild from the ground up. Trust in our current institutions cannot be regained. They are ruined. Courts are seen as a joke. Executive agencies. Congress. All of them.
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Create a record that proves that these monsters would rather cut taxes for the rich than feed kids or provide healthcare for the poor and elderly. But then they need to talk about every fucking day (and all the other cruel shit the GOP is doing).
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Look, in this case, Sen. Wyden is doing what he can. I am one who thinks Dems need to do much more across the board, by Wyden has been one of the few speaking out forcefully, and in this situation, all Dems can do is propose amendments to stem the damage and force the GOP to vote them down.
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Real world example is taking immigrants to Gitmo. Arguably legal, so tyranny or no? I just don’t think what the law says about anything helps you draw a line between legit government and tyranny.
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Say, for example, the president invokes the insurrection act (which is very broadly written in the discretion given to the executive) and orders AD troops to put down protests. Technically within the law. So tyranny or nah? Just one example.
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In my view, tyranny is only tangentially related to adherence to a body of law, and in fact may get its power from the law itself.
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I just think that judging whether this government has crossed into tyranny by whether its acts are “constitutional” is deeply problematic. It might be helpful to define what we mean when we use the term “tyranny.”
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Just a data point: everything the Nazis did in Germany was legal. I am really not sure that adherence to the law as written or to the rule of law generally is the best metric. The rule of law, despite what some legal philosophers might argue, is not inherently moral.
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Amen to that.
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Honestly, doesn’t seem that crazy to me. Perhaps I am a bit jaded? 🤦♂️
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JFC. 🤦♂️
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And so we have entire areas of the law that are a freaking mess because judges want certain people to lose. See, e.g., 4A law resulting from the “war on drugs.”
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Honestly, lawyers are trained to make arguments on behalf of their clients and they do so without regard for the downstream consequences. Judges do the same thing, adopting arguments in a given case so one side wins.
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YES!!!
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That’s exactly what I am saying, for sure.
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I just think this is about how lawyers (and law professors) are trained to think about issues and making arguments.
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I’m a PD so I see it as mostly blocking relief for criminal defendants, but it’s not just they who are frustrated. Sane shit permeates civil law, too. I am all for procedural fairness, but so much of these bars are insane.
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Just so you know, this attitude is not restricted to just legal academia. It is endemic to the profession, too. There are so many formalistic and procedural obstacles in the way of achieving anything approaching actual justice as to make the entire enterprise absurd.
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Julian, someone really needs to write the article I have already named and mentioned before: The originalist case for ignoring history. Wurman might be a good candidate to write it. He has already done a bang-up job on birthright citizenship.
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When you are focus-grouping a message in the face of an existential danger to democracy, you aren’t leading. You need to be out there explaining why this is a big deal. So much more to say about this fucking cowardice. Why is this so hard for them to get?
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Until it becomes politically untenable for Congress not to act to remove the president or other officials (and given where the country is, it’s not clear when or if that will happen), impeachment is not going to happen not matter how “impeachable” the conduct appears to be to us.
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Well, sure. Really anything a president does *can be* an impeachable offense because impeachment is a political act. It’s up to Congress to decide what constitutes a “high crime or misdemeanor.” But the politics of all of this have not caught up with this conduct.
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The two so far are both on my short list of absolute best movies I have seen.
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I said “no offense.” You’re OK. It’s the rest of your type.
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JFC, Julian. Why did you post this depressing truth? I am sorry but I am starting to think that legal academia is a racket. No offense to you. 😊
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Because the unfortunate reality is that conservative academics can just *say things* and have it get taken seriously, while any refutation must be heavily footnoted.
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Consistent with Trump’s stated view that military service members are suckers and losers. He and those he surrounds himself have no understanding of civic virtue (or any virtue at all, for that matter). They just assume everyone is like them, so they project their lack of virtue on everyone.
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This is good content.
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Me too.
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Not Paddington 1? (They’re both near the top of my list of best movies, to be clear — 1 with a slight edge for me) Just beautiful movies, both of them.
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Nobody said anything about negotiations. The Dems have no good-faith partner to negotiate with. The only thing for them to do is to do everything they can to slow it down and to shout from the rooftops what is actually going on and what it means for Americans.
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Glad I don’t work there. I would be screwed. JFC. 🤦♂️
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What’s missing is elected officials from the party purported to be the opposition to lead and tell America the significance of what is happening. Keep doing that and people might start joining you in the streets!
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The people like yourself who are already mobilized were already there. It’s a small slice of the electorate — of even the Dem electorate. Lots of folks maybe have heard what is happening but simply do not appreciate the gravity of it all.
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It is going to be hard to really stir up public fervor over all of this — it’s a lot and doesn’t necessarily directly affect most Americans (yet!) and pretty abstract — without Dem politicians actually leading by telling Americans what all of it means.
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Dude, I am. I have called my entire (Republican) Congressional delegation. I am doing everything I can to raise the alarm. But I am a public defender in medium sized town in the mountains. News media doesn’t give a shit what I say. But it does care what elected officials say.
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That type of rhetoric from senior Dem elected will get coverage. Why were virtually no Dem elected in front of cameras yesterday and today talking about Danielle Sassoon’s memo and what it means? Until Schumer is willing to talk about this as the crisis it is, we’re cooked.
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Dem voters and activists groups organizing is all well and good. But the only way to break through, to get the media to even discuss the significance of all of this is for leaders of the opposition party to actually explain it. Call it a coup. Call it a destruction of the constitutional order.