Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that individual states can't be bullied by the federal government, I wonder how long it will be before some of the feistier red states start reinstituting Jim Crow. Since the Voting Rights Act is now gutted, how can a state like Alabama resist just declaring Black people to be non-citizens? If the states are no longer bound by the constitution, how can Mississippi resist the siren call of bring back slavery?
Louisiana passes a new law that says Black people can't vote
District court in Louisiana rules the law a clear violation of the 14th amendment of the US constitution
Appeals court "pauses" the District court ruling, but also does not allow the law to go into effect until its constitutionality can be considered by the Appeals court, sometime in late 2027
US Supreme Court refuses to rule on the constitutionality of the law itself, but allows the law to go into effect while its constitutionality is considered by lower courts.
2028: Black people in Louisiana still awaiting a ruling on the constitutionality of the law that deprived them of their voting rights, a 5th circuit court hearing on this question has been inexplicably delayed once again as the Louisiana law has spread to twelve more states.
Did I get that right? Is that how our system works? I can haz law degree now?
I’m having a harder time than usual laughing at this one, not because it isn’t funny but because I have a real sense that a Rubicon has been crossed. The understanding that immigration policy and law falls solely within the purview of the federal government has been settled law for over a century. So more than Dobbs or the voting rights or the affirmative action cases, this feels like SCOTUS is really taking off the guardrails and they don’t care who sees them do it.
The crazy thing is that NOBODY has actually ruled on the question except for the one lowly District court judge who found the damn thing clearly unconstitutional. So the Supremes get it both ways: 1) Texas gets to have its own immigration laws 2) They never* have to rule on the constitutionality of those laws.
*One legal advocate for immigrants in Texas said it could be years before the case wends its way back up to the top court. Which, given that it's going to take at least FOUR YEARS to get to a trial of Donald Trump on the charge of attempted overthrow of the US government, sounds about right.
Yeah, this ruling looks like the kind of "states rights" ruling that Ross Barnett and Orval Faubus always wanted. The Democrats need to come up with an FDR-type strategy to rein this Supreme Court in. Strong anti-corruption laws for SCOTUS Justices and Congressional investigations into the current Justices' relationships with their billionaire sugardaddies would b a good start.
Whatever the sensible people do, it will backfire. Options:
1) do nothing – certain people get cleansed, kiss the "American Dream" (no more huddled masses, no more yearning to breathe, free nor otherwise) g'bye...
2) do something – media scold the sensibles, insurrectionistas insurrestionate, life as we know it ceases as such, all ends in tears...
Eh, let 'em insurrectionate, we got a few hundred in prison right now from the last try, here's a case where I'm willing to build as many prisons as necessary.
Abbott and Paxton are my two least favorite politicians. In a country with so many shitty politicians you think it might be hard to choose two in particular. No sir. Abbott and Paxton.
I had a job that took me to Texas now and then. After a while I refused to go. Back in the heyday of Tom DeLay. The home office asked me why. I said it was a shit hole. Evidently they'd been there because they didn't have any problem with my excuse.
I'm got a new government program I'd like to propose - Drones for Insurrectionists. Just like it sounds.
I think that if, back in the day, we would have droned them Bundy fucks we wouldn't quite be in such a predicament.
Just you all wait: we'll soon have scalping gangs like in Blood Meridian. Then we'll see who the real cannibals are...
Also, FUN linguistic FACT: the "tl" consonant that every white person says like the last sound in "wattle" (invoked above in our host's "Quetzalcoatl") is actually the same unvoiced lateral fricative ya find in Welsh or Icelandic. Push your tongue against your alveolar ridge & press airflow around it on both sides. Hey presto! now you're a world traveller!
Next stop: the surprising variety of phonemic clicks in langauges such as Xhosa!
Yeah, Big Sleep is the one with the sexy bookstore. "Looks like we're closed for the day" says the sexy bookseller as she pulls down the shade before teaching Philip Marlowe some phonetics.
The phonetic things you notice are fascinating. A TESOL PhD acquaintance of mine once remarked that I often pronounced “wh” as “hw.” “Hwat?!” I exclaimed, embracing my Old Norse (or is it Old English? Or am I just a dork?).
Consensus among attorneys appears to be that the Supreme Clusterfuck has finally rendered the post-Civil War Constitution dead and buried with this Texas decision. They laughed when I said, post-Roe, that the Clowns were working toward legalizing slavery, but that’s not too far away from today’s reality.
Leave us not forget that USian incarcerated persons are by legal definition subject to enslaveryment, and have been since that "post-Civil War Constitution" got thrust upon us...
They’ll start with those, then allow states to enslave migrants, then give Musk et al the legal right to enslave employees, and then everyone else they don’t like, especially women and those with college degrees.
“Oh, the Court would never do that! The wise and holy Justices revere the sanctity of the law too much!” [clutches pearls; collapses on fainting couch as the Supreme Clerics declare the Constitution null and void]
Constitutional Law is just religion for atheists. Civic theology if you will, desperately clinging to the notion of Law as the Divine Watchmaker, refusing to accept that the Celestial Hall Monitors will not come down to save us from the fascists.
At first, I thought Biden should roll out "Pretendecessor" as his new name for Trump, but then I realized watching him try that would be like watching a truck full of dynamite negotiate a twisty mountain road.
The 5th Circuit has re-imposed a stay on Texas’s ridiculously unconstitutional law. It was apparently too much for even that radically reactionary circuit.
The next step, apparently, is that the 5th Circuit will consider the constitutionality of SB-4 and rule on that, something that will probably take them about five years to do, cuz they got lots o' dusty ol' law books to read, which is why the fight is always about whether the law is in effect while being examined by the courts, because everyone involved understands that the federal court system is a complete clusterfuck that can't be relied on to produce its decisions in anything approaching a timely manner, or before the sun runs out of hydrogen.
I kept waiting for the cigarette holder and the pince-nez, then I remembered that it was an arrogant dumbfuck decision that has Abbott in a wheelchair in the first place.
“ BEAUREGARD: No, Jeb, they’s f’um Hay-ee-sha where they gawt thet voodoo what makes ‘em woana eat folks up like they was poultry or biscuits or somethin’.”
I see you’ve been sneaking peeks at Victor Orban’s No. 1 fan again, Roy.
"For Haitian Protestants, whose opinions we rarely if ever encounter in the media, this is the central fact explaining their country’s chronic misery. They say the country’s founders brought a curse on Haiti by consecrating it to demons in the slave revolt that sparked the Haitian Revolution."
See, it's a curse! Send Br'er Dreher down there with a bucket of holy water.
Demons, pedophilia, vermin, cannibalism. It's all about dehumanizing Them, making it easier to kill Them. Just like in war. From what little I've read, turns out it's kinda hard to take random civilians drafted into the military and convince them in a short time that its OK to kill other people, even when theyre trying to kill you. You have to be carefully taught that, too.
Not-so-fun fact about Haiti is that it has some of the most extreme economic inequality in the world, a handful of wealthy families own nearly everything, and have always run the country (into the ground) for their own personal benefit.
Which makes me wonder, if I did a Venn diagram. "Handful of wealthy families" and "Haitian Protestants" would I find much overlap?
Haiti was literally occupied by the United States from 1915 to 1934. No other independent Central or South American or Caribbean country had that happen to them.
I think Dreher has a dart board hanging in his Budapest apartment with sections labeled "LGBT", "Demons", "Liberals", and "The Blacks" and whenever he needs inspiration to regurgitate some new fascist talking points for his boss -- because we can dispense with any notion he's currently a journalist rather than Orban's chief English speaking propagandist -- he throws a dart to determine the boogie man du jour.
I knew, and went to college with, *plenty* of Haitian Protestants; I can't think of any one who would say such a thing. They attributed their problems to the Tonton Macoutes, not "demons". If anything they wanted a Haiti free of overseas interference.
TBH, though, if I was headed home from anywhere by which I could go on I-95, I could also do Blue Ridge Parkway and, in the normal course, that would always be the preference. Sorry, Roy.
Just noticed how the rich n' powerful treat our legal system, that actual judgements are relatively unimportant compared with your ability to defer them forever, is also how the rich n' powerful treat money. For normal workin' folks a loan is a burden, an obligation, a thing that hangs over you and maybe even keeps you up at night, but for rich folks, a loan is basically just free money. Maybe you'll pay it off, maybe you won't, maybe when it finally comes due you'll pay it off with another loan - yeah, that's how the real winners do it!
Maybe our economic, legal, political systems are actually designed for this, to advantage people who have a very specific kind of blindness, the inability to see more than two years into the future. Greg Abbot is a winner tonight, who cares if his bullshit law gets invalidated sometime in 2028?
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that individual states can't be bullied by the federal government, I wonder how long it will be before some of the feistier red states start reinstituting Jim Crow. Since the Voting Rights Act is now gutted, how can a state like Alabama resist just declaring Black people to be non-citizens? If the states are no longer bound by the constitution, how can Mississippi resist the siren call of bring back slavery?
Muh mawma, as respectabul as they is anywhars, useta call me a feist. Not sher wha...
Louisiana passes a new law that says Black people can't vote
District court in Louisiana rules the law a clear violation of the 14th amendment of the US constitution
Appeals court "pauses" the District court ruling, but also does not allow the law to go into effect until its constitutionality can be considered by the Appeals court, sometime in late 2027
US Supreme Court refuses to rule on the constitutionality of the law itself, but allows the law to go into effect while its constitutionality is considered by lower courts.
2028: Black people in Louisiana still awaiting a ruling on the constitutionality of the law that deprived them of their voting rights, a 5th circuit court hearing on this question has been inexplicably delayed once again as the Louisiana law has spread to twelve more states.
Did I get that right? Is that how our system works? I can haz law degree now?
Slowness, weaponized.
The.
.
.
.
S.
.
.
.
W.
.
.
.
O.
.
.
.
A.
.
.
.
That's.
.
.
.
The.
.
.
.
Slow.
.
.
.
Walkers.
.
.
.
Of.
.
.
.
America.
Expect Governor Brett Favre to sign the 2026 Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and Re-Re-Redemption Acts.
(It has been, after all, 80 years since the all-White primary was declared unconstitutional. Why not go back to the Good Old Days?)
Wuzn't them minority types happier back then? They wuz always singin' soft and low out inna fields!
Learnin' valuable skills!
I’m having a harder time than usual laughing at this one, not because it isn’t funny but because I have a real sense that a Rubicon has been crossed. The understanding that immigration policy and law falls solely within the purview of the federal government has been settled law for over a century. So more than Dobbs or the voting rights or the affirmative action cases, this feels like SCOTUS is really taking off the guardrails and they don’t care who sees them do it.
no one expects the talibangelical inquisition!
As always, that 'no one' is doing a heavy lift, standing in for 'everyone'...
The crazy thing is that NOBODY has actually ruled on the question except for the one lowly District court judge who found the damn thing clearly unconstitutional. So the Supremes get it both ways: 1) Texas gets to have its own immigration laws 2) They never* have to rule on the constitutionality of those laws.
*One legal advocate for immigrants in Texas said it could be years before the case wends its way back up to the top court. Which, given that it's going to take at least FOUR YEARS to get to a trial of Donald Trump on the charge of attempted overthrow of the US government, sounds about right.
Yeah, this ruling looks like the kind of "states rights" ruling that Ross Barnett and Orval Faubus always wanted. The Democrats need to come up with an FDR-type strategy to rein this Supreme Court in. Strong anti-corruption laws for SCOTUS Justices and Congressional investigations into the current Justices' relationships with their billionaire sugardaddies would b a good start.
Yes sir — they do. But will they?
Whatever the sensible people do, it will backfire. Options:
1) do nothing – certain people get cleansed, kiss the "American Dream" (no more huddled masses, no more yearning to breathe, free nor otherwise) g'bye...
2) do something – media scold the sensibles, insurrectionistas insurrestionate, life as we know it ceases as such, all ends in tears...
Happy spring!
Eh, let 'em insurrectionate, we got a few hundred in prison right now from the last try, here's a case where I'm willing to build as many prisons as necessary.
Abbott and Paxton are my two least favorite politicians. In a country with so many shitty politicians you think it might be hard to choose two in particular. No sir. Abbott and Paxton.
I had a job that took me to Texas now and then. After a while I refused to go. Back in the heyday of Tom DeLay. The home office asked me why. I said it was a shit hole. Evidently they'd been there because they didn't have any problem with my excuse.
I'm got a new government program I'd like to propose - Drones for Insurrectionists. Just like it sounds.
I think that if, back in the day, we would have droned them Bundy fucks we wouldn't quite be in such a predicament.
Soons I read halfway thru this comment, I knew it was you, and I haz a non-sad.
Roy, you use your tongue purtier'n a twenty dollar whore 😜
Accounting for all known uses of tongue, that says quite a bit!
Be still, Taggart!
Just you all wait: we'll soon have scalping gangs like in Blood Meridian. Then we'll see who the real cannibals are...
Also, FUN linguistic FACT: the "tl" consonant that every white person says like the last sound in "wattle" (invoked above in our host's "Quetzalcoatl") is actually the same unvoiced lateral fricative ya find in Welsh or Icelandic. Push your tongue against your alveolar ridge & press airflow around it on both sides. Hey presto! now you're a world traveller!
Next stop: the surprising variety of phonemic clicks in langauges such as Xhosa!
I just stick with Kukulcan myself…
Oh you oughta hear me pro-nouncin' Quetzalcoatl
Cause I gots me a throat fulla first-class glottal
So meet me down in Guachaca
Singin' Boom! shakalaka
And we'll Boom! shakalaka til we're all outta wattle
I have a fondness for phonemics, but we've never clicked.
*reaches for rolled-up newspaper*
Thank you for taking care of that for me, Pere
Aw, now don't you start too! Newsprint has always had too much impact on me.
You are incorrugateable, good sir!
Name that movie: "I come from a long line of heels, but we never clicked."
Too modest to chime in...will wait til all the incorrect guesses have been posted...
Hint to the uninitiated: It's not Conan the Barbarian.
"push your tongue against your alveolar ridge"
I'm pretty sure that'd get you arrested in Texas.
"The day that Billy Joe McAllister pushed off the alveolar ridge. . ."
That was the line they reworked for Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.
"You know how to make an unvoiced lateral fricative, doncha, Steve?" No, wait, that's To Have and Have Not, never mind.
Dang it! I got the wrong movie title.
Yeah, Big Sleep is the one with the sexy bookstore. "Looks like we're closed for the day" says the sexy bookseller as she pulls down the shade before teaching Philip Marlowe some phonetics.
Oh, I know the Big Sleep. I just forgot that quote wasn’t from it. I’ve never seen To Have And Have Not though.
Finally! A comment with the phrase "unvoiced lateral fricative."
Also, the word "wattle", and it's not said in reference to Mitch McConnell!
This here’s the wattle
The emblem of our land
You can stick it in a bottle
Or you can hold it in your hand
Please tell me you learned that one at Grandpa's knee.
The Monty Python “Bruces” sketch
And here I was thinking I was getting some real South Dakota folk wisdom.
The phonetic things you notice are fascinating. A TESOL PhD acquaintance of mine once remarked that I often pronounced “wh” as “hw.” “Hwat?!” I exclaimed, embracing my Old Norse (or is it Old English? Or am I just a dork?).
Insert obligatory "Why not all three?"
¿Por que no los trés?
Hvorfor ikke alle tre?
Du fik mig der, ven
Me tienes ahí, amigo
Your ON dorkiness would probably say "hvað" with a much huskier "h" (or would that be "hvuski"? <thinking emoji>)
yETH, it’s a THORNy issue, Old Norse is.
Texan too!
Wouldn't I need to know where the Alveolar Ridge is? I assume we liberated that in WW2 France back in '44
Consensus among attorneys appears to be that the Supreme Clusterfuck has finally rendered the post-Civil War Constitution dead and buried with this Texas decision. They laughed when I said, post-Roe, that the Clowns were working toward legalizing slavery, but that’s not too far away from today’s reality.
Leave us not forget that USian incarcerated persons are by legal definition subject to enslaveryment, and have been since that "post-Civil War Constitution" got thrust upon us...
They’ll start with those, then allow states to enslave migrants, then give Musk et al the legal right to enslave employees, and then everyone else they don’t like, especially women and those with college degrees.
If you declare, as Texas has, that being without papers is a felony, then migrants = felons = slaves, speeds the whole process along.
Checks out from here, but I'd wait til Steve has confirmed the equation.
“Oh, the Court would never do that! The wise and holy Justices revere the sanctity of the law too much!” [clutches pearls; collapses on fainting couch as the Supreme Clerics declare the Constitution null and void]
Constitutional Law is just religion for atheists. Civic theology if you will, desperately clinging to the notion of Law as the Divine Watchmaker, refusing to accept that the Celestial Hall Monitors will not come down to save us from the fascists.
"Mr. Kavanaugh has assured me of his deep respect for precedent."
You spelled pretendcedent incorrectly.
At first, I thought Biden should roll out "Pretendecessor" as his new name for Trump, but then I realized watching him try that would be like watching a truck full of dynamite negotiate a twisty mountain road.
Every press conference becomes The Wages of Fear
Jon Stewart acted that out: "He's walking away from the podium, successfully answered all the questions OH NO HE'S TURNING AROUND SOMEBODY STOP HIM"
The 5th Circuit has re-imposed a stay on Texas’s ridiculously unconstitutional law. It was apparently too much for even that radically reactionary circuit.
https://apple.news/AAR6MFhYvRn21Bzt4Q0nzMw
When you're too much for the 5th Circuit...
District court rules Texas law SB-4 unconstitutional
5th Circuit "pauses" this ruling
Justice Department asks 5th Circuit to "un-pause" the ruling
Case goes to Supreme Court, which allows SB-4 to go into effect
5th Circuit, in response, "un-pauses" the District Court ruling, which "pauses" SB-4
Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the wonders of the American System of Justice
If anyone else can make any sense of this, please have at it.
The next step, apparently, is that the 5th Circuit will consider the constitutionality of SB-4 and rule on that, something that will probably take them about five years to do, cuz they got lots o' dusty ol' law books to read, which is why the fight is always about whether the law is in effect while being examined by the courts, because everyone involved understands that the federal court system is a complete clusterfuck that can't be relied on to produce its decisions in anything approaching a timely manner, or before the sun runs out of hydrogen.
Pass.
The Moon is in a different phase, or the wind changed direction.
I like pretzels, but not the logical kind.
"sits in an old-fashioned high-backed oak cane wheelchair"
Oof.
Carry on, carry on...
The ghost of FDR wishes to clearly disassociate itself from this aspect of the set design.
I kept waiting for the cigarette holder and the pince-nez, then I remembered that it was an arrogant dumbfuck decision that has Abbott in a wheelchair in the first place.
Sunrise at Camp O' the Saints.
How many cleaning ladies in a gaggle?
SEVEN, maybe?
After all that dialect-talkin', Roy's computer ran out of apostrophes. Also Abbot's code-switching, perfectly done.
“ BEAUREGARD: No, Jeb, they’s f’um Hay-ee-sha where they gawt thet voodoo what makes ‘em woana eat folks up like they was poultry or biscuits or somethin’.”
I see you’ve been sneaking peeks at Victor Orban’s No. 1 fan again, Roy.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/why-is-haiti-uniquely-miserable/
Dreher goes for the literal Oooga-Booga.
"For Haitian Protestants, whose opinions we rarely if ever encounter in the media, this is the central fact explaining their country’s chronic misery. They say the country’s founders brought a curse on Haiti by consecrating it to demons in the slave revolt that sparked the Haitian Revolution."
See, it's a curse! Send Br'er Dreher down there with a bucket of holy water.
Demons, pedophilia, vermin, cannibalism. It's all about dehumanizing Them, making it easier to kill Them. Just like in war. From what little I've read, turns out it's kinda hard to take random civilians drafted into the military and convince them in a short time that its OK to kill other people, even when theyre trying to kill you. You have to be carefully taught that, too.
Military policy requires such training, in this country anyway.
Gunny knew! https://youtu.be/liusEeP1QcE?si=FLfsnPew36n3MyEV
What do Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald have in common?
Carbon-based life forms?
Indifferent markspersons?
Yoicks! Why not just stick his head in the bucket where he already is, and avoid wasting the carbons on shipping him?
Not-so-fun fact about Haiti is that it has some of the most extreme economic inequality in the world, a handful of wealthy families own nearly everything, and have always run the country (into the ground) for their own personal benefit.
Which makes me wonder, if I did a Venn diagram. "Handful of wealthy families" and "Haitian Protestants" would I find much overlap?
I dunno - YOU da maths guy!
"Let's ask Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi what's wrong with Iran."
He's dead, Steve
Thanks, Bones.
Dreary mentions how the Dominican Republic was somehow "better" like they haven't been routinely closing their border for trivial reasons: https://apnews.com/article/dominican-republic-haiti-border-closed-abinader-a8e763730d674fc840b4ea33d50ebe23
Haiti was literally occupied by the United States from 1915 to 1934. No other independent Central or South American or Caribbean country had that happen to them.
Also, France extracted a large amount of money from Haiti
Maybe, but United Fruit couped Guatemala, which is within spitting distance of what Haiti miseried thru.
I think Dreher has a dart board hanging in his Budapest apartment with sections labeled "LGBT", "Demons", "Liberals", and "The Blacks" and whenever he needs inspiration to regurgitate some new fascist talking points for his boss -- because we can dispense with any notion he's currently a journalist rather than Orban's chief English speaking propagandist -- he throws a dart to determine the boogie man du jour.
I knew, and went to college with, *plenty* of Haitian Protestants; I can't think of any one who would say such a thing. They attributed their problems to the Tonton Macoutes, not "demons". If anything they wanted a Haiti free of overseas interference.
Dreher's "Haitian Protestant" is like Friedman's "Iraqi cab driver."
I give 'em 6 months...
HELP!
Bern’s stalking me!
Can you hear the creaking of the bicycle as he comes up behind you? Oil that chain, Bern, they're on to you!
Wait. What??
I have to stay alert for the sound of a bike?? I know that if in Baltimore I have to do that for Mr. Roy Ed Roso? Same, yeah?
Also, the puns. He leaves a trail of puns behind.
Another reason to avoid Baltimore.
TBH, though, if I was headed home from anywhere by which I could go on I-95, I could also do Blue Ridge Parkway and, in the normal course, that would always be the preference. Sorry, Roy.
and marks, bloody marks. It's like he is Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk
😳
Yeah, me too...
It is a little-known and poorly understood fact that Berns grow on tall, stake-like vegetative growths, called...
...
...
...
Wait for it...
...
...
...
Bernstalks.
Ah, yes, no. You’re not a stalk, just a stalker.
Stalker than some, yeah.
Just noticed how the rich n' powerful treat our legal system, that actual judgements are relatively unimportant compared with your ability to defer them forever, is also how the rich n' powerful treat money. For normal workin' folks a loan is a burden, an obligation, a thing that hangs over you and maybe even keeps you up at night, but for rich folks, a loan is basically just free money. Maybe you'll pay it off, maybe you won't, maybe when it finally comes due you'll pay it off with another loan - yeah, that's how the real winners do it!
Maybe our economic, legal, political systems are actually designed for this, to advantage people who have a very specific kind of blindness, the inability to see more than two years into the future. Greg Abbot is a winner tonight, who cares if his bullshit law gets invalidated sometime in 2028?
But, but...the NATIONAL DEBT!!!
[Neverminding that the debt of the nation is all that money sloshin', I say SLOSHIN', 'round the whole damn place!]
Then he woke up and shee-it, it was all just a dream.