Justice Sotomayor did not hold back in her dissent: "Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were not so single-minded. In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” The Federalist No. 77, p. 507 (J. Harvard Li- brary ed. 2009). The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.” Ibid. The answer after today is no. Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent."

The killer here is that we don’t really have any recourse. Like, the best case scenario is what, wait until some of the right wing justices pass away and hope that the Democrats have both the presidency and the Senate? And, even then, it would take a long time to undo the damage the Roberts Court has wrought. Maybe THIS will get the Dems to ditch the filibuster and pack the court. Of course, that would require the Democratic party as a whole to show some fight, something they refuse to do for some reason.

I can’t help but think this is them trying to institute mandatory indoctrination of the so-called 'woke youth". I’m not sure it’d actually work, though. When I was stuck in the military, I met a ton of people from many different backgrounds. If anything, I got even more left-wing in my time there. It seemed that to me, the lifers skewed Republican quite a bit, while junior personnel were all over the place politically.

Why they’re floating this now, I have no idea. The draft is something that people tend to vote against, after all.

Wait, “sermon on the mound”? I’m not even Christian and I know it’s the Sermon on the Mount.

Beehaw would be far more thriving if they let users make communities instead of restricting us to the current generic ones. I think that’s the single biggest factor preventing this place from booming.

Honestly, I think the generic communities work better for us for now. We don’t really have the userbase for anything niche yet. Letting people create their own communities here would just lead to an awful lot of ghost towns. Doing it this way also lets us sidestep the reddit mod fiefdom problem, where anyone can create a sub and abuse the mod powers.

Is it true that he can still run for the office even if he’s in jail?

Eugene V. Debs ran for president in 1920 while was serving time for “sedition”(he had been making anti-war and anti-draft speeches during World War I). It’s certainly possible, though incredibly doubtful he’d win. I find that I can’t really count anything out when it comes to Trump, though.

Convicted Felon Donald Trump. Let us hope that his downfall is nigh.

I grew up in a secular household, and my parents told me that I could decide for myself what to believe. I ended up an atheist.

I start to check out once someone starts talking about “the economy”. It’s just a rich person circlejerk about “line goes up”. It doesn’t really impact me at all unless I get laid off. I guess, technically, I have a 401k but I doubt I’d ever truly be able to retire.

Besides, I’m barely making ends meet. Any praise of the economy is going to ring hollow in my ears, because I sure as hell am not seeing any of the windfall.

Why are we quoting each other? I remember the comment before yours. I made it. Idiot.

This is a beehaw community you’re posting on. We expect you to bee nice here.

Yeah, I’m getting very sick of these “free speech” types. Like, I don’t want to create an echo chamber, but, seriously, we don’t to hear the goddamn Nazi point of view. Platforming that sort of thing normalizes it. Mainstream platforms won’t even permaban stochastic terrorists like LibsOfTiktok. In fact, social media platforms carry much of the blame for the divisiveness in society these days. That’s why the Beehaw project is important. We need to show the world that there’s a better way to do things. That it’s possible to disagree with someone without being at each other’s throats, entertaining dissenting opinions and perhaps reconsidering one’s stance on things, and growing as a person by widening the pool of experiences one is exposed to. For example, I used to be a vague “libertarian” type, but my position has evolved to the point where I’m a left-wing anarchist now. People can change for the better. Again, I’m not saying we should listen to the ultra right wing’s point of view, but I bet there’s tons of people out there in their own little bubbles who have never left their homogeneous communities and have never heard the stories of the marginalized. We may not be able to change everyone’s minds. But if we can change some, well, that’s a win for all of us.

Good. She can’t win; she’d only function as a spoiler. Not that I’d want her to win anyway, she was awful. I still remember that weird thumbs down into curtsy motion she made to kill a bill (I think it was to increase the federal minimum wage). Had real “fuck the poors” energy.

Pretty crappy, really, I’ve been laid low with what is most likely a flu since Tuesday. I’m still sick, but I think I’m getting better now. At least it doesn’t seem to be covid(I took two tests and both came back negative).

All that work people put in to create this and it’s all going to disappear because of corporate greed. I wanted to see Coyote vs. Acme, but I guess I never will.

That’s a classic right there.

I really hope it was Billy that caved and not TG. Dude really is awful in quite a few ways.

If anyone wants a ridiculously long deep dive on the Billy Mitchell stuff(and is willing to read instead of watching a video), I recommend checking out this. There’s also on that website a huge deep dive into the story about his alleged “perfect Pacman” run, and his history of gaslighting the classic gaming community into thinking he was the greatest gamer ever.

I couldn’t get past the second area(I think?)of Cuphead, there was a dragon boss that was just a wall for me.

This isn’t surprising in the least. They’ve been pushing more and more ads recently; trying to get streamers to run them more often. I hate ads, so I have always opted for a short pre-roll so that when its done, viewers won’t have to worry about ads anymore. But I think Twitch will eventually force streamers to run ads every half hour, no matter how many people they scare off.

Fortunately, Musk walked it back(for now):

UPDATE 1/9/24: Hours after reporting out this initial story, some of the suspended X accounts returned. X has not explained what happened and the affected account owners have no idea why they were briefly suspended. The reinstatement came after notable users such as George Galloway, a former member of the British Parliament, called out Musk for banning the accounts.

Of course, anyone who’s still on there should consider leaving… he’s going to continue to pull this shit, and the more people that interact with the platform, the more legitimized it is.