Whatever his political views turn out to be, Thomas Jacob Sanford is gonna be pretty hard for Republicans to spin as a "woke socialist girlie-boy who hates everything America stands for". I suspect they're already re-writing their speeches to read "just a lone nut".
I think you underestimate the capacity of the far right propaganda machine. There's a reason "swift boating" entered the political lexicon and things have only got worse in the 2 decades since.
True. OTOH, don't underestimate the visual effect. John Kerry didn't have a martial appearance about him, and for all intents and purposes came off as a rather nerdy civilian. Sanford presents quite differently, and unlike with Kerry, the only images people will have of him are the photos.
But we can split the difference and say that if Republicans DO try to spin Sanford as a woke leftist, they probably won't use the photo of him with the dead deer in his pick-up truck. Maybe his lawn signs, if the Google Street View image showing "Trump/Vance Stop" turns out to be authentic.
Right now, I'm leaning toward the theory(floated elsewhere) that he was a right-winger who didn't know much about Mormons, and the attack on the church was revenge for the killing of Charlie Kirk. Or maybe he had some personal reason to hate religion(eg. God failed to prevent his son's illness), and targeted that church 'cuz it just happened to be nearby.
Yes, California has civil grand juries as well as criminal grand juries, two separate things -- the same body does not serve both functions.
Civil grand juries are independent watchdog bodies that look at their county governments and cities and agencies within their counties, including the prisons. They also look into citizen complaints abou all of those. In Los Angeles County it's a full-time job that lasts a year and pays $80/day (less than minimum wage -- you gotta be really public spirited to sign up for this).
Criminal grand juries in California do function the way federal ones do -- it's just that we don't use them as much. The vast majority of felony cases go through the preliminary hearing process where it's a judge determining if the prosecutor has enough evidence to go to trial and the defendant is present and their lawyer can participate.
In certain smaller counes there is only one grand jury which handle both criminal and civil matters. While there is no exhaustive list, Placer County, Madera County
and Plumas County have just one grand jury. Point is, it is allowed in California law.
you gotta be really public spirited to sign up for this.
I don't believe this is voluntary. One is summoned to jury duty by the Superior Court.
Right now, I'm leaning toward the theory(floated elsewhere) that he was a right-winger who didn't know much about Mormons, and the attack on the church was revenge for the killing of Charlie Kirk. Or maybe he had some personal reason to hate religion(eg. God failed to prevent his son's illness), and targeted that church 'cuz it just happened to be nearby.
According to a municipal political candidate who had spoken to Sanford a short while before the shooting, he expressed anti-Mormon views, from what sounds like a conservative Christian perspective, and also mentioned having lived briefly in Utah a few years prior. There also seems to be an indication that he supported right-wing causes(eg. an abortion ban), and did indeed have
And while the Trump/Vance sign was indeed hung above a Stop sign, it looks more like that was just because it was a convenient place to put it, rather than some clever juxtaposition.
Long and the short, looks like right-wing, Christian-on-Christian sectarian violence. And at least on social media, I have noticed a drop in people trying to claim Sanford was left-wing.
The thing that I don't get about grand juries is why they are so one-sided, why they only hear the prosecutor's case for probable cause and not the defendant's. The defendant isn't even present. The process seems set up to mislead.
Technically, “probable cause” has to do with arrests and search warrants.
The purpose of the grand jury, at least theoretically, is to be a check on a prosecutor’s decision as to whether charges should be brought. The grand jury’s task is to decide whether the prosecution has sufficient evidence of guilt to send the case to trial, or whether the prosecution can’t make a convincing case to start with. So being two-sided isn’t really in the remit; it’s supposed to act as a green light or a red light for the prosecution.
I think my problem is I understand the system in California but not the federal system.
In California most felony cases go through the steps of 1. Charges filed, 2. Preliminary hearing before a judge, where the prosecutor presents evidence and the defendant's lawyer pokes holes in the case and the burden of proof is probable cause, 3. If the judge finds that burden is met, the case goes to trial before a jury. Grand juries are supposed to be for keeping high-profile cases out of the news before they go to trial to protect evidence or shield vulnerable witnesses, or for weak cases.
So I think my familiarity with the California state system makes the federal system look weird to me. And frankly, unfair.
Thanks for this. The California system you describe is unfamiliar to me (our system is similar to the federal system), and I can see how that system makes the federal system look one-sided to you.
To me, it’s a little bit the opposite, in that having the defendant try to poke holes in the case before the case goes to trial seems to unnecessarily encourage the defendant to show their cards earlier than they might want to. But I’ll readily admit that may be solely because of unfamiliarity to me, not because of any merit or lack of merit to the system.
And I should walk back my comment that “technically, ‘probable cause’ has to do with arrests and search warrants.” Those are the contexts in which I typically heard “probable cause” used, but as I thought about it, I realized I over-stated and it could be used here in the indictment context as well.
In any event, the grand jury’s role here is to ensure that the prosecutor has evidence showing that a crime was committed and that it’s more likely than not that the defendant committed it. The defendant’s opportunity to shoot holes in the evidence come at trial, when the burden of proof for the prosecution is beyond a reasonable doubt.
Long and the short, looks like right-wing, Christian-on-Christian sectarian violence. And at least on social media, I have noticed a drop in people trying to claim Sanford was left-wing.
Reading through the back-and-forth self-exonerations in YouTube debates, it strikes me that very few leftists, when presented with the argument that a conservative church seems more likely something leftists would attack, have responded with "But you have to keep in mind that a lot of fundamentalists hate Mormonism as well."
SNOBBERY ALERT
I think it was the marxist theoretician Terry Eagleton who observed some time before or during the New Atheist debates, that progressives in particular tended to have an abysmal knowledge of theology, and that this hinders their ability to properly analyze culture.
(Eagleton himself, I believe, came to his mature politics via left-wing political Catholicism, so might be a little biased.)
@Nick Tamen, when I sat on a jury for a felony case, the preliminary hearing was one of the things that tripped up the prosecutor. Things said at the prelim can be brought up at the trial. The main witness/accuser had to tell her story three times - to the cops, at the prelim, and at trial - and there were glaring discrepancies. It wasn't the only problem with the case, but it was a serious one.
you gotta be really public spirited to sign up for this.
I don't believe this is voluntary. One is summoned to jury duty by the Superior Court.
In Los Angeles County people are summoned to serve on criminal grand juries just like regular jury duty, and each jury serves for a month. To be on the civil grand jury, where people serve a full year, people apply.
Also, Plumas County doesn't have the same grand jury for both civil and criminal matters. It always has a civil grand jury, and a criminal grand jury is empaneled when they need one. I didn't look up the other counties you mentioned, but I'd bet a small sum that they have separate bodies as well, as the work of the two are very different.
All of this information can be verified on county court websites.
Also, Plumas County doesn't have the same grand jury for both civil and criminal matters. It always has a civil grand jury, and a criminal grand jury is empaneled when they need one. I didn't look up the other counties you mentioned, but I'd bet a small sum that they have separate bodies as well, as the work of the two are very different.
On the other hand, Madera's Grand Jury is impaneled as a civil grand jury. However, in the frequently asked questions about whether a Grand Jury can investigate criminal cases, it answers that while it is possible for a grand jury to do both usually a separate grand jury will be impaneled. https://www.madera.courts.ca.gov/online-services/jury-grand-jury-information/grand-jury
The Pluma Grand Jury site does say its grand jury is for civil cases only, though, as you say.
One point we overlooked: The Grand Jury may receive and investigate complaints by individuals, including private citizens, local government officials, and employees, regarding action and performances of public officials.
And, then, today, he posted an AI altered video of Jefferis and Schumer, Jefferies wearing a sombrero and Schumer calling all elected Democrats sh^t
When he announced he was sending troops to Portland, he referred to seeing videos of destruction in Portland. Those videos were apparently from the 2020 riots after the death of George Floyd. Trump apparently thinks they were very recent videos.
I know what my kids would be doing if I were posting such garbage on my social media. Family Intervention time. The keys to the car would be taken away, and they would be placing me in a dementia ward.
There were a bunch of other freakish things that happened over the weekend, but it is getting past my bed time.
@Nick Tamen, when I sat on a jury for a felony case, the preliminary hearing was one of the things that tripped up the prosecutor. Things said at the prelim can be brought up at the trial. The main witness/accuser had to tell her story three times - to the cops, at the prelim, and at trial - and there were glaring discrepancies. It wasn't the only problem with the case, but it was a serious one.
Interesting. Here the defense would have access to any statements made to police, but not to the grand jury.
I wonder where California’s system came from, and if there are other states that use it or something like it. Another reminder that the US has 52+ judicial systems, and very few blanket assumptions, beyond requirements of the US Constitution, can be made about how things work.
Whoever said the meeting of the Senior officers could have been handled electronically, turns out it was true. Hegseth: Get in shape men. If I can do calisthenics, you can too. Trump: let's train our men in our cities. How many billions did this cost?
1) The U.S. Treasury is working on designs for a $1 coin bearing the likeness of Donald Trump on both the obverse and reverse sides. It will supposedly be released next year in honor of the United States' 250th anniversary.
2) By law (31 US Code § 5114(b)) "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."
3) Donald Trump has made no public appearances since addressing a gathering of generals and admirals on Tuesday.
Is there something you're trying to tell us, Treasury Department?
1) The U.S. Treasury is working on designs for a $1 coin bearing the likeness of Donald Trump on both the obverse and reverse sides. It will supposedly be released next year in honor of the United States' 250th anniversary.
2) By law (31 US Code § 5114(b)) "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."
3) Donald Trump has made no public appearances since addressing a gathering of generals and admirals on Tuesday.
Is there something you're trying to tell us, Treasury Department?
Showing the likeness: so his head on one side, "heads" presumably, and what could be on the reverse (tails) side?
1) The U.S. Treasury is working on designs for a $1 coin bearing the likeness of Donald Trump on both the obverse and reverse sides. It will supposedly be released next year in honor of the United States' 250th anniversary.
2) By law (31 US Code § 5114(b)) "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."
3) Donald Trump has made no public appearances since addressing a gathering of generals and admirals on Tuesday.
Is there something you're trying to tell us, Treasury Department?
Showing the likeness: so his head on one side, "heads" presumably, and what could be on the reverse (tails) side?
Is there something you're trying to tell us, Treasury Department?
And if he is still alive, should the FBI investigate the Treasury Department for making what can only be construed as a threat against the life of the President?
He wants to be dictator. The unitary executive theory is just extra syllables. The Ukrainians I meet with for conversational English told me this week they think he's like Putin.
I hope it's all right to repost from another forum where someone posted an account from Chicago. Please delete this, if not.
"In case anyone has missed the news (which is likely because so few outlets are reporting on it), here’s the truth of what’s happening in Chicago.
"Feds/ICE agents rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of an apartment building at 1am and zip tied children. Some of them were naked. They have been separated from their families. Everyone was loaded into rented U-Hauls. The agents trashed the apartments so people returned (if they were released) to completely destroyed belongings.
"Earlier today, feds/ICE agents targeted a grocery store and teargassed the street outside because people were honking. There were children on the street. At a nearby hospital, an alderperson was detained and kicked out for asking if the agents had a warrant. The feds/ICE have started “Operation Freaky Friday” to target possibly undocumented children and remove them from the city. Agents are driving around elementary schools and high schools taunting kids and parents. Some of the schools have enacted alternate release methods to hopefully keep the kids safe.
"Broadview continues to be an absolute disaster. The press, first responders, and police have been victims of excessive force, hit with pepper balls, and teargassed by feds/ICE agents. They grabbed a priest by the throat today. They are ignoring mandates from Broadview’s officials.
"We are constantly vigilant. We are protesting every day. We are helping each other on the ground by honking, blowing whistles, and shouting on the streets when feds/ICE shows up. We are furious and we will continue to fight and show up for our city in the best ways we can.
"Chicago WAS a peaceful city until all these goons dropped in. What is happening is wrong, whether you are right, left, or something else."
The ones with power appear to be well satisfied with the way these events are Making America Great Again. They are not much bothered by the opinions of the millions who have no power.
Republicans in Congress are fine with this. Democrats in Congress say "enough is enough" in various ways but can't organize themselves out of a wet paper bag. Schumer and Jeffries have no charisma or ability to put together a good message. AOC and Sanders are fantastic, but, you know, too radical or socialist or whatever.
American democracy is in freefall. The episode described in @Ariel's post is particularly horrible, but awful things are happening every single day. Federal agents are conducting warrantless arrests without reasonable suspicion, assaulting people, kidnapping people, holding people indefinitely in terrible conditions, deporting people to countries where they know no one or are in danger of being killed. The Supreme Court is just making shit up to support whatever the administration wants to do. A recent opinion in support of a shadow docket ruling claimed that citizens are only briefly detained by federal agents and let go once they prove their citizenship, when the reality is that anyone who is not white is in danger of being grabbed and dragged off by agents whose main job qualification is their willingness to brutalize people. The administration (at what point do we drop that term and simply say "regime"?) has discussed deploying the 82nd Airborne - the division that is prepared to conduct what they call a "forcible entry parachute assault" within 18 hours of being given the order - in Portland, Oregon. The fourth amendment is a memory, and the first will go next.
The midterms are still 13 months away, so it's far too soon to stay what will happen, but I'm deeply afraid that a combination of election roll purges and voter intimidation will make a mockery of free and fair elections. The Speaker of the House refused to swear in a Democrat who won a special election for a Congressional seat before the government shutdown because she will be the 218th signatory (all the Democrats plus a handful of Republicans) on a petition that would force a vote to release the Epstein files. There's no reason to think the Republicans will peacefully hand control of Congress to the Democrats if the Dems win.
I keep reminding myself that though we'll mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, the US only became a full democracy 60 years ago when the Voting Rights Act was passed. I hope this current era is a terrible backward step on the road toward becoming a successful multiethnic, multicultural democracy. But right now I have serious doubts we'll get there in my lifetime.
I keep reminding myself that though we'll mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, the US only became a full democracy 60 years ago when the Voting Rights Act was passed. I hope this current era is a terrible backward step on the road toward becoming a successful multiethnic, multicultural democracy. But right now I have serious doubts we'll get there in my lifetime.
I came across three articles arguing that the most recent iteration of the American republic has failed. They were all riffing off each other so it's not like these are three independent sources coming to the same conclusion, but their arguments are pretty convincing.
The Republic as we knew it is over. The fight now is whether the new one will be a fascistic, competitive authoritarian regime or a pluralist democracy that, we can hope, is better than what came before.
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Even if you think restoration is possible, it’s a bad idea. The Constitution has failed. Or, more accurately, the Constitutional order built out of the New Deal, the Second Reconstruction, and the repudiation of the Nixon presidency has failed. This is not a prediction. It’s not a “if we continue on our current course.” The Constitution as designed by the founders, was supposed to prevent the current regime. Its original guardrails did not work. The ones added after the Civil War did not work. The de facto amendments created by the accretion of judicial decisions did not work. The post-Watergate reforms did not work.
I think Nexon is correct. We get one of the following. Note that I have broken one of his categories into two by separating “fascistic, competitive authoritarian regime” into “deeper fascism” or “competitive authoritarianism.”
1) Deeper fascism. Trump (more likely Miller, Vance, Vought, Homan, etc.) finds a way to truly move the country into a clearer dictatorial structure. This is the nightmare scenario, which I think is unlikely, but is real enough that I can’t discount it.
2) Competitive Authoritarianism. There are two versions of this in my head,
One-Party. Here, the GOP is able to manipulate the system in 2026 and 2028 in a way that looks like we are having competitive elections, but the playing field is tilted towards the GOP sufficiently that they win regardless of the actual popular preference. This is the US version of Hungary, at least in broad brushstrokes.
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Two-Party. In this version, the Democrats are able to win back power, but the system is sufficiently broken that they will govern like Trump has: by fiat and with the Congress being basically a vestigial organ. This is a broken democracy at best.
3) Pluralist Democracy. This is going to require reforms and could only come about under current conditions if the Democrats win back power and do what they failed to do in 2021: use their majority to institute change. My post from August of 2020 provides a starting spot: Reforms: the Possible, the Improbable, and the Unpossible. I might change some of those recommendations if I rewrote the post, but the basic gist remains, I think, on point.
Quite frankly, since the early days of this term, most specifically because of what DOGE did (and as amplified by a string of shadow docket decisions by SCOTUS), I think that the most likely outcome of all of this is 2b: Two-party competitive authoritarianism, with every four to eight years one of the two parties comes to power and governing largely through executive action in a version of what Guillermo O’Donnell once called “delegative democracy” (which was a critique of the poor quality of Latin American democracy in the post-authoritarian period–something I have been meaning to write about). This would continue until one side was able to move us to 2a (or worse). It would look like the constitutional order was still functioning, but that would be an illusion.
The option of a competitive authoritarianism. in which the Democratic party becomes a mirror image of the Republican, and we trade off back and forth between essentially anti-democratic authoritarian regimes with radically different policy goals, strikes me as wildly improbable. This would require a Democratic party that would bear essentially no resemblance to that which now exists. That could happen, I suppose, in a context of very rapid radicalization, but such radicalization could in turn only happen, I think, under conditions that would include the triumph of the fake competitive authoritarian model in which the ruling party holds elections but has no intention of honoring the results if they lose. This is the Russian and Chinese models, and calling this competitive authoritarianism is confusing since it does not feature actual competition. Nor, of course, would an American version of such political “competition.”
If that’s correct, the options become open dictatorship, crypto-dictatorship, revolutionary reconstitution via the destruction of the old regime and its replacement with a new one, complete national dissolution post-civil war, or national partition, which is also probably only possible in the context of post-revolutionary violence.
What I don’t think is possible is that the American polity simply votes its way to one of these options, via the current political system. As Jexpat pointed out in the comments to one of the posts, there is literally no instance of a fascist or crypto or semi-fascist regime allowing itself to be voted out of power. The closest thing to a counter-example is Spain post-Franco, but the Franco regime quickly morphed from a nominally fascist regime into a traditional military dictatorship, with really no fascist features, unless you define any modern military dictatorship as fascist. And in any event Franco was never voted out of power: he died, and is still dead, after 36 years of dictatorship, although as noted it was a relatively “soft” dictatorship after the first few years.
These aren't fun reads, but I recommend them anyway.
I've heard other people refer to the midterms, or the next election. Is it generally felt that these are certainties?
Not sure what you're asking -- is it certain that we'll have them? Or is the outcome certain?
We'll have midterm elections. Russia has elections; Putin won 88% of the vote last year. Our elections will be compromised to one degree or another -- people with a right to vote will be purged from electoral rolls without their knowledge, or troops will scare people in certain areas on election day, discouraging them from voting -- but we'll have them.
The outcome is anyone's guess, but this from @Crœsos's third link sounds right on the money:
The idea that the Trumpist party is going to cede power because of a detail like losing an election or two is, in my view, nearly as fantastic at this point as the idea that the Leninists or the Maoists or the Nazis, or the Italian fascists, or Vladimir Putin, or the PRC, would allow themselves to be voted out of power. More precisely in terms of circumstances in America in 2025, it’s as fantastic as the idea that a fundamentalist religious congregation would allow a vote to transform itself into a commune of vegan atheists.
Saturday a Trump-appointed Oregon judge blocked Trump's federalization and deployment of the Oregon National Guard to Portland, Oregon, saying the administration has no legal basis for doing so, as Portland is not, contrary what Fox News says, a lawless war zone. That same judge on Sunday evening held an emergency hearing because the administration attempted to circumvent the restraining order she issued by ordering federalized National Guard troops from California and Texas to Oregon (the California troops were federalized over our governor's objections; the Texas governor is of course cooperating). She issued a new temporary restraining order prohibiting the administration from deploying the National Guard from any state in Oregon. Several times she reminded the Justice Dept lawyer that he is an officer of the court -- which apparently indicates a very low opinion of his arguments and judgement.
California Gov. Newsom says these are attempts to impose martial law.
From what I am hearing, the people in Portland that are causing problems are the Federal Agents acting like brownshirts. It is confined to the city block around the ICE building. Protesters have peacefully surrounded the building, but the federal hooligans will periodically come out, rough the protestors up a bit, and then retreat back into the building.
Meanwhile the Naked Bike Riders Association has called for a emergency naked bike ride through the streets of Portland as a protest to the attempt to institute martial law there. That is a typical Portland protest.
I've heard other people refer to the midterms, or the next election. Is it generally felt that these are certainties?
Not sure what you're asking -- is it certain that we'll have them? Or is the outcome certain?
Whether you'd have them. I fancy the outcome would have to be fairly certain for them to be held -
The idea that the Trumpist party is going to cede power because of a detail like losing an election or two is, in my view, nearly as fantastic at this point as the idea that the Leninists or the Maoists or the Nazis, or the Italian fascists, or Vladimir Putin, or the PRC, would allow themselves to be voted out of power. More precisely in terms of circumstances in America in 2025, it’s as fantastic as the idea that a fundamentalist religious congregation would allow a vote to transform itself into a commune of vegan atheists.
Filing this under the Oh God! category: Trump has announced a UFC match on the South Lawn of the White House next year on June 14, which will be his 80th Birthday. Here is information on the UFC. It had nearly gone bankrupt when Trump saw it as a potential draw for his failing casinos. It has since taken off.
John McCain once called the UFC a human cockfighting organization.
The event will be an all-day affair. Weigh in is planned for the Lincoln Memorial with other activities throughout the National Mall.
1) Call a Constitutional Convention, revoke the current 1787 document and start the Second American Republic; or
2) Telephone HM Charless III, apologize for your gratuitous rudeness to HM George III (of late and happy memory) and have the Boston City Council pay for the tea that wound up in Boston Harbour in 1783. Then Canada can reclaim the Lost Provinces and we can be one big happy British North America again. (Apropos to mention on the 250th anniversay of said gratuitously rude document).
On a more factual note:
The structural political problem in the US originates in two related conceptual flaws in the US Constitution and the institutional design it implements:
1) There are four points of veto in the US political system (two Houses of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court). Most countries only have two for reasons I will get to. This gives far too much opportunity (decades) to political minorities to fight legislation. The National Labor Relations Act is a case in point, it was hollowed out by the late 1970's through Supreme Court rulings that undercut the ability to organize unions and negated strong remedial Bargaining Orders from the National Labor Relations Board. What employers did not get through the front door in 1937 with NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel they got by 1980 through the bck door by winning the battle through incremental court cases. The Voting Rights Act looks like it will suffer a similar fate.
2) The conceptual fault of the 1787 Constitution is the lack of what in Westminster Parliamentary terms is called Responsible Government. The Framers were far too comfortable with inaction and they created no penalty for inaction. The current US Government shutdown is a case in point. In a Westminster system this sort of thing is by definition impossible. A lack of supply is by definition a matter of confidence and the government must resign and either a new government formed or elections called. Canada has had government fall over loss of supply, it's a well-trodden path.
Size is no excuse on this point as India has confidence provisions in its Constitution and will call elections over loss of confidence.
Point 2 is a variation on the problem Weimar Germany faced in its final years: multiple unstable governments without the ability to form a new one. This was resolved in Germany's 1949 Basic Law by requiring Constructive Votes of Non-Confidence, that is that in order to pass, a vote of non-confidence must affirm a new government as well. Likewise Westminster system overcome loss of financial supply dismissing the government, something that can't happen in the US.
Likewise Westminster system have evolved mechanisms to bypass legislative vetos in upper houses by either removing the veto (UK), permitting flooding the chamber with new appointees (Canada) or joint chamber sittings as a single assembly (Australia).
I'm quite serious when I saw that the introduction of parliamentary Resonsibility conventions in the US system would resolve a large amount conflict by incentivizing some sort of compromise action instead of rewarding inaction.
1) Call a Constitutional Convention, revoke the current 1787 document and start the Second American Republic; or
2) Telephone HM Charless III, apologize for your gratuitous rudeness to HM George III (of late and happy memory) and have the Boston City Council pay for the tea that wound up in Boston Harbour in 1783. Then Canada can reclaim the Lost Provinces and we can be one big happy British North America again. (Apropos to mention on the 250th anniversay of said gratuitously rude document).
Well, right now, the Yanks DO have a president who mused positively about joining the Commonwealth a few months back(*), and just last week tried(unsuccesfully) to give a prized personal possession of DDE, housed in the a government-backed museum, as a gift to King Charles III, and then obliterated the career of the librarian who objected to the planned bestowment.
(*) Context: some UK tabloid had run a story, I suspect based on decades-old policy proposals that went nowhere, that the Foreign Office thingamabob was tossing around the idea of Commonwealth membership for the USA, and Trump tweeted "Great idea! I love King Charles!"
To me, this kind of drove home how rootless and ahistorical Trump's annexationist fantasies are. Historically, the kind of Americans who wanted to grab land to the north were the ones LEAST likely to propose joining a British imperial club or handing national treasures over to His Majesty.
None of this makes Trump's jingoistic rantings any less obnoxious, but I think it partially explains why his arctic-empire fantasy has led to little organized support in the US. He's not situating it within any coherent historical narrative currently holding sway.
In other news, The Israelis and Hamas appear to have agreed to the first phase of a permanent cease fire. The Israeli Cabinet still has to approve it. If they do,
The Hostages will be released, dead or alive.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be returned
The Israeli army will pull back some what
Food and other aid will be able to flow into GAZA
Do you think Trump may be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize if this holds true?
In other news, The Israelis and Hamas appear to have agreed to the first phase of a permanent cease fire. The Israeli Cabinet still has to approve it. If they do,
The Hostages will be released, dead or alive.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be returned
The Israeli army will pull back some what
Food and other aid will be able to flow into GAZA
Do you think Trump may be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize if this holds true?
I think he's already been nominated for this round? Nominations themselves aren't very significant. But I don't know if someone can nominate him again specifically with reference to Israel/Hamas. If so, yeah, someone will probably do it, but it's the Academy that makes the decisions.
Sorry. This was an unfinished reply to the post about Trump hosting a UFC match. I was just gonna mention that when Ford was in office, he announced he'd be refereeing a lingerie-football match.
Nominations themselves aren't very significant. But I don't know if someone can nominate him again specifically with reference to Israel/Hamas. If so, yeah, someone will probably do it, but it's the Academy that makes the decisions.
The decision is made by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament (the Storting). Nominations are only received from those specified by the Nobel Foundation as eligible to make nominations. But eligible nominees include members of governments or legislatures, so yeah, someone in that category certainly will nominate him.
Trump was nominated in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025.
Nominations themselves aren't very significant. But I don't know if someone can nominate him again specifically with reference to Israel/Hamas. If so, yeah, someone will probably do it, but it's the Academy that makes the decisions.
The decision is made by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament (the Storting). Nominations are only received from those specified by the Nobel Foundation as eligible to make nominations. But eligible nominees include members of governments or legislatures, so yeah, someone in that category certainly will nominate him.
As someone who agrees with the brandtist Korean Democratic Party that Trump's summits with the Norks were a good thing and should(as suggested in Trump's presence by President Lee a few weeks ago) resume, I'd happily have Trump receive the peace-prize for that. Normally, I wouldn't even throw in the quid pro quo that he resign the presidency, but at this point I think it's so imperative to thwart his general ambitions that I would now make it part of the bargain.
In my ideal world Mark Carney would receive the Peace Prize for his diplomatic defence of Canada, which would lead to trump vanishing for ever in a puff of spontaneous combustion.
I feel very sceptical about the apparent agreements reached re Israel and Gaza. There seem to be too many egos involved in putting it all together and no real guarantees that it can all really come about successfully. However I'm hoping that my fears won't come to fruition.
I see that Trump has already been cheated out of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and for Physics, which must irk him considering his (self-proclaimed) great intuitive knowledge of all sciences.
Comments
True. OTOH, don't underestimate the visual effect. John Kerry didn't have a martial appearance about him, and for all intents and purposes came off as a rather nerdy civilian. Sanford presents quite differently, and unlike with Kerry, the only images people will have of him are the photos.
But we can split the difference and say that if Republicans DO try to spin Sanford as a woke leftist, they probably won't use the photo of him with the dead deer in his pick-up truck. Maybe his lawn signs, if the Google Street View image showing "Trump/Vance Stop" turns out to be authentic.
Right now, I'm leaning toward the theory(floated elsewhere) that he was a right-winger who didn't know much about Mormons, and the attack on the church was revenge for the killing of Charlie Kirk. Or maybe he had some personal reason to hate religion(eg. God failed to prevent his son's illness), and targeted that church 'cuz it just happened to be nearby.
In certain smaller counes there is only one grand jury which handle both criminal and civil matters. While there is no exhaustive list, Placer County, Madera County
and Plumas County have just one grand jury. Point is, it is allowed in California law.
I don't believe this is voluntary. One is summoned to jury duty by the Superior Court.
According to a municipal political candidate who had spoken to Sanford a short while before the shooting, he expressed anti-Mormon views, from what sounds like a conservative Christian perspective, and also mentioned having lived briefly in Utah a few years prior. There also seems to be an indication that he supported right-wing causes(eg. an abortion ban), and did indeed have
And while the Trump/Vance sign was indeed hung above a Stop sign, it looks more like that was just because it was a convenient place to put it, rather than some clever juxtaposition.
Long and the short, looks like right-wing, Christian-on-Christian sectarian violence. And at least on social media, I have noticed a drop in people trying to claim Sanford was left-wing.
To me, it’s a little bit the opposite, in that having the defendant try to poke holes in the case before the case goes to trial seems to unnecessarily encourage the defendant to show their cards earlier than they might want to. But I’ll readily admit that may be solely because of unfamiliarity to me, not because of any merit or lack of merit to the system.
And I should walk back my comment that “technically, ‘probable cause’ has to do with arrests and search warrants.” Those are the contexts in which I typically heard “probable cause” used, but as I thought about it, I realized I over-stated and it could be used here in the indictment context as well.
In any event, the grand jury’s role here is to ensure that the prosecutor has evidence showing that a crime was committed and that it’s more likely than not that the defendant committed it. The defendant’s opportunity to shoot holes in the evidence come at trial, when the burden of proof for the prosecution is beyond a reasonable doubt.
Reading through the back-and-forth self-exonerations in YouTube debates, it strikes me that very few leftists, when presented with the argument that a conservative church seems more likely something leftists would attack, have responded with "But you have to keep in mind that a lot of fundamentalists hate Mormonism as well."
SNOBBERY ALERT
I think it was the marxist theoretician Terry Eagleton who observed some time before or during the New Atheist debates, that progressives in particular tended to have an abysmal knowledge of theology, and that this hinders their ability to properly analyze culture.
(Eagleton himself, I believe, came to his mature politics via left-wing political Catholicism, so might be a little biased.)
In Los Angeles County people are summoned to serve on criminal grand juries just like regular jury duty, and each jury serves for a month. To be on the civil grand jury, where people serve a full year, people apply.
Also, Plumas County doesn't have the same grand jury for both civil and criminal matters. It always has a civil grand jury, and a criminal grand jury is empaneled when they need one. I didn't look up the other counties you mentioned, but I'd bet a small sum that they have separate bodies as well, as the work of the two are very different.
All of this information can be verified on county court websites.
I listened to the first five minutes. That's all I could take of his voice and rambling.
Placer County's website indicates the same grand jury can consider criminal cases if asked by the prosecutor. https://www.placer.courts.ca.gov/general-information/grand-jury
On the other hand, Madera's Grand Jury is impaneled as a civil grand jury. However, in the frequently asked questions about whether a Grand Jury can investigate criminal cases, it answers that while it is possible for a grand jury to do both usually a separate grand jury will be impaneled. https://www.madera.courts.ca.gov/online-services/jury-grand-jury-information/grand-jury
The Pluma Grand Jury site does say its grand jury is for civil cases only, though, as you say.
One point we overlooked: The Grand Jury may receive and investigate complaints by individuals, including private citizens, local government officials, and employees, regarding action and performances of public officials.
He also posted another video touting the medical benefit of marijuana for seniors https://www.marijuanamoment.net/trump-posts-video-on-medical-benefits-of-cannabis-for-seniors-as-white-house-weighs-rescheduling/
And, then, today, he posted an AI altered video of Jefferis and Schumer, Jefferies wearing a sombrero and Schumer calling all elected Democrats sh^t
When he announced he was sending troops to Portland, he referred to seeing videos of destruction in Portland. Those videos were apparently from the 2020 riots after the death of George Floyd. Trump apparently thinks they were very recent videos.
I know what my kids would be doing if I were posting such garbage on my social media. Family Intervention time. The keys to the car would be taken away, and they would be placing me in a dementia ward.
There were a bunch of other freakish things that happened over the weekend, but it is getting past my bed time.
I wonder where California’s system came from, and if there are other states that use it or something like it. Another reminder that the US has 52+ judicial systems, and very few blanket assumptions, beyond requirements of the US Constitution, can be made about how things work.
How could they tell?
1) The U.S. Treasury is working on designs for a $1 coin bearing the likeness of Donald Trump on both the obverse and reverse sides. It will supposedly be released next year in honor of the United States' 250th anniversary.
2) By law (31 US Code § 5114(b)) "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."
3) Donald Trump has made no public appearances since addressing a gathering of generals and admirals on Tuesday.
Is there something you're trying to tell us, Treasury Department?
Showing the likeness: so his head on one side, "heads" presumably, and what could be on the reverse (tails) side?
His butt?
"In case anyone has missed the news (which is likely because so few outlets are reporting on it), here’s the truth of what’s happening in Chicago.
"Feds/ICE agents rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of an apartment building at 1am and zip tied children. Some of them were naked. They have been separated from their families. Everyone was loaded into rented U-Hauls. The agents trashed the apartments so people returned (if they were released) to completely destroyed belongings.
"Earlier today, feds/ICE agents targeted a grocery store and teargassed the street outside because people were honking. There were children on the street. At a nearby hospital, an alderperson was detained and kicked out for asking if the agents had a warrant. The feds/ICE have started “Operation Freaky Friday” to target possibly undocumented children and remove them from the city. Agents are driving around elementary schools and high schools taunting kids and parents. Some of the schools have enacted alternate release methods to hopefully keep the kids safe.
"Broadview continues to be an absolute disaster. The press, first responders, and police have been victims of excessive force, hit with pepper balls, and teargassed by feds/ICE agents. They grabbed a priest by the throat today. They are ignoring mandates from Broadview’s officials.
"We are constantly vigilant. We are protesting every day. We are helping each other on the ground by honking, blowing whistles, and shouting on the streets when feds/ICE shows up. We are furious and we will continue to fight and show up for our city in the best ways we can.
"Chicago WAS a peaceful city until all these goons dropped in. What is happening is wrong, whether you are right, left, or something else."
Chicago Sun Times
American democracy is in freefall. The episode described in @Ariel's post is particularly horrible, but awful things are happening every single day. Federal agents are conducting warrantless arrests without reasonable suspicion, assaulting people, kidnapping people, holding people indefinitely in terrible conditions, deporting people to countries where they know no one or are in danger of being killed. The Supreme Court is just making shit up to support whatever the administration wants to do. A recent opinion in support of a shadow docket ruling claimed that citizens are only briefly detained by federal agents and let go once they prove their citizenship, when the reality is that anyone who is not white is in danger of being grabbed and dragged off by agents whose main job qualification is their willingness to brutalize people. The administration (at what point do we drop that term and simply say "regime"?) has discussed deploying the 82nd Airborne - the division that is prepared to conduct what they call a "forcible entry parachute assault" within 18 hours of being given the order - in Portland, Oregon. The fourth amendment is a memory, and the first will go next.
The midterms are still 13 months away, so it's far too soon to stay what will happen, but I'm deeply afraid that a combination of election roll purges and voter intimidation will make a mockery of free and fair elections. The Speaker of the House refused to swear in a Democrat who won a special election for a Congressional seat before the government shutdown because she will be the 218th signatory (all the Democrats plus a handful of Republicans) on a petition that would force a vote to release the Epstein files. There's no reason to think the Republicans will peacefully hand control of Congress to the Democrats if the Dems win.
I keep reminding myself that though we'll mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, the US only became a full democracy 60 years ago when the Voting Rights Act was passed. I hope this current era is a terrible backward step on the road toward becoming a successful multiethnic, multicultural democracy. But right now I have serious doubts we'll get there in my lifetime.
I came across three articles arguing that the most recent iteration of the American republic has failed. They were all riffing off each other so it's not like these are three independent sources coming to the same conclusion, but their arguments are pretty convincing.
The first is by Dan Nexon:
He goes on from there and is well worth a read. Picking up from Nexon, Steven Taylor does an analysis over at his own blog.
Completing the trilogy is Nexon's co-blogger Paul Campos. A sample:
These aren't fun reads, but I recommend them anyway.
Not sure what you're asking -- is it certain that we'll have them? Or is the outcome certain?
We'll have midterm elections. Russia has elections; Putin won 88% of the vote last year. Our elections will be compromised to one degree or another -- people with a right to vote will be purged from electoral rolls without their knowledge, or troops will scare people in certain areas on election day, discouraging them from voting -- but we'll have them.
The outcome is anyone's guess, but this from @Crœsos's third link sounds right on the money:
California Gov. Newsom says these are attempts to impose martial law.
Meanwhile the Naked Bike Riders Association has called for a emergency naked bike ride through the streets of Portland as a protest to the attempt to institute martial law there. That is a typical Portland protest.
Whether you'd have them. I fancy the outcome would have to be fairly certain for them to be held -
- well, quite.
John McCain once called the UFC a human cockfighting organization.
The event will be an all-day affair. Weigh in is planned for the Lincoln Memorial with other activities throughout the National Mall.
Heaven help us.
Well, you (The US) in that have two choices:
1) Call a Constitutional Convention, revoke the current 1787 document and start the Second American Republic; or
2) Telephone HM Charless III, apologize for your gratuitous rudeness to HM George III (of late and happy memory) and have the Boston City Council pay for the tea that wound up in Boston Harbour in 1783. Then Canada can reclaim the Lost Provinces and we can be one big happy British North America again. (Apropos to mention on the 250th anniversay of said gratuitously rude document).
On a more factual note:
The structural political problem in the US originates in two related conceptual flaws in the US Constitution and the institutional design it implements:
1) There are four points of veto in the US political system (two Houses of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court). Most countries only have two for reasons I will get to. This gives far too much opportunity (decades) to political minorities to fight legislation. The National Labor Relations Act is a case in point, it was hollowed out by the late 1970's through Supreme Court rulings that undercut the ability to organize unions and negated strong remedial Bargaining Orders from the National Labor Relations Board. What employers did not get through the front door in 1937 with NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel they got by 1980 through the bck door by winning the battle through incremental court cases. The Voting Rights Act looks like it will suffer a similar fate.
2) The conceptual fault of the 1787 Constitution is the lack of what in Westminster Parliamentary terms is called Responsible Government. The Framers were far too comfortable with inaction and they created no penalty for inaction. The current US Government shutdown is a case in point. In a Westminster system this sort of thing is by definition impossible. A lack of supply is by definition a matter of confidence and the government must resign and either a new government formed or elections called. Canada has had government fall over loss of supply, it's a well-trodden path.
Size is no excuse on this point as India has confidence provisions in its Constitution and will call elections over loss of confidence.
Point 2 is a variation on the problem Weimar Germany faced in its final years: multiple unstable governments without the ability to form a new one. This was resolved in Germany's 1949 Basic Law by requiring Constructive Votes of Non-Confidence, that is that in order to pass, a vote of non-confidence must affirm a new government as well. Likewise Westminster system overcome loss of financial supply dismissing the government, something that can't happen in the US.
Likewise Westminster system have evolved mechanisms to bypass legislative vetos in upper houses by either removing the veto (UK), permitting flooding the chamber with new appointees (Canada) or joint chamber sittings as a single assembly (Australia).
I'm quite serious when I saw that the introduction of parliamentary Resonsibility conventions in the US system would resolve a large amount conflict by incentivizing some sort of compromise action instead of rewarding inaction.
Well, right now, the Yanks DO have a president who mused positively about joining the Commonwealth a few months back(*), and just last week tried(unsuccesfully) to give a prized personal possession of DDE, housed in the a government-backed museum, as a gift to King Charles III, and then obliterated the career of the librarian who objected to the planned bestowment.
(*) Context: some UK tabloid had run a story, I suspect based on decades-old policy proposals that went nowhere, that the Foreign Office thingamabob was tossing around the idea of Commonwealth membership for the USA, and Trump tweeted "Great idea! I love King Charles!"
To me, this kind of drove home how rootless and ahistorical Trump's annexationist fantasies are. Historically, the kind of Americans who wanted to grab land to the north were the ones LEAST likely to propose joining a British imperial club or handing national treasures over to His Majesty.
None of this makes Trump's jingoistic rantings any less obnoxious, but I think it partially explains why his arctic-empire fantasy has led to little organized support in the US. He's not situating it within any coherent historical narrative currently holding sway.
The Hostages will be released, dead or alive.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be returned
The Israeli army will pull back some what
Food and other aid will be able to flow into GAZA
Do you think Trump may be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize if this holds true?
I think he's already been nominated for this round? Nominations themselves aren't very significant. But I don't know if someone can nominate him again specifically with reference to Israel/Hamas. If so, yeah, someone will probably do it, but it's the Academy that makes the decisions.
Sorry. This was an unfinished reply to the post about Trump hosting a UFC match. I was just gonna mention that when Ford was in office, he announced he'd be refereeing a lingerie-football match.
(Didn't happen.)
Trump was nominated in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025.
As someone who agrees with the brandtist Korean Democratic Party that Trump's summits with the Norks were a good thing and should(as suggested in Trump's presence by President Lee a few weeks ago) resume, I'd happily have Trump receive the peace-prize for that. Normally, I wouldn't even throw in the quid pro quo that he resign the presidency, but at this point I think it's so imperative to thwart his general ambitions that I would now make it part of the bargain.