What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Jacob]

What are the practical implications of this thing?

Are the States going to obstruct federal officials? Stop co-operating with them? And if so, in what way?

Or is it pure theatre at this point?

[grumbler]

What are the practical implications of this thing?

Are the States going to obstruct federal officials? Stop co-operating with them? And if so, in what way?

Or is it pure theatre at this point?

According to Abbot's claimed citation (which is, probably unintentionally, ironic given that he is citing those powers  explicitly denied to the states), the power he is seizing is the power for Texas to independently wage war.  There's just the tiniest chance that this claim is pure theater.

[Tonitrus]

So far: Florida, Virginia, Oklahoma, Montana, Arkansas, Georgia, and South Dakota have all announced they stand with Texas

[Tonitrus]

So Abbot is claiming that Texas has "constitutional rights" and is acting on a "quote" from Article ! Section 10 that is not actually in the Constitution?

Which article of the Texas state constitution allows the governor to just make shit up and give it the force of law?

And he also seems to explicitly contradict Article VI.

[The Minsky Moment]

Let's not get so excited just because a fatuous jackass like Abbott writes a one-page letter.  Who knows perhaps one day someone will teach him that dissenting Supreme Court opinions are not precedential.

Although - and obviously I know very little on this - that case sounds like it definitely shouldn't have been 5-4. Or am I wrong?

There were 3 dissenters - Scalia, Alito, and Thomas.  Thomas dissented because he objects wholesale to the concept of federal pre-emption unless the law in question specifically states - "the following state laws are pre-empted."  Alito dissented because although he accepted the basic framework of federal pre-emption analysis, he disagreed with its application to two of the challenged sections.  Scalia was the only one to go off the rails with a rant about state "sovereign" powers.

Scalia's dissenting opinion in that case is interesting for other reasons, however, that he probably did not intend.  First, in his zeal to argue about inherent state sovereign powers over immigration, he exposed the historical reality that many Americans of the founding generation did not believe the Constitution gave the federal government power to control immigration at all (as opposed to naturalization) - a position that follows pretty obviously from a purely textual reading. 

Second, he exposed the flim-flammery involved in "originalist" doctrine, in his attempt to argue that states historically had " enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens." His examples show otherwise:
+ laws about screening for contagious diseases - these were public health regulations, not immigration policy.
+ laws about excluding convicts - these were public safety regs.
+ laws about excluding free blacks - these were Southern laws enforcing slave codes.

Basically until the 1880s, anyone without a known criminal record could enter the country without restriction if free from contagious disease. No one thought of restricting immigration on policy grounds until the racist Chinese exclusion laws of the 1880s.

[Tamas]

Is this one about States' rights?

Two civil wars over being afraid of coloured people seems a bit excessive.

[The Minsky Moment]

Anytime you hear the word "sovereign" or "sovereingty" in an American legal context, hold tightly to your intellectual wallet, especially if it comes from a self-proclaimed "originalist".  The concept's main historical use in American law has been to make up powers that don't exist in the Constitution.

The word sovereign of course refers to the powers of a King, the very thing the American Revolution overthrew.  The word does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.  If there is anything that resembles a sovereign in the American system it is "We the People" and nothing else. The federal government is not a sovereign by definition, it is a limited government of enumerated powers.  The states are certainly not sovereign as the scope of their authority is limited both by specific constitutional limitations and the federal supremacy clause.

[The Brain]

To be fair though, many states are Stupid. This grants them wide powers of asshattery.

[jimmy olsen]

Mayorkas impeachment was immediately thrown out in the senate.

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1780678632223936998

It looks like Biden might not be able to get on the ballot in Ohio

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-gop-leaders-reject-democrats-033115761.html

[OttoVonBismarck]

Biden will almost certainly be on the ballot in Ohio; an Ohio State law professor has said the Dems could hold a "mini-convention" in which Biden/Harris are formally certified, before the big public convention. Ohio law just requires a party has fully certified a candidate 90 days out.

[Syt]

Well this is a totally normal thing to ask during a hearing.

https://youtu.be/iGLWU6868GE

REP. RICK ALLEN: Are you familiar with Genesis 12:3?

MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Probably not as well as you are, Congressman.

REP. RICK ALLEN: Well, it's pretty clear. It was the covenant that God made with Abraham. And that covenant was real clear: "If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you." And then, in the New Testament, it was confirmed that all nations would be blessed through you. So, you do not know about that?

MINOUCHE SHAFIK: I have heard that, now that you've explained it.

REP. RICK ALLEN: OK.

MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Yes, I have heard that before.

REP. RICK ALLEN: So, it's now familiar. Do you consider that a serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God, of the Bible?

MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Definitely not.

REP. RICK ALLEN: OK. Well, that's good.

[The Minsky Moment]

Well this is a totally normal thing to ask during a hearing.

At risk of falling deeper into the rabbit hole of GOP mental illness, it's garbage Biblical scholarship.

The word Israel does not appear in that passage. Not surprising as "Israel" in Genesis refers to a person (Jacob) and Jacob is not even born until Chapter 25.

A typical translation is something like the following (from the New JPS): "The Lord said to Abram . . . I will bless those who bless you, And curse him that curses you."

For American fundie types the KJV is basically the same except for the achaic familiar second person: "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee"

The person being blessed here is Abraham not his unborn grandson Israel/Jacob.  And that is significant because Abraham's descendants include people other than Jacob/Israel.  For example, it includes Abraham's first born son Ishmael, who under both Biblical and Islamic tradition is deemed to be the progenitor of the Arabs.

[The Brain]

Call me Ishmael maybe.

[HVC]

What would you know about the bible, you're Jewish

[Barrister]

There was an amazing thread on Twitter a few days ago.  Naomi Wolf, who is a writer and "public intellectual" tweeted about how she got her hands on a very old copy of the Bible written in Greek, and how with the help of a Greek-English dictionary 'oh gosh wasn't it amazing how different it was'...