Octopus Overlords

I figured with the spate of ridiculous lower court rulings popping out nearly daily it might be helpful to have a thread documenting how rule of law has become a game of "conservative" calvinball in the United States.

To start we have this garbage where MAGAt judges ruled today that Texas apparently gets to write the rules for how private companies can regulate hate speech on their platforms.

I'm not really sure what to make of all this. Are the decades+ plans to stack the courts finally paying off? Or did the SCotUS Roe v. Wade decision earlier this year signal that judges could start taking crazy pills? It just seems like we're living in exceptionally strange times.

This has been incremental. It took years for this to happen but Trump supercharged it with extremely politicized judges who are more interested in being tyrants than judges. In this case, the 5th is particularly full of Trumpist judges versus say Trump judges. That distinction is important right now because judges have always been arrayed along a political continuum. Someone appointed by Trump isn't necessarily a complete crazy just because he nominated them. Unfortunately a lot more crazy, unfit judges got through the door and we might have reached a tipping point where the crazy is winning enough to do real damage to the prestige of the legal system. On top, you have SCOTUS acting like politicized tyrants now. It's bad. Really bad.

However we have decisions like this one where you'll likely hear almost all serious 1st amendment lawyers say this is just terrible. Much like Cannon's decision. They ignore the law, precedent, and even the facts to deliver partisan outcomes. I think it's notable that staid legal voices are essentially starting to say - this is getting crazy. I'd have to dig it up but someone related that sometimes the decisions out of the 5th are accepting fringe and outrageous legal theories (e.g., the Kraken legal arguments) or what someone might have shouted at Tucker Carlson on Fox News. That's not great even if they get cleaned up by SCOTUS eventually. Along the way it does great damage to the reputation of the legal system. But it's even worse when you consider that in the meantime they are doing harm and wielding raw power injudiciously along the way.

It's farcical.

Does this make corporations congress now?

In related POS fraud posing as the law news

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politic ... wyer-says/

AUSTIN — Lawyers representing the men who accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of securities fraud will be able to question him under oath — but not until after the election.

Collin County District Court Judge Cynthia Wheless has ordered Paxton to sit for a one-hour deposition on Nov. 28, court records show.

Terry Jacobson, who along with Dallas lawyer Alex More represents GOP Rep. Byron Cook of Corsicana and Florida billionaire businessman Joel Hochberg, confirmed that Wheless made the decision at a hearing Friday and signed the order Tuesday.

Paxton’s agency and campaign staff, as well as his attorney, Mitch Little, did not respond to requests for comment.

You'd be damned right if I had a company Id censor hate and stupidity and if the US didn't allow me to do it I wouldn't have my company IN the US because it would no longer be the true US but a puppet state in the hands of imbeciles.

Only if they truly believe.

So if no corporate censorship, could you hire a Daehawk to go after racists?

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 6:51 pm Does this make corporations congress now?

You ask this as if they already weren’t.

Could one of our Texans please go on Truth Social and post about all the accomplishments Biden has had and how ineffective the Republicans have been in stopping him? When the post gets taken down, you'll have a case to sue Truth. I think the law provide money for damages.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:27 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 6:51 pm Does this make corporations congress now?

You ask this as if they already weren’t.

Oh, they own Congress for sure. But now it's constitutional?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

stessier wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:21 am Could one of our Texans please go on Truth Social and post about all the accomplishments Biden has had and how ineffective the Republicans have been in stopping him? When the post gets taken down, you'll have a case to sue Truth. I think the law provide money for damages.

I tried to sign up for Truth Social a while ago to see what kind of shit is on there. They require a phone number and don't accept a Google voice number. So no account for me.

Aren't corporations people? Don't they have the right to not be told what they have to say by Attorney's General? Can they refuse Fuck Head on religious grounds? Like disallowing abortions is against a corporate religion and therefore they can tell you to go fuck your corrupt ass right the fuck off?


https://www.history.com/topics/united-s ... #section_4

The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, held that the First Amendment protects the right to free speech, even if the speaker is a corporation, and effectively removed limitations on corporate funding of independent political broadcasts.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy in the majority, while Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

So Thomas and Roberts must be fuming and just waiting to take on Paxton, right? (And McConnell to for that matter. He was behind the Citizen's United suit, wasn't he?)

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:56 am I tried to sign up for Truth Social a while ago to see what kind of shit is on there. They require a phone number and don't accept a Google voice number. So no account for me.

Do they verify it? You could use the number for your local PETA.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 12:53 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:56 am I tried to sign up for Truth Social a while ago to see what kind of shit is on there. They require a phone number and don't accept a Google voice number. So no account for me.

Do they verify it? You could use the number for your local PETA.

They verify it.

stessier wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:21 am Could one of our Texans please go on Truth Social and post about all the accomplishments Biden has had and how ineffective the Republicans have been in stopping him? When the post gets taken down, you'll have a case to sue Truth. I think the law provide money for damages.

Iirc, I think Truth Social is too much of a failure to fall under the volume required to trigger this law.

sorry


...I know you, little libertine...
... I know you're a calvinball

Better home than the general Trump thread. This is the state of "rule of law" in 11 states.

I dont get the Trump draw..I see him as a walking turd of greed and stupidity. What do they see exactly that Im not? He is a snake oil salesman.

And we could have guessed who the first name on the list is

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000183 ... b798e20000

Paxton is really trying to unseat McConnell as the worst American in my lifetime.

Play by play deconstruction of Cannon's calvinball

@Emptywheel lays out the timeline here in pretty clear terms. Judge Cannon is apparently abusing her power to protect Trump. There aren't too many other ways to parse this. She is making up law, rules, deadlines, and essentially just pouring mud all over the case. It explains why the DOJ moved to overturn her whole order in the 11th.

What is the play to remove a federal judge, if there even is one? SC? (Ha!)

The irony being that I've heard nothing but "OMG Dems want to 'pack the courts''' since Kavenaugh was being considered. Packing the courts has never meant what it sounded like. The connotation may be nothing like denotation but this is what I've always heard when someone was really talking about tampering with Supreme Court.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:56 am What is the play to remove a federal judge, if there even is one? SC? (Ha!)

Impeachment. But Mr Fed pointed out that for improper rulings, the corrective action is appeal - which is what is happening.

There has to be some reform to fix the aspect of the case assignment system that allows litigants to borderline pick their judge by filing in certain towns within a federal district, right? Like how Trump's team wound up with Cannon. Presumably that's something that could be addressed by congressional action, although I also wonder whether this is something that courts can fix through their own rules (to the extent that they are inclined to).

The case management aspect is important but that's only a partial fix. It'd certainly help but low quality, calvinball judges are still likely spread out all over the place.

Unfortunately even if it were in the courts power, that decision might live with Roberts. It feels like at present he might not want to act and give legitimacy to the idea that the politicization problem even exists. And the chance Congress fixes it? It has to be near zero.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 10:55 am The case management aspect is important but that's only a partial fix. It'd certainly help but low quality, calvinball judges are still likely spread out all over the place.

Unfortunately even if it were in the courts power, that decision might live with Roberts. It feels like at present he might not want to act and give legitimacy to the idea that the politicization problem even exists. And the chance Congress fixes it? It has to be near zero.

Yeah the problem of lunatic judges would still exist but we would be in a much, much better place if Trump and the conservative legal movement couldn't plan on which judges to get assigned to their crazy litigation. Sometimes they'll get lucky, but it's a totally different ballgame when they can plan around specific judges.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 10:58 am Sometimes they'll get lucky, but it's a totally different ballgame when they can plan around specific judges.

Yeah. "We" caught of a bit of a lucky break that they are only 50/50 on this. The first time the case happened to land with another judge because of a scheduling conflict and that judge pointed out the scheme. So there is a little chance still baked in but the entire notion that we see normalized venue shopping and judge selection happening is just another warning sign that our nation is very unhealthy.