Christian Mott

Interesting exchange in light of the cert denial in Vincent v. Bondi. Seems like SA may be a vote against as-applied challenges under (g)(1).

That is, unless they start generating targets using (necessarily) out-of-sample predictions from an ML model.

(It seems to me that using such predictions for this purpose should violate the principle of distinction, but I an not an expert in international humanitarian law.)

(Of course, these strikes are far worse than the Libya intervention on other axes, including legal basis. There was, after all, a UN resolution supporting the Libya intervention, which was conducted along with NATO allies.)

So Trump is going with the Libya strategy of attempting regime change via bombs and cruise missiles? Has anyone told him how that worked out?

People keep telling me impeachment isn’t possible but *Donald Trump* is the fucking president for a second time and he just launched a war in a fucking baseball hat so in fact anything and everything are *possible*

The Trump administration continues to demonstrate its remarkable commitment to trying to destroy cutting edge American businesses. First Moderna, now Anthropic.

Maine has RCV, so a progressive without a Nazi tattoo could still run as an independent without being a spoiler...

Will Trump allies be able to takeover CNN, the third largest cable news network by viewership? Somehow it depends on how much Ted Sarandos likes Batman and Harry Potter.

Does Mamdani have more sway or does he care more? Immediately getting on the phone and asking for a constituent's release is quite different from waiting three days and then issuing a statement calling for release "if the administration cannot prove [the student] has violated any criminal law."

Yes, it has to be paired with expansion. The Khanna bill does so in a clever way. One provision adds a new seat every two years. Another provision says only new seats have 18 year terms. The provisions are severable. If SCOTUS strikes down the term limit, it gets indefinite court expansion.

It's really a conformity experiment: Will you mindlessly conform to whatever your ruler says about which lines are straight?

Nice find!

Though now that I'm searching the phrase, it appears in Walter Scott's work even earlier. (Of course, the Chief or a clerk could have instead been inspired by Jane's response to Mr. Bingley in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice movie, which was "yes, yes, a thousand times yes.")

The top of page 276 of the Folio Classique edition of Madame Bovary. The last paragraph reads: -- Et, d'ailleurs, les embarras, la dépense... Ah! non, non, mille fois non! cela eût été trop bête!

@dividedargument.bsky.social was discussing the source of the phrase "no, no, a thousand times no," which appears in footnote 6 of the Chief's opinion in Learning Resources. One potential source is Flaubert's Madame Bovary, published in 1856. See the last line of part II, chapter 12.

That means he will not be serving his full seven-year term as chief judge. Kethledge will take over as chief.

On a skim, Gorsuch's opinion reads like he thinks MQD is necessary. Barrett's opinion does not. I would guess the Chief is on the Barrett side, and II-A-2 is there for Gorsuch alone, but it's at least possible!

The upshot: The tariffs case could create some controversy in the lower courts over whether they should rely on the fact that 6 justices seem to agree the MQD does not apply in foreign affairs contexts (the liberals think it never applies; BK, A, and T because they would carve out this context).

This 2015 3rd Circuit case contains a great separate opinion by Judge Ambro on voting paradoxes, and the difference between voting by issue and voting by outcome.

Not clear to me whether R, NG, and AB reach the holding only due to the MQD. If so, the tariff case is a voting paradox!

1. 6 justices would invalidate tariffs, but 3 only if MQD applies
2. 6 justices would hold MQD does not apply

If justices decided and relied on 2 first, it would have changed 1.

The divisibility analysis in this opinion strikes me as quite weak and likely to be reversed on appeal.

I'm not suggesting it makes third-party candidates more likely to win. I am suggesting it makes them less likely to play spoiler, so there's less risk in using this opportunity to try out a platform that neither major party is going to support.

Would love to see someone who meets one of those descriptions run third-party in the general, with the message that the two main parties have failed the country and reform (e.g., PR) is needed so they stop dominating our politics. Probably wouldn't work as a message, but worth trying in an RCV state

(The G-League doesn't work as a lower league, since many of those teams are owned by the same groups that own their partner NBA teams.)

That's the ideal solution but it's hard to implement at this point, since there's no lower league. I wonder if they could do something like allow every other team to bid to take over the contracts of all players on the worst three teams. Then only the worst teams would want to tank.

Completely unrelatedly, isn't it interesting that Virginia's Supreme Court justices are elected by the legislature?

Predicting AI will cause economic doom turns out to be the best way to get free advertising for AI, in the form of headlines like this one.

So, I have done this and it mostly involved looking at office buildings. (Though to be fair I got the tour from a family member who was working there rather than taking one of the official guided tours.)

Just to underscore one of the reasons courts should consider taking less than four years to issue opinions in appeals from criminal convictions...

Per the BOP website, this defendant was released from custody in April 2024.