These declines are MASSIVE. And the comparative silence in media coverage is absolutely DAMNING. “Why are ppl always so afraid of crime?” THIS is why. When crime goes up, media trips over itself to report it. Falls to pre-war (!!) levels? Just CRICKETS.

"porch piracy" is theft. it's illegal in every single state. in states with expansive statutes, this could even be burglary. there is no evidence that local police or prosecutors are unable to handle this. and existing federal law on interstate transportation of stolen property can handle big cases.

Brett Kavanaugh is such a pathetic man.

I've always loved this illustration depicting Joseph and Mary looking for a room. I am finding it especially powerful this year

5th Cir., 2-1, holds that it neither fell below the an objective standard of reasonableness nor deprived defendant of counsel when his lawyer fell asleep multiple times during direct examination of witnesses he went on to cross-examine bc he had a second lawyer. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

"Why is any of this okay with so many of those who once claimed to be free-speech champions or absolutists? Because, quite obviously, they were not." I endorse. And admittedly feel some frustration it seems @adamserwer.bsky.social and others do too, having seen through this crowd clearly for years.

Which is exactly the kind of cynicism Trump benefits from. If you flatten all misbehavior into this undifferentiated soup of “they’re all bastards,” it gives the actual bastards cover.

There's no limit to how much public gutter racism today's GOP will accept.

My days of being concerned about the politics of the Paradox games fan base are certainly coming to a middle:

The left is nowhere close to equivalent with the right on this point, but it is still important for us to remain connected to reality when, say, economic data comes out that differs from what we might have expected.

I was so unbelievably frustrated by the shit about how "look the Supreme Court just gave Biden unlimited power to avoid prosecution!!!" Like... no... they didn't... do you think Clarence Thomas was going to allow him to install American Communism with an executive order? That ruling was for Trump

Unclear and Present Danger dropped an episode on A Few Good Men and now I'm going to have to post about the ethics of criminal defense.

A huge problem with our current era is everyone is trying to out-populist each other so no one wants to be the cuck going “erm actually this is a different and far less bad type of elite misbehavior”, so it all gets flattened to the same thing. But the difference between those things *is* important!

Is the trump class of surface warships thing supposed to be built with money that was actually appropriated by Congress or is this more personal rule BS?

I hope Trump is sticking his fingers in decisions about what we call what we build, not what we build.

The use case in my field that seems most promising is in transcription, translation, and discovery review. Even if you have to double check everything, I've got hundreds of clients and cases with hours and hours of video to review. Getting pointed in the right direction is valuable.

It’s really strange the vice president of the United States is a white supremacist, who says white supremacist slogans, who publicly praises and follows the work of white supremacists, and it’s simply not mentioned or discussed in political media

going to the hague for being the guy who showed mr. beast CUBE

CBS paid the president of the United States millions in bribe money and now they censor news reports so it does not annoy him. I don’t know how much plainer we can put this.

We don't know what will happen in the next 11 months, but Dems in states with GOP statehouse gerrymanders need to realize that this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I still remember my disbelief when NC (NC! the cigarette capital of the world!) passed an indoor ban.

THERE ARE NO JOBS IN ACADEMIA! NO JOBS! DOZENS OF HYPER QUALIFIED APPLICANTS PER JOB!

i genuinely cannot stand the kind of imaginary radical who does a kind of pose of rebellion which defends the status quo in words which purport to attack it

I took my friend with only a high school degree to a fancy party and saw his face freeze up at the terminology being used by the elite. “Hebephile?” “Ephebophile?” I quickly asked him if he wanted to go somewhere else and he anxiously nodded yes and so we went to a Trump rally. By David Brooks

Just to be clear, the jokes are a coping mechanism. May these vile bigots experience the consequences that they deserve for their persecution of trans people.

I thought it was pretty clear first term Trump had been constrained from doing a lot of insane and despotic things by more or less normal actors around him, and would not be so constrained in the sequel. But many folks were eager to persuade themselves Jan 6 was an outlier rather than a harbinger.

yes! i am a bit of a broken record on this but among elite male commentators there is such obvious gender anxiety

I suppose Elon Musk isn't the first person to promise a revolutionary technological breakthrough that will definitely happen in the next couple years if you just give him your money.

The irony here is how similar this tweet is to actual existing gun control policies.

In response to SSRN's removal of Professor Edwards's "The Originalist Case for the President's Power to Pardon State Offenses," I have posted "A Response to SSRN's Removal of Jerry Edwards's 'The Originalist Case for the President's Power to Pardon State Offenses'" papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Making the most depressing point I can make yet again: the US media is going to treat Donald Trump with far less vitriol in response to him starting a random war in Venezuela vs the sheer level of vitriol that they hurled at Joe Biden for ENDING the War in Afghanistan.

Do other people's toddlers/young kids also respect the sacred power of Setting A Timer or is that specific to my social circle?

I believe the Court is communicating ex parte with the White House about this case and has been for months.

very interesting that the guy who wrote the “i can’t find a job because i’m white” piece zeroed in on me as responsible for the negative response on bluesky, despite the fact that i wrote a single post about the piece well after the discourse had started.

The other part of this is that we don't know how aware trump is of the world around them. He might be so sealed off (by dementia, his personality defects, his information environment, whatever) that he can't see the things a normal president would see and react to.

look it's very simple we have this antisemitism problem because our society is too cosmopolitan and lacks proper roots

When you add this to Judge Matey's similar dissent earlier this year, you can see that there is an emerging strand of thought among the more radical right-wing jurists that would aim to strip basic rights and freedoms from noncitizens. It's not had any success yet, but its adherents are growing.

I posted this ten minutes ago and the "so you hate waffles" responses are already rolling in.

Look, the GOP has been the party for bad people who make everything worse for my entire adult life, but there has not previously been a simple and straightforward argument under conventional legal principles that several high ranking members of the administration are murderers.

This is Bluesky, so I figured there would be dozens of lazy dunks from people who didn't click through and read the argument. I'm proud of us.

This is what I mean when I say the Trump era has made me “more conservative”: He is taking a wrecking ball to norms and institutions he does not understand, on the premise that American power, prosperity, and stability are some ineluctable law of nature rather than hard won & fragile achievements.

The Supreme Court's Purcell "principle" is an intentionally flexible standard that allows the justices to do what it takes to help Republican candidates win elections

Welp, that feels like an appropriate way for us to miss the playoffs

The big unanswered question here isn’t “do examples of people doing well or people doing poorly describe everything?” It’s “why do surveys consistently seem to show people doing pretty much fine but believing everything is shitty?”

Van Hollen almost certainly saved this man’s life

In case you have never seen this.

I'll do my best to summarize NC here. I am sanding off a lot of details and caveats. This stuff is really complex and you need to hire a lawyer if you're concerned about a specific case.