US Politics Thread 2021-23

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

I agree, but the fact that he even says these things is what matters to me and it should be pointed out to the general public just how unamerican and Fascist his views are.

A good point but shouldn't that also apply to the current President. Joe Biden has lied about the economy, inflation, the border, covid and taxes. He has told some unbelievable tall tales and fabulous stories and in all cases they proved to be false. Does this not concern you at all? Is this someone who should be the leader of a country like the United States?

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

McCarthy is nobody and doesn't have the stones to face down MAGA. He lost his chance to make them irrelevant and take control of the House and instead called for the impeachment that will never get a floor vote as required. It's a case of pointing at the man and then trying to find a crime instead having a crime and pointing at the man. MAGA will get voted out.

umm those 21 or so congressmen were voted in by people who exercised their right to vote. Now you want one man to ‘take control’ and make them bend to his will. How very authoritarian of you.


And by the way define fascism? Hint it’s Italian and Biden is the first president in history to publically pickett with them and it’s Democrats who when they lose elections support fascism by wanting to get rid of the electoral vote. Then there’s Democrats who love to exercise their Facisim, which coincidently leads to authoritarian rule, by labeling everyone who doesn’t agree with them as extremists.

Facists and Nazis are everywhere. lol

[Rockstar]

Granted it’s not the New York Times, Wikipedia or your favorite fact checker bot, but it’ll do.

Joe Biden Lied At Least 16 Times About His Family’s Business Schemes

https://oversight.house.gov/blog/joe...iness-schemes/


WSJ Editorial Board: There Is Evidence for an Impeachment Inquiry

WASHINGTON—The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board published a piece emphasizing the importance of opening an impeachment inquiry in the wake of mounting evidence of Joe Biden’s abuse of public office. The Editorial Board points to the evidence unearthed by the House Oversight Committee, which reveals Joe Biden knew and was involved in his family’s influence peddling schemes around the world that enriched the Biden family.

Say this for the Biden White House: It knows its media audience. It was thus no surprise that after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the opening of an impeachment inquiry this week, White House spokesman Ian Sams gave the press its marching orders.

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an inquiry based on lies,” he wrote in a memo to news outlets. Much of the press proceeded to report that Republicans have “no evidence” to justify investigating the President.

It’s true there’s no proof so far that the President cashed checks from foreign sources. But there’s plenty of evidence that son Hunter and others in the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign partners who believed they were buying influence with his father. The House has good reason to follow these leads about a President who is asking to remain in office for another four years.

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Chairman, this week outlined the evidence that Republicans have already gathered. It’s some list.

Former Hunter business partner Devon Archer says Joe Biden was “the brand” being sold, and that as Vice President he participated by speakerphone with Hunter and his business associates at least 20 times, and that he also met or dined with Hunter and his foreign associates. These included Russian oligarchs, a Ukrainian executive being investigated for corruption, and a Chinese business partner for whose daughter Mr. Archer thinks Joe Biden wrote a college letter of recommendation.

We also know that Vice President Biden okayed talking points on the Ukrainian company Burisma supplied by Hunter business associate Eric Schwerin. We know the State Department’s George Kent warned Mr. Biden in 2015 that Hunter’s presence on the board of Burisma was being used to undermine America’s anti-corruption message.

An FBI informant has told the bureau that Mykola Zlochevsky, Burisma’s CEO, paid $5 million each in bribes to Hunter and Joe. This hasn’t been corroborated. More recently we learned that Hunter business partner James Gilliar emailed Hunter and other associates that 10% of a deal with Chinese energy firm CEFC was to go to the “big guy.” Former Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski has said the big guy was Joe Biden.

The Biden money trail goes through at least 20 shell companies; the Vice President used different email pseudonyms; and at least 170 financial transactions related to Hunter or Joe’s brother James Biden were flagged to Treasury as suspicious. A pair of IRS agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, told Congress that the Justice Department undermined their investigation into Hunter Biden’s emails and tax filings.

Mr. Biden has obfuscated all of this from the start, such as denying in a 2020 campaign debate that his family had received money from China. He also invoked a phony talking point cooked up by 51 former intelligence officers to declare Hunter’s infamous laptop Russian disinformation. His administration has stonewalled House efforts to get the information it seeks and has now set up a war room to fight an inquiry.

Starting an inquiry doesn’t mean it will end in impeachment, and there’s not enough evidence so far to justify such a step. But to say there’s no cause for investigation is to deny the reality of all we’ve learned about the Biden family business.

And now

[mapuc]

In my opinion it shouldn't be a question whether a politicians, a Minister or a President should be held accountable for crimes they have done during their time in Congress, Senate or the White House.

It should not be a discussion if a politician shall have a warning or being impeached.

In the real there's a different-Here your fellow partner can't vote for or against a warning or impeachment.

Markus

[Rockstar]

Democrat Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm to delay the critical shutdown vote

Dude should be removed & in cuffs.





This is the same buffoon who called for Biden to make 6 Jan a national day of remembrance. Democrats do so love the spectacle. “Smart” enough to become a congressman but dumb enough to think a fire alarm opens doors.

[Rockstar]

The new Supreme Court term takes aim at the administrative state
Conflicts over guns, gender bias and abortion are coming up, too

Sep 28th 2023 | NEW YORK

https://archive.ph/6vj1b

Amid a storm of ethics concerns and an approval rating stuck at historic lows for a second consecutive year, the Supreme Court returns to action on October 2nd. Battles over gun rights, gender-based employment discrimination and social-media use by public officials loom, as do lingering questions about voting rights, abortion pills and affirmative action. A constitutional challenge to Donald Trump’s candidacy based on his role in the riot at the Capitol on January 6th 2021 could reach the high court as the presidential campaign heats up. But the stars of the term may be a deceptively bland trio of cases that could transform the way the federal government does its work.

A wonky-but-weighty hearing will greet the justices on their second day back in robes. In the snappily named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (cfpb) v Community Financial Services Association of America, the court will review a decision of the fifth circuit court of appeals, America’s most conservative circuit court, undercutting the consumer-watchdog agency established in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-08. The fifth circuit ruled that the cfpb has an unconstitutional funding structure. Article I, section 9 of the constitution mandates that “[n]o money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law”. Since the cfpb has a permanent funding stream allocated annually not by Congress but by the Federal Reserve, the plaintiffs argue that its financing is illegitimate.

If the justices find that this arrangement violates the constitution, everything the agency has done over its 12 years—from cracking down on predatory lenders to breaking up fraudulent debt-collection schemes—could be deemed unlawful, too. The fallout from such a ruling would be “deeply destabilising”, the federal government warns. A friend-of-the-court brief from the housing finance industry predicts “catastrophic economic consequences” should challengers to the cfpb prevail, including “severe instability” in the mortgage market from uncertainty about the status of the agency’s lending rules.

Similarly significant effects could flow from Securities and Exchange Commission (sec) v Jarkesy, another fifth-circuit decision coming to the Supreme Court later in the autumn. The case was brought by George Jarkesy after his company, Patriot28, appeared before an administrative-law judge (alj) in 2014 for alleged securities fraud involving two hedge funds. After the alj found him liable, assessing $300,000 in civil penalties and disgorging $685,000 of illicit profits, Mr Jarkesy sued the sec, contending that its enforcement procedures are unconstitutional. A fifth-circuit panel found that Mr Jarkesy had a seventh-amendment right to a jury trial, that Congress has handed the sec too much power and that aljs are too hard to remove. If the Supreme Court agrees, the sec will become less nimble in its ability to protect investors. Other agencies using aljs to enforce regulations, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Environmental Protection Agency (epa), could get caught in Jarkesy’s wake.

A third case threatening the independence of administrative agencies—Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo—may pull the plug on a precedent that has been on life support for years. When Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council came down in 1984, conservatives faithfully applied the deference it afforded to administrative agencies’ own interpretations of ambiguous laws. As long as agencies like the epa or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued “reasonable” regulations in the face of statutory ambiguity, Chevron held, judges should butt out and let the bureaucrats do their work.

But over the decades justices on the right have soured on Chevron’s long leash for agencies and their progressive regulations. In 2015, in a case involving enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that Chevron had enabled the epa to enact “policy goals”—usurping Congress’s job. Last year, Justice Neil Gorsuch characterised Chevron as “judicial abdication” and argued that although courts now seldom invoke it, the ruling “deserves a tombstone no one can miss”.

With three opportunities to rein in federal agencies—thereby reallocating power to the judiciary—the justices also face a tough case testing the reach of a revolutionary gun-rights decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, issued in 2022. According to that ruling, the only limits on firearms allowed by the second amendment today are those with historical analogues that were in place when the amendment was ratified in 1791 or extended to the states through the 14th amendment in 1868. United States v Rahimi asks whether a federal ban on guns for domestic abusers under restraining orders passes constitutional muster despite, as the fifth circuit found, “no tradition” of such prohibitions in the 18th or 19th centuries.

Racial gerrymandering returns to the Supreme Court on October 11th, when the justices look into a claim that South Carolina shuttled black voters in and out of districts when drawing its congressional map after the 2020 census. On October 31st the justices will hear two cases asking whether the first amendment bars public officials—a city manager in Michigan and two school-board members in San Diego—from blocking constituents on their social-media accounts. Later in the autumn, they will ask whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was violated when a female police officer was transferred to a less interesting position because her supervisor allegedly wanted a man for her job.

The justices have aftershocks to confront from several recent decisions related to race. They showed no patience for Alabama’s defiance of Allen v Milligan, a decision from June requiring the state to comply with the Voting Rights Act by drawing a second congressional district where black voters have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard, the decision from June ending race-based affirmative action in university admissions, has put wind in the sails of a lawsuit against a race-blind policy designed to enhance diversity at an elite high school in Virginia. In August opponents of the policy asked the Supreme Court to hear their case. And a new challenge to the consideration of race at West Point, a military academy, could eventually end up in the justices’ laps.

The hottest-button issue in American politics—abortion—is also likely to end up back at the high court. In the coming months, they may have the final say on a district court’s decision severely limiting access to mifepristone, a widely used drug to end early pregnancies.

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Who has agency?"