If this had been a right-wing politician’s rally instead, every conservative in the country would be calling for all members of the Democratic Party to be hanged for this heinous crime, regardless of the identity or motive of the perpetrator.
The more I hear from this woman, the more I feel like there might actually be a decent heart deep down inside who wants to better her country, but is being hindered by an incredibly stupid brain that is calling the shots.
Newsom, probably
I think most people already know that flags at half staff is worthless virtue-signalling
Kirk was a complete scumbag, but flags definitely flew at half-staff for school shootings in the past.
Trump ordered flags at half-staff for Minneapolis
Biden ordered flags at half-staff for Allen, Texas
Also, since this took place at a university, this technically counts as a school shooting. A feverent right-wing agitator dies at a school shooting. Ironic.
Isn’t it just strange that a right-wing agitator meets his end… by being shot in a school shooting??
Unrelated quote:
I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
—Clarence Darrow, civil rights lawyer
I’m going to make a prediction if they are going to release a list of some sort with names on it:
monospace font like this one where all characters are the same width.It is unusual for a US president. Name one other president who did something like this.
They are trying not to remind China of their continued existence
The thing that nobody wants to admit with Tibet is that China won. They moved a bunch of Han people into the region and it’s now so interconnected with the rest of China that even if a completely free and fair referendum were held on independence, it’d probably be defeated 2 to 1. Call me a bot or a doomer, but if you ever go to Tibet, you’ll realise the old Tibet is pretty much gone. All that’s left is just another Chinese province with Tibet-themed attractions. They did it with Tibet and Inner Mongolia, they are doing it to Hong Kong, and if given the chance, they’d do it to Taiwan too.
While that’s how it started, most Taiwanese people don’t think of themselves as Chinese any more.
The people who consider themselves as solely Taiwanese people outnumber those who consider themselves Chinese by 2 to 1. The Taiwanese government can’t do something like change its name to the “Republic of Taiwan” without starting shit with the People’s Republic of China. So they figure sticking with the old name of the “Republic of China” is less llikely to cause problems.
A lot of geopolitics in general revolves around people trying not to start a conflict over something dumb rather than accepting obvious truths.
I think that’s not what the author was trying to say here. He’s saying that recognition should be granted on an objective basis based on whether an organisation claiming to be a state is able to exercise the powers of sovereignty, without respect for the political implications, and that if Palestine meets the requirements, then Taiwan definitely does as well, so it’s unfair to not also recognise Taiwan.
I understand you are playing the devil’s advocate here, but this is a legally misinformed take. There is a legal doctrine in American law called the “anti-commandeering doctrine”, which states that even though federal law is supreme to state law, the federal government may not “commandeer” organs of the state government by requiring them to perform actions in furtherance of a federal policy. Hence, it would be illegal for the federal government to require states use their law enforcement resources for immigration purposes.
The State of Colorado in particular has instead chosen to explicitly forbid its law enforcement agents from expending state resources to enforce or aid in the enforcement of federal immigration law.
The 19th century was a time of letter-writing, not Signal group chats. For that reason, I think that if the governor of Georgia had explicitly asked Jackson for permission to defy the Supreme Court, we would probably have a copy of that letter or at least a mention of its existence in the correspondence or journals of these men or of their secretaries. I also don’t think Jackson was so brazen as to give a go-ahead to defy the Supreme Court. Such an action would have undoubted started a major incident if the press found out about it, and may have even caused the unravelling of the federal system, and Jackson was certainly no idiot and knew this.
With respect to the current situation, I think the current president and attorney-general are more or less just as willing to disobey the courts. Georgia officials in the Cherokee incident(s) only did so because they were politically accountable only to the white, landowning, citizens of Georgia, who were behind them every step of the way. In a similar vein, the voters seem to have delivered a message to Trump in 2024 that there is no political cost to authoritarianism and disrespect for the rule of law. Or, at least, that’s the message Trump thinks the voters sent him. In reality, such a cost does exist, and it’s why Trump lost in 2020. Though Allan Lichtman’s prediction of the 2024 presidential election outcome was definitely wrong, I still think that his overall message, that voters care more about whether the incumbent president is good or bad than whether their opponent is good or bad, makes a lot of sense to me. But I’m no expert in that.
This is a commonly-told but not actually true version of events. Here’s what really happened between Jackson and the Cherokee case.
The background of the case is that the State of Georgia had enacted a law forbidding the settling of Cherokee territories by whites without a licence. A man by the name of Samuel Worcester, a missionary who helped establish the first Cherokee-language newspaper (the Cherokee Phoenix or ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎴᎯᏌᏅᎯ), protested against this law, saying that Georgia had no power to legislate what goes on in Cherokee territory, because the Cherokee Nation was sovereign over their own territory and not subject to the law of the State. The governor of Georgia ordered the arrest of Worcester and some other dissidents who refused to apply for a licence. He was brought before a Georgia court and stood trial, was convicted, and sentenced to four years’ hard labour. Some of his fellow defendants accepted pardons from the governor, but Worcester refused the pardon in order to preserve his right to appeal his conviction.
The case was brought before the US Supreme Court, which ruled in the case of Worcester v. Georgia that the Cherokee Nation had sovereignty which the State of Georgia could not abridge, and that the law banning whites from settling Cherokee land was void. President Jackson expressed disdain over this ruling, and contemporary news thought he was unlikely to help the Supreme Court if it asked him to enforce its ruling. However, the Court never asked Jackson to send federal marshals to enforce the decision, so there was nothing for him to “violate”.
Georgia state officials chose to ignore the ruling and refused to release Worcester from prison. His lawyers petitioned the new governor of Georgia to offer Worcester an unconditional pardon, but the governor refused, saying that the Supreme Court had overstepped its authority. Georgia officials decided to agitate for the federal government to impose a removal treaty against the Cherokees. Then, in an unrelated incident, South Carolina started a spat with the federal government by attempting to nullify a federal law that they didn’t like, which caused the Jackson administration to change its tune towards Worcester’s situation. His government dropped hints to the governor of Georgia that if Worcester (and another person similarly situated) were released, that the Jackson administration would arrange for a removal treaty to be imposed on the Cherokees. Worcester intended to continue pursuing his case before the federal courts but feared that doing so might provoke the government of Georgia to do something like attempt to secede or otherwise bring harm to the Cherokees. The governor and Worcester’s legal representatives haggled over the wording of Worcester’s petition for a pardon, and in the end, they were released the year after the Supreme Court’s decision. Worcester gave up his case before the federal courts.
At the same time as this was happening, gold was discovered on Cherokee lands and the State of Georgia infringed on the Cherokees’ sovereignty in other ways, including attempting to abolish the tribal government, trying to legislate away all of the Cherokees’ land rights, and raffling off plots of Cherokee territory to white settlers.
In 1835 (three years after this ruling), a group of Cherokees not authorised by the Cherokee National Council or by their Principal Chief negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, agreeing on behalf the entire tribe to vacate their traditional homelands in exchange for five and a half million dollars and a reservation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Despite the vast majority of Cherokee people opposing this treaty, its signatories having lacked the authority from the Cherokee council to negotiate it, and against the wishes of the Cherokee Principal Chief, the US Senate gave force to the treaty and President van Buren ordered the US Army to remove all Cherokees to Indian Territory in 1838.
Government sources indicate that the US really only imports from two Middle Eastern countries: Iraq and Saudi Arabia. I don’t see how either of those countries would be particularly displeased if the US cuts off Israel.
Israel is a useless ally. They just hold their hands out for American money and don’t seem to provide anything in return other than bad press. Maybe you could make an argument that Israel’s position is beneficial for regional stability, but I don’t see why other countries couldn’t fill that role. There is no shortage of strongmen in the Middle East. Yeah, they’re the “oNlY deMocRaCy iN tHe MiddLe EasT” but that means nothing if their electorate always just votes for politicians who want to massacre their neighbours.
In the United States, the Constitution states that in order to take your land for this purpose, you must be compensated fairly. Of course, “fairly” in terms of market value did not amount to very much, but compensation was paid and even dilapidated housing in so-called “blighted” neighbourhoods were still worth something and the cost does add up when you’re knocking hundreds of houses down and having to pay thousands for each one.
There is no easy way to withhold the taxes because the State of California never touches the money. Most of the federal tax revenue from California is remitted directly to the Internal Revenue Service by individual taxpayers.
I’m not going to pretend that I know the whole picture as to why this project is so severely over budget and behind schedule (there is likely nobody on Earth who does), but let me give some pointers as to why countries like China have built hundreds of thousands of kilometres of high-speed rail while California struggles to build a few hundred.
For one, the legal environment in China is one of the prerogative state. “Rights” in China are whatever the Government suffers you to have or deems it expedient to honour. So if you “own” a piece of land in the middle of the planned rail route, the Government will just kick you out. What are you going to do, sue? In the US, environmental laws, land rights laws, and legal procedural law mean that anyone who can spend $50,000 on a lawyer can cause $1 million worth of headaches for the high speed rail authority using the American legal system, which believe it or not, actually sometimes holds the State accountable to the law.
Secondly, in China, the Government has an unprecedented control over the economy that allows it to offer carrots and sticks to a degree that American politicians could only dream of. Yes, you have no say on whether the Government will order your house demolished to make way for an expressway, but in return, if you go quietly, you’ll get a flat in a high-rise in exchange and generous monetary compensation. Raise a stink, and you’ll be paid three strawberries and a steamed bun for your house instead.
Thirdly, under Chinese property law, all land in the country belongs to the State. Everyone else can only lease it from the State.
This is fantastic news for the Mamdani campaign.