So I’m not sure where you’re from, but the feds don’t run local governments in the US, with some exceptions in DC.

Never mind that California probably has more conservatives than most conservative states…

Didn’t Fetterman’s views change after a major medical incident? It really just seems like he had an actual personality change after having a stroke.

The RFK Stadium bill unanimously passed the Senate separately.

Right but if they don’t count primary votes that were cast, then there’s a cause of action because they’re breaking their own rules. It’s basically a breach of contract. There’s no cause of action for some votes being more valuable than others because those were always the rules. I don’t love that system, but it’s a private entity and those are their rules for picking a candidate to run in the general. It’s true that they’re not required to have a primary, but that’s irrelevant right now because the Dems do have a primary under their own rules.

They can’t legally ignore primary votes. It’s not necessarily a crime, but there is definitely a successful and very expensive lawsuit if someone wins a primary by the rules and the party just picks someone else instead.

I don’t think he can. This is a former county judge who oversaw state cases. It would require the governor and/or state AG to pardon those kids. I actually think there was a commission set up specifically for that purposes, which led to hundreds of vacated convictions and a class action lawsuit that recovered millions in damages.

What is the point you want to make?

PSL are basically tankies now and the Greens are fully captured by Russian oligarchs. Both are small enough that you’re right, maybe it’ll be easier to change them. However, I doubt it because in some ways they’re more radical than the Dems so more set in their beliefs. Dems might be easier to change from within because there’s already so many camps, it’ll be easier to form a coalition.

Also, as much as I like Sanders, people need to let 2016 go. He knew the rules, he’d been in the Senate since 2007 and in politics since the 70s. Superdelegates were not some secret, Sanders knew he had to win them over too. Democrats didn’t like him because he ran as a Democrat for the funding and platform, but was an Independent before and an Independent afterwards.

Ultimately, he wanted to use the Dems but didn’t want to work for them. I have zero problem with him doing this, but I’m also not surprised the party leaders didn’t line up behind him as the nominee. Same deal as Clinton and Harris, they knew the rules and that the game was rigged in Trump’s favor through the electoral college (and sexism), and they lost. I don’t have to like the result, but I’m also not going to say any of them were robbed. The only person that can legitimately claim to have a modern presidential election stolen from them is Al Gore because he actually won the nomination and electoral college. The Supreme Court changing the results is not in the rules that anyone agreed to.

Plenty of unelected people have a massive say in policy. We wouldn’t get anything done if every bureaucrat had to be elected.

This specific unelected soon-to-be bureaucrat is fucking towel though.

In the U.S., the IRS collects all federal taxes and deposits them in the Treasury. The President submits a proposed annual budget and Congress spends entirely too much time appropriating the money from the Treasury to fund those parts of the budget it approves. There is no way to know what your tax dollars went to specifically because they go into a comingled fund that pays for all federal appropriations.

What national government anywhere in the world specifies the federal programs paid for by taxes on an employee pay stub?

I did, in fact, not notice that. Sorry about that.

So you’d replace Garland and the new AG would do what, exactly? Fire Jack Smith?

It’s fun that your answer to fascism is fascism but with a guy you prefer.

Would he nice if that attitude persists for a while.

The correct solution for an outlier event is to set up a proper Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The U.S. still thinks it’s above that, but it’s not. A TRC would have worked after 1/6 because it was an inherently partisan event. You cannot have it be bipartisan for the same reason the Nazis didn’t get to be judges at Nuremberg and neither Shining Path nor the former government officials in Peru got to sit on their TRC. The group that perpetrated the violence shouldn’t get to adjudicate it.

Why would that change speedy trial? Plenty of defendants with PDs waive speedy trial.

I’m curious where this narrative that the case only began in 2023 came from. Smith was appointed in November 2022 and the investigation doesn’t necessarily start when the public finds out or when the prosecutor (special or otherwise) is announced.

To be clear I’m just talking about federal prosecutors. State and local tend to be political and, as a result, that tends to be where you see way more corruption. Ironically, it’s also why state AGs will have policies that are entirely different from the governor’s: they’re a separate political office.