Over and over and over again.
So, yes, @jamellebouie.net is right. The Right has sought to cultivate this idea that it has no agency for *generations*. No agency means no accountability. Power without accountability is what the Right has always sought in America. And I do mean *always*.
Another way to look at this is that billionaires have joined a war on professional administrative class of public servants precisely because of their proximity to formal mechanisms of accountability. Civil servants are sworn to uphold the constitution, report wrongdoing to officials, follow the rules. They are in most respects more accountable than our politicians to ethical and legal requirements, and more difficult to buy off. This makes government slower and more irritating for sure, and puts those officials at odds with the Musks, Andreessens, and Karps of the world, whose vision and interests benefits from reduced oversight and accountability.
I think the Palantir attacks on bureaucrats here is ideological - like the similarly despised professors, they are a potential source of criticism.
But it is also practical. The administrative class is tasked with imposing accountability, which Palantir - like the Trump administration - dislikes.
hard same
over the past 60 years, courts have used qualified immunity to excuse all sorts of egregious police abuses--saying 'maybe they didn't know they couldn't do that!'--and whittle down our constitutional right to be free from such abuses into nothingness
ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/zorn-...
Trump is reported close to a "deal" with himself under which US taxpayers would pay him $10 billion.
I served in multiple communist and authoritarian dictatorships, but I never witnessed corruption on this scale or this blatant.
Donald Trump is a reflection of what America has become: a nation comprised primarily of uneducated, arrogant, racist buffoons without a conscience or even basic social skills, scamming their way thru life with impunity while believing that laws apply only to other people— never to them.
A headline reads: "Times Exclusive: The Inside Story of 5 Days That Remade the Supreme Court. Secret memos obtained by The New York Times illuminate the origins of the court’s now-routine 'shadow docket' rulings on presidential power."
Confidential memos by Supreme Court justices, obtained by The New York Times, show how they decided to bypass time-tested procedures and create the modern “shadow docket,” a rushed and secretive new way of doing business. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
Just thinking about how #UVA and #Monticello just decided to give #JohnRoberts the Jefferson Medal of Law for contributions to law. I will never respect #UVA and #Monticello again.
I just listened to an extended NPR interview w an education economist about 40 yrs of rising college tuition & student debt, and not a single mention that 40 yrs ago was about the time all states cut higher education budgets, privatized tuition, in order to pay for tax cuts and prisons
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
Octavia E. Butler, 1998:
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Funny how this works . . .
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Absolutely!
#BookSky
America’s favorite sport: saying the right thing and hoping no one checks the scoreboard.
Just a gentle reminder: you don’t have to read fast, finish the longest book or have the prettiest shelf, if reading bring you peace, you’re doing it right.
I’ve given Bert the day off! I’m here until 4pm - Sally
name a time that conservatives got what they wanted and it wasnt a giant disaster that made your life worse
100% true in the legal world. People who can't see the value of doing the hard grunt work and think only about efficiency are the most shallow thinkers, and often people, I run into.
All of Us Should Be Able To Agree With This…..
Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.
The President is openly threatening genocide. A crime against humanity. He must be removed from office.
The 25th Amendment must be invoked. If not, Congress has to do our damn job. Speaker Johnson, call us into session. War powers & impeachment. Remove this man from office.
“How lucky is the United States that everytime they look for democracy in other countries they find oil instead”- Spain Deputy Gabriel Rufián
👇👇
Man, SCOTUS denied cert in Wilson v. Midland?? Blurgh.
That's the IJ case where a criminal defendant sued a lawyer who acted as both the prosecutor and the judge's law clerk int he same case.
Yes, you read that right. He was on both sides of the case. Secretly.
Don't get me wrong: I'm relieved that this case is shaping up as either 8-1 or 7-2 against the Trump executive order. But the case is a gift to the Supreme Court. By rejecting an outlandish position, it will earn credibility as apolitical, even as the Overton window moves far to the right.
Greenberg: This year, Trump is losing support fast. He is flailing—and flailing would-be dictators are dangerous. They lash out.
That’s why he targeted Minnesota. That’s why he launched an illegal, catastrophic war with Iran. That’s why we fully expect him to try to sabotage the upcoming elections.
I love when he accidentally tells the truth!
Tardy #QOTD for August 7, 2023, from The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America’s Most Vulnerable Citizens by #DanielLHatcher
That's quite the sign:
Walz: The president said it's a bunch of radicals. You're damn right we've been radicalized. Radicalized by compassion, radicalized by decency, radicalized by due process, radicalized by democracy.
I feel as if we should consider these good people of the twin cities our current equivalent of the first wave across Omaha Beach.
Tardy #QOTD for August 6, 2023, from #TheGoodSoldiers by #DavidFinkel "The rain, when it came down on the roof, and fell through the downspouts, and washed across his lawn, and flowed along his street, sounded musical to him, and he listened to it, wondering what time it was in Iraq."
