SCOTUS Cases

That’s not super clear. At any point on Earth that probably any of us has ever been to, it is possible to go due north. But if you keep on going north until you reach the north pole, it no longer makes sense to ask what it means to go further north while remaining on the surface. Likewise, in any point in space time after the big bang, there is a preferred notion of “before”. But as you approach the big bang, everything, including time, collapses and the math doesn’t math. It’s a 4 dimensional manifold rather than a 2 manifold, so the analogy with north isn’t perfect, but it is very similar except with 2 more dimensions.

Right, but something can depend on something else in a way that is not temporal.

For example, our existence depends on the existence of the strong nuclear force. This is not a temporal relationship (even if the strong nuclear force as we know it didn’t exist far enough back in time). By this, i mean that it’s not that the strong nuclear force causes an event in time which is me. Instead, it’s that the strong nuclear force describes a feature of reality upon which we depend, but which does not depend on us. Then other (efficient) causes happen in time to actually create us.

Similarly, we can ask what it is about reality that allows mass/energy to exist, and for the big bang to happen.

That’s what I wanted to say :grinning_face:

I’m not convinced that someone actually has accepted that there are things we can’t comprehend if they need to follow with “therefore god” to fill the existential dread.

Even less if they need that god to know them personally and care who they have sex with…

You don’t have to look very far to find scientists, or, at the very least, people who claim to be using science to make claims beyond what science can actually prove and demand belief because “science”. This lack of humility isn’t limited to non-scientists.

One legacy of this SCOTUS will be that Stare Decisis is dead.

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So SCOTUS decisions become like Executive Orders except that it takes the majority to change rather than simply a new president? Though I guess depending on how many appointments a president gets it could be just one person changing.

Could just be a large enough suitcase of cash to get a justice or 2 to change their vote.

For one of them, the suitcase will need to be RV-sized.

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And he STILL won’t bite!

I thought he did…just not for John Oliver.

When I saw the first part I started thinking Pelican Brief.

Well, JO’s offer required him to resign.

Supreme Court to decide if Trump can limit the constitutional right to citizenship at birth?

It will be interesting to hear Alito and Thomas bend over backwards on this one. Yes, the constitution says that but Dear Leader must be obeyed.

We’re constitutional originalists, which to us means we do whatever Dear Leader wants us to do

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SCOTUS sided 6-3 against Trump re: National Guard deployment to IL, and one of the 3 dissents is Gorsuch who said that he thought the case was too complex for the shadow docket and any ruling needed to be narrower than what was issued. So kinda more a 6-2-1 ruling, with the 2 being the usual nutjobs.

The majority decision was unsigned, but Kavanaugh wrote his own concurrence, which included a footnote saying:

The State and the Government disagree about whether the immigration officers have violated the Constitution in making certain immigration stops and arrests. The basic constitutional rules governing that dispute are longstanding and clear: The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.

which arguably contradicts his previous signed shadow docket concurrence authorizing Kavanaugh stops. I guess adding his name to what should be grossly illegal actions is enough public pressure to make him soften his stance.

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Yeah.

After he sobered up.

He is sober as a judge, no?

He loves his beer. That’s all I know.

I heard that he has a nontraditional method of intake when it comes to his beer.