Tanner Andrews 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Another Anti-Immigrant Lie Exposed: IRS Records Will Be Used To Track Down Undocumented Immigrants

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2025 @ 04:56am

    For all the talk of “just wait until the mid-terms” I’m not entirely sure there will be a country left to save by that time.
    Also there is no sign of any viable opposition. The Dems some years ago eliminated national leadership. Now their Senate coalition is led by someone in such financial straits that he cannot afford a spine. Over in the house, they have sidelined anyone who threatens to have any utility. At least I have been generous: 
    Sen. Chuck Schumer,
322 Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC  20510.

Dear Sir:

Refs: Continuing Resolution FY 2025-2025.

Enclosed please find my check #7641, a contribution
of $1.00, which I encourage you to put toward the
purchase of a spine.

                   Yours &c.
    Obviously it will take many generous people in order for the Dems to have a spine in the Senate leadership, and it may be that they have to share it amongst several members,but one is a start.

  • On the post: Contempt Continued: Rubio, Bondi Attempt To Stonewall Court Inquiry With Bullshit ‘State Secrets’ Response

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2025 @ 07:28am

    bad choice of words

    US court system has a long and extensive history of treating claims of ‘state secrets’ and ‘national security’ by the government with extreme skepticism
    The word you want is "deference" not "skepticism". Totten v. United States, 92 U.S. 105 (1875), and far too many cases following even where inappropriate.

  • On the post: Contempt Continued: Rubio, Bondi Attempt To Stonewall Court Inquiry With Bullshit ‘State Secrets’ Response

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2025 @ 07:23am

    crimes and civil contempt

    I would say that as far as I’m aware presidential pardons are limited to federal crimes
    The pardon power reaches to all Federal crimes. For instance, sheriff Crazy Joe was pardoned for criminal contempt. The power does not reach to civil matters. Thus, the president cannot "pardon" himself for civil judgments. Neither can he pardon civil contempt, which is coercive rather than punitive in nature. Normally it is said that the contemnor "holds the key to the jailhouse door in his pocket" by having the power to do whatever the court ordered. So, if these folks were to announce the times that the airplanes flew, then they would purge the civil contempt. If it turned out that the planes flew after the order without turning around, then you would have criminal contempt. That would be the subject of pardons. The optics might not be good, but this administration appears to care little for such things.

  • On the post: How Does This End?

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2025 @ 03:48am

    seems rather unlikely

    if the run-up to the 2026 mid-terms shows the Democrats making overwhelming gains
    Right now the chances are apportioned between slim and none, and I think slim just left town. Accordingly, the below. ` Sen. Chuck Schumer, 322 Hart Senate Office Bldg, Washington DC 20510. Dear Sir: Please find enclosed a contribution of $1.00, which I encourage you to put toward the purchase of a spine. Yours &c. (encl) `

  • On the post: Trump Tests How Many Law Firms He Can Destroy Before Someone Stops Him

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2025 @ 10:20pm

    the rest of the story

    “Kill all the lawyers.” [Henry 6 Pt 2, act 4 scene 2]
    Go ahead, tell us why Dick the Butcher wanted to kill all the lawyers, what he hoped to accomplish. No need to stop at half measures.

  • On the post: Alito “Stunned” By Court Exercising Judicial Power He Championed & Expanded Just Months Ago

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2025 @ 03:33am

    try again

    But then again, [ Fla. Stat. 73.60(2) ] shows that the plaintiff has to pony up before he can file a case
    Go back, read it again. The defendant is the one who must pony up before he can raise defenses.

  • On the post: Trump Claims Boycotting Tesla Is Illegal, Which It Very Much Is Not

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2025 @ 03:24am

    we can always hope

    From an investor standpoint you would defend those prices as a bet on the future of the company.
    For this to be reasonable, the company should have a plan to start paying dividends. Given the stock price, it should be a plan to pay really big dividends.

  • On the post: Judge Uses D&D’s Failure To Make Him Worship Satan To School Florida On Social Media Moral Panics

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 15 Mar, 2025 @ 08:34am

    sorry about your feelings

    There are lots of adults who will tell you how they feel like social media has harmed them. Not really the case with comic books,D&D, etc.
    There is a vast gulf between "feel like %s has harmed" and actual causation. If yhou successfully fill it in, then people are less likely to laugh at you when you feel like something has harmed you.

  • On the post: Warner Bros. Streisands The Leaked Trailer For Canceled Powerpuff Girls Show To The Moon

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2025 @ 05:11am

    not the normal plan

    [ cw logo tells me it is bad ]
    I admit that I may be a little out of touch, since I have too much other stuff going on to spend time watching television. So perhaps my understand of how things work is outdated. With that caveat, my understanding is that when an entertainment company creates a real big stinker, the sort that can be smelt two counties away, they immediately promote it heavily. There will be adverts in different media, and possibly merchandise. Indeed, they sometimes ``Streisand'' material in order to raise interest. Think of it as cheap advertising. It is unlikely that we would know anything about Canceled Powerpuff Girls but for this campaign. This is surely such a stinker. The failure to do the complete promotion campaign and product release seems odd to me.

  • On the post: GOP Senators Trade Constitutional Authority For Elon’s Phone Number

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 10 Mar, 2025 @ 11:47pm

    full and topped off

    [Dems] say that they are fighting, but there is nothing they can do
    They are in fact full of a substance sometimes noted for its odor. House Dems blew their opportunity on the oversight committee. At least they can still vote "no" as a bloc on any proposed bills, allowing the Rs to own whatever they do -- if Mike Johnson can get all the Rs lined up in a row to pass it. Senate Dems have been looking for spines, but unfortunately they are on back-order. Until a new shipment arrives, no fillibuster for you. Just a bit of meek complaining and occasional ineffective "no" votes.

  • On the post: Alito “Stunned” By Court Exercising Judicial Power He Championed & Expanded Just Months Ago

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2025 @ 04:27am

    requiring payment up front

    Have you ever seen a case where a court issued a TRO ordering the defendant to pay the plaintiff what they are owed?
    Pretty close. Fla. Stat. 83.60(2) requires tenants to pay rent before they can contest whether it is owed.

  • On the post: Alito “Stunned” By Court Exercising Judicial Power He Championed & Expanded Just Months Ago

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2025 @ 04:24am

    exception for jurisdiction

    No one at the initial hearing contested the jurisdiction of that court
    Does not matter. While the general rule is that you cannot bring up stuff on appeal that was not in the lower court, the question of jurisdiction is an exception to that rule. Courts, and especially Federal courts, are supposed to consider jurisdiction at every stage of the proceedings. In this situation, there was clearly a case and controversy: US govt had contracted for work and then failed to pay. The question of jurisdiction is therefore pretty easy here, except for certain supremes who appear to be somewhat coin-operated.

  • On the post: Hey Elon: You Don’t Just ‘Ooopsie’ The Destruction Of Ebola Prevention

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2025 @ 05:06am

    not exactly backtracking

    Elon may be tonedeaf enough to not realise this, but people without billions to fall back on do and have just enough power to make him backtrack… for now at least.
    Close. There is enough opposition power to make Elmo announce that he is backtracking and restoring ebola response. That is similar but not identical to actually backtracking and restoring ebola response.

  • On the post: Profiles In Cowardice: The Nobody Saw This Coming Brigade

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2025 @ 05:09am

    treason per U.S. Constitution

    suspect that the constitution definition of treason requires the US be at war
    Actually, 
    Treason against the United States, shall consist 
only in levying War against them, or in adhering 
to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
    So there need not be a separate war. If you were to organize a crew to violently attack the Capitol, tearing down the U.S. flag and putting up your own in its stead, that would seem to be levying war and thus within the definition. The "And and Comfort" optyion would require that the adhered-to entities be enemies, but there is no requirement that we be at war. If, for instance, if we are not directly at war with someone, but there is a historical relationship that could perhaps be described as a ``cold war'', then they might be an enemy such that adhering to them or their intelligence services could fit within the definition. Obviously in any actual prosecution the defense attorney would seek to either narrow the definition or place the defendant outside of it. Also, the first time the Capitol was attacked, in the War of 1812, the attackers were external forces and thus not amenable to charges of treason.

  • On the post: Musk Decries Hitler’s Censorship, Right Before Threatening To Jail Critics

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2025 @ 10:49pm

    not quite absolutist

    free speech absolutist
    More correctly, free speech abolitionist.

  • On the post: Lane Kiffin Defeats Keith Bell In ‘Winning Isn’t Normal’ Copyright Case

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2025 @ 02:02am

    still do not

    TD always links. You know that. Did you not see it?
    And I still do not see the link to the PDF. I only see two links in the article: one to an earlier TD article, and one to a "sportico" page reporting on the court result.

  • On the post: The Faux Free Speech Warriors Attacking Free Speech

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2025 @ 01:50am

    bristle at the idea that children should be propagandized into tolerating/accepting queer people by a school curriculum.
    I think it is essential. And I go farther. I think we ought to propagandize students to tolerate persons of color, and possibly even yankees (obviously not damnyankees however). Probably Catholics, and maybe Mohammedans, too. The alternatiove is to not propagandize students in this way, instead allowing them to fight in the hallways with those who are of the wrong color, or origin, or religion. Society fails if we cannot walk through the hallways without beating up on or being beaten by groups of people who are different.

  • On the post: As NCMEC Removes Any Mention of Trans Youth, the Anti-Porn Movement Shows Its True Colors With Trump’s Executive Order Against ‘Gender Ideology’

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2025 @ 07:56pm

    biology can matter under the law

    It’s a small step from yelling “biology matters!” at trans people to yelling the same at parents who don’t have their children the standard biological way.
    You do not have to go that much farther back to reach their next step of biology mattering. Loving v. Virgina was decided not quite 60 years ago, but the decision quoted the trial case: 
    Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red,
and he placed them on separate continents.
And but for the interference with His arrangement
there would be no cause for such marriages.
The fact that He separated the races shows that
he did not intend for the races to mix.
    And of course here in Florida, besides the embarrassment of the Virgil Hawkins cases, we also have McGlaughlin v. State, 153 So.2d 1 (Fla. 1963), which praised the ``well-written decision'' in Pace v. Alabama. Overturned, McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964). The law in Pace also said that biology mattered. A person with one negro in three generations, which is to say 1/8, could not legally marry a white person. The penalty, preserved when the law was upheld by the U.S. Supremes, was 2 years in the state pen. McLaughlin and Loving may be getting a bit hoary, but with the present crop of supremes you never know. At least some have expressed desire to roll back some civil rights cases.

  • On the post: Trump Pardons Ulbricht, Betraying His Demand That Drug Dealers Deserve Death

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2025 @ 11:49pm

    in a bench trial, too

    Yes, though the "jury" is just the judge. You should still only be sentenced for those things for which you were charged and found guilty.

  • On the post: Spam Emails, Spam Lawsuit: The GOP Tries To Break Gmail By Court Order

    Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 07 Feb, 2025 @ 03:41am

    important difference

    “Mail” and “email” sound like they must be very similar, but they aren’t. Mail has a cost; email essentially does not; and that makes all the difference.
    Why?
    Because, when the sender pays, there is a motive to limit the unwanted transmissions. That is a key difference between common carriers and internet service, by the way. The person seeking the use of a common carrier would pay the tarriffed rate. The common carrier made its money by having people pay that tarriffed rate. Resorts in desirable locations did not get to push a float-load of adverts into the baggage or RPO car for delivery to people shivering in New York for free. Instead, they paid the originating postmaster so much per piece to send. Due to the costs, they generally sent to people whom they thought would be interested. If the RNC had to pay so much per e-mail, there would be a lot less enthusiasm for sending a blast of ``patriot alert'' junk mail. Instead, with the internet, the recipient pays the cost of dealing with electronic junk mail, with payment being made in time and attention at least. The same motivations apply for those spam list spammers like * mia9.jockson@gmail.com * brooklyn.collins@events-info.com * mgraham@theclearprospects.com * loren.grayusa121@gmail.com who enthusiastically use Google's bullet-proof hosting service to send out their solicitations for ``highly targeted'' prospect lists.

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