StrangeSox

I was wondering who could possibly like trump. Of course it's Greg.

Eight churches in ten days now. All just unrelated vandalism probably. http://time.com/3942688/black-church-burni...south-carolina/

White supremacist terrorist attacks have targeted black churches as long as there have been black churches.

No, not in most states.

On Roberts' flop when citing the "ancient" traditional marriage in various societies https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-m...justice-roberts

Just woken up by a magnitude 5.0 earthquake near volcanoes national park, first terrifying thought was "oh God volcano is erupting"

Which again nobody is actually calling for. Because that would be stupid. Stopping honoring something isn't the same thing as expunging it from history.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Jun 26, 2015 -> 01:44 PM) I think there's a fine line here. A statue in a public building is interpreted by the general public as honoring the person, not as a figure in history who may have done really good or really bad things. Clearly these people need to remain a part of our public conscience within the context of the study of history, but putting a statue of them up in a public place goes beyond that. I do find it very ironic that Washington and Jefferson get free passes though. Somehow owning slaves in 1790 isn't as bad as owning slaves in 1860. A few years back I went to Charlottesville for a week for training, and one of the co-workers who went with me is black. He was not in a very good mood after the trip to and tour of Monticello, and I don't blame him. Yeah, that stuff belongs in museums.

I'm fine with some of that, too. Why do you want to continue to honor racist slave owning traitors to the county

The means of "asking for state governments to stop flying the flag" seems pretty reasonable.

QUOTE (HuskyCaucasian @ Jun 26, 2015 -> 08:41 AM) I am going to open this up for debate, and please be civil and respectful. I heard this idea a few days ago, not saying I endorse it - just opening it up for debate, that marriage should be banned as a governmental concept. There should be civil unions issued by the government for all couples (same-sex, or traditional) and "marriage" is a religious form of civil unions. "Now that gays can marry let's just blow the whole thing up" is a pretty awful response

Also Scalia is again the worst

Yeah that would be pretty stupid

Nah, I think the people who keep complaining about people wanting the flags taken down are lending their support to those who want them to keep flying. You're essentially telling the people who are calling for the flag to be taken down (screaming hoards, lol) to shut up and talk about something else because some corporations might do something silly. Apple has enacted stupid blanket bans on things in the past. Google has done it with adsense before. It's pretty ridiculous to try to hold a activists who are in no way calling for them to do that accountable. Well your edit essentially confirms my point that you guys are just engaging in some weak concern trolling.

They cannot "decline all provisions of obamacare" but they can refuse to expand Medicaid.

More great characterization! I'm just confused why you have such a strong interest in defending the symbols of white supremacy. Is it simply because liberals are trying to get them removed?

Nobody was calling for Apple to do that though. If there's an overreach there that's not the fault of the people correctly calling for governments to stop flying the flag and honoring confederate slavers

lol

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:55 PM) I'm not some Obamacare repealer. I could give two s***s honestly. But I 100% agree with Scalia when it comes to statutory interpretation and the pretty absurd hoops the majority went through to get to the conclusion that exchanges created by states also meant/means exchanges by the federal government. There's no hoops, though. That's why Scalia's dissent is just hack-work. The statute uses "exchange" and EEBTS interchangeably in various places throughout the statute. The federal government is even instructed to establish "such exchanges" if the states don't, and the federal exchanges are completely pointless if Scalia's reading holds. You have to ignore all of the absurdities his reading creates in order to agree with his conclusion. Here is another solid example illustrating why Scalia has to either be a hack or an idiot in this dissent: The Court doesn't "predict" anything but cites a bunch of cases of this literally happening in states that did guaranteed issue and community rating but no functional mandate (which is what stripping subsidies would amount to). And even then, no, we wouldn't necessarily see that in the political world that has existed since the ACA was passed. How many states have still refused to expand Medicaid?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:56 PM) Um, but it does when the whole basis of the case is ambiguity of statutory text. Be definition if it was "clear" there'd be no ambiguity to review. Unless it was a bunch of bad-faith lawsuits because they would try literally anything. Which it was, and every court that looked at it ruled against them.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:52 PM) Please. That's like saying Plessy wasn't a good decision because it was all planned from the beginning by people that wanted to repeal the Separate Car Act. How it got to the Court is irrelevant to the Court's reasoning and holding. You said that if it was clear there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. I was pointing out that the lawsuits came from a "throw everything against the wall and see what might stick" political strategy and saying "but there's a lawsuit!" doesn't actually tell us anything about the merits.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:49 PM) Bills are always different from the final version. And this "mistake" was made 7 times. I don't buy it. And again, it's not for the Court to change it because of what it thinks Congress meant. That still means the whole idea that Congress actually intended to withhold the subsidies is bulls***. I guess I don't really care what you "buy" because it's all very well documented. There were multiple versions of the bill, they were merged, and due to it being passed on reconciliation, there wasn't an opportunity to clean up any potential language issues. That nobody even recognized that this was potentially an issue for a while after it was passed cuts against the claim that the Court changed anything at all here. They use the terms interchangeably, and they tell the feds to establish "such exchange" if the state doesn't. It's pretty straight forward and it never should have gone this far.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:44 PM) Link I think the oral arguments showed the Roberts was annoyed that they were even hearing this case.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:44 PM) I think if it were "clear" there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. It's anything but. Are you aware of where this challenge originated? It was part of a political conference that set out to destroy Obamacare using any means possible. This wasn't some principled legal stand. Hell, that they had to work so hard to find any eligible plaintiffs and even then, there were very legitimate questions about standing for all four of them says a lot. But nobody came up with this "federal exchanges don't count" interpretation until well after the bill had been signed into law, and it was developed by political opponents explicitly looking for anything they could to destroy the law.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 25, 2015 -> 12:44 PM) I think if it were "clear" there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. It's anything but. Hack lawsuits that were rejected by every court that heard them (DC circuit was pretty much a lock to reverse en banc) don't say anything about the merits.