Thread by @soychicka

Something Mike Lee just said made me wonder: if someone with a medical condition encounters an elected official who is about to vote to take away their health care, which will result in their death 2 weeks later - are they justified in using deadly force to prevent it?

And - crazy fact: in Florida, it seems you can preemptively kill someone to prevent them from committing an act of treason....

So long as you are someplace you have the legal right to be.

This is not legal advice - just a possible interpretation...

And Ms. Coney Barrett said that THE PEOPLE's understanding of the law as written is what matters in originalist parsing of the law, rather than the legislator's intent...

that's kind of weird, no?

I know legislators are protected from civil arrest, but are there any catches to cover this loophole?

Again, not legal advice or a call to action - just curious about how this plays out in light of Coney Barrett's explication -

especially when THE PEOPLE have an incomplete understanding of the context of the law and additional cross-referenced terms (i.e. time scope of 'imminent' ).

How well-read do THE PEOPLE have to be?

Also, here's a plug for making secondary explicatory documents mandatory for any law passed that would need to be interpreted by citizens - a long form version of the intent of the law, including glossaries of terms, diagrams, flowcharts, explicit case studies...

And for requiring that explication to be considered to inform any judicial processes involving that law... And for legislation to go through a publicly accessible judicial smell test for edge cases BEFORE it's ratified... mock cases to determine if law fits intent.

All of this could be done incredibly easily using a system that enables a more truly participatory democracy.

https://twitter.com/soychicka/status/1060281764625702912?s=20

I hear @LaurenUnderwood's the new head of @HomelandDems Subcomm. on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation - I'm sure she knows the importance of transparency and ensuring stakeholders feel as if they had a voice to restoring and maintaining national security.

But, if we had a system like the above that allowed verified citizens access to ask questions and submit feedback, it could allow for issues like what was outlined above to be addressed before legislation is passed, minimizing loopholes,

and effectively reducing the power the judicial branch to screw things up after the fact, which causes uncertainty and distrust of government.

Of course, until #MoscowMitch's reign of brinksmanship and governance by disaster is terminated, no chance.

But it's what we need.

And, again, to be perfectly clear - this is neither a threat of nor a call to violence against anyone... just an illustration of how the old way of governing doesn't work - because right now, the only way to know for sure is to test it out.

And that's not advisable.

But you've got to wonder how things might change if elected officials thought that knowingly enabling the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans through inaction on COVID, or screwing with the ACA, might put their own lives at risk - if this were a valid defense.