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Scott Lemieux

@LemieuxLGM

2 Jul

The Roberts Court’s Nullification of the Voting Rights Act lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/07/the-ro…

“We cannot enforce the statute as written because it would stop too much vote suppression and we *like* vote suppression” is almost literally the holding of Alito’s opinion

I've already excerpted EK's description of how Alito's opinion is at war with the plain text of the statute, but I also enjoyed her observation that the ad hoc bullshit Roberts used to rationalize striking down Section 4 instantly vaporized because it isn't a real legal doctrine:

Read 4 tweets

Scott Lemieux

@LemieuxLGM

1 Jul

In Shelby County, Roberts defended his (indefensible) decision to strike down Section 4 by noting that Section 2 is still in effect. In a bait-and-switch anyone could see coming, the Court has now effectively made Section 2 a nullity: nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

One thing Kagan's dissent communicates very effectively is that Alito and the 5 other Republican justices are engaged in an act of nullification here. He doesn't like the choice Congress made to ban voting restrictions with a disparate impact, so he refuses to enforce the law:

While these vote suppression measures affect a relatively small number of voters, 1)elections -- including AZ's most recent presidential election! -- are often decided by small margins, and 2)there is no "must effect a significant percentage of voters" qualification in the VRA

Read 5 tweets

Scott Lemieux

@LemieuxLGM

30 Jun

Can powerful men be held accountable in America? lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/06/can-po…

Essentially, the decision of one prosecutor to give Cosby a formal pass despite the strong evidence against him tied the hands of more responsible prosecutors going forward because he then testified in a civil suit, according to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In 2014, a 500 page hagiography of Cosby was published to mostly fawning reviews. It ignored the many credible accusations of sexual assault entirely, as did many reviews. Kelefa Sanneh's 6,000 word review mentioned them once, in the 3rd-to-last graf: lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/07/the-ma…

Read 7 tweets

Scott Lemieux

@LemieuxLGM

25 Jun

@JFreshHockey

Since we could be about to be drowned in "the NHL playoffs are pure chaos" takes, I'm glad @JFreshHockey published this excellent post about how the Canadiens are Actually Good: jfresh.substack.com/p/the-canadien…

@EvolvingWild

It's nearly impossible to think of the Habs of scrappy hipster underdogs because of their history, but if you look at the @EvolvingWild data, they've had very strong underlying metrics for years, and were also a possession monster this year until Gallagher got hurt:

Price's regular season decline meant that the record didn't match the underlying quality of the team, but between Price's reemergence as elite during the playoffs and the critical addition of Caufield, it shouldn't be *that* surprising to see the Habs in the finals

Read 7 tweets

Scott Lemieux

@LemieuxLGM

17 Jun

This is basically one of those atrocious "I fully support labor...except for the Sacred Relationship between teacher and graduate student instructor" articles, just applied to political campaigns [that we like] jacobinmag.com/2021/06/dianne…

The problem with the whole genre, of course, is that EVERY employer has a story for why organized labor won't work in their workplace. "I support labor in general but not in this specific case" is the hoariest play in the union-busing playbook

If fighting corporate power is important, it's important enough to pay workers a decent wage and give them decent working conditions

Read 4 tweets

Scott Lemieux

@LemieuxLGM

17 Jun

Court rejects idiotic challenge to ACA on standing grounds lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/06/but-we…

The better argument is that even if you assume arguendo that the $0 mandate is unconstitutional, it's absolutely ridiculous to claim that it can't be severed from the rest of the statute, when it has literally no impact on how anything else operates. But a win is a win.

But as the tone of Alito's dissent makes clear, the REAL argument against the ACA has nothing to with federalism, it's "the Constitution enacted Ms. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, so regulations and subsidies designed to increase access to healthcare are bad"

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