This is just a really important lesson from the Iraq War (and some other things, like Katrina) that conservatives, with their massive media apparatus, never learned. They think they can BS and spin their way out of anything, but no, sometimes you just have to get the policy right

https://twitter.com/dilanesper/status/2032494349330923741

If the administration gets the Straits of Hormuz open and oil prices down and puts a stop to Iranian attacks on neighboring countries and forces political moderation in Iran (all things I hope happens), they can claim success. But if the bad stuff keeps happening....

General thoughts:

1. The people who support these sorts of actions are sick of hearing about how they violate international law, but they do. No matter how bad a government is, other states aren't supposed to just attack and overthrow the government. 2. Further, there's a REASON for that international law principle. If nobody is constrained from doing this, you'll almost certainly see more warfare in the long term, because there are all sorts of grievances among nation states.

SCOTUS nerd material: Gorsuch (cheered on online by the Right) ID's 4 opinions where he says liberals' positions were inconsistent with the position they took on tariffs-- greenhouse gases, vaccine mandates, student loans, and eviction moratoria.

He's wrong on 3 and right on 1. The greenhouse gas, vaccine mandate, and student loan cases all involved statutory language that really did seem to authorize what the government was doing. So unless you thought the major questions doctrine should exist, the government should have won.

Let's continue our series on legal arguments that the public doesn't understand but are justifiable. Today we cover "substantive due process", the legal bogeyman that the Right blames for abortion and the Left blames for the Lochner era. It sounds terrible. But is it? For those who don't know, the 5th and 14th Amendment basically provide that no governmental entity in America can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. "Due process" is not further defined.

I have decided to do an occasional series explaining legal doctrines I think the public does not understand and unfairly criticize.

So let's talk about corporate personhood and Citizens United! Corporate personhood drives a lot of normies crazy. How can corporations be persons? It sounds totally contrary to common sense. And Citizens United is blamed by campaign finance reformers and a lot of folks on the Left for all rich people's influence on politics.

I have been thinking about the policy and politics of immigration a lot lately. And I think both parties are hemmed in by some really bad tendencies.

On the Right, it's performative cruelty.
On the Left, it's serving the Groups.

I will try and sketch out a third way here. First, what's everyone doing wrong right now? Well, on the Right, the problem is very obvious. Too many right wingers have a cruel streak when it comes to immigration. They liked the ICE tactics and would have just as soon they continued unabated even after the two shootings.

Helen Andrews is indicative of something I am very worried about.

There's no significant constituency of what I would call "hard racists" (i.e., Klan types, people who want to restore Jim Crow) in the US. But the intellectual Right is incubating a "softer" form of racism.

https://twitter.com/default_friend/status/2019730130432561611

What are the features of this "softer" form of open racism?

1. Massive racial generalizations and stereotyping.
2. Extensive arguments about culture and merit with whites just happening to always come out on top.
3. Unfounded claims about immigrant groups "destroying" America.

There's a kernel of truth in one of the right wing allegations about Hennepin County (Minneapolis) and immigration:

Since 2021, the county has not honored ICE detainers, which are requests to hold people who are arrested and subject to a final order of deportation. Here's the thing: ICE detainers are just one of those things where the immigration Groups who support the Democrats want something that isn't politically tenable or morally justifiable.

To understand this issue, let's talk about what a detainer is.

If you want a "keeping it real" story of how the airline industry evolved to it's current state of tiered levels of service with discomfort at the bottom end, I'll walk you through it. It has no relationship to the things the industry's critics say.

A thread.

https://twitter.com/dilanesper/status/2000244188928245855

1. 31 inches pitch in coach and 17 inches seat width has been basically standard among major airlines for over 40 years. If there is shrinkage in legroom it is a very slow process and mostly on budget carriers.

What I wish people would realize about anti-semitism is that it isn't enough to say "it's theoretically possible to harshly criticize Israel without being anti-semitic".

Yes it is. But lots of Palestinian Cause types traffic in anti-semitism and don't face sufficient opprobrium. And again, hashtag "not all Palestinian Cause types". Absolutely right. Some strident advocates for Palestinians and even some one state solution types do express proper horror about October 7, Bondi Beach, etc.

But lots of others look immediately to justify and minimize.

Folks, if the air travel market said "we're sick of the bad cramped seats" and refused to fly in them, instead filling up premium while economy went unsold, airlines would respond to that by adding room.

But that's NOT what most people do. They want cheap fares more than space! The real objection is "I should get a high class product while paying a rock bottom fare", but, no, you actually shouldn't, and what actually happens is when the airlines give you the option of paying more for more space, most travelers prefer paying less for less space.

A lot of followers responded to my sex positive thread about the Internet and young women by asking "what about porn?".

It's a very good question. And I might as well say it-- I think the right wing and feminists have a point about porn as we stand in 2025. To be clear, "as we stand in 2025" is crucial here. Part of the problem with critiques of pornography is there really was a "crying wolf" phenomenon. The religious right, after all, opposed Henry Miller novels and tried to ban the shipment of dildos under the Comstock Act.

I am going to once again say, this is BS, people are scaring you, a lot of commentators claim the legal system and the parties and the voters will allow things that are actually impossible, and repeating these claims is highly irresponsible.

https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1981829942959837508

There's no third term. See this thread.

https://x.com/dilanesper/status/1906815125216244106

i mentioned awhile ago how i think the second Trump term has completely refuted the unitary executive theory. Media regulation is a PERFECT example. You want antitrust regulations of media mergers, and the President CAN'T be allowed to run them.

https://twitter.com/CGasparino/status/1981496719863955913

I know people claim the Constitution requires the President have personal control of everything in the executive branch but the text of the Constitution says no such thing. ALL it says is the executive power vests in the President, which is entirely vague.

I think this has to be taken on directly. "Genocide scholars" have entirely discredited themselves over the past 2+ years over Israel and academics need to understand this because it is directly tied to why the public no longer trusts them.

https://twitter.com/KundunIlikedit_/status/1980171503414255773

There are very few people on the far left in society. But there has long been a concentration of such people in academia. There were lots of Marxist professors way back when William F. Buckley complained about Yale right after World War II. That isn't new.

I think both parties, given their druthers, will do culture war stuff rather than governance, and with today being No Kings day (and given President Trump's love of the culture war), I might tell a story that shows how deep the rot in our politics goes. It's bipartisan. In 2024, the California legislature passed, and Gavin Newsom signed, this law that takes effect in 2026 and effectively bans any California high schools from having Native American mascots.

actionnewsnow.com/news/a-new-cal…

Inspired by a recent @whignewtons podcast, I want to talk about a part of the "conversion therapy" case that I think legal conservatives have been way too dismissive of-- professional speech.

To tee this up, let's talk about my profession, lawyers. We write and talk for a living There are all sorts of restrictions on the content of lawyers' speech. In a couple of areas, we get some First Amendment protection, though less than ordinary people get. In other areas, nobody even thinks the First Amendment applies to our speech.

The "concert tickets are too expensive" discourse, for some reason, has really stuck in my craw for the last couple of days.

People really have to come to grips with what living in a prosperous society means. It means there's more disposable income chasing limited quantities. The reason why you could see Sinatra for $5 in a lounge in Vegas in the late 1950's (as you could) is (1) a lot of Americans couldn't afford to travel to Vegas, and (2) it wasn't easy for most Americans to get there. For many, a "vacation" meant a park or beach 20 miles away.

this. all of it.

I was arguing earlier today with one of these left leaning types who thinks America is teeming with white supremacists. No, we aren't. This is, for all of our laws, still a great country, based on Enlightenment values.

https://twitter.com/dhaaruni/status/1968912210249273612

some people online in the Discourse either (1) have personality disorders that cause them to massively overstate areas where we fall short or (2) think lying and deliberately overstating America's problems will serve their goals.

BTW, this whole thing with Bivens shows you why hard core originalism, with no regard for pragmatism, is such a bad judicial philosophy.

There's no text in the Constitution prohibiting a Bivens remedy. Both sides of the debate are making up the law on this.

https://twitter.com/dilanesper/status/1965117521654415737

The originalists are just saying there's this implied rule against courts implying causes of action, because that's part of the Article I "legislative" power. It's all by implication, not clear in the text, and yet the Court's conservatives treat this as some unbreakable rule.

This morning is probably the first day many people will learn that for almost 50 years, going back to US v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976), SCOTUS has allowed racial profiling by immigration officers.

It was shameful then, and it is shameful it is still good law. Michael Kinsley used to say the scandal in Washington isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. I actually think this morning's order is rightly decided under the controlling precedents.

The problem is those precedents.