What procedural step is being abused here to allow one Senator to have this much influence? Or is this another case of one Senator being the face while backed by the rest of their party?

Of course, it’s just his “get out of jail free” card to save face publicly when he starts rejecting requests.

He qualified it by specifying it’s if you were “unfairly” facing repercussions, which of course means he can deny or accept anyone he wants for any reason that he wants and still claim he’s upholding his pledge.

Haven’t used my desktop in ages, has been completely replaced by my personal and work laptops.

It’s so incredibly frustrating. One of the main reasons Trump rose to popularity was his campaigning against D.C. ineptitude and corruption. Drain the swamp and all of that. And now we have the perfect encapsulation of why those issues exist. He is the ineptitude and corruption. But the people who are supposedly railing against that are embracing him without wavering. Now they’re about to nominate someone who had a laundry list of indictments.

If you can’t hold yourselves accountable how could you ever expect to hold others accountable? It doesn’t work like that. The GOP is broken, but perhaps more concerning are the supposed independents who for one reason or another just don’t seem to care.

He’d probably have to put all of his eggs in the reincarnation basket and start doing some good deeds.

Or bad deeds, depending on your opinion of actors.

This line from Schindler’s List always stuck with me:

“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”

The context is that at the end of the movie Schindler is distraught thinking of how many more he could have saved if he just did certain things differently, like selling a ring and using that money to hire another Jewish worker. One of the people he saved tells him the above line.

It’s stuck with me for two reasons, I think.

First, it’s an interesting perspective on individuality. Each person has their own unique perspective of the world. When that person dies, that perspective is gone forever. An entire universe dies with them, never to be seen again. I think that’s a powerful way to view the individual.

Second, it’s a reminder that we do what we can, and while it may be imperfect, it’s enough. You can’t save everyone, just live well and help those you can in the capacity that you can. If you save one of those people, you’ve saved the world.

The Exorcist got me pretty good

He endorsed Elon for saving Twitter too, so maybe he’s not the best judge of character?

The major question doctrine acts as a “get-out-of-text-free card” that conservative justices make “magically appear” whenever they see an executive branch policy that goes against their ideological “goals,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent in the 2022 case of West Virginia v. EPA.

Apparently legislating from the bench is fine for Conservatives as long as you make up your own judicial doctrine as justification.

I don’t know how we fix the problems we face. The court is seated by politicians, Congress is seated by grifters and ideologues, and the people are too defeated/controlled to make meaningful changes.