lmmarsano

He didn’t wait. Massie’s interesting

• No AIPAC funding
• 2025
  • May: rejected Big Beautiful Bill act
  • June: introduced resolution to end unauthorized hostilities in Iran
  • July: only Republican cosponsor of Epstein Files Transparency Act
• 2026
  • March: condemned the “illegal, unconstitutional, and pre-emptive war” on the House floor
  • May: introduced a bill to more tightly regulate AIPAC and other lobbyists representing foreign interests
  • May: primaried out by the administration
  • June: only Republican cosponsor of the reintroduced resolution mentioned before passed by Congress and ignored by the president
  • July: introduced Epstein Files Transparency Act II
  • September: moved onto attempting to impeach Hegseth before elections, but House Speaker Johnson adjourned the House early to preempt a vote.

One of the few Republican legislators doing anything to check the President.

Lemmy’s a slur now, lemmings: it means something so monumentally stupid, it’s practically lemmy. Someone on lemmy said it, so it’s true! Now lemmy needs to change the name. Them’s the rules.

The lack of sense on here to go along with whatever anyone says is incredible: it’s peak lemmy. Someone states a dumb opinion, then all the lemmings agree without question like it’s the undisputed truth.

There’s a word to describe such profound lack of sense. When someone, their choices, or a state of affairs lacks sense or achieves significant stupidity, we call that stupid. That’s not a slur, that’s a judgement that plainly describes.

If you seriously believe that, then we can coin a word just for you in these situations: the word “🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮”. Usage example:

That comment 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 wrote was so outrageously 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮.

Technically, it means “wrong about the word stupid”.

Everyone else can continue using the word stupid, because it’s not a slur. Believing it is takes stupidity defying basic observation. It’s stupider still to jump aboard a stupid bandwagon that stupidly tries to purity police this thread according to some stupid idea that was stupidly made up and takes narcissistic levels of stupidity willfully ignoring contrary plain observation to stupidly believe.

For the record, I’m not making a free speech absolutist argument.

That’s a really strange disclaimer over a fundamental right akin to

I’m not a self-determination absolutist

I’m not a due-process-of-law absolutist

I’m not a freedom-of-movement absolutist

I’m not a freedom-of-conscience absolutist

I’m not a warranted-search-and-seizure absolutist

Absolutism here isn’t mentioned to disclaim protection of illegal speech, because that’s already unprotected, and no one here would dispute that. In this context, absolutism disclaims protection of unpopular speech people here would denounce, so it disclaims freedom of speech entirely.

This denies the presumption of a fundamental right as protected, which is entirely backward. Fundamental rights are presumed protected, whereas attempts to restrict or challenge them need strict scrutiny. The less common disclaimer

I’m not a censorship absolutist

is an asymmetry revealing a copout.

As for regulation, it’s a private device people are free to denounce, customize, or reject for a competitor. People have the liberty to produce & choose censored junk. An open society doesn’t restrict such choices when it can leverage fundamental rights^[1] to denounce, criticize, and challenge.

So youre saying the actual cops would have responded to Jane does gang rape instead of the “cops, but like we work for Cornell first and ignore a gang rape victim telling us she was gang raped when we write up the summation doc for the DA” cops? Ithaca cops that would have arrested the rapists, and then told the school, who could have then done their own academic action regardless of the frat or not?

That is by no means certain. Cops employed by government rather than a private or unelected employer (the legality of which is completely bizarre in a liberal democracy) have a horrible record of abuse despite their theoretical accountability to the public. The DA wasn’t employed by the university, and they went only by Jane Doe’s signed statement to conclude her allegations contradicted elements necessary to charge for rape as defined in state law. The statement she said she was very confident about was produced in an interview led by a campus police investigator alongside a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate, and Jane Doe’s adviser. Government police would have produced a similar statement, except the interview would have lacked university employees, especially the Title IX investigator.

Title IX is an anti-discrimination law that protects students’ equal access to educational opportunities regardless of sex. As long as the institution’s programs & activities don’t sexually discriminate or deny equal access, and a claim doesn’t allege the contrary, such claims lack Title IX interests. School conduct code violations unrelated to Title IX lack legal obligations beyond terms of contract.

Private conduct (of mostly adults) outside the school environment that doesn’t affect it lacks Title IX interests, and it would make total sense for schools to focus more narrowly on legal obligations instead of assuming responsibility beyond that of independent individuals and organizations responsible for their own conduct.

Ironically, the school so far has imposed more adverse action on the accused than have our public institutions, which have imposed none. If the DA’s initial determination is correct, the state may end up imposing nothing for an accusation negated by alleged facts.

Though the results in practice may be worse, I still think public police are preferable to non-public, because they lack conflict of interest to an unelected employer, and they could be held accountable to the public with sufficient public will and reform.

“Greek life” organizations don’t need recognition of educational institutions, and institutions elsewhere in the world don’t recognize them.

Without recognition, they become unaffiliated associations (like the moonies) outside the purview of the educational institution. Alleged crimes and misconduct outside the educational institution are matters entirely for authorities unrelated to the institution.

Drawing attention to this font by denouncing it and giving it antagonistic appeal is not an effective way to make it go away, so I think OP is secretly promoting it and wants more of it.
Nice try, OP: we’re onto your mind games.

While I would love that, the more moderate republicans who argued to impeach & convict Trump last time were ousted, so that leaves the Trumpiest core to work with. GOP shittiness & general hostility to the government working in any sense for the American people can’t be underestimated. Plus, convicting Trump results in Vance replacing him.

I think some highly guarded optimism is warranted. Blocking hideous legislation and Trump appointments isn’t too bad of a check if they’re unable to pull off anything better.

See? No serious alternative.

What part of what you wrote contradicts anything written about democracy? The destruction & abuses you list could be far worse in governments with unchecked power.

Democracy isn’t a magic salve that instantly cures everything it touches. Liberal democratic institutions permit reforms through a nonviolent, deliberative process to address everything you stated. To check abuses of power that could end democratic, open society, they also limit government capacity to unilaterally impose swift, sweeping changes. The institution trades sweeping state power that’s riskier to abuse for more limited, checked, deliberative state power likelier to sustain the democratic system. You don’t get democratic reforms without that slow, power-constrained work to protect the system.

All that money the obscenely wealthy dumped into the elections didn’t get the results they paid for. Lack of action according to your timetable isn’t legal immunity.

While your criticism gripes about the problems we can observe, no one is discounting them. We are criticizing your failures to consider all the problems we can’t observe (because the system of limited government avoided them) and the strength of nonviolent, popular reform.

Your criticism looks like just griping that doesn’t seriously weigh the tradeoffs, which is fine to commiserate, but not a rational basis to weigh alternative systems of government.

A democracy can change those rules & technicalities, it just takes time & popular will.

As argued by the same person who articulated the paradox of tolerance (widely distorted on social media), an overlooked strength of liberal democracy is the institutional framework (driven by competitive choices of the people open to rational debate) to institute reform without violence. To check abuses of power by the state, the people need to sustain such institutions that allow for open inquiry and grant all citizens extensive rights against their governments. They argued that strict limits on the power of the state limit bad or incompetent rulers from doing too much damage (eg, damage that outright ends a democratic, open society). Those limits on government with Democrats in legislative power are also why MAGA control of the legislature and executive hasn’t yet prevented elections and we don’t have to fight frequent revolutions to take back control.

Democracy can reform itself nonviolently, presidents can be prosecuted when they leave office, and you’re not suggesting a serious alternative, just grief lacking nuance.

Not how that works: without supermajorities in the legislature to override a veto or convict an impeachment, the president can still block all legislation.

Kind of wild how it’s always radio silence from the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” brigade in comment sections like this, where you have a centrist Dem using their platform to bash a progressive or leftist candidate just a couple days prior to elections

Starting from a counterfactual isn’t a strong argument. El-Sayed won the primary for a reason and gets massive support in similar comment sections from Democrats overwhelmingly agreeing that Stevens can go fuck herself.

How you divine who is & isn’t “the Vote Blue No Matter Who brigade” is the real mystery. Supporting commentary looks the same no matter who writes it, and it’s hardly needed when an upvote will do. Are you a mindreader? Do you consort with a higher power? Please show us your mystical, sagely ways.

It’s especially comical because Vote Blue No Matter Who unsurprisingly means doing that regardless of whom blue is. It doesn’t necessarily imply broadcasting commentary everywhere about it to your satisfaction.

It seems you’re agitating for some poorly articulated conflict in your deluded fantasy when the “Blue No Matter Who” crowd is embracing your candidate.

That just seems like more classic patriarchy.
Calling it psychopatriarchy makes it seem badass and gives it subversive appeal.
I could easily imagine right-wing social media running with it and squawking “pSyChOpAtRiArChY!!” with gusto like dumbass Beavises going “fire! fire! FIRE!”.
Not sure what that’ll do for public discourse.
Calling it before it happens.

The paradox of tolerance is literally just about too much tolerance of the intolerant causing issues in society.

It’s literally not.
Repeating reductive shit they say on social media doesn’t make it true.
Your ignorance of the source material is telling.

There’s a Wikipedia article quoting part of it

[Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.] But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

explaining the various takes on it.
It comes from a book called The Open Society and Its Enemies about what I stated.

The type of intolerance the quote refers to is the kind that uses force and refuses debate.
They even explicitly reject that we should in general “suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies” as long as rational argument & public opinion still govern public choice.

They were absolutely arguing in favor of more open discourse & deliberation, not force, to reform government without violence and restrict its potential damage.
That means tolerating opinions we disagree with from people who don’t try to impose them with force.

Unsurprisingly, you shouldn’t expect philosophers who emphasize free, open inquiry and rational argument as crucial to an open society to defend forcible suppression of tolerant disagreements in it.
Colloquial intolerance isn’t the stricter intolerance they refer to.
We can observe intolerance of actual intolerance as posed in that book in action: we do live in a society roughly following the system that book was defending, assault (including that motivated by violent extremism) is a crime, and our society doesn’t tolerate it pretty much as I stated before.

Social media dumbasses butchered the idea into bullshit pop philosophy, and you aren’t winning any arguments by regurgitating shit that’s flat out wrong unless that argument is “How dumb is social media? Very.”

Because you’re absolutely wrong about the paradox of tolerance?
Your butchered social media interpretation of it is not at all what the philosophers who articulated the idea meant by it or concluded from it.

1. It’s a paradox, not a conclusion, and not your conclusion.
2. They were arguing about the merits of liberal governments over the unchecked power of totalitarian systems.
   Particularly, they called out the overlooked merits of intellectual freedom and political institutions structured to limit potential damage of government power through rational debate and deliberative, competitive decision-making.
3. The meaning of intolerant in philosophy is more technical than merely an opinion that disagrees with other ways: it requires literally prohibiting other ways by unjustified force.

Accordingly, someone who is not imposing their opinion on society with force is tolerant.
Contrary to your position, they would argue that beating a tolerant person over an opinion is a case of intolerance.
Such an appeal to force has no place in open society, and an open society is justified to not tolerate it.

To resolve your paradox, a tolerant, open society would be justified to drop Unfiltered Mama’s son into juvie.

Don’t you think it’s fucked, though, in terms of accountability & integrity of government authority? Some people might assume police authority belongs exclusively to the government and ultimately answers to the public through elected officials, yet here we have unelected private employers setting their conditions of employment and directing policy with no inherent duty to the public. That scheme seems at odds with basic premises of liberal democratic governance. Private employment of police officers isn’t necessary to assign public officers to beats at campuses with specialized policies.

Law enforcement is bad enough when accountable to the public. Despite the results, severing that accountability & governance is in principle unsound.

Did the statement say “calling other people to the room”? She was offered a foursome and said “no” to that. That doesn’t imply “no” to taking turns or an audience. The rest is your embellishment.

An argument showing the relevant legal standard for “lack of consent” (stated in the DA’s statement) is satisfied would be compelling. This isn’t.

Failing to review transcripts is substandard practice: serious fault in the DA there. However, unless significant allegations in the transcript are absent from the statement, it’s unlikely to resolve the statement’s contradiction of a crime.

A confident claim is not a conclusive legal determination drawn from alleged facts. According to the reported transcript, she was confident about the statement, too:

On the second day of the interview, Jane Doe reviewed the revised six-page statement. The transcript shows her adviser asked if she wanted her and another adviser to review the statement.

Before signing, the transcript shows Jane Doe said, “I’m very confident about this.”

When the only allegation recommending a criminal charge alleges facts that not only fail to support that conclusion but negate key statutory elements of the crime, that eliminates every prosecutable theory and legal basis for an investigation. Such a contradiction is not resolvable through further investigation. At least some plausible basis for a crime needs to be articulated for an investigation to justifiably proceed.

The DA gave the complainant notice of his determination and an opportunity to review it together. That was another chance to raise any allegations the DA could have missed & explain how they arrived to their conclusion when alleged facts reviewed so far didn’t support it. The complainant apparently waived the opportunity.

The “multiple things indicating lack of consent” are worse than you wrote, yet they don’t satisfy the element of the crime. A feeling lacking clear expression is not a fact supporting the legal standard; she had the liberty to reject, exercised it, and was met with compliance

According to the statement, each time Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual conduct, the sexual conduct stopped.

Shutting down events and distasteful language in snapchat obviously don’t qualify.

Much that you mention or that comes up in these stories is already in the statement, too. Some allegation that actually meets the legal standards is needed.

Under New York State Law, “mental incapacitation” occurs when a victim is rendered incapable of controlling her own conduct due to the administration of a drug without her consent. The facts provided by Jane Doe’s statement do not allege that she was either rendered incapable of controlling her own conduct or that any drug was administered to her without her consent.

She alleged cognitive capacity (understood what she’s doing), volition (willing choices), not incapacity to control her conduct, compulsion, inability to communicate willingness, expression of nonconsent, etc. Throughout the recollection, she was understanding, rejecting & accepting requests, choosing offers, conducting choices. She exercised autonomy.

The legal standard of “mental incapacitation” isn’t an incapacity to recall, it’s an incapacity to control one’s own actions (with conditions). Memory‑formation failure is not a loss of volitional control. People are still responsive to stimuli, can have full on conversations, can conduct willful choices. Their failure to recall it later is retrospective. That does not mean people weren’t cognizant at the time and making willful choices. The law doesn’t say black-out drunks lack a choice when they commit a crime. Dumber, less inhibited choices aren’t a lack of willing choice.

I doubt the structure of the law & its standards would support your suggested interpretation of “mental incapacitation”. It explicitly rejects voluntary intoxication, and she alleges legally significant capacity to understand & choose her conduct. New York already rejects intoxication as a defense for criminal liability. Consistency with that is unlikely to support constructions for consensual intoxication as a substantial incapacity to understand and control one’s own conduct (which would excuse liability).