3536

That’s not true. Non-citizens have all of the rights in the Bill of Rights, which does not even contain the word “citizen”. So you can’t just throw Japanese tourists into Gitmo, restrict their freedom of speech, search them without cause, convict them without trial, etc.

You can deport non-citizens, but first you’d have to find a place willing to accept them.

It is actually very hard to lose US citizenship, for one practical reason: US citizens are subject to income taxes no matter where they live and work. Giving up citizenship generally requires filing paperwork announcing your intention to do so. Merely acquiring citizenship in another country or serving in a foreign military is not sufficient, as many Israeli-Americans can tell you.

3537

What’s sad, is that this is because most folks on both the right AND the left don’t really “get” what Scalia believed, which was a strict interpretation of the constitution. Why he himself was conservative in many of his personal values, his actual LEGAL rulings (barring perhaps some of his later ones when he was really old), were based in a very principled base of believing in strict interpretation of laws and the constitution exactly as they were written.

But for many on the left and right, they just imagine him to be some conservative ideologue, which he most certainly was not.

3538

I rarely agreed with him, but I always respected him and understood his methodology (even if I often thought he didn’t bother to follow it when it suited him).

3539

Like I said, I think you need to separate out some of his very late decisions, as he was prety old and I think perhaps past his prime.

But for the majority of his career, he was a brilliant legal mind, whose arguments arose from a much deeper, principled view than partisans on either side would like to think about.

And I do not believe that Scalia would have liked Trump.

3540

Remember this retweet from Trump yesterday?

Well…



He’s editing retweets. What a strange fellow this Trump is.

3541

The election is OVER. Trump won, but apparently can’t figure that out.

3542

The election is not over for him, that’s why he is taking the retweet bait about 3mill ‘illegals’ voting, because he can’t stand that Hillary still won the pop. vote by such a margin. Remember, this election was an ego project for him; he doesn’t actually want to be the president and do president stuff. This is just about his popularity and him showing how much he is winning at winning. His need for ego stroking and approval is insatiable, that’s why he is starting the “thank you tour” for crowd approval and cheers already.

3543

Who talks like this? It’s weird, right? I didn’t grow up speaking primarily English so perhaps this is just a bit too… nuanced, maybe? I acknowledge that my skills with this language are flawed at times and I still occasionally mix up my idioms but having Trump at the head of our country feels like we’re stuck between a rock and roll, yeah?

3544

I think of it sort of like the southern expression “bless your heart.” At face value, it’s sympathetic, but actually, it basically means “well aren’t you fucking pathetic.”

3545

You might want to read the case Texas vs Johnson or at least the wiki.

I happen to agree with the majority, but Rehnquist dissent made some pretty strong arguments. The main ones being that Flag has unique place in American history and it is not inherently a political symbol, but that burning it is equivalent to “fighting words”, which can be in some circumstance be prohibited. The second and more compelling (IMO) argument is that the constitution doesn’t say anything about the flag. So it is perfectly ok for 48 out of 50 states (at the time) and the federal government to ban the burn of the flag in the same way that many states ban the burning of a cross. (Cross burning laws have been found to be constitutional.) It is seems an entirely reasonable argument that if government can ban cross burning than it also can ban flag burning.

The vast majority of American think flag burning should be outlawed, and it appears that majority of countries including Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland make it crime to burn their country’s flag and many other ban the burning of other countries flags. So it’s easy to understand why 4 judges dissented.

The hypocrisy of this is pretty amazing considering that Senator Clinton introduced a bill criminalizing the burning of the flag with a $100,000 fine.

What I find particularly depressing about this is there are two likely explanations for Trump’s tweet and both are bad.
Either this is a deliberate troll/distraction on the part of Mr. Trump to get the focus of the more important but less sexy stories like massive conflict of interest stories publish in the WSJ or NY Times.

And/or this is further evidence of Trump’s incredible narcissistic behavior… The only reason Trump cared about this is because the fly burning and been flown at 1/2 staff was due to his election.

3546

A flag is not an inherently political symbol? It’s the most political symbol there is.

All of these named countries ban speech in ways that Americans generally recoil from. Several if not all of them have blasphemy laws.

3547

Take it up with Justices White, O’Connor and Rehnquist, I’m just summarizing their opinion,.

All of these named countries ban speech in ways that Americans generally recoil from. Several if not all of them have blasphemy laws.

If I have learned one thing this election, both on this forum and in social media, People at best only pay lip service to the concept of allowing other to express opinions they disagree with.

3548

I think that perhaps the most messed up thing about Trump’s statement isn’t simply the idea of criminalizing flag burning, buy the suggestion that doing so, or really, committing any crime, could result in the loss of citizenship.

3549

Yea, thats the big one.

If the governement or the legal system can strip citizens of their citizenship, then being a citizen mean nothing, you have no rights has citizen, because if they don’t want to give you these rights, they can just remove your citizenship first.

Lets say… drone killing. They find you in australia and want to kill you with a drone strike, they first remove your USA citizenship, then they send the predators.

3550

I always thought the best solution to this was an international agreement like they do with prohibitions on internal spying. Countries A and B are not allowed to assassinate their own citizens, but it’s perfectly OK to assassinate anyone else. So they just give each other the names and locations of citizens it would be really convenient to have die in a missile strike. Moral problem solved!

3551

That’s basically what extraordinary rendition was, but for torture.

3552

Plus the U.S. already targeted an American citizen with a drone attack in Yemen, right? Without a trial or due process. So it’s not as if you need your citizenship removed to be targeted under that precedent.

3553

No, although the legal conditions for said extrajudicial killings, such as they are, would be pretty hard to stand up in a country like Australia where the US could reasonably expect cooperative police.

3554

It’s brown-nosing business-speak. He’s using 1980’s businessman language when speaking to a world leader, as opposed to using 2016 political speak. For some countries, like Russia, for instance, it’s going to play very well. That kind of ego stroking is perfect for egomaniacs. Not sure how it will play in more politically advanced places though.

Also makes me realize how easy it will be for people to manipulate Trump on the political stage. If they return the compliments, or, better yet, initiate their own compliments first, they are going to be able to sway him relatively easily. On the flip side, anyone who doesn’t speak to him in the same manner is likely to go on his “naughty list”. It’s pretty easy to get off the naughty list though; just brown nose a bit. Look what’s going on with Romney; a few positive words and he’s your best friend again.

Going to be a weird 4 - 8 years

3555

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s stylemogging; taking the position as the font of good grace by authoritatively complimenting someone. It’s not patronizing them in the negative connotation kind of way - your compliment can be sincere and expressed over some valuable achievement, it doesn’t have to be complimenting someone for tying their shoes. The point is that by asserting the authority to judge the other person’s actions, you put yourself above them, socially. Trump does it well, but it also works on him when others do it (Obama, for example).