How about this for a conspiracy theory?

Its a fact....

Mind translating that from disingenuous liberal propaganda and conspiracy theories to English?

Homelessness and lack of affordable housing arent even things the government/taxes are responsible to fix. Have you seen what libertarians think about those things…

The wall is the issue that Trump created for his absolute dumbest supporters after the birther nonsense fell through.

@ilbbaicnl, it actually goes one level deeper. The Congress of the US (both parties) simply doesn't want to do its job anymore.

Notice how Mike Johnson originally wanted 12 separate spending bills for each issue versus the Continuing Resolution we currently have? That because Congress no longer wishes to do the work it has the power to do. It only wants to push these large omnibus, thereby creating a the "mirage" of doing something for their community while also having plausible deniability for the parts their constituents do not like.

Immigration is an actual problem, I can admit that as a liberal. But what angers me about the MAGA types is that they fail to see it goes beyond border crossing. As you said, most illegals came in legally and have expired visas. Homelessness and lack of cheap housing puts downward pressure on the middle and especially lower classes. There are young professionals, like myself, who effectively live in or close to ghetto communities because that's all they can afford including other expenses.

To be fair, I don't necessarily think this problem is solely the GOP. Rather, we have just let our elected officials get away with too much pork and this immigration issue is simply the straw breaking all of our wallets.

@puddytat, if you disagree with me please feel free to enlighten me. In all seriousness.

"Seems pretty clear that homelessness and lack of affordable housing are much bigger problems than any associated with immigration."

Homeless is a problem of untreated mental illness, usually schizophrenia or substance addiction.

"So, perhaps hyping the border problem is more about giving the Presidency rule-by-decree powers like a fuhrer."

LOL, whatever. Trump wasn't a Fuhrer in his first term. He didn't need a wall, just Remain in Mexico. Now if he just cracks down on employers of illegals, we won't need a wall. The border and illegal immigration are a real problem especially for strained social services like we're seeing in many cities.

"who blocked Congressional action to legally reduce illegal border crossing and admission of asylum seekers."

LOL, you mean the bill that would have codified and legitimized high levels of illegal immigration? It was a political stunt for a bill they knew wouldn't pass, and you're just playing along. The acceptable level of illegal immigration is zero.

The easiest thing for any would-be authoritarian leader to do to whip up support from lower socio-economic classes is to claim that the country is being overrun or controlled by a minority group. Hitler did it with Jews in the 30's, Le'Pen (sp?) does it with Muslims in France, etc. This is nothing new it's been going on forever. Trump is just following a playbook.

The sad thing is that people forget at one point their grand parents and great-grand parents were the immigrants that were being attacked. I'm Italian and my grand parents came here in the late 1800's and they were looked down upon and blamed for all kinds of things. Same with the Irish, etc.

"@puddytat, if you disagree with me please feel free to enlighten me. In all seriousness."

I actually don't think we're far apart, except like I said homelessness is a problem of untreated mental illness. Lack of cheap housing is a problem of NIMBYism and regulations, primarily local. Homeowners vote, and they want cheap housing (depressing their own housing values) as much as they want gonorrhea. It's why New England NIMBYs (who are horrible) are all for green energy until wind turbines spoil their ocean view.

I'm aware that most overstay their visas, which is a reason why to tackle it from the employer end. I think Skibum said make e-Verify a condition of doing business with the government, I'd say fine the shit out of any business employing illegals with half of it going to the informant. And if they keep doing it, prosecute them. This isn't a difficult problem if we don't want it to, it's that the left wants to show how pure and non-racist they are by flooding the country with illegals, and corporations (who are highly disproportionately Harris donors) want cheap labor.

Harris' housing subsidy plan is an invitation to increase housing prices. If you want cheap housing, take away all the onerous permitting and regulations. That's local, not federal.

I agree that Congress is fucked, but that's a larger problem of OUR polarization. MTG, Gaetz, AOC, Tlaib, Omar are a reflection of their constituents. We vote them in because we want to stick it to the other side. We want them to never give an inch.

Another problem is that Congress has given away a shitload of its power, or at least looked the other way as it's been taken. They gave it to the executive to enact by fiat, or to SCOTUS to "find" rights that they couldn't pass. Barack Obama had 60 senators in Jan 2009, why didn't he pass a national abortion law then? He wasn't pro-life then, everyone knew Roe v Wade was a poorly-reasoned decision, shit, RBG said so. They need to nut up and take the power of the purse back.

An alarming proposition I'm hearing is to get rid of the filibuster, or at least carve it out. We'll whipsaw between two diametrically opposed ideas every few years and nothing will get done. It's like paying one side to dig holes and the other side to fill them. Ditto for packing the SCOTUS. Progressives want 4 to give themselves the majority? (and that's the only reason they would choose exactly 4?) Don't complain when the GOP appoints 8 to restore their old ratio. It's a vicious cycle.

^^ "LOL, whatever. Trump wasn't a Fuhrer in his first term. He didn't need a wall, just Remain in Mexico. Now if he just cracks down on employers of illegals, we won't need a wall. The border and illegal immigration are a real problem especially for strained social services like we're seeing in many cities." I agree.

https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-border-…

Although, I personally think it is more driven by low unemployment in the US. The cost-effective solution is more than token enforcement of laws against hiring unauthorized workers.

If it quacks like a fuhrer then... https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-r…

@ Puddy Tat, thank you for the explanation.

SCOTUS seats have always been a mystery to me. I'm sure you know this, but SCOTUS wasn't always 9 seats.
Adding more seats would be reasonable considering the size of the country now (in terms of raw population) versus the 1940s. However, I agree with strict construction in that seats shouldn't be added just because it benefits whichever moron happens to be in the Oval Office.

A compromise could be made. Create a metric determining how the SCOTUS seats should align with population (1 seat for every 5 MM, as an obvious low-ball example). Then pass an amendment stating that the POTUS is only allowed 3 SCOTUS assignments per term in office. SCOTUS decisions can not be made until all seats are filled.

I'm suggesting a balancing act between the Judicial branch and Executive Branch that will weaken the "pack the court" ideology we are currently stuck in. Its not a perfect plan and I'm sure you'll have your own correction. I think the entire purpose of SCOTUS is that it SHOULD BE DIFFICULT TO CHANGE and SHOULD BE MOSTLY IMMUNE TO CRONYISM if at all possible.

@ggofv - One reason for SCOTUS not being term-limited is to help prevent them becoming too political as they don't need to be focused on how to get re-affirmed. And yes, they can be Impeached, removed and replaced. Adding more doesn't help - look at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals with 29 Judges and is frequently over-turned by the SCOTUS like high 70%.

We really need Constitutionalists, not "Conservatives" or "Progressives", that push back on Congress to do their job without shitty laws and crappy opinions from lower courts. And, this current WH just feels like this can ignore 9-0 decisions with no consequences - that Authoritarian and this WU is guilty as sin, We've had quite a few 9-0 decisions the past 4 years, yet, when we get 6-3 or 5-4 decisions, the Dems squeal like little piggies. When "Conservative" SCJs side with the "Liberals", they say nothing. The SCOTUS has had more Liberals for a long time, until the past 4 years. Keep it at 9.

Example: Obama said he'd codify Roe, and never did. He avoided spending political capital as he had something in-place that Congress should have taken care of. SCJ RBG even said Roe was not good legislation, and Dem states had abortion laws that exceed the 1st Trimester as Roe specified unless it was to save the "birthing person" (just to be politically correct for the Lefties here). So, why not clean it up with a Congressional Act? I'm not trying to stir up an abortion thing here, just an example were Congress fucked-up when they had a solid Dem Major and POTUS. It shows how much Congress depends on the Judicial Branch and bureaucrats, "Deep State", to manage the country so they can get re-elected every 2/6 years and line their pockets.

Term limits sound good in theory, but honestly, they might just make the Supreme Court even more political. Justices would be worrying about their next job will be once they step down - and make rulings that would set themselves up for big $$$ in the next

The real issue is how screwed up the confirmation process has become since 2016.

It is all about pushing a political agenda, passing a litmus test.... not picking the best judges.

We need to take the politics out of picking justices. It should be about finding the most qualified people who genuinely care about upholding the Constitution, not just scoring points for their political team.

@ggofv - i think your heart is in the right place, but before the concerted Democratic campaign against the Supreme Court, no one saw 9 justices as a problem. They're sore that it, like freedom of speech, stands in the way of implementing their agenda unimpeded. They loved the Supreme Court when they found for abortion and gay marriage. So it sounds like "reforming" (LOL) the court is only about getting progressive policies implemented. That's a no, dawg.

@ilb - not sure how that makes him a fuhrer but as invested as you are in calling him a Nazi, I'm sure you'll stretch something else.

^ Supreme Court was just fine until Mitch McConnel stepped in and manipulated the court by denying Barack Obama, his fair opportunity to nominate a justice, since then there has been no decision that has be considered free of politics, in my opinion Mitch McConnel is as responsible for the political mess we have in this country as any of our presidents.

Before this country can get back on a normal footing, the Supreme Court needs to repair their reputation, I don't see that happening any time soon, there is no political center any more, both parties are governed by their most extreme factions, until the country returns to the center, we are going to have to live with this petty partisanship.

^ i agree that McConnell escalated it, and the next Republican president with a Democratic Senate majority leader is within their rights to do the same, but Court packing is an escalation on top of that and one that would be even more difficult to repair (because it'll keep increasing).

^ You need to admit, that it's the event McConnel engineered, that caused the whole court packing to the forefront, so the liberals don't consider packing to be an escalation, but rather the evolution of this fight that McConnel started, which is separate from the ethics issues, although when you start an argument that is ideologically based, it escalates way beyond the original fight, and generally morphs into a polarizing issue.

^ That didn't occur within the vacuum either, after Harry Reid took away the filibuster for judicial nominees.

But Court packing is a genie that neither will be able to deny the other one it's out of the bottle. The Democrats add 4, the Republicans add 8, etc. It won't stop.

The ethics issues are on both sides (e.g. Sotomayor) although the leftist investigative groups are only interested in unearthing one side.

^ This is why these discussions degenerate into a fiasco of crap, where name calling, rulesthis website (and most others as well), your statement blaming one side is the problem, as solutions need to be bi-partisan for any resolution to be workable.

^ I did not blame one side, in fact I agreed with you. But court packing, no matter who does it, is the hydrogen bomb from which the court will not recover.

^ You referenced leftist investigative groups, you imply with a statement like that that the right doesn't do the same

Look at who's getting the ink.

^ that is source based, find better sources.

This is a non sequitur fallacy.

Given
A - something true
B - something true
Then
C - something that doesn't follow from A and B.

I.e.
Given
A - More people overstay their visas than cross the border without a visa.
B - homelessness and lack of affordable housing are much bigger problems than any associated with immigration.
Then
C - hyping the border problem is more about giving the Presidency rule-by-decree powers like a fuhrer.

...C is also an example of Reductio ad Hitlerum... playing the nazi card. I've seen that many times but didn't know there was actually a name for this.

IMO, hyping the border problem is a calculated appeal in part to to xenophobia, and in part to border states. Xenophobia bc it's always easy to say that some identifiable group is behind problems. Border states bc in fact unmanaged immigration is a problem to an extent and disproportionately effects the border states. The former is pretty basic, but shitty. The latter is real.

The idea that the Dupreme Court was fine and this is McConnell's issue is pure ignorant, partisan bullshit. Obama wasn't getting Merrick Garland on Scotus (thank fucking god as the guy is a fucking cunt) even with a vote. Garland wasn't going to get 60 votes even if only his relatives voted. Honest people at least admit that Ted Kennedy murderer of young women started this Scotus bullshit with Robert Bork. Then again Democrats are s honest as Nasrallah is alive. They supported him too.

^ so if Garland wasn’t acceptable it would have been another pick assuming the senate wouldn’t vote to approve, it was still Obama’s choice to make.
As far as Bork was concerned, he was a moron who didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut, the Republicans still received a vote, and got a Justice appointed.
That last statement was gratuitous and immaterial, which as an attorney you should know that any qualified jurist would have admonished you for that and ordered it stricken from the record.

Not sure how this got to be a SCOTUS thread, but anyway.

The founders originally wanted no Bill of Rights. They wanted to continue with the English system of common or case law. Where the courts gave deference to the legislature, but also were makers of law. The principle of stare decisis helped make this practical. Because it didn't occur to anyone, until relatively recently, that legislator should be a full time job, it was pretty much a practical necessity that the courts help fill out the law. Over the centuries the courts had established more and more rights for individuals in case law. The founders thought this tradition was adequate, and wanted it to continue. When they went along with having a Bill of Rights, they put in the 9th Amendment. Because they feared that the Bill of Rights could lead to a loss of rights already established by case law. But, the so-called Constitutionalists ignore the 9th Amendment when it suits their true purposes. When the Bill of Rights was passed, case law established a right to an abortion until the fetus started kicking. The 9th Amendment requires that right be respected.

Those who would fetishize or make false gods of the founders should recognize that they didn't see voting as a right. Something only to be denied or diminished with strong, clear justification. That led to a catch 22, where people who's votes were denied or dimished could do little about it within the law. The people who could vote undimished had an incentive to hold on to their relative privilege. SCOTUS took a questionable step to resolve this problem with this decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v… . It seems about as anti-Constitutionalist as you can get. Basically saying, states, you can' t be unfair to your voters in the same was that the national Senate is unfair to them. But, as a practical matter, it rescued many states from situations where the state government was acting against the clear interests of most of the state's population.

“And if they keep doing it, prosecute them. This isn't a difficult problem if we don't want it to, it's that the left wants to show how pure and non-racist they are by flooding the country with illegals, and corporations (who are highly disproportionately Harris donors) want cheap labor.”

@Puddy and others im wondering on this. Regarding the cheap labor, its not just corporations that benefit but even consumers as a whole. Cheaper labor = lower operating costs and these companies can therefore offer their products or services at lower cost.
Society as a whole benefits from this, the only people who lose, are people who wanted to do the same labor at a higher price.
From my understanding what Trump is doing is called protectionism and i think he does it to appeal to certain blue collar workers who are angry about immigrants coming in and taking their jobs because they’re willing to work at lower prices.
Its a similar concept to putting tariffs on foreign made cars, to encourage people to buy American made cars. The free market economists are strongly against this sort of thing. The problem with tariffs on Chinese cars, or restricting immigration in an attempt to keep domestic labor prices higher, is that youre helping certain groups in society but at the cost of harming society as a whole. A true free market economy isn’t supposed to have protectionist policies. The immigration situation is more complex because if you’re giving them reduced cost housing or other benefits using taxpayer dollars, that negates some or all of the benefits to society from the cheaper labor.

But the fact still is, all else equal, society will be helped by that cheaper labor because products and services are cheaper. Even the mechanic who loses his job because of an immigrant worker, will still benefit from the lower prices for goods.
Additionally immigrant labor isnt the only thing affecting the labor market, you also have companies like apple or nike who just build a factory overseas and use cheaper foreign labor that way.

Now if the government were to penalize them for using the foreign labor, and forced them to only produce their stuff domestically, it would result in those things being more expensive. And that would help no one besides the domestic labor workers receiving the higher pay for their work.

Even the owners and shareholders of nike/apple may not actually benefit from higher prices because it could easily create reduced demand and lower sales for their product.
So it would basically be like everyone is paying higher prices for nikes and iphones just so the labor workers can make more money.

^Abortion was legal in places, but it was never a "right" under English Common Law or American Common Law. It was permitted until "quickening" which is about the start of the fourth month. The 9th amendment requires that "rights", not all "laws" of "case law" be respected and has never once been considered a "right" under the 9th. The 10th amendment covers abortion, a right reserved to the people and the states as it does not appear in the 10th amendment. Under the 10th amendment there cannot be a right to abortion. The same reason applies to the banning of abprtion, which also cannot be done Federally.

^ But there is a right to privacy, which is the basis for Roe v Wade.

^ Which even RBG found to be shit legal reasoning.

^ Not quite
RBG believed that the original ruling had based the right to abortion on the wrong argument, a violation of a woman's privacy rather than on gender equality. This, she thought, left the ruling vulnerable to targeted legal attacks by anti-abortion activists.
Had nothing to do with shit legal reasoning, and she was a very strong advocate of women’s rights including the freedom to have an abortion and autonomy over their own bodies.

^ Roe vs Wade was almost universally agreed to be horrible reasoning which left it vulnerable, and Dobbs did that.

Where was Obama on this when he had 60 senators?

^ you really need to stop making blanket statements “universally agreed “ really, it was fine until McConnell packed the court with radical religious judges, three of the Supreme Court Justices are evangelicals which is problematic when you consider the separation of church and state doctrine and realize how much of their religious views are part of their legal ideology.

^ Was the religious balance of the court OK with you when it put out liberal decisions like Roe and Obergefell? Sounds like you need to read up on what separation of church and state means.

Liberals like you need to realize, you live by the SCOTUS, you die by the SCOTUS.

First of all you need to stop making blanket statements
Secondly you call yourself a conservative but that’s not what you’re espousing, you are promoting a false narrative, and that’s not what conservatives do.
I’m tired of hearing false claims, especially about subjects like RBGs opinions especially since she’s written extensively about the subject at hand and her opinion is easily accessible if you took the time to look at it.
I know quite well what separation of church and state means, and universally speaking it ain’t secular like a small minority taking the right of women to make decisions for themselves.
Like I’ve been saying repeatedly personal attacks on folks who don’t agree with you are just plain stupid.

BTW I don’t know where Obama was on the subject when he had 60 senators, but unlike you, I’m just saying what I believe not posting MAGA propaganda

"I know quite well what separation of church and state means, and universally speaking it ain’t secular like a small minority taking the right of women to make decisions for themselves."

Say you don't know what it means without saying you don't know what it means. No Bible in the decision. You don't like evangelicals having power is what it sounds like.

The left is talking about passing laws to codify abortion, my question is where were they when they actually had a chance to?