Whoever said that Congress is obligated to do anything other than meet up in the Capitol building every once in while? If you look for other posts on this particular subject I've made, I've said that the Senate has already fulfilled their Constitutional duty in this case - they already gave their 'advice' and told him that whoever he picks, they will not get the Senate's consent until at least after the election, if ever.
From a Constitutional perspective, the President doesn't have the authority to direct Congress to do anything, except that he can order them to convene if they aren't in session under "Extraordinary Occasions." The Congress, once gaveled into session under that decree, can then proceed to play a giant poker tournament in the Senate Cloakroom if they so choose.
Of course, if their opposition to a particular nomination is purely partisan, those Congress critters may well answer for it when they're up for re-election, but that's all part of the game. Their re-election chances might be helped by it, too. I guess that's the best part of being a Senator - you get to choose what is right for the people that sent you there to represent them.
as an administrator, you know there's a problem to Google a solution for.
Most people that fall prey to this malware don't even know these vulnerabilities exist until they are already compromised. That's the real problem here. Microsoft should disable this behavior by default, until the first time you try to use it, at which point it doesn't give you a 'shut up and go away' button, but makes you actually go into a setting panel somewhere and explicitly enable it with a nice big fat warning confirmation box.
I think we can both agree that there is something rotten in the system, and that the majority of the citizenry is disengaged, and there's really no arguing that. The real question is how to get their participation in the process. So far this year, we've seen increased turnout in the primaries - the question is why? Is it because of 'I can't let candidate X get the nomination, so I need to vote for Y' or 'I'm super energized by candidate X, so I'm going to make sure I vote!'? Perhaps both?
And while a 30% turnout doesn't equate to an electoral mandate for 100% of the citizenry, an electoral victory does equate to a mandate for the percentage of the citizenry that actually gives a shit enough to spend 10 minutes* filling in bubbles.
*speaking from my own experience - every time I've voted, which is basically every election since I turned 18, it has taken less than 30 minutes start to finish. This includes living in two large cities. I'm sure there are experiences outside of my own, but I cannot speak to them.
the actual winning option was, "I don't trust either the red candidate or the blue candidate to represent me!"
... you were attempting to speak for 192 million people, by your own numbers.
There are many reasons not to vote, you pointed to one of them and said that the 60% of the population that didn't vote decided not to for that reason. Either you are the most amazing psychic ever, or your arrogance is showing.
I keep hearing about this happening, where systemd will apparently take your OS right off a cliff and end in a twisted flaming wreck at the bottom. However, I've been running over a hundred Linux servers where it hasn't happened even once.
Yeah, I know, small sample size, etc. However, if you listen to the systemd hate around, here, it sounds like this is happening every other day. Is this just groupthink and 'haters be hatin', a case of people not bothering to learn the new way because INIT must be superior simply because it's been around for 800 years?
Yes, and it has been for years. The built in VPN client will talk PPTP and L2TP, and there is an OpenVPN client available for free from the App Store. Similarly, there are VNC and RDP clients available, as well as SSH terminals. I, too, work from home most of the time, and I've been able to VPN and SSH into servers from my iPad or iPhone while on a golf course to restart a service when needed.
That used to be, when Apple was fighting an uphill battle for establishment of their products. Now that they're on top of the heap, everyone loves to hate the incumbent.
So there's a battle of hipster smugness being associated with Apple, and contrarian anti-establishment smugness being associated with Android, even though Android is far more established. And the whole thing is stupid, because it's just a fucking phone.
Now only if you could have one engine that imparts high thrust for getting out of the atmosphere... we'll call that "stage 1"... and then another separate engine for use once in space, which we can call "stage 2". And, when you change over to "stage 2" we can drop off all the empty fuel tanks and the engine from "stage 1", because it's dry useless mass that we won't need any more!
I'm sure nobody has ever thought of this novel method of optimizing a rocket before. Certainly not during Apollo.
Yeah, because nuclear thermal propulsion is SOOO science fiction and entirely impossible. No wait, it's just using a big box of heat to turn a liquid into an expanding gas, which you then eject out of a rocket nozzle. This, of course, has the advantage of rather simple, and massively cutting down the weight of what you're taking with you, because you're not bringing along several tons of chemical oxidizer so that you can use your traditional rocket for something besides mass. And it was already prototyped in the 1960s.
You are absolutely correct. It just so happens that protecting himself, his company, and his values aligns very closely with protecting me, and my values. Therefore, I support his efforts.
If a criminal wanted to "go dark" 60 years ago, there were still forms of encryption and communication that the United States Government couldn't do fuck-all about. Somehow it's different now, than it was 60 years ago if someone used a one-time pad and a telegram?
No, they agree he has "Presidental powers" - but they (and the Constitution, by the way) disagree that one of the Presidential powers is to direct the Senate to do anything beyond gavel into session under "extraordinary Occasions."
The Senate is already in session, and the Senate gets to choose what business they do, or don't do, per Article I, Section V. And if the President doesn't like it, too fucking bad. And the President knows this, because he used to be a member of the United States Senate, and is a "Constitutional Scholar."
Yeah, except the Filibuster is a Senate rule, and the very first thing the Senate does after being gaveled into session is vote on the rules of order for the Senate, per Article I, section V of the Constitution.
The Founders have nothing to do with the Filibuster, outside of granting the Senate the authority to enact their own rules of order and operation, which may or may not include a Filibuster. You'll note that that House of Representatives has no such device, as they continue to operate by the rules that Thomas Jefferson literally wrote, which doesn't follow parliamentary procedure as closely as the Senate does.
Go take a civics course some time and be knowledgeable about what you post.
If Hillary wins, the Senate still has two months to hold confirmation hearings and vote during a lame duck session before the next Congress is gaveled into session several weeks before Hillary would take the oath of office and be able to nominate anyone.
Plan D is to wait for the election to conclude, and then either confirm this guy in a lame duck session should Democrats win, or wait until January if they hold onto the Senate or gain the White House.
It's chickenshit, but completely in their power to do so.
They have one card left to play after the election in November though - if Hillary wins, they can always take up this nomination in a lame duck session and confirm him on the way out the door for the holiday recess. They can equivocate with some mealy-mouthed bullshit about how they just didn't want to take this business up during an election cycle or some nonsense in order to try to wash off the hypocrisy.
This option remains open unless Obama withdraws the nomination, which would really cause a political stink of "why nominate this guy if you don't think he's the guy for the job" etc.
Honestly though, I feel sorry for the nominee that he's become a pawn on this particular chess board.
Sure, he can put the Senate into session, but that's where his authority ends. The Senate chooses how they do business when in session, per article I section V. So yeah, he can make them gavel into session, at which point they can read the phone book into the congressional record and not do a god damn thing the President wants, because he's not King. And then they can adjourn themselves.
Besides, the document and clause you quote also indicates that he may only do this under 'extaordinary Occasions' which doesn't include "they aren't doing what I want, so I'm going to throw a fit until they do" and I'll guess that the sitting Supreme Court Justices would agree.
The founders just threw off a King, and were not interested in having a powerful executive. To further accomplish that goal, they put the power of the purse with the People's branch of government (Congress) as well as the power to reject or approve treaties, and the 'advise and consent' clause. If the Senate's 'advice' is "don't bother because we won't consent" then they have fulfilled their congressional obligations under Article II, Section II.
Also, because they weren't interested in a powerful executive, they allowed the houses of Congress to establish their own rules of order and proceeding under Article I, Section V. If the current rules of the Senate dictate that a floor vote is only held on measures that the Majority Leader brings to the floor (they do) then that's the rules. It's the same rules that blocked judicial nominations when Harry Reid was in charge. No, that doesn't make it okay, but it does tag a lot of people as hypocrits on both sides of the conversation.
Either way, legal circles have long held that Congressional inaction on a subject is equal to Congressional action. If they choose not to take up an issue, it's the same as choosing to take up the issue and vote it down. The same goes for 'advice and consent' from the Senate - they choose not to take it up, therefore their consent has not been given.
Short version: this was the intended mode of operation when the States ratified the Constitution. If you have a problem with it, take it up with James Madison.
Then the omission of 'advice and consent' is still advice and a lack of consent. Why is this hard to understand?
For the record, I think it's chickenshit political grandstanding, but I don't see why people are bringing a constitutional argument here. The Senate has fulfilled their duty the moment that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said that he won't hold hearings, and that the Majority Leader said there won't be a floor vote, as the Senate gets to set their own rules for how they operate.
The separation of powers is there for a reason, and a sitting President doesn't have the constitutional authority to direct the Senate to the restroom, much less demand that they hold hearings or a vote on anything.
You seem to think that a sitting Senator will notice and actually avoid being a massive hypocrit, despite the Everest-sized mountain of evidence to the contrary. Have no doubt that these hacks will do what they want at all times, regardless of past position.
The district lines are drawn at the STATE level, so if there was any gerrymandering in North Carolina, it was done by the duly elected representatives of North Carolina. So your very first sentence and the entire premise of your post is FALSE. The will of North Carolina was expressed through the legislature that North Carolina sent to the capitol. Don't like it? Vote the bums out.
You can try to blame other people and weep about it, but it doesn't wash. Everyone loves to trot out 'the popular vote' for larger geographical borders that have nothing to do with anything whenever their tribe lost. Why quote statewide totals for district elections? Why are you trying to force your 'say-so' onto those districts that have different views? It's the same fallacy as the people who quote nationwide totals for state-by-state elections for President - it's complete nonsense that in no way means anything, unless you are advocating for a system where the population centers get to dictate what happens for everyone else; in that case you would still lose because New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Houston would dictate what happens for the rest of the country, and North Carolina would get even less of a 'say-so.'
The rules are clearly defined, and they've been defined for decades. Other states have just as much Democrat gerrymandering as you may have Republican gerrymandering. So instead of bitching about it, get a public referendum passed that causes an independent bipartisan commission to draw district lines and get it out of the state legislature's hands. Several states have already done this.
Stop bitching, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT other than blame the other tribe.
I don't see why people are saying that Congress is ignoring their constitutional duty here. The constitution says that the President nominates a person, with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The Senate has offered the advice of "don't bother, because you won't get our consent." Constitutional duty fulfilled.
I don't agree with it, but that is what it says, and that is what they are doing.
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Whoever said that Congress is obligated to do anything other than meet up in the Capitol building every once in while? If you look for other posts on this particular subject I've made, I've said that the Senate has already fulfilled their Constitutional duty in this case - they already gave their 'advice' and told him that whoever he picks, they will not get the Senate's consent until at least after the election, if ever.
From a Constitutional perspective, the President doesn't have the authority to direct Congress to do anything, except that he can order them to convene if they aren't in session under "Extraordinary Occasions." The Congress, once gaveled into session under that decree, can then proceed to play a giant poker tournament in the Senate Cloakroom if they so choose.
Of course, if their opposition to a particular nomination is purely partisan, those Congress critters may well answer for it when they're up for re-election, but that's all part of the game. Their re-election chances might be helped by it, too. I guess that's the best part of being a Senator - you get to choose what is right for the people that sent you there to represent them.
as an administrator, you know there's a problem to Google a solution for.
Most people that fall prey to this malware don't even know these vulnerabilities exist until they are already compromised. That's the real problem here. Microsoft should disable this behavior by default, until the first time you try to use it, at which point it doesn't give you a 'shut up and go away' button, but makes you actually go into a setting panel somewhere and explicitly enable it with a nice big fat warning confirmation box.
TLDR: Opt-in versus opt-out.
I think we can both agree that there is something rotten in the system, and that the majority of the citizenry is disengaged, and there's really no arguing that. The real question is how to get their participation in the process. So far this year, we've seen increased turnout in the primaries - the question is why? Is it because of 'I can't let candidate X get the nomination, so I need to vote for Y' or 'I'm super energized by candidate X, so I'm going to make sure I vote!'? Perhaps both?
And while a 30% turnout doesn't equate to an electoral mandate for 100% of the citizenry, an electoral victory does equate to a mandate for the percentage of the citizenry that actually gives a shit enough to spend 10 minutes* filling in bubbles.
*speaking from my own experience - every time I've voted, which is basically every election since I turned 18, it has taken less than 30 minutes start to finish. This includes living in two large cities. I'm sure there are experiences outside of my own, but I cannot speak to them.
Yeah, except for when you said
the actual winning option was, "I don't trust either the red candidate or the blue candidate to represent me!"
... you were attempting to speak for 192 million people, by your own numbers.
There are many reasons not to vote, you pointed to one of them and said that the 60% of the population that didn't vote decided not to for that reason. Either you are the most amazing psychic ever, or your arrogance is showing.
I keep hearing about this happening, where systemd will apparently take your OS right off a cliff and end in a twisted flaming wreck at the bottom. However, I've been running over a hundred Linux servers where it hasn't happened even once.
Yeah, I know, small sample size, etc. However, if you listen to the systemd hate around, here, it sounds like this is happening every other day. Is this just groupthink and 'haters be hatin', a case of people not bothering to learn the new way because INIT must be superior simply because it's been around for 800 years?
I'm genuinely curious.
Yes, and it has been for years. The built in VPN client will talk PPTP and L2TP, and there is an OpenVPN client available for free from the App Store. Similarly, there are VNC and RDP clients available, as well as SSH terminals. I, too, work from home most of the time, and I've been able to VPN and SSH into servers from my iPad or iPhone while on a golf course to restart a service when needed.
That used to be, when Apple was fighting an uphill battle for establishment of their products. Now that they're on top of the heap, everyone loves to hate the incumbent.
So there's a battle of hipster smugness being associated with Apple, and contrarian anti-establishment smugness being associated with Android, even though Android is far more established. And the whole thing is stupid, because it's just a fucking phone.
Every manufacturer makes their Ford Pinto eventually.
Look! A car analogy!
Now only if you could have one engine that imparts high thrust for getting out of the atmosphere... we'll call that "stage 1"... and then another separate engine for use once in space, which we can call "stage 2". And, when you change over to "stage 2" we can drop off all the empty fuel tanks and the engine from "stage 1", because it's dry useless mass that we won't need any more!
I'm sure nobody has ever thought of this novel method of optimizing a rocket before. Certainly not during Apollo.
Yeah, because nuclear thermal propulsion is SOOO science fiction and entirely impossible. No wait, it's just using a big box of heat to turn a liquid into an expanding gas, which you then eject out of a rocket nozzle. This, of course, has the advantage of rather simple, and massively cutting down the weight of what you're taking with you, because you're not bringing along several tons of chemical oxidizer so that you can use your traditional rocket for something besides mass. And it was already prototyped in the 1960s.
False.
Go away.
You are absolutely correct. It just so happens that protecting himself, his company, and his values aligns very closely with protecting me, and my values. Therefore, I support his efforts.
If a criminal wanted to "go dark" 60 years ago, there were still forms of encryption and communication that the United States Government couldn't do fuck-all about. Somehow it's different now, than it was 60 years ago if someone used a one-time pad and a telegram?
The counterpoint to your statistics is "I am fine with either candidate, so I simply will not voice an opinion by voting."
You don't get to lend voice to those that don't speak, the same as I don't.
No, they agree he has "Presidental powers" - but they (and the Constitution, by the way) disagree that one of the Presidential powers is to direct the Senate to do anything beyond gavel into session under "extraordinary Occasions."
The Senate is already in session, and the Senate gets to choose what business they do, or don't do, per Article I, Section V. And if the President doesn't like it, too fucking bad. And the President knows this, because he used to be a member of the United States Senate, and is a "Constitutional Scholar."
Yeah, except the Filibuster is a Senate rule, and the very first thing the Senate does after being gaveled into session is vote on the rules of order for the Senate, per Article I, section V of the Constitution.
The Founders have nothing to do with the Filibuster, outside of granting the Senate the authority to enact their own rules of order and operation, which may or may not include a Filibuster. You'll note that that House of Representatives has no such device, as they continue to operate by the rules that Thomas Jefferson literally wrote, which doesn't follow parliamentary procedure as closely as the Senate does.
Go take a civics course some time and be knowledgeable about what you post.
If Hillary wins, the Senate still has two months to hold confirmation hearings and vote during a lame duck session before the next Congress is gaveled into session several weeks before Hillary would take the oath of office and be able to nominate anyone.
Plan D is to wait for the election to conclude, and then either confirm this guy in a lame duck session should Democrats win, or wait until January if they hold onto the Senate or gain the White House.
It's chickenshit, but completely in their power to do so.
They have one card left to play after the election in November though - if Hillary wins, they can always take up this nomination in a lame duck session and confirm him on the way out the door for the holiday recess. They can equivocate with some mealy-mouthed bullshit about how they just didn't want to take this business up during an election cycle or some nonsense in order to try to wash off the hypocrisy.
This option remains open unless Obama withdraws the nomination, which would really cause a political stink of "why nominate this guy if you don't think he's the guy for the job" etc.
Honestly though, I feel sorry for the nominee that he's become a pawn on this particular chess board.
Sure, he can put the Senate into session, but that's where his authority ends. The Senate chooses how they do business when in session, per article I section V. So yeah, he can make them gavel into session, at which point they can read the phone book into the congressional record and not do a god damn thing the President wants, because he's not King. And then they can adjourn themselves.
Besides, the document and clause you quote also indicates that he may only do this under 'extaordinary Occasions' which doesn't include "they aren't doing what I want, so I'm going to throw a fit until they do" and I'll guess that the sitting Supreme Court Justices would agree.
The founders just threw off a King, and were not interested in having a powerful executive. To further accomplish that goal, they put the power of the purse with the People's branch of government (Congress) as well as the power to reject or approve treaties, and the 'advise and consent' clause. If the Senate's 'advice' is "don't bother because we won't consent" then they have fulfilled their congressional obligations under Article II, Section II.
Also, because they weren't interested in a powerful executive, they allowed the houses of Congress to establish their own rules of order and proceeding under Article I, Section V. If the current rules of the Senate dictate that a floor vote is only held on measures that the Majority Leader brings to the floor (they do) then that's the rules. It's the same rules that blocked judicial nominations when Harry Reid was in charge. No, that doesn't make it okay, but it does tag a lot of people as hypocrits on both sides of the conversation.
Either way, legal circles have long held that Congressional inaction on a subject is equal to Congressional action. If they choose not to take up an issue, it's the same as choosing to take up the issue and vote it down. The same goes for 'advice and consent' from the Senate - they choose not to take it up, therefore their consent has not been given.
Short version: this was the intended mode of operation when the States ratified the Constitution. If you have a problem with it, take it up with James Madison.
The omission of speech is still free speech, no?
Then the omission of 'advice and consent' is still advice and a lack of consent. Why is this hard to understand?
For the record, I think it's chickenshit political grandstanding, but I don't see why people are bringing a constitutional argument here. The Senate has fulfilled their duty the moment that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said that he won't hold hearings, and that the Majority Leader said there won't be a floor vote, as the Senate gets to set their own rules for how they operate.
The separation of powers is there for a reason, and a sitting President doesn't have the constitutional authority to direct the Senate to the restroom, much less demand that they hold hearings or a vote on anything.
You seem to think that a sitting Senator will notice and actually avoid being a massive hypocrit, despite the Everest-sized mountain of evidence to the contrary. Have no doubt that these hacks will do what they want at all times, regardless of past position.
The district lines are drawn at the STATE level, so if there was any gerrymandering in North Carolina, it was done by the duly elected representatives of North Carolina. So your very first sentence and the entire premise of your post is FALSE. The will of North Carolina was expressed through the legislature that North Carolina sent to the capitol. Don't like it? Vote the bums out.
You can try to blame other people and weep about it, but it doesn't wash. Everyone loves to trot out 'the popular vote' for larger geographical borders that have nothing to do with anything whenever their tribe lost. Why quote statewide totals for district elections? Why are you trying to force your 'say-so' onto those districts that have different views? It's the same fallacy as the people who quote nationwide totals for state-by-state elections for President - it's complete nonsense that in no way means anything, unless you are advocating for a system where the population centers get to dictate what happens for everyone else; in that case you would still lose because New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Houston would dictate what happens for the rest of the country, and North Carolina would get even less of a 'say-so.'
The rules are clearly defined, and they've been defined for decades. Other states have just as much Democrat gerrymandering as you may have Republican gerrymandering. So instead of bitching about it, get a public referendum passed that causes an independent bipartisan commission to draw district lines and get it out of the state legislature's hands. Several states have already done this.
Stop bitching, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT other than blame the other tribe.
I don't see why people are saying that Congress is ignoring their constitutional duty here. The constitution says that the President nominates a person, with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The Senate has offered the advice of "don't bother, because you won't get our consent." Constitutional duty fulfilled.
I don't agree with it, but that is what it says, and that is what they are doing.