Government

Spooky Week #3

Area 51 and the Surveillance Industrial Complex: Spooky Week #3

10/27/21 by iHeartRadio

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/130410600
Episode: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/chtbl.com/track/5899E/traffic.megaphone.fm/HSW9588420214.mp3

What’s more dangerous that UFOs? What REALLY goes on at Area 51? Join us as we watch the CIA and Air Force repeatedly bring us to the brink of nuclear war

Why The Supreme Court Probably Doesn’t Care What Most Americans Think About Abortion Or Gun Rights | FiveThirtyEight

Why The Supreme Court Probably Doesn’t Care What Most Americans Think About Abortion Or Gun Rights | FiveThirtyEight

It's also possible that Supreme Court justices mostly care about their reputation among a select group of Americans. Baum and Neal Devins, a professor of law and government at the College of William & Mary, have argued that Supreme Court justices are more interested in how they’re regarded by elites.

This is significant for understanding why the conservative justices’ behavior has become more predictably right-wing. Baum and Devins argue that as elites have grown more politically polarized, the justices’ partisan tendencies have hardened as well. In other words, the people influencing the conservative justices' thoughts are probably much more right-wing than the public at large. On top of that, some of the justices may be willing to risk backlash for the outcome they believe is correct. “Is legitimacy something that’s enough to get a justice to move away from something [he or she] strongly feels?” Baum told me. With the possible exception of Roberts, who is particularly focused on the court’s image, Baum doesn’t think the public’s views will be enough to sway a justice who cares deeply about the issue they’re deciding.

And this might be right. On one hand, it’s not obvious that a single unpopular ruling -- even if it’s high-profile -- would be enough to sow widespread doubt in the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. Take the outcome in Bush v. Gore, where a divided Supreme Court, split along partisan lines, effectively handed the presidency to George W. Bush. The ruling was intensely controversial at the time, but it appears to have had little lasting impact on the court’s image. And although it might be hard to imagine, the same could be true of a decision that overturns or reshapes Roe — particularly if the justices merely limit the constitutional right to abortion, rather than eliminate it.

NYS β€œIndependent” Redistricting Commission Maps are Anything But – The BenCen Blog

NYS β€œIndependent” Redistricting Commission Maps are Anything But – The BenCen Blog

At this point, it is plain as day that partisanship trumped consensus and that the commission is willing, in the form of these first released set of maps, to demonstrate the party actors are very much viewing and operating with a partisan lens, despite the commission’s charge to be independent (it is in the body’s name, afterall). So, two sets of plans were released – one Democrat and one Republican – each for redistricting the State Assembly, State Senate, and our Congressional districts. At best, this reflects the bipartisan nature of the commission, but bipartisanship is not independence from the political process, and a bipartisan commission is only advantageous when compromises are struck and a consensus is built. Since the Democrat supermajority in the Assembly and the Senate will have the final say on how the lines are drawn, it is troubling then that partisans on the commission released separate maps in opposition to each other. It demonstrates the challenge of having this redistricting task completed by vested interests; that is, incumbents and a party that would like to stay in power.

Minority Rights

America is the one of the few countries that protects minority rights through our political system. Most democracies do not have a mechanism that protects the rights of minorities through the power of the filibuster, federalism, and the ability of different political parties to control different branches of government.

We also have a Constitution which protects additional rights, that can not be questioned by Congress or the President. Congress has two branches, the House and Senate, drawn from distinctively different constituencies. It also have a separate executive, the President, who is drawn from a national constituency. Unless all these diverse groups agree, no policy can be implemented.

Most countries allow their governments toΒ engageΒ in rash decisions,Β allow a simple majority to act in a tyrannical fashion. Fortunately, America is globally unique, and and we restrict the power of the majority by empowering minorities. This is one of the reasons why America’s democracy has outlived most other countries, and has proven to be a stable, long-lasting form of government.

The Rise of the Taliban

Afghanistan: The Rise of the Taliban

9/16/21 by NPR

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/128545712
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/npr-510333/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/throughline/2021/09/20210916_throughline_final_mix_afghanistan_2_taliban_wads_lw_91521_-_real.mp3

How did a small group of Islamic students go from local vigilantes to one of the most infamous and enigmatic forces in the world? The Taliban is a name that has haunted the American imagination since 2001. The scenes of the group’s brutality repeatedly played in the Western media, while true, perhaps obscure our ability to see the complex origins of the Taliban and how they impact the lives of Afghans. It’s a shadow that reaches across the vast ancient Afghan homeland, the reputation of the modern state, and throughout global politics. At the end of the US war in Afghanistan we go back to the end of the Soviet Occupation and the start of the Afghan civil war to look at the rise of the Taliban. Their story concludes Throughline’s two-episode investigation on the past, present, and future of the country that was once called “the center of the world.”