Sens. Cruz, Hawley & Lee Show How To Take A Good Bill Idea And Make It Blatantly Unconstitutional
from the seriously-guys? dept
Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Mike Lee, all hold themselves out to be "constitutional" lawyers. All graduated from law schools and went on to clerk for Supreme Court Justices (Cruz clerked for Rehnquist, Hawley for Roberts, and Lee for Alito -- though before he moved to the Supreme Court). And yet, all three have shown that their support for the Constitution they swore to uphold and protect is a little wishy washy when they can build a culture war around it and get some silly press attention. The latest move is their new bill to strip Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption.
Now, I've explained this before, but let me be explicit about it here, because it's the part that people keep getting tripped up on: I think this is a good idea. It's silly that Major League Baseball has an antitrust exemption and it should be gotten rid of. There's no need for it and it's bad policy that it exists. And if Senators Cruz, Hawley and Lee had simply introduced such a bill, I might even cheer it on.
But... that's not what they did. They announced it in a manner that makes it blatantly unconstitutional, because they flat out admit that they're doing it to punish MLB for MLB's political expression (namely moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta to protest Georgia's new voting law). And the Senators don't even try to hide this or come up with some Potemkin-style façade. They just out and out admit that they're doing this for unconstitutional reasons:
Following Major League Baseball’s (MLB) decision to relocate the All-Star game from the state of Georgia, U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) will hold a press conference today outlining their legislation to end MLB’s special immunity from antitrust laws.
Here's the thing that many people are missing: you can do constitutional things for unconstitutional reasons, and it makes the things you do... unconstitutional. In this case, Cruz, Lee, and Hawley are actually making it more difficult to remove MLB's antitrust exemption, because they've just handed MLB an easy response should this bill go anywhere. They can run to court and say that this was clearly vindictive behavior by Congress in response to protected 1st Amendment speech.
So even if you support removing MLB's antitrust exemption, you should be against this. Because this action, in this way, simply guarantees that if it got traction, it would get tied up in court for years solely due to the statements of Hawley, Cruz, and Lee.
It's quite likely that none of the three actually care, of course. They're all just grandstanding for an ignorant base who wants these Senators to embrace "cancelling" Major League Baseball for daring to... care about voting rights. And, in doing so, these three Senators show (yet again) that they're not interested in actually doing what's right, or what's constitutional. They're only interested in frothing up some grist for an ignorant base who revels in the politics of petty grievances.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, antitrust, exemption, free speech, josh hawley, mike lee, retaliation, ted cruz, voting rights
Companies: mlb
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Republican lawmakers: “Fuck cancel culture! Grow some thicker skin, assholes! Stop being so offended by everything!”
Also Republican lawmakers: “We’re cancelling these fuckers because they hurt conservative feelings. Don’t they know that’s illegal?”
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A shame we don't have a Constitutional test for all incoming congress critters. 1/2 of them would fail.
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Only half?
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I'm feeling generous today. But I see lots more of it from one particular half.
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You are insinuating that those people don't know what they are doing, or they'd not do it.
The question governing their behavior is not "what would be the moral thing to do?" or "what would be the legal thing to do?" or "what did I swear an oath on?" but "what can I get away with?".
That's sort of the same competency question relevant for a crime lord, except that in politics the populist element of answering this question has a larger weight.
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For Hawley, he certainly knows better. But idjits like Marjorie Taylor Greene are genuinely stupid.
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Republican lawmakers: “Fuck cancel culture! Grow some thicker skin, assholes! Stop being so offended by everything!”
Also Republican lawmakers: “We’re cancelling these fuckers because they hurt conservative feelings. Don’t they know that’s illegal?”
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If there is one thing they're consistent about its hypocrisy.
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The only reason hypocrisy isn't listed as a core republican party principle at this point is that honesty most certainly isn't.
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Three of the many congress critters who don't care about legislation, just making a name for themselves. The real point of this was just to appease and fire up their base, doesn't matter if it passes or not.
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In other words, what they're doing with this legislation is feeding steak, jerky, and burgers to their base.
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Re: Re:
Burgers all around, I think.
Take good legislation, grind it up and add filler until it no longer resembles steak.
And not Jerky, because they don't want their constituents to have to really chew on the legislation.
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"Three of the many congress critters who don't care about legislation"
Yeah, and to be fair, by now the words "hawley & cruz" just tells you all you need to know about the proposed bill. It's like seeing that Nathan Bedford Forrest just proposed a new novel idea on racial equality. You already know what it'll be about without reading it.
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What is this "League Baseball"? Is it a children's game that people watch, like Texas Holdum or Balkan Underwater Synchronized Tiddlywinks? I don't have a TV or cable network access: is there anything else I must do to never hear about it again?
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I have a TV but I also have Roku access, and the MLB even has their own streaming service.
I choose not to subscribe because I'm not a baseball fan, but that's what makes Streaming better than cable: I can decide the services and content I want and not some cable company.
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Works Both Ways
There is no intent clause in the first amendment. The senators are similarly entitled to their opinions. Any elected officials that vote to eliminate the antitrust exemption are allowed to do so because they think it's a good idea, while also holding the opinion that MLB are a bunch of jerks. Laws cannot be declared unconstitutional on the basis of lawmakers being insufficiently friendly.
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Re: Works Both Ways
The senators are entitled to their opinions. However, the first amendment explicitly says "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…". The MLB moving their game from Atlanta to Denver was a decision for political reasons, and Cruz, Hawley, and Lee are making it clear they are making a law to punish political speech.
Oh, and don't you argue that moving a game from one location to another isn't speech, because the same arguments were made about flag burning and the Supreme Court struck down an anti-flag-burning law on first amendment grounds (with Scalia concurring in the majority).
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Re: Re: Works Both Ways
The proposed legal change would not abridge speech, but would instead change the interpretation of a 1922 court decision regarding the scope of interstate commerce. MLB would still be free to swap all-star site locations for political purposes as much as they want.
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Re: Re: Re: Works Both Ways
It's impressive how intentionally obtuse you are.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Works Both Ways
It is difficult to get a person to understand something when their argument/position depends upon their ignorance or 'ignorance' of it.
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But it would punish a corporation for its speech — and last I checked, that counts as a First Amendment violation.
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Re: Re: Re: Works Both Ways
Back here in the real world, the chilling effect exists.
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A lawmaker has said they intend to punish Major League Baseball for its speech by crafting a law that aims to do exactly that. You may not care about that, but federal judges — whose opinions carry the weight of law — will absolutely care.
I mean, I get it: You think the government is on the side of the righteous here. Maybe it is. But doing the right thing for the wrong reasons means you’re doing the wrong thing. The government can remove the antitrust protections for MLB for reasons that won’t violate the First Amendment — but now it can’t, at least not for the foreseeable future, because three Senators decided to say the quiet part out loud.
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Re: Works Both Ways
It's legal to fire an employee.
It's illegal to fire an employee as retaliation for reporting harassment.
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'nocuos leader
'cause my FIRST comment is caught and not let out
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Hawley also just proposed a laughably stupid bill that proposes blocking all mergers for companies above an arbitrary market cap.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/hawleys-antitrust-bill-targets-big-tech-but-experts -worry-about-collateral-damage/
Nothing but a political ploy.
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I'm sure it would only apply to companies in a certain sector.
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Not according to the article itself, though I imagine insurrection-supporter Hawley is only thinking about a particular sector, and even more specifically companies within it that don't pledge allegiance to the cult of Trump as I have no doubt he'd have no problem with any mergers by companies he sees as on his side.
In relying on it, Hawley’s bill would ensnare companies in a wide variety of industries that go well beyond Big Tech, including banks, pharmaceuticals, retailers, automakers, telecoms, and more. Nearly 150 companies would qualify today.
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It would be glorious if this passed and ended up blocking a merger involving a key Republican donor. But then, I'm sure Hawley would back off the instant he noticed Democrats were lining up to support the bill, including Fox's biggest punching bags.
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It wouldn't surprise me if he's already gotten a few unpleasant phone calls from 'donors' cracking the whip and pointing out that if he's going to meddle into their business by blocking any mergers they might want to engage in they might need to cut back on any 'donations' in return.
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Huh, yeah, speaking of the news-o-sphere, are there any people and/or companies with insane amounts of market control in that sector?
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So the claims are made. Where was this concern previously, i wonder, particularly from the conservative / republican zone?
So my guess is that somehow such a law is enforced selectively. I realize that is a shocking thought. ;)
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It's the republican way, don't govern, don't even pretend to, just create an enemy, create laws that your colleagues will never allow to pass into law to fight said enemy and fundraise on it. Meanwhile, the next generation of republicans will grow up brainwashed by their parents into believing that this is the heart of the party platform, and what as initially a grift becomes an entrenched belief. All the while, they attack the constitution, fill the halls of power with people who you wouldn't trust to run a used car dealership and pump raw sewage into the court system and their grifty notion creeps closer to becoming law. See overturning abortion rights, the attacks on LGBQT+ rights, Christian dogma overriding science and the rule of law...
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It's basically legislate via spite.
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And the environment
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At some point of time they will have to explain Lincoln. And Eisenhower. Maybe they can arrange with the Democrats to swap a few politicians. It would make the history books less puzzling to read.
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It is not much of a stretch from ``good people on both sides'' in Charlottesville back to Abe Lincoln, who during the debates said he would not allow negroes to vote, or marry whites, or integrate socially, or serve on juries.
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AC one-liners only, eh? it'll cramp my style...
obviously Maz can't stand actual dissent
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Re: AC one-liners only, eh? it'll cramp my style...
No, he just can't stand obvious asshats.
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and I'm in! maybe...
What? Mentions antitrust AND exemption? ...
OMG! Pop the champagne cork! Maz actually unequivocally states one of my favorite views!
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Re: and I'm in! maybe...
Yep, after hammering for several minutes, like a switch was flipped, all goes in.
The obstacle is that "Held For Moderation" is for me a LIE. My comments never come, besides that TD has gamed the system by dealying effect.
You wouldn't know of the viewpoint discrimination done out of sight if I didn't mention it, often as can.
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Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
The obstacle is that "Held For Moderation" is for me a LIE.
As has been explained to you multiple times, it is not a lie. We will release all the non spam comments that get caught in the filter when we get to them. The only reason we don't release the 300 or so that you put in every FUCKING day is because you KEEP ON SPAMMING until you figure out some way to get around the filter. So you ALREADY got your comment in at which point there's no need for us to release the other 300 comments, even though that would demonstrate to our community how truly insane you are.
Your problem is that you're like a 2 year old who demands instant gratification. You can't wait until someone goes through them, so you fill them up with more and more garbage, which actually makes it MORE DIFFICULT for someone to review comments and release the ones that were incorrectly caught.
Stop being a such a fucking asshole.
If we were trying to "censor" you, we'd just delete all your fucking comments, because you're an unhinged, totally ignorant, blatantly stupid, hypocritical oaf. But if you just commented normally, and then if they got caught in the filter, we'd release them when we had a chance to review them. But you can't accept that and go through your paranoid delusional state, filling up our filters with even more garbage to sort through.
If you don't like it, go the fuck away. I have no problem with dissent. I have a problem with totally deranged idiots wasting my time. You are that person.
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Re: Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
Clearly you ask too much of him.
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Re: Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
Mike, at the point where at I'd just classify all his posts as spam and be done with it. I know your stance on allowing anonymous people to post freely, but in regards to this "person", just delete his comments since he isn't actually contributing anything worthwhile to the discussions.
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Agreed.
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Re: Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
I dunno, i might go for a one-off post that just lists all the comments that weren't released on a given day. Or a "best" of...
Content Moderation Case Study: 300 Comments in One Afternoon From a Deranged Wackaloon.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
There's already a slew of comments from the longer threads blue has spammed. Including the Devin Nunes memo thread, and the original "ignorant motherfucker" thread that blue himself keeps linking back to.
A study wouldn't be hard to run, blue himself keeps generating content. For a website that he absolutely hates the guts of.
He's a constant reminder of how brain damaged copyright fans are, it's genuinely fucking disturbing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
Yeah, i have read far too many of them. And probably i have responded to too many as well. Sometimes he provides those sort of "arguments" which could use a response for other people who might read a thread at any time. The downside is he barely engages with any response except to repeat the same stuff he spams even when no one is responding, or he is talking to himself about a giant conspiracy that won't let him post.
Honestly, yes, i find him to be one of those reality-challenged and discourse-impervious sorts who is rather disturbing. I've seen plenty elsewhere, but only a few his sort of persistence, and i can't think of another that also combines the paranoia that the site/internet is magically affecting their systems. That's usually a thing by itself.
Of course a study is hardly required. One can simply look for high comment-count posts, a scroll to the sections where a lot of comments are hidden by default and read them. They are like bloody meta-bookmarks. Then apparently extrapolate that number i guess, given Mike's comment.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
At that point there's really only one kind of response to blue, and those of his ilk: remind them of their failures, constantly. Just like Trump's failure to secure the latest round of elections.
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You'd think that someone with such a vested opinion against pirates would understand, but no - copyright is brain damage.
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Re: Re: and I'm in! maybe...
Just post, "I'm a dumb cunt." Not only will that get thru, it will be upheld as the first truthful post you've made here.
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here's a HOWEVER
However he quickly goes wrong on the UN-Constitutional claim:
A) Corporations do NOT have "1A rights". They're NOT "persons" in the Constitution.
B) Corporations have ONLY a lawyer-granted "legal doctrine" to treat them as "persons".
C) Therefore, the GRANT of exemption to a legal fiction can be removed without least Constitutional question.
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Re: here's a HOWEVER
Maz's real goal here is to protect corporatism, as always, by claiming raises Constitutional questions.
My bet is that Maz's view doesn't apply to the NFL and other sports leagues: he's simply not a basebally type.
Maz is also actually giving nothing because this is likely not going anywhere.
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Do you have a map that leads us to the fucking point, or are you endlessly rambling so you don’t go to sleep from a concussion?
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His point is exactly as he labeled it: that he keeps coming with scams that deny the constitution (such as "corporations do nothave 1A rights").
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Re: Re: here's a HOWEVER
Said the RIAA fanboy.
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'Welp it's been five seconds, time for a reminder...'
While trusting them in general would be an insanely bad idea you can at least trust republican lawmakers to remind people how grossly hypocritical they are and how much they hate the first amendment when it's used by anyone else on such a regular basis you could set a clock by it.
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Re: 'Welp it's been five seconds, time for a reminder...'
Hypocrisy and hating the 1st Amendment when used by others are traits not limited to Republicans. They just happen to have a momentary lead in the never-ending race to the bottom.
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Re: Re: 'Welp it's been five seconds, time for a reminder...'
Oh I wouldn't argue that they're the only ones with those traits just that they are working overtime these days to make sure that they're at the top of the list and the first group people might think of anytime hypocrisy and loathing of the first amendment come up.
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yet another one-liner
to show that I can get bits in... longer is blocked
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Cruz, Hawley, and Lee: do they time share the one brain cell available to them on an hourly or daily basis?
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It's like time-sharing. These days we call it "The Cloud".
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The only brain cells available to the entire Republican Party belong to their rich corporate overlords.
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Explains how Trump got them to abase themselves before him - he just grabbed the brain cell as they passed it around, like some deranged, populist Perseus.
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You're too generous. They're not stupid, they're evil.
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A hypothetical scenario: let's say a bill that goes against a corporation's interests comes up in the Senate and get passed barely by one vote and before the vote, one of the bill supporters was on the record as saying he is voting because he wants to punish the corporation for saying things the senator does not like. According to the logic employed here if I understand correctly, if the bill would not been passed but for that person's support, would the law that the bill becomes be then deemed "unconstitutional" even though the provisions in the bill are inherently not unconstitutional? If that vote does not matter then how about two of the bill supporters on record of saying they are voting because they dont like the corporation's political speech? Would the two votes matter? No? How about five? ten? where's the line?
Sounds absurd to me, the logic of yours. I think the provisions in the law per se should be the sole criteria used to deem whether the said law is unconstitutional regardless the political motivations of some of the lawmakers. (on record or alleged) Just my two cents.
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You either need to reread the article several times until you grok what it actually says or work on your honesty, because your 'hypothetical' has nothing to do with what's going on here. This isn't a case of a valid bill passing due to a handful of politicians with rotten motivations supporting it it's a bill that's unconstitutional from the outset due to it being a blatant attempt to punish someone for legal speech, which is just kinda a no-no when it comes to government action. Motivation and context matter, all the more so when the government is involved, so the idea that the only thing that should be looked at is what a bill says/does and not why it's being applied is to ignore a vital detail.
As the article noted even if you think that stripping the MLB of it's anti-trust exemption is a good idea you shouldn't be supporting this, not only because it's unconstitutional but because it just handed the MLB a perfect counter to any valid attempts to strip that exemption by allowing them to raise questions regarding the motivation behind the attempt.
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That One Guy already picked your shit apart, but for the sake of actually answering your insincere bullshit question with a sincere answer (which is…really something I should probably stop doing):
The intent of those who wrote/sponsored/introduced the bill matters more. But in this specific example? The corporation that decides to fight the new law could point to that Senator’s vote as a means of declaring legally null the passage of that law. (“They voted for this to fuck us over for something we said — how is that not a First Amendment violation?”) Whether that argument succeeds would depend on numerous variables, not the least of which would be the political leaning of the court hearing that case.
The number of lawmakers who vote in favor of the bill for the reason you outline increases the relevance of their reasoning. One Senator going “fuck their speech” would be disturbing, but ultimately outweighed by the other Senators going “nope, not passing this because of their speech” (regardless of whether they’re lying about that position). But multiple Senators going “fuck their speech” before the vote would, at a bare minimum, increase the likelihood that the new law would be found unconstitutional.
In an ideal world, no lawmaker would attack any corporation for its political speech by passing laws designed to fuck over that corporation. But we don’t live in that world. That’s why we have courts of law.
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Thanks for your sincere answer. You unfairly misjudge me. My question was sincere and I'm sorry I dont fully understand all the nuances here. I have no dog in this fight, given that I'm not an American and not living in the states anymore. I was just questioning whether the motivation should be a factor besides the letter of the law in determining whether a law is constitutional or not because I see a slippery slope there. You have led me to see that this case illustrates that motivation of the lawmakers matters or should matter as in determining the constitutionality of a law. Thank you.
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Look, it's just that we have a lot of trolls arguing in bad faith coming here. While I cannot speak on That One Guy or Stephen T. Stone, if we are rude to people, it's because said trolls come here and ask questions like yours (which you did in good faith), but in a cynical manner to get a rise out of people.
Please don't hold it against us, it's just that a lot of trolling can indeed train one's behavior.
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oops, should have been
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Re: Re:
If that was an honest question on your part then sorry if my comment came off unfairly aggressively, as Samuel noted TD suffers from a number of grossly dishonest trolls and the hypothetical you proposed struck me as so different from what was actually happening that it came across as a deliberate strawman and I have basically zero patience with those I perceive as arguing in bad faith.
As for your question motivation absolutely matters(as noted by Radix above firing someone is legal, firing someone as retaliation for reporting abuse is not), the thing is while usually politicians are smart enough to cloak any unconstitutional or sleazy motivations behind grand and legal justifications the trio here were stupid enough to say the silent part out loud and admit that this is about punishing the MLB for speech, which is a huge no-no when the government's doing it and took a legal action(removing an anti-trust exemption) and made it a not so legal action(punishing a group for legally protected speech).
Had they simply proposed removing the anti-trust exemption and found a legal justification for it the timing would have been questionable but it probably wouldn't have been enough to tank the bill, but by admitting to their motivations they've not just tip-toed into unconstitutional territory they made a jet-pack assisted vault into it.
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"According to the logic employed here if I understand correctly, if the bill would not been passed but for that person's support, would the law that the bill becomes be then deemed "unconstitutional" even though the provisions in the bill are inherently not unconstitutional?"
You need to learn to read. A bill doesn't change constitutionality no matter who comments on it.
Cruz and Hawley, however, have changed the bill.
"Sounds absurd to me, the logic of yours."
Classy move, Baghdad Bob. Claim the OP said something which - looking back to the OP - they didn't say at all. Then chew them out for it. As if we needed further proof that you're a troll...
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[Edit]
Should have been; "A bill doesn't change constitutionality no matter who comments on it. Cruz and Hawley, however, have changed the legal classification of the bill."
Antitrust legislation in itself is not bad. Punitive measures however, over speech? Suddenly the bill isn't antitrust anymore. It's a violation of 1A.
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Why politicians study Constitutional Law
There is a disturbing lack of correlation between a background in constitutional law and not trying unconstitutional shit. It is like the reason they studied it was to try to find ways to bypass it.
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Re: Why politicians study Constitutional Law
Example: Barack "Constitutional Scholar" Obama.
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