I worked for a developer at a Web hosting company for a while. I really wish my story about flaming text wasn’t true, and that the words weren’t “permanent unrecoverable data loss”, and the audience wasn’t internal support technicians.

Gotta have a way to delete a vps, and there’s only so much you can do to get someone to check that they have the right one.

So, sure that might work. More likely they forgot this bit is even here on account of it being 20 years old.

Also, never doubt the persistence of a sufficiently motivated and impatient user. I don’t think needing to read something has ever stopped one.
You can literally put animated flaming text and people will click right past.

Yup, you found the developer. That’s his phone number.

It’s not exactly a new change either. In 2006 people weren’t going to the specific page from duckduckgo, they were probably finding the sqlite homepage, and then tracking down the contact info.

20 years later it’s probably better to maintain consistency with the prefix than to change it even if it’s weird.

Pretty sure my life would be really different if I had had the ability to actually study instead of “read some of the chapter, skip the boring bits and exercises, and then call it good”.

Per the doc, a better than average memory can do a good job masking that it’s not encoding stuff right or that you’re not getting half of what’s being given.

My pediatrician told my parents that I definitely had ADHD, needed to be properly tested to confirm, and to get some medication to straighten things out.
I vaguely remember my mother saying that she didn’t think it was right to medicate away childhood exuberance, and that I just wasn’t challenged at school.

Fast forward 30 some years, and I get diagnosed and some medicine. My passionate love for a million different things hasn’t been diminished, but now I can actually make progress on hobbies, and sometimes finish projects.

I feel as creative as I’ve always felt, just able to direct it more coherently so that it’s actually productive.

I built shelves and put all the tools away afterwards. In the tool bag even, which is now back in the garage, and not just tucked away in a room I wasn’t using.

For the military thing, I think there’s coverage for that. The constitution gives Congress the authority to govern the conduct of the military, as well as when it may be used. The president’s “just” the commander, but they’re bound by the same rules for the military that Congress made. I think the best case a rogue president could make there would be that they should be court martialed rather that tried in a civilian court, and I’m unsure if that’s better.

Since Congress has authority over the conduct of the military, I can’t actually think of a situation where “being commander” was the defining thing, and not their conduct as commander. Closest I got was some sort of negligence resulting in death, but that’s derilection of duty and part of conduct.

I believe the executive power thing is essentially “control of the executive branch”. I think that one is actually fairly well fleshed out since it’s the leading source of disputes, since it’s all about what the president can tell a part of the executive branch to do.
It would essentially be “the president is not criminally liable for firing the attorney general”.

So yeah, I think the sane conclusion would be that the president is de facto immune to laws that currently don’t exist, and likely never will that are insanely narrow in scope.

I unfortunately don’t think the court is playing a game.
I think their slow handling of the case was partly avoiding claims of the courts influencing the election, and partly it just being complicated and unprecedented.
I think they were very clear that the other acts are basically anything the president does “as president”, particularly since they ruled that it’s okay for the president to ask the justice department about options for replacing electors, because the president gets to talk to the justice department.

I think it’s also worth reiterating that this doesn’t prevent the courts from preventing an action, or other checks against presidential actions, only the consequences the individual may face afterwards.
The president has the same authority to order the military to disband Congress as they did before, I just might be harder to sue them for it.

I’d agree that that would also be a valid way of accomplishing the same thing. Given the history of how we’ve handled things like civil immunity for the presidency before, it’s at least consistent to call it an extension or clarification of existing practices, rather than something new.

Those are all great points.

To be clear, I don’t agree with the notion that the president requires immunity in order to be “undistracted” while being president.
I think that immunity for explicitly delineated powers makes sense purely from a logical point of view: the constitution says the president can do a thing, therefore a law saying they can’t do that thing is either unconstitutional, or doesn’t apply to the president.
If they’re impeached it wasn’t a valid use of their powers and they are potentially personally criminally liable.
I feel like it’s less traditional immunity and more an acknowledgement that the legislature can’t criminalize things in the constitution, and someone can’t be guilty of a crime under an unconstitutional law.

It’s the not-enumerated official acts bit that’s wonky to me.

I don’t think anything that trump did would even remotely fit under an enumerated power of the president, which are pretty clearly and narrowly defined. Nowhere does the constitution empower the president to futz about with elections. If Congress delegated that power to the president, then the president is acting in the bounds of a law they can break.

I mean, if he’s even sorta a boot licker, that’s pretty awesome.

Hopefully that “lol, nice” makes up for that iota. :)

The rationale is that the powers aren’t unchecked, but that the check for official constitutionally listed acts of the president is Congress, not the courts.

Article 48 gave the presidentisl office the power to unilaterally bypass the legislature.
This supreme Court ruling delineates the line between the individual and the office with regards to the judicial system, not the relationship between the office and the other branches like article 48 did.
Rather than granting new powers or preventing restraint of the executive branch, it purely limits the consequences the individual can face out of office.
The concept of presidential immunity existed prior to this case.

The ruling essentially listed three categories and their immunity status with regards to the courts. In my opinion, two of them are reasonable and the third shouldn’t exist.

It’s reasonable to me to say you cannot sue the president for vetoing a bill, or criminally prosecute the president for commanding the military. The constitution says the president can do those things, and that the check on presidential power is congressional acts including impeachment. The office of the president or the government as a whole may be prosecuted, and Congress and the courts can hammer out the exact meaning of the core powers, but the individual is only liable if Congress uses their power to assert that something was definitely not a valid presidential act.

It’s reasonable to me to say that being the president doesn’t grant you broad immunity for non-president things. The president does not have the constitutional authority to drink and drive, so if they do they’re just a person subject to criminal prosecution.

It’s unreasonable to me to say that in areas where the president acts officially, but their authority is shared with Congress or an inherent power of the office that they might not have immunity depending on how it impacts the role of the president.
It’s weird to say it, but in this case I agree more with Coney Barrett that the more appropriate test is to see if the law applies to the official act and then determine if in this case it would interfere with a delineated core power.

In her own separate concurrence, Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the majority “that the Constitution prohibits Congress from criminalizing a President’s exercise” of his core constitutional powers and “closely related conduct.” But she would have courts approach the question of immunity for other official acts differently, by focusing first on whether the criminal law under which a former president is charged applies to his official acts and, if so, whether prosecuting the former president would interfere with his constitutional authority.

Applying that principle to the facts of this case, she suggested that at least some of the conduct that serves as the basis for the charges against Trump – such as his request that the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives hold a special session about election fraud claims – would not be immune. “The President,” she concluded, “has no authority over state legislatures or their leadership, so it is hard to see how prosecuting him for crimes committed when dealing with the Arizona House Speaker would unconstitutionally intrude on executive power.”

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/07/justices-rule-trump-has-some-immunity-from-prosecution/

I ultimately think that it would have been better to say that the president (individual) cannot be criminally prosecuted for exercising specifically enumerated constitutional powers unless Congress has impeached and removed from office and send it back to the lower court. They’re perfectly capable of deciding if a particular act was an executive overreach or not on a case by case basis, and the fact that this has never happened before is a pretty solid argument against needing to worry about a “chilling effect” on the exercise of presidential power. The president should be chilled, it’s practically in the constitution. Any power not given to the government is reserved to the people, clearly implying that the constitution should be read as stingy with power to the government, and generous with rights to the people. The president, as a member of the government, should be encouraged to worry about wandering around in legal grey areas.

So, national emergencies can do some of that, but this one has more to do with financing of programs, and the legal basis for financial sanctions relating to fighting terrorism. It also allows for more flexible hiring of military officers and for there to be more generals than usual.

The actual things being changed by the emergency declaration is listed in the order.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13224

It’s basically “we don’t need to ask Congress when the Treasury department tells a bank they can’t send money to specific overseas accounts”.

Do you think that source contradicts what I said?

Mr. Miranda asked Ms. Wasserman Schultz whether they should call CNN to complain about a segment the network aired in which Mr. Sanders said he would oust the chairwoman if he were elected. “Do you all think it’s worth highlighting for CNN that her term ends the day after the inauguration, when a new D.N.C. Chair is elected anyway?” Mr. Miranda asked. Ms. Wasserman Schultz responded by dismissing the senator’s chances. “This is a silly story,” she wrote. “He isn’t going to be president.”

Shocking. She didn’t speak kindly of a person who publicly attacked her, and opted to leave the story alone instead of doing anything.

Same information, but cast with additional context

Most of the shocking things mentioned in the emails were only mentioned, and are then dismissed.

Your mistaking opinions and preference bias, which all people have, for unfair bias. Do you actually expect that the people who run a political party don’t have an opinion about politics?

The coin thing didn’t happen.. At best she won six out of a dozen, which is what you would expect. The reality is more complicated.

You grossly mischaracterize the agreement.
From the article:

This does not include any communications related to primary debates – which will be exclusively controlled by the DNC.

Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC’s obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates.

HFA will be granted complete and seamless access to all research work product and tools (not including any research or tracking the DNC may engage in relating to other Democratic candidates).

In other words, her campaign agreed to give the DNC money to prepare for the general election, and in exchange they got to look at those preparations.
This was definitely the Clinton campaign assuming she would be the candidate, but it’s not exactly a smoking gun for financial impropriety regarding the primary.

Honestly, if your campaign can’t find a lawyer or accountant who can understand campaign finance management, you probably actually shouldn’t be in charge of a country. The financial arrangements weren’t particularly obtuse or obfuscated for moving millions of dollars between multiple political entities in multiple states.

Quoting a phrase from an internal email out of context makes you seem disingenuous. The emails that were stolen show people being mean, but it also shows that they were consistently not rigging anything. Or does someone making a shitty suggestion and then a higher ranking member of the party saying “no” not fit the narrative your drawing? Or that the only time they talked about financial schemes was after the Sanders campaign alleged misconduct?

In context, Sanders told CNN that if he was elected, she would no longer be the chair person. The internal comment was “this is a silly story. Sanders isn’t going to be president” at a time where he was already loosing.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz has to resign.

She did. Eight years ago.

Tldr, party leadership preferred Clinton over Obama. Turns out that preference without misconduct doesn’t have much impact.

you refer to a 76 year old career politician like Sanders as a new person.

Oh please. It’s even in the bit that you quoted: new to the party. I act like he was new to the party because he was, and his campaign was run by people who didn’t know the party structures. When their inexperience with the party tools led to them not taking advantage of them, they cried misconduct for the other campaigns knowing about them.

Depends on the state, and when exactly the candidate dropped out.

Basically the state holds a primary, and then a little later they have a state convention to assign delegates.

If they drop out before the delegates are picked, the delegate selections are usually reallocated to the remaining candidates. If they drop out afterwards, their delegates may be expected to vote for them anyway in the first round, or they may be free to vote as they please depending on the state. If the candidate has endorsed another candidate, the delegate is often expected to vote for the endorsed candidate.

“Expected” is important because their votes aren’t disqualified if they don’t adhere to expectations or anything, they just risk their state party being mad at them and if they’re someone with continued interest in party involvement, that’s a great way to make them not want to involve you. This is in contrast with the electoral college where faithless electors can see their votes not count unless they’re cast according to the election outcome.
In both cases, electors or delegates are chosen for a mix of loyalty and dedication, usually as sort of a minor honor or reward, so it’s not common for them to go rogue against expectations.

It’s why there’s an advantage to staying in the race longer: you get to pick the delegates you won, even if you drop out afterwards, and you can use that to get the frontrunner to involve you in their campaign in exchange for an enforcement.

Oh, definitely. Not just possible, they weren’t even looking for that. They were entirely looking for what the debate did to preferences and opinions directly about the candidates.

I mostly brought it out as an example of the headline not capturing the whole message of how it impacted voters. Or didn’t impact, rather.

So what were the advantages? The usual one I hear listed is superdelegates, which doesn’t matter if more people voted for the winner, or that they didn’t proactively inform his campaign about funding tricks that the Clinton campaign already knew about.

Are you saying that Clinton was an independent who just happened to align with the party for her entire political career?

I’m not sure you know how political affiliation or “people” work. Being a member of the party for decades vs being a member for months matters. Those are called “connections”, and it’s how most politicians get stuff done: by knowing people and how to talk to them.

The point of a primary is to determine who the candidate is, not who the party is more aligned with. Party leadership will almost always be more aligned with the person who has been a member longer, particularly when that person has been a member of part leadership themselves. It’s how people work. You prefer a person you’ve known and worked with for a long time over a person who just showed up to use your organization, and by extension you, for their own goals.
We have rules to make sure that those unavoidable human preferences don’t make it unfair.

The Obama campaign is a good example. He didn’t have the connections that Clinton did, so party leadership favored her. Once they actually voted, he got more so leadership alignment didn’t matter and he was the candidate. He then worked to develop those connections so that he and the party were better aligned and work together better, and he won. Yay!

So what rules did they break for Clinton? What advantages did she have over Sanders that she didn’t have over Obama?
Which of those advantages weren’t just "new people to the party didn’t know tools the party made available?”

It gets complicated because the parties can hold their primary elections however they want, independently by state because various rules mean you need a Democratic party for each state, plus the national party. So each state does it differently to some degree. Some vote for the candidate, and the delegates are assigned to vote for the winner, some get a proportion of the delegates, and in some the voters vote for the delegate based on who they support.
They use that process to assign delegates who go and vote on who the national party will select for the national election. If the first election there doesn’t yield a majority winner, they keep voting but now the delegates can switch if they want, and members of party leadership can also vote. That hasn’t happened in quite a while though, since it’s much easier to know the counts accurately before the convention and do your politics by getting people to drop out and endorse you.

Like what? Did she get votes for him thrown out?

People have been saying for years that she had an advantage and so it wasn’t fair, but those advantages seem to ignore that more people voted for her.

He was an independent running as a Democrat, and then claiming it’s unfair when the Democratic party was more aligned with the person who had always been a Democrat.

George Washington eschewed political parties because he didn’t want to establish a precedent where his choice as first president set the standard everyone else had to conform to, and there’s a little irony in people holding him up as an example in that light more than 200 years later.

He, and the other founders largely, disliked political parties in their entirety, not just having some specific number of them.
They also built the system that enshrined the two party dichotomy as the only option, actively sought to ensure that the “right” people could override the will of the people if needed, and founded the parties they had previously argued against.
They are far from infallible bastions of correctness in this matter.

Oh yeah, he’s totally not a viable candidate, but he does have an actual political philosophy and opinions that are surprisingly agreeable. He just lacks the actual political fortitude or will to get elected.