Dennis Watson

Dennis Watson

@denniswatson.bsky.social

1863

Posts

Attorney, travel enthusiast. My posts are my opinions; likes and shares are interest, not necessarily agreement. Recovering indigent defense Trial Lawyer from Florida, left for a Sabbatical in India and now practicing law in Georgia.

Posts Replies Media

Wow. Yeah, if you are part of the “In” group, do you even notice the evil being done to the “out” groups? Especially if you are one of the people prejudiced against the out groups.

Read this, share this widely

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yes, we boiled the planet, but it was worth it to make a machine that, instead of adding two plus two, takes the statistical average of every answer to questions containing "what" "is" "two" and "plus" from a database of illegal cell phone transcripts and returns a fake nude pic of a high schooler

I’ve thought about this a bit. I mean, I’m sympathetic to the reporters to some extent, but collaboration is also a choice. The editorial staff and owners are openly hostile to freedom and democracy. If you choose to work for them, that’s a choice you made.

I feel bad for the journalists inside the NYT, the WSJ and Washington Post trying to do excellent work in spite of leadership decisions and terrible op-eds that undermine those ongoing efforts

My work is having a convention next week, and I hate downtown traffic and parking. Used the holiday for a trial run on MARTA. I’m having fun! No crowds this early, I just used one of the Vine scooters for the first time, this has been great. Hope this helps shake off the funk I’ve had since Monday.

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LETTUCE ALL CELEBRATE

Liz Truss has gone! Labour took the seat! By just 600 votes!

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Pwnallthethings

As I said earlier, we have to put in the hard work and perseverance to get through this election to keep Trump out of the White House. The long term trends are very positive and there’s not much left of the true GOP. Once MAGA is defeated, that’s a totally splintered party.

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Doomer shit is un-American as fuck. Sorry. Factual. This country didn't even consider me a fucking person for half its existence, and the Supreme Court declared Black ppl didn't qualify as US citizens TWICE.

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Didn’t even need to click through to guess the author’s race an gender. Do you what you want, fucker. But too many people got savaged by dogs, blasted with fire hoses, and hung from trees to get me into the voting booth for me to ever opt out.

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just watched 74 people speaking at least a dozen different languages become american citizens in a ceremony at monticello, where the speakers were themselves children of immigrants. inspiring stuff and a vivid illustration of what reactionaries want to snuff out

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to entrap Indian students for laughs and make a little money on the side, which is the sort of thing you do when you’re a brazenly lawless agency

Uh why is ICE running a fake university

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Reminder from a Pittsburgher who was at one point Mr. Rogers neighbor: “Look for the helpers” was intended to be advice for his usual audience, children. We’re grown ups now. We’re supposed to be the helpers.

This feels like something I can post and feel good about. On my way home this afternoon, I’m picking up some Publix red white and blue frosted cupcakes, and some jalapeños. Tomorrow for the Fourth we’re having chorizo tacos and chimichangas and cupcakes. Because that’s what we want. Happy Fourth!

So what are we cooking tomorrow for the Fourth of July? Our menu: -hot dogs with sauteed sauerkraut & onions -canned baked beans -Ina Garten's French potato salad -Smitten Kitchen corn salad with chile & lime -SK strawberry & black pepper cocktails -peach pie from the farm stand

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and it’s not a power the court can put back in the bottle once it starts being used that way if a president starts ordering assassinations and the court says well oops that’s not what we meant why would he listen to them instead of making them the next targets

Between a president's new absolute immunity and the existing unchecked, unreviewable power to issue pardons, there literally is no legal power of compulsion that can be brought to bear against him or his subordinates. This ruling eviscerates the judicial power just as much as the legislative power.

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The Vibes today are Very Bad and if you're out there mansplaining fascism and its ills right now after ignoring our warnings for years, I hope you have an even worse week than my own

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My favorite line about war applies here: "The aggressor is always peace-loving... he would prefer to take over our country unopposed." No man, if you're trying a revolution against the Constitution of the United States, pro-Constitution Americans aren't going to simply get out of your way. Hard no.

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution"www.mediamatters.org

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James Fallows Tierney

"The ruling is egregiously wrong. The remedy is a new Court." See how easy that is to say?

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I don't know how many years of my life I've been writing Close-Guantanamo-Before-It's-Too-Late stories and while this would be a highly ironic end for Liz "The al-Qaeda Seven" Cheney the joke won't be funny for very long

Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials, Invokes Military Tribunalswww.nytimes.com A post that Mr. Trump circulated on Sunday called for Liz Cheney to be prosecuted by a military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.

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People like Fallon start from the premise, "Can I imagine some explanation in which this thing, standing alone, can be fitted into a principled legal system?" I mean, yeah, sure, that can be done for anything. But doing so makes you a collaborator and a propagandist, not an honest & wise scholar.

constitutional lawyers use your fucking brain challenge www.politico.com/news/2024/07...

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If Biden had a sense of self-preservation, he'd treat the Federalist Society the way the FBI treated the Black Panthers.

This is a VERY good activist activity for people who want to do something tangible.

In 2020, I worked a voter assistance hotline and helped dozens of people figure out registration and voting in a complicated state. It was immensely satisfying and I am signing up to do it again this cycle. It was relatively low stress, in the calls were from people who WANTED to talk to me.

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They'll file a suit after the election saying 'Kamala can't replace Joe' if he drops out and she wins and SCOTUS will legislate from the bench that they're right. But you won't see any challenge before the election, or if she loses after replacing him.

A big unspoken subplot is how many of the alternative options to Biden look dicey because of bad faith conservative legal shenanigans and in-progress attempts to steal the 2024 election. Challenges to putting a replacement on ballots or leaving VP office vacant could result in stolen election

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Yep. One of the biggest blind spots people have is assuming that underneath, others share the same basic values as them. They have trouble imagining an ideology that is completely misaligned with theirs.

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apropos of uhhhhhhh everything, reposting this again

As well-meaning publishers try to navigate the coming storm of state laws against diversity, I hope they'll consider Timothy Snyder's Rule #1 (from his slim book ON TYRANNY).

This was a good read. I needed some good news and thoughtful legal analysis today. My faith in the system is still shattered, but it helps to remember that some good people have not surrendered to the wrongdoers.

NEW: Rudy Giuliani has been disbarred in New York www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad1/c...

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National Politician Don't Kill a Dog Challenge

Bizarre photo surfaces of RFK and ‘barbecued dog’: ‘The f--- is wrong with this man?’www.nj.com "Kennedy told the person, who was traveling to Asia, that he might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog on the menu."

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i think we should see the Trump v. United States ruling as a group of Republican apparatchiks taking their opportunity to vindicate Nixon and write the unitary executive into the Constitution. www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/o...

Opinion | Your Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card Is Ready, Sirwww.nytimes.com The Nixonian theory of presidential power is now enshrined as constitutional law.

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sent back to lexington to be reconsidered

Supreme Court rules 6-3 American Revolutionary War was incorrectly decided

Having Indian for dinner tonight.

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a thing to remember, in all of this horror, is that these are not the actions of a political party that is confident it represents the will of the people, and who is currently out of power and enslaved to a deeply flawed avatar. the struggle is not over and they have not won

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No shame in feeling scared, overwhelmed and not knowing what to do. To me feeling one's feelings doesn't preclude taking action. These are confusing times. Give yourself some grace.