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Rand Paul vows to drag out Senate effort to pass foreign aid package
  • And he did it on the Fourth of July.

    Along with the rest of the republiQan putin-suckers.

    On Tuesday afternoon, the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee issued some important findings, concluding that the U.S. intelligence community was correct in its assessment: Russia attacked the U.S. elections in 2016 and did so in the hopes of putting Donald Trump in the White House.

    It was right around this time that seven Republican members of Congress -- six senators and one House member -- were in Moscow. Making matters much worse, however, is what the GOP lawmakers had to say while they were there. The Washington Post reported:

  • What If China Paid Trump While In Office But The Supreme Court Said The Question Was Moot?

    What If China Paid Trump While In Office But The Supreme Court Said The Question Was Moot? It did, and they did? Well how about that.

    . . . For starters, we need to emphasize again that Trump’s getting money from foreign sources is not simply a paperwork detail, it’s a flat out violation of the US Constitution, which Republicans used to say was a pretty big deal. The “foreign emoluments clause” ( Article I, Section 9, clause 8) is pretty clear on the matter:

    “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

    “Emolument” is simply a ye olde word for an “advantage, profit, or gain received as a result of one’s employment or one’s holding of office,” and it has generally been interpreted as a ban on taking any gifts or payments from a foreign. The clause very much applies to presidents, and prior to Trump, it was taken quite seriously. As the report notes, John F. Kennedy had to turn down Ireland’s symbolic offer of honorary Irish citizenship, and Barack Obama was allowed to accept the Nobel Peace Prize “only after the DOJ determined that the selection process was independent from the influence of the Norwegian government.” (It was a 20-page decision.) And even then, he donated to charity the $1.4 million that went with the honor.

    . . .

    Trump just bulldozed right past such petty concerns, and because he was such a tornado of chaos and scandal (way off the Fujita scale, what with the bulldozer being tossed around in the whirlwind too), his Constitution-defying business operations never got him in any trouble. Even when good government groups tried to sue to get federal courts to pay attention, the suits got thrown out of court because judges said the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, since Trump’s defiance of the Constitution hadn’t directly harmed them.

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    2 authors say OpenAI 'ingested' their books to train ChatGPT. Now they're suing, and a 'wave' of similar court cases may follow.
  • Have no fear, citizens! The American Judicial system will adjudicate this conflict with characteristic speed and wisdom! Expect everything to be a kind of malevolent higgledy-piggledy for 30 years. After that, there'll be some sort of tacit understanding of a gentleman's agreement which will be used as a rule of thumb for certain non-monetized works which may be certified for limited un-scraping status. It's win-win!

  • Is having an Android really a deal-breaker for some people?
  • I have friends who, against better counsel, have android phones, and the group texts were forever breaking. I finally brokered a deal for us to use Signal, which has been great. So (1) Android users in a group text on iPhone is a super pain in the ass, and (2) If everyone's using Signal, it's cool.

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    theachievers @lemmy.world
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