Rounds

@cvpayne You'd not have lived long enough to be bitten more than once or twice.

I would have been bitten so many times I would have become Cobra Man

@aakashgupta Judges determined the extent of judicial immunity. If bartenders had the power to protect themselves, they would as well.

A bartender in Galveston, Texas was arrested for serving a drunk customer who killed someone. She makes $25 an hour. A federal judge makes $236,000 a year and has absolute legal immunity for every decision on the bench, including releasing violent offenders who kill again. 42 states have dram shop laws. The bartender’s causation chain has two links: pour drink, person crashes. Exposed window? Sometimes three hours. She can be charged with criminal negligence, sued in civil court, and lose her livelihood. All for failing to eyeball whether a guy at a crowded bar was too drunk for one more round. The judge has a pre-sentencing report, a criminal history score, a risk assessment algorithm, victim impact statements, and a prosecutor arguing the case in front of them. Every tool the system can produce. And when they get it wrong? Nothing. Absolute judicial immunity, codified since Bradley v. Fisher in 1871, means a judge cannot be sued for any act performed in judicial capacity. How absolute? In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Stump v. Sparkman that a judge who signed a petition to sterilize a 15-year-old girl without her knowledge or consent was fully immune. The court acknowledged the act was reprehensible. Didn’t matter. Judicial act, judicial immunity, case closed. That precedent still controls today. The recidivism data is where this gets obscene. The U.S. Sentencing Commission tracked violent offenders released in 2010 across eight years. 63.8% were rearrested. Median time to rearrest: 16 months. These numbers haven’t moved in two decades. The 2005 cohort and the 2010 cohort produced statistically identical outcomes. Judges aren’t making unpredictable calls. They’re making well-documented bets with other people’s lives, and the base rates have been published and available the entire time. The bartender gets three hours of ambiguous signals. The judge gets the full weight of the federal data apparatus. One of them can go to prison for getting it wrong. The other can’t even be named in a civil suit.

A GOP Senator put up a bill for a simple photo id to vote - nothing else. The dems all voted against it. x.com/EricLDaugh/sta… #TheFive

@VodkaPundit Or have a change of Starfleet administration that wakes up to the reality of a space navy, with merit based promotions and more rationality and challenging physical requirements. It'd be an interesting season seeing a reorganization that brings Star Trek back to it's roots.

If Paramount were really smart, they'd shelve both seasons, delete the files, take the tax write off, pretend the show never happened, and consider it a necessary down payment on winning back Trek fans.

Just checked with grok, and the proposed deal with Iran is very little like the JCPOA, as @JessicaTarlov said it was. No nuclear bomb capability at all. Removal of all existing enriched uranium. No enrichment at all. Bilateral, not multilateral. #TheFive

@Johnny_Joey I thought you were going for America, obviously.

I’ve go one but it’s too… Obivious

@AlbertBrooks It did take an Einstein to make such a genius movie. Thanks!

Defending Your Life was released 35 years ago today!! I think I've conquered at least half of my fears.

@TyDemo92 @travisakers Weren't the inspections under the JCPOA both announced and restricted to a limited number of sites? I'd think #6, requiring a "strict" set of protocols was not a part of the JCPOA as well.

@travisakers Im not for this war, but the truth matters. The only 1 of these 6 that were part of JCPOA was #6. All others are new terms Example: uranium enrichment was allowed up to 3.67% under “Obamas plan”

Trump is literally proposing the same exact plan that President Obama already had in place before Trump ended it.

@cabsav456 Don't misunderstand my point. No foreign government should spend a penny without legal repercussions. I'm just saying that portraying what Russia did as massive (it wasn't) or aggressive (not particularly so) is wrong.

@RoundsR ???? This is a foreign country spending that much. On our elections. Your point about our own country spending billions on candidates is totally irrelevant

Yes, they did. This is an indisputable fact backed by the Mueller Report, all U.S. intel agencies, and the bipartisan (Republican-led) Senate Intel Committee. Russia ran a massive and aggressive operation, spending $1.25 million a month to target Americans. They literally hacked the DNC & Podesta emails, then leaked damaging material via WikiLeaks. This was all confirmed by Marco Rubio & the rest of the Senate Intel Committee back in 2019-2020. None of this is to say that the election was stolen. Trump won fair & square in 2016 and in 2024, and no serious person disagrees with that fact. But to be clear: Russian INTERFERENCE in 2016 is not debatable. Russian COLLUSION between the Trump campaign & the Russians was the hoax.

@EylonALevy Hasn't Iran targeted UK bases in the immediate area and Diego Garcia as well. Does the Secretary think Iran is afraid of angering the European leaders and what they might do? This would be laughable were it not so serious.

If the Iranian regime has already struck Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Iraq, why would European leaders be so insufferably arrogant as to assume it won't hit them too if it has the capabilities?

@shipwreckedcrew I'm curious as to what this post is in reply to.

@rich_goldberg Because they believed the earlier lies and can't change their worldview to reflect being wrong time after time after time.

This is a regime that lied about its nuclear program, lied about its missile program, lied about massacring its population, lied about everything. Why would anyone rely on their claims about how they're doing right now?

@SpencerGuard I think a lot of pundits opining on the war both understand this and choose to ignore it. They'd rather make guesses to appear smart and relevant than admit lack of knowledge. Which means the public is misinformed and led down incongruent paths of belief.

What don't people know about the war in Iran? 🧵

@chicagotribune Rogers Park, Venezuela?

Chicago police have arrested a 25-year-old Rogers Park man in connection with Thursday’s fatal shooting of Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman, according to records obtained by the Tribune. trib.al/rdaP961

@elonmusk Based on the subject matter, "this is insane" means it's perfectly reasonable and normal - in Seattle.

This is insane

@JamesPPinkerton Just wait until the robot-rights NGOs get started. "These robots were conceived here, even if they were built overseas, they should get to vote." They'll probably know more than the average low information voter.

We can have robots, not unskilled immigration, which is never the boon that it's pitched to be.

@Joelmpetlin @sfchronicle @brandeiscenter By incorrectly labeling Brandeis Center as Zionist, they also inadvertently acknowledged the correctness of Zionists - as they essentially won, with UCB adjusting their curriculum and paying their legal expenses.

It wasn't simply an editorial oversight for @sfchronicle to describe @brandeiscenter as "a Zionist organization." It was a deliberately worded signal to Bay Area readers that Brandeis isn't fighting a legitimate civil rights cause, and therefore the litigation was frivolous.

@SenWarren Sure. Completely ignore Iranian proxy Hezbollah and it's actions in Lebanon. Sounds about right for you.

Pay attention to Lebanon. Trump and Netanyahu started a regional war in the Middle East, creating a humanitarian disaster. And now, the Israeli army has killed over 1,000 people in Lebanon—about 20% of them are kids. Congress should not bankroll this escalating war of choice.

Isn't Pelosi retiring? #TheFive