The 8th Amendment bars "cruel and unusual punishment." They didn't write a list of punishments that were OK and those that weren't. Ditto capacious terms like "due process."

They set out concepts, not specific lists. If you wrote an office dress code in 2000 that said employees "must wear appropriate professional dress" would you expect everyone in 2026 to dress like they did in 2000? In 2000 it might've meant a suit. Now it might mean a collared shirt. Sure, jean shorts would be out in any era just the rack and screw would've been out in any era.

In the founding era they might've thought that a public flogging until the prisoner passed out is OK. Now we wouldn't.

Segregated schools were fine in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment. Should that mean that segregated schools are fine now?

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"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

from that to address my q. Looks to be close!

eliminating the filibuster could make it materially more difficult for Dems to get back into power for the foreseeable future. Starting with SAVE.

solution. He said he won't approve TSA without SAVE and Thune is basically saying we will do it by reconciliation and then when the parliamentarian rejects it, they will wave their hands and call it a day or blow up the filibuster.

The question is how long Thune has before Trump calls for him to be replaced if he does not blow up filibuster for SAVE Act. Trump does not care about the Dems not having to comply with filibuster when next in power, but guys like Thune do.

This may be rhetorical, but why is it so hard to find media that is willing to continually bring forth truth out of all the gaslighting?

I think mail in for any reason is more popular in Western states, particularly CA, and those states significantly lean Dem anyways. I bet within certain states, the difference is less between the parties. It is just so sad the right and some media continue to refer to SAVE as a Voter ID bill, when it is all about suppression.

As you can imagine, vote by mail dropped from pandemic era elections, but it's still quite popular. Democrats vote by mail more often, but GOP registered voters utilize vote by mail quite significantly.

The partisan divide in mail voting continued, with
more Democrats than Republicans utilizing this
method, although the gap narrowed because of
declining usage among Democrats.
» Thirty-seven percent of Democrats
reported voting by mail, compared to 24%
of Republicans. This is a decrease from
60% for Democrats and 32% for Republi-
cans in 2020

I think it's interesting that the GOP rate decreased far less signficantly than the Dem rate in 2024.

https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2025-07/HowWeVotedIn2024.pdf

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Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

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“In my view, the ratified text is the law. People enact law as they understand that law to be and as it will govern the governed. So I am an originalist because I think it’s the right way to think about the law.” - Amy Coney Barrett

Certainly not a proponent of a “living constitution” but I’ve always viewed her as more of a textualist than an originalist- at least as compared to someone like Thomas. She lives and dies by the idea that it’s Congress’s right and obligation to make the laws and if they do a shit job of it, it’s not her job to “fix” it.

How many facets of life in America would be better right now if this was SOP everywhere? Pampered fucking scumbags.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/24/delta-airlines-congress-dhs-shutdown-tsa.html

I would pay $500/month for that newsletter.

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why ICE was sent to airports.

As Trump keeps bumbling toward the midterms, flipping the Senate looks more and more realistic (though I refuse to get my hopes too high). I think the House is all but assured, it's just a question of margin.

I thought: Here comes MattG! It's like your bat signal (in a good way).

each Party votes mail in?

Seems like a lot of Trumpers in key R states (GA, NC) would vote Trumper.

I am thinking of old rural white people. But there are rural blacks as well.

But it seems like the Federalist Papers would be the go to.

Then again Hamilton and Madison wanted a strong Central Government, right?

Then again again, they wanted strong protections versus tyrannical governments.

This is high school stuff, but the basic are the basics.

I know they put crazy crap in it just for political theater to hide what I assume is only worse changes, but seriously do we reallly want to put at risk ~70+ million voters?

I cant think of a more blatantly worse attempt to screw America over for decades.

FWIW, did you know Project 2025 specifically calls for the privatization of TSA? And that the goal is to break TSA’s union? So really the Trump admin doesnt give a damn about fixing the TSA issue? Instead they want to claim TSA is unfixable and privatize the whole thing?

These really are horrible people running this admin. Its like the worst of late 1800/ early 1900 robber barons trying to break up unions by killing people.

Really, the entire conservative judiciary has adopted it. Because it's a killer trick. You start by saying that the original documents are silent on the question presented (because if the law is clear, why are we here?)\

Then you say that the governmental action is question is either 1) not explicitly granted or 2) not explicitly proscribed by the constitution or whatever statute you're examining.

Then you get to claim the mantle of the Founding Fathers and say OF COURSE they wanted the government to have this power, or else they would have said they couldn't do that.

It gets trickier when the law says the opposite of what you want it to say. But the right-wingers figured it out. You basically do a seance and claim that isn't really what the founders meant in 1821 or whatever, based on contemporaneous writing that you cherry pick from some guy in England that they used to look up to for legal purposes.

But how far do they take Originalism? What you just stated is way to far and stupid. And who on the Court is an Originalist?

Scalia was.

Thomas and Gorsuch?

I guess others are but a matter of degree?

Do they use originalism to overturn precedent?

sorry, I am pretty ignorant on this.

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are delivered before or after Election Day.

had a 21% swing (yes, twenty one percent) from R to D from the 2024 election.

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here they are discussing how the Union army voted in the Civil War. Who f*cking cares?

If one takes it utterly seriously, we shouldn't have mail-in ballots at all. After all, if there's Election "Day" why allow votes cast before it?

The concept is to prevent states from having presidential and congressional elections months apart. Letting ballots come in that are post-marked after election day doesn't hurt anything.

I like voting by mail because I can sit down and research the down-ballot candidates and issues. A lot of Nebraska races are nominally non-partisan but the candidates have starkly different positions.

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"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

But there's no good reason beyond a Sam Alito fever dream why ballots postmarked by Election Day shouldn't count. I don't care how many MAGA brains are broken by the idea of the apparent outcome changing as legitimate votes are, you know, tabulated.

Thune might also punt on the SAVE Act until after the Easter recess.

I'm reading that as probably still dead. No Democrats are going to change their vote, no, not even Fetterman.

On the SCOTUS and mail-in voting, the decision in the Mississippi case does not ban mail-in voting at all. It addresses if ballots can be counted if received after election day.

It affects the 14 states that allow it:

Alaska
California
Illinois
Maryland
Massachusetts
Mississippi
Nevada
New Jersey
New York
Oregon
Texas
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia

but then I started to see tweets quoting Thune talking about it as a legit possibility. I'm already worked up about the SCOTUS oral arguments yesterday and their seeming willingness to upend mail-in voting.

“It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation,” tweeted Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the act’s sponsor. “And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible.’”

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/why-the-gops-newest-plan-to-pass-save-ameri...

through reconciliation? How the fuck is that possible?