I believe the politically correct term is “Women”. They tend to bitch a lot when you call them “birds”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “No”.

It’s already available and parents are not utilizing it.

The parents have determined that it’s not needed. They’ve determined that trying to strictly regulate exactly what Little Johnny can and can’t see online does him far more harm than porn ever could. This hyper-authoritarian nonsense needs to die in a fire.

“If I do attend, I get killed.

I think he meant that literally.

She’s an M.E. therefore I trust her to be competent on this point.

Is she also a lawyer?

Her medical qualifications are entirely irrelevant to the question at hand.

Pretty sure the nuclear plant will provide significantly more heat. I mean, those giant cooling towers are specifically designed to unload heat into the atmosphere.

Octane is basically irrelevant to the issue of ethanol. The relevant issue is that gasoline (ethanol-free) has a specific energy of 47.3 MJ/kg, while ethanol has a specific energy of 29.7 MJ/kg. You need 1.6 gallons of ethanol to get the same energy as a gallon of gasoline.

Fucking red-button mindset.

Gen X grew up with daily exposure to the highest levels of lead in their environment. Boomers had the second highest. Their mothers smoked and drank while pregnant. These generations are more brain damaged than any before or since.

Only the oldest Millennials can even remember leaded gasoline, and it was off the market long before they learned to drive. Zeds are obnoxious, but they aren’t wrong. The sooner they engage with politics, the better.

Asymptomatic. Correct. You just agreed with the doctor that she was not displaying symptoms of Hantavirus.

Like the other 95% of asymptomatic people on board, she was already under quarantine. Like all of them, she was already being treated as an asymptomatic carrier.

That’s a very, very good point, but not the one you think it is.

Of the ~240 people aboard the vessel, 100% are experiencing symptoms of “anxiety”, while about 5% have been identified as also experiencing “Hantavirus”.

Everyone aboard is quarantined, and regularly being interviewed by medical personnel to determine if they are symptomatic. Did she initially report virus symptoms along with the anxiety affecting everyone? Or did the virus symptoms appear later?

“Ma’am, even though you have reported no symptoms indicating you have contracted the virus, we’re going to go ahead and say you have it.”

^ much more problematic diagnosis.

What were the specific symptoms she reported to the doctors?

If I go to the doctor and I report “I’m feeling generally nervous and a little scared”, I would expect the doctor to respond “That sounds like anxiety”.

If I report “I’m having a worsening cough, and body aches”, I’d expect “That sounds like a viral infection”.

If I were to report “I had a cough several days ago, but it has disappeared. I’m feeling generally nervous and a little scared”, should the doctor listen to what I am saying and conclude “anxiety”? Or should they focus solely on the symptom I reported in decline and conclude “virus”?

correct, that’s called regulation.

It’s called “invading children’s privacy”, but ok. Paxton is a scumbag, but even a broken clock…

California and Colorado respond to such data mining not by suing them to stop, but by requiring them to do it.

Shit.

I feel you didn’t address my point.

No matter the size of the court, on 5-year terms, the president will be replacing 20% of the court each year. At the end of his first, 4-year presidential term, he’s replaced 80% of the court.

Every presidential election I can remember has involved some sort of challenge in the courts, and many of those challenges have been elevated to SCOTUS. With your 5-year plan, every SCOTUS decision relating to presidential elections will be made by a court consisting of 80% to 100% of appointees made by the incumbent president.

Why would we want this situation to exist?

This is pretty close to my thinking as well: just keep adding members on a set schedule; don’t fill vacated seats. (I’d add one seat at the end of the first and third year of the presidential term, to keep this process as far away from the presidential and midterm elections as possible.)

The only major difference is that I would not use emergency sessions to reconstitute the court! I would strongly isolate the court from politicization.

The foundation of my plan would be to establish a formal “line of succession” to SCOTUS. We have 13 circuit courts of appeal, each with a chief judge. Those chief judges, in order of seniority, are the first in the line of succession. Next, every other appeals court judge, in order of seniority.

Every one of these judges has been through a Senate confirmation. They are pre-approved. If every SCOTUS justice dies from a Hantavirus outbreak, the next court has already been selected, without needing to expose the court to the political process.

This line of succession offers some other possibilities as well. When it comes time to appoint a new justice, the president can name anyone they want, and the Senate can confirm. But, we can say that the first 26 (2 * number of circuit courts) in the line of succession are pre-confirmed and don’t require an additional confirmation to be named to the bench. The Senate can fairly consider the president’s preferred, younger nominee, or the president can ram one of these 26 senior candidates down the Senate’s throat. The president has a veto-proof pool of candidates that the Senate can’t play games with.

The line of succession also offers the possibility of temporary elevations for specific purposes. Suppose most/all of the justices are conflicted and forced to recuse themselves from a particular case. The line of succession allows us to elevate temporary replacement justices for this case. This would allow an ad hoc supreme court to hear cases involving, say, SCOTUS ethics.

With 9 justices, that’s a new justice appointed every ~7 months. Are you sure Trump should be putting 7 people on a 9-seat court right before that court will be hearing issues related to the next presidential election?

Don’t assign a set number of seats. Whenever a justice dies, their seat dies with them.

Add one justice every two years, at the end of the first and third year of the presidential term. Every president gets to add exactly two justices per term. This timing pushes the decision as far away from an election as possible.

To further depoliticize the process, I would formally establish a “line of succession” for the court. This line would start with the chief judges of each of the 13 circuit appeals courts, then continue with every other judge in the appeals courts, in order of seniority.

Everyone in the line of succession has been previously confirmed by the Senate to their appellate court seats. To limit the games the Senate can play, I would not require an additional Senate confirmation if the candidate is one of the first 26 in the line of succession. The president can unilaterally elevate any of those 26 to SCOTUS (but, these are the oldest candidates available. They are at the pinnacle of their careers; they can be expected to serve terms measured in months, not decades. The president is not going to want to name one of these geriatrics.)

If a new justice hasn’t been added by the 18th/30th month of the president’s term, the next in the line of succession is permanently elevated to SCOTUS. This deadline keeps the appointment process at least 6 months away from an election.

The “line of succession” also suggests a way for the court to be apolitically reconstituted in case of a disaster. If the court falls below 5 members, the next in the line is automatically elevated.

Further, it provides a means for a case to be heard even if all sitting justices are conflicted and compelled to recuse themselves. If fewer than 5 members of the court are eligible to hear a particular case, the next in the line of succession is temporarily elevated for that case. In a case where SCOTUS ethics rules are under scrutiny, the case may be heard entirely by temporary members.

I just read an argument that he can run for VP. The problem is a difference in language between the 12th and the 25th amendments.

The 25th says nobody can be elected to president more than twice. It does not say that a person is ineligible to be president, only that they can’t be elected to the office.

A two-term former president is not prohibited from being named the Speaker of the House, or to any other office in the line of succession. That two term former President cum Speaker is not constitutionally ineligible from becoming president again. If all offices in the line ahead of him are vacant, he is eligible to retake the office.

The 12th amendment says: “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

It doesn’t say anything about being “elected”.

As he would be theoretically eligible to become president via the line of succession, he is not actually ineligible to be president again. Therefore, he is not ineligible to run for VP, with a running mate who runs on a platform of “I’ll resign on day one”.