I would like the members of this court to read it and say, “Oh, not a bad point. Not a bad point.’
Thomas and Alito:
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Oh, everyone exaggerates on their profiles just a little. So you meet someone who says they want to go back to the 1950s and they really mean the 1850s…that’s dating, what do you expect?
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The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that, on its face, appears to set a double standard for Donald Trump and every other private citizen in this country.
On Monday, the nation’s conservative-majority high court upheld a ban preventing former New Mexico official Couy Griffin from running for office within the state again due to his specific criminal history: In 2022, Griffin was convicted on misdemeanor offenses for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, ultimately costing him his job as county commissioner.
WTF
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I think it’s consistent, maybe not right, but consistent. A state can ban a candidate from state offices or elections, but not from federal. I have to wonder if this could apply to certain congresscritters, given that they are, in fact, state elections, not federal ones. 
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US Supreme Court justices, judges face new rules for disclosing free trips
U.S. Supreme Court justices and federal judges can no longer avoid disclosing the value of travel-related gifts they receive by classifying such free trips as “reimbursements” on their financial disclosure forms under new regulations now in effect.
The regulations, announced by the federal judiciary late on Friday, follow revelations that conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had not disclosed luxury trips paid for by a wealthy benefactor.
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Gotta think “reimbursements” is not inaccurate, just reflects an illegal practice.
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Nah, put him the one place his cultists would never think to look for him: in the county jail.
They should be prohibited from doing official business exclusively on private social media, IMO. If as an example a school principal or superintendent wants to post on the school’s Facebook wall that school is closed for a snow day that’s fine, but they should also be required to distribute that information in other ways (TV news, radio, school’s website, direct email or texts to parents, etc.) In that case if a parent gets belligerent towards the principal or superintendent on Facebook they can be banned from the school’s page but they can still get all the official information through other channels.
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I respectfully disagree. The nature of different communication platforms and media means there will be a difference in the message and risk some people being locked out of some detail based on whether they have an account. And the current real problem is that there is information from public officials in their official capacity on social media unavailable from other sources.
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I can’t tell you how many times people complain in city council meetings or any other type of community gathering about “not being informed” even though relevant information had been posted in newspapers, local news sites and on even highway sign boards. Public officials walling off information is not a good thing.
Texas city and county gummint have perfected this “we put the information out there as required” theater. Any gaps in the process of their doing their political and financially-rewarding business can be supplemented with message shaping and the manufacturing of consent, which is itself more theater.
All of this performative bs is not worth a bucket of warm spit, to borrow a phrase from Lyndon Baines Johnson.
ETA:
This “process” is furthered by the gutting of local newspapers, local news orgs, and mad scramble to make ends meet that most 2-job workers live through every day.
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I understand your concern. But perhaps this potential lack of uniformity could be remedied (at least partially) with rules about what information must be provided for certain types of communications regardless of how the communications are distributed, or perhaps even a standard template for those types of communications that again is distribution method-agnostic.
As an example, a snow day announcement is generally pretty simple: which school or schools are closed / delayed opening / doing early dismissal, what the impact is on bus schedules (no buses, buses picking up X hours late, or buses dropping off X hours early), and what the impact is on extracurricular activities.
Having the exact same text shared both on social media (Facebook, X, etc.) as well as other channels (on the school website, via radio, via direct text or email) would broaden the distribution of a uniform message. [TV broadcasts via a ticker on the bottom of the screen face some bandwidth constraints that could require streamlining of the message.]
As long as the body of the message is the same (which is detectable by people with access to two or more of the distribution methods) does it matter how you got the information? And if the body of the message does differ, does the principal or superintendent have a valid reason (like the TV ticker’s limited bandwidth) for the difference?
I think the problem is, by the time this filters down to the local level, who is accountable and who is holding them accountable for following these guidelines? Because they aren’t following them now and they aren’t being held accountable for it.
It just makes it a lot easier to apply uniformly if there is a simple and firm rule, applied across the board in the US, that public officials can’t use social media to communicate official business. That way the public can hold them accountable with no weaseling out of it.
Not to mention, we don’t need public officials propping up Xitter or Fbook. No thanks.
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I mean, this ruling is absurd to the point that it opens up future Courts to revisit everything that has been ruled under Roberts.
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I thought that was squarely in federal jurisdiction, but what do I know?
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But remember, according to Barrett, we need to “turn down the temperature…”
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