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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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Excerpt:

It’s extremely difficult to square this ruling with the text of Section 3 [of the Fourteenth Amendment]. The language is clearly mandatory. The first words are “No person shall be” a member of Congress or a state or federal officer if that person has engaged in insurrection or rebellion or provided aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution. The Section then says, “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.”

In other words, the Constitution imposes the disability, and only a supermajority of Congress can remove it. But under the Supreme Court’s reasoning, the meaning is inverted: The Constitution merely allows Congress to impose the disability, and if Congress chooses not to enact legislation enforcing the section, then the disability does not exist. The Supreme Court has effectively replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office — a supermajority vote by Congress — with the lowest bar imaginable: congressional inaction.

This is a fairly easy read for the legal layperson, and the best general overview I've seen yet that sets forth the various legal and constitutional factors involved in today's decision, including the concurring dissent by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson.

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[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 2 points 8 months ago

A civil war between what forces? An arm of the US military and a small fragment of the population rilled up enough to attempt human wave tactics?

It might lead to a ton of scholastic violence, maybe riots and some attempts on public figures from random idiots...

But let's assume people go charging out armed into the streets and get organized

But there's something important to think about. We have a "just in time" food distribution system. Grocery stores would be empty in a couple weeks if food deliveries are stopped, say by blockading roads. The US government and military keeps ungodly amounts of food supplies stashed around strategically too...

The only way it could happen is if part of the military attempted a coup. That requires a split at the top. Plenty of grunts might defect, but grunts aren't going to do a lot. You need to take entire military bases to keep aircraft running and to get that nice information asymmetry.

We're living fragile, interconnected lives at the end of the Anthropocene.

We can't have a civil war. We're incapable of it.

We could have a little chaos for a few days, it might even be a wakeup call

this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024

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