CNN Article for the Left

[Ronson]

Biden isn't Trump, so I'm not so worried about the DOJ doing his bidding. But I'm sure you can count on the Senate starting an investigation, whether it's needed or not. Whether it continues will of course depend on the results of the Georgia runoff election.

I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. From the NSA invasion of privacy to cell phone taps to Obama's attacks on the press (via the DOJ), there is more to fear from the statism of the Left than you ever had from Trump.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-...ssay-1.5121514

If you're afraid that there can never be any investigation of the president when the same party holds both Houses of Congress and the White House, now that Trump has busted all the norms, I chalk that up to just one more of the adverse consequences of electing someone like Trump. (If you don't think it can be blamed on Trump, and is just a feature of our political system, feel free to propose what you think should be done about it. Just don't expect it to happen in the next couple of years.)

Private investigations can take place, and probably will. If something serious is uncovered than the DOJ will have no other option than to act.

[Terraceth]

First, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among the majority in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

She (along with Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor) did join part of the majority decision, but the specific portion they joined was when the majority opinion upheld the constitutionality of some of the disclosure requirements, e.g. requiring commercials to say who made it (you know, all of those "<blank> is responsible for the content of this advertisement" things you hear at the end of a political ad). They didn't join any other part of the majority decision.

So they may have technically been "among the majority" but not in a way that really supports your point.

[Starlight]

And you wonder why everyone points and laughs whenever you start pontificating on American politics.

First, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among the majority in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But then given the depth of your understanding of the subject (you likely watched a TYT video and now consider yourself an expert) and the fact you truly believe that the communist dictator Joseph Stalin was a right-winger, you probably think RBG was a Republican.

Sorry moron, but you're utterly wrong as per usual. As per usual I know vastly more about your own country's politics than you do.

The recent SCOTUS decisions overthrowing anti-corruption laws, e.g. Citizens United, McCutcheon, etc. were 5-4 decisions that split the Republican and Democratic appointees, with the Republicans voting together to reject the anti-corruption laws, and the Democratic appointees voting together to uphold them.

As Terraceth notes, the Dems joined only a tiny part of the Citizens United decision - a part that upheld the constitutionality of one of the existing anti-corruption laws. The Dems rejected all the parts that denied the constitutionality of the anti-corruption laws.

Second, absolutely nobody thinks "corruption is free speech." That reading comes from the fetid swamp of your imagination.

First Amendment "free speech" is the underlying part of the constitution that the Republican-appointed judges used as grounds for throwing out the anti-corruption laws. They judged that people paying money in support of politicians was just their speech expressing a liking of those politicians. And that therefore anti-corruption laws violated the first amendment right to free speech.

[Starlight]

It's obviously an opinion piece, and NBC was content to platform it.

You implied it was a left-wing opinion piece because of the publisher. The truth however was that it was a right-wing opinion piece because of the author.

So your representation here of it was inaccurate, and clearly your underlying understanding of what kinds of content NBC platforms is also inaccurate.

[CivilDiscourse]

The funniest thing about Citizens United, is we have Michael Moore to thank for getting the ball rolling. Liberals set the events in motion that lead to one of their most hated court decisions.

[shunyadragon]

I find that hilarious in the saddest way.

Now they say joey needs to clear the air.

I can only point and laugh at these liberals who carried his water.

The people demand this: No one will resond.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States

DISCLOSE Act of 2010

The DISCLOSE Act (S. 3628) was proposed in July 2010. The bill would have amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and establish additional disclosure requirements for election spending. The bill would have imposed new donor and contribution disclosure requirements on nearly all organizations that air political ads independently of candidates or the political parties. The legislation would have required the sponsor of the ad to appear in the ad itself. President Obama argued that the bill would reduce foreign influence over American elections. Democrats needed at least one Republican to support the measure in order to get the 60 votes to overcome GOP procedural delays, but were unsuccessful.^[9][10]

© Copyright Original Source

^{Still waiting . . .}

[CivilDiscourse]

The people demand this: No one will resond.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States

DISCLOSE Act of 2010

The DISCLOSE Act (S. 3628) was proposed in July 2010. The bill would have amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and establish additional disclosure requirements for election spending. The bill would have imposed new donor and contribution disclosure requirements on nearly all organizations that air political ads independently of candidates or the political parties. The legislation would have required the sponsor of the ad to appear in the ad itself. President Obama argued that the bill would reduce foreign influence over American elections. Democrats needed at least one Republican to support the measure in order to get the 60 votes to overcome GOP procedural delays, but were unsuccessful.^[9][10]

© Copyright Original Source

^{Still waiting . . .}

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also expressed opposition in 2010 and 2019 to proposed DISCLOSE Act requirements, arguing that it unnecessarily impinge on free speech rights, subject recipients to "onerous and intrusive disclosure requirements," and adversely impact donor anonymity.

[Starlight]

As for Stalin being left-wing or right-wing, that likely comes from another thread but judging by your Trump-esque attack I would guess that you believe Stalin to have been left-wing. If that is the case, I suggest you give the following Quora topic a read for a good number of decent replies to just that question.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Stalinism-l...-or-right-wing

As the replies to that topic make clear, it totally depends on how a person defines and understands the terms 'right' and 'left' in politics, as to how they label Stalin.

Rogue's understanding of politics is very child-like. He grew up in a world where the Soviet Union were the baddies, and they were 'left-wing', and where America and capitalism were the goodies, and they were 'right-wing'. And that's as far as his not-at-all-nuanced understanding of those terms goes.

The fact that the terms 'right' and 'left' in politics originated far before that era, and that they might have been misused in that era for propaganda purposes, and that the realities of the politics of that era were complex and not captured well by the old 'right' and 'left' terms, appears to be too much complexity and nuance for him to grasp.

My own explanation of the situation, to add to your quora link would be:

Modern computer-analysis of politicians voting patterns on bills reveals there are two axis on which political views are distributed. The computer can't name those axis, but when humans look at what they appear to be, they look like an economic axis and a social issues axis. It's probably news to no one that in politics there's economic issues and there's social policy issues.

There tends to be a correlation between people's views on economic and social issues. People who want lower taxes have a tendency to favor conservative stances on social policy issues, whereas people who want higher welfare spending have a tendency to favor progressive stances on social issues. This can be understood as reflecting the traditional "right-wing vs left-wing" divide. i.e. the right-left continuum is a 1-dimensional line that runs diagonally across the 2-dimensional chart of politics. e.g. here's someone's personal attempt to guess where the parties in Canada in 2019 fell on those two dimensions. I've drawn the diagonal in, and the parties fit very nicely on it or close to it:

Canada2019.jpg

So the 'left vs right' political spectrum appears to describe the parties in Canada in 2019 very well, with NDP apparently being the most left-wing party, and the People's Party apparently being the most right-wing (assuming the person who plotted the parties in 2-d got it correct).

However, if we look at a equivalent graph of Australia in 2013, we can see an issue:

Australia2013.jpg

The Greens are on the "left wing" of the diagonal line, and National / Liberal / One Nation are on the "right wing" end of the diagonal line. But there's an issue with Katter's Australian party - it's not anywhere close to the diagonal. So is it left or right wing? Neither. It has similarities with left wing parties on economic issues and similarities with right wing parties on social issues. And the fact that it didn't fit neatly on the traditional left-wing vs right-wing spectrum was apparent to those involved in it: "Claiming the party did not fit neatly onto a left-right spectrum, party leader Robbie Katter described the party's ideology..." (wiki)

We can see that because the traditional left-right spectrum can be thought of as a 1-d line, and because politics is 2-dimensional, it will be possible that some parties/ideologies don't fall on the traditional right-left line and are outside of the traditional "right-wing" and "left-wing" categories. The two ideologies that occupy the parts of the 2-d box far from the 1-d line are Communism and Libertarianism. In the graphs above, communism would be in the top-left region and libertarianism in the far right or bottom right region.

When communism was invented it was obvious to people, that, like Katter's party, it wasn't fitting properly onto the traditional left-wing right-wing axis. A popular way of explaining the political continuum of that time was as a "horseshoe" in which the left-right continuum bent around so far that the far-left was near to the far-right. Obviously if you plots a horseshoe shape onto those 2-d graphs, you can reach many points that my 1-d diagonal line can't, and hence you can choose to arbitrarily include communism into the left-right spectrum in any way you feel like depending on how you draw your horseshoe. But that would be arbitrary. What the invention of "horseshoe" metaphor shows, however, is that that the people of that time could observe the underlying fact that communism didn't fit properly into their traditional right-left political spectrum, and was in some way different or outside it. Our 2-d plot vs the 1-d line tells us why communism wasn't on the left-right political spectrum. Libertarian and communism are not on the 1-d diagonal line and hence not part of the traditional right-left political spectrum that continues to describe most political parties well to this day. Thus, because Stalin's administration was sitting far from the diagonal line, he was neither "left" nor "right" wing in the way we typically use those terms.

[Starlight]

The funniest thing about Citizens United, is we have Michael Moore to thank for getting the ball rolling. Liberals set the events in motion that lead to one of their most hated court decisions.

Wow, way to pass the buck of responsibility.

"A liberal did something, and conservatives got really angry at the liberal and then did something everyone hates, therefore the liberal is to blame!"

I am amazed at how conservatives in the US never take personal responsibility for anything. If a conservative does something, "a liberal made them angry so it's the liberal's fault", is not how it works. Unless you really want to argue that conservatives have zero self-control and are utterly victims of their feelings and that liberals should know this and thus go out of their way to avoid triggering the helpless victim conservatives just as an adult would be careful with a small baby not to trigger a crying fit?

[Stoic]

Can you explain how lying to the FISA court and altering evidence was by the book?

It wasn't. Do you have any evidence that Obama ordered it?

And yes, I'm familiar where the "by the book" remark comes from -- an email that Sally Rice sent to herself in the final days of the Obama Administration where she repeatedly used that phrase in describing the investigation. An email that has all the earmarks of a CYA attempt of establishing documentation for that claim.

In any case, it's not evidence that Obama had a hand in the investigation.

[Ronson]

You implied it was a left-wing opinion piece because of the publisher. The truth however was that it was a right-wing opinion piece because of the author.

Left or right is determined by the content. But since it was presented by a left-leaning outfit, they obviously didn't object to it.

[Stoic]

I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. From the NSA invasion of privacy to cell phone taps to Obama's attacks on the press (via the DOJ), there is more to fear from the statism of the Left than you ever had from Trump.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-...ssay-1.5121514

I will consider it a plus if Barr is replaced by . . . anyone.

Private investigations can take place, and probably will. If something serious is uncovered than the DOJ will have no other option than to act.

As I said, "I expect the DOJ to investigate any credible allegations."

[CivilDiscourse]

Wow, way to pass the buck of responsibility.

"A liberal did something, and conservatives got really angry at the liberal and then did something everyone hates, therefore the liberal is to blame!"

I am amazed at how conservatives in the US never take personal responsibility for anything. If a conservative does something, "a liberal made them angry so it's the liberal's fault", is not how it works. Unless you really want to argue that conservatives have zero self-control and are utterly victims of their feelings and that liberals should know this and thus go out of their way to avoid triggering the helpless victim conservatives just as an adult would be careful with a small baby not to trigger a crying fit?

Nope, Moore's movie was challenged on the grounds that it was electioneering and violated campaign finance rules. The FEC let it pass. This precedent led Citizens United to believe that their movie "Hillary: The Movie" would be allowed through under the same precedent. When the FEC came to a different conclusion, Citizens united sued the FEC for unfair treatment.

Hence, why I said Liberals set the ball in motion for the court case they didn't like.

[Ronson]

As the replies to that topic make clear, it totally depends on how a person defines and understands the terms 'right' and 'left' in politics, as to how they label Stalin.

And you just got through claiming you know more about American politics than an American?

In this country, right now (since terms evolve) Left and Right in politics is used to describe how one supports the size and scope of government. And since Stalin ruled over a state where the government owned everything, it was about as far "Left" and one could travel. Going to the extreme in the other direction would be anarchy.

How the terms are used in NZ apparently is not how they are used here.

[Starlight]

In this country, right now (since terms evolve) Left and Right in politics is used to describe how one supports the size and scope of government.

That is some people's definition of those terms, in every country. It is not an official American definition. And not all Americans share that definition. It's most common in libertarian circles, which, I note, are pretty small bubbles. So your strong adherence to that definition probably reflects your own libertarian brainwashing plus your lack of knowledge of American views outside your libertarian bubble.

It is also not a good definition as it has a tendency to apply much more strongly to the economic axis alone and apply poorly or not at all to the social issues axis. e.g. same-sex marriage, abortion, etc are difficult to link to the size and scope of government, or can be linked in different and arbitrary ways depending on which view on them the person wants to claim is big government and which view is small government.