#just in case it's ever relevant to a case

[contemplatingoutlander]

"Once a constitutional crisis becomes an endemic condition, the term no longer usefully describes our collapsing system. Instead, we live in an era of constitutional failure when the relevant institutions cannot fulfill their responsibilities."

—Jack Rakove, PhD, the Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science and (by courtesy) law, emeritus, at Stanford University.

The historian Jack Rakove makes a chilling case that we are now beyond calling what is happening with the Trump administration a "constitutional crisis." Rakove claims that what we are experiencing now is a "constitutional failure." Below are some excerpts.

The idea that the United States awaits some dread constitutional crisis has become commonplace. For lawyers, such a crisis would likely involve Donald Trump’s administration defying the Supreme Court on some critical ruling. [...] Such scenarios are not unfounded, but they do not diagnose our true malady. Our ongoing constitutional crisis began with the presidential election last November 5. Reelecting an individual culpable for January 6 who has twice made a mockery of the presidential oath of office is itself a constitutional crisis. Nothing in his past or current behavior suggests that Trump has ever felt fidelity to his constitutional duties.

Once a constitutional crisis becomes an endemic condition, the term no longer usefully describes our collapsing system. Instead, we live in an era of constitutional failure when the relevant institutions cannot fulfill their responsibilities.

Because constitutional failure is a term we have never needed to use, it merits a precise definition. First, it must identify the specific situations where the government institutions have manifestly not fulfilled their constitutional functions. Second, it should treat these omissions not as occasional lapses but systemic defects. Third, it must explain how the political and ethical norms of constitutional governance have evaporated.

To apply this framework to the second Trump administration is hardly difficult. The only problem is where to begin. Consider its authoritarian reliance on executive orders to vitiate legally established government activities, its attempt to intimidate institutions outside of government to do its bidding, and its insistence that servile loyalty to the president outweighs fidelity to constitutional norms. That some commentators describe this last practice as the "Führerprinzip"—the Nazi principle that the will of the leader transcends all legal norms—tells us everything.

Deciding whether the Constitution is failing requires asking if and why the other two branches of government have been remiss in checking a rogue executive.

[moonknighttism]

okay this time i’m not trying to defend a borderline indefensible retcon, listen to me. fuckin grips you by the shoulders. listen to me. 8-ball deserves this.

he’s trying his best. he’s pathetic. he’s babygirl. he’s everything.

just look at him taking a bubble bath

he’s wearing his stupid fucking hat! he’s singing a johnny cash song about playing pool and he’s doing it a capella! he answers his phone with a silly little catchphrase! also moon knight has his fucking cell phone number!

or even just his first appearance in mk, absolutely getting his shit rocked IMMEDIATELY

(cropped to just show 8-ball relevant bits because the rest is badr being oblique and this isnt about him)

in his defense badr is not actually a civilian, but still. he is a total fucking wimp on every conceivable level, he has never won a fistfight, the first thing he ever says in mk (aside from “AAAAGGHHHH!”) is wait no please don’t cut my face off!

bonus: if he makes this round and probably even if he doesn’t i will make a post showing all the different ways it turns out a pool ball can emote, because for the uninitiated (and in case the bath thing didn’t make it obvious) we wears that thing all. the. fucking. time. and you would be shocked at how many feelings a pool ball can have.

[bloodysparklez]

i'm obsessed with nikki's completely disproportionate response to this situation lmao

giovanni: mansplain manipulate manslaughter

nikki "gentle parenting is always the solution" lastname: how about MANNERS

[teratomatica]

you always land on all fours

[xxplastic-cubexx]

waiting for marvel to take you up as their comic artist so that we can have amazing art with cherik official storyline

marvel hire me to draw professor x and magneto making out sloppy style for forty issues straight you will get a BAJILLION dollars i promise

[kasarian]

Hi! I see you reblogged an OC ask game. Can I please ask for number 4. Does your OC have any scars or tattoos? You can do this for any OC you like, or more than just one. Hope you're having a good day ^_^

HI NAGI!! tysm for sending in an ask!! i wanted to draw more of my ocs but this is the most energy ive got in me for today waaah

Mela and Hiraya (and ther dad, Orbit) respectively! All my ocs have scars but I really wanted to show these two off bc of how prominent their scars are visually!

Mela has a sort of... lichtenburg + fractal wood burning scars on top of what is a literal burning marks on her hands and forearms! It's due to magic, and for those that don't know, Mela is a nature spirit! Tree girl! anything that burns affects her more harshly (physically) than those that don't. Her being literal wood mostly affects her extremities when it comes to magic :3 that's why her body can heal like a typical human body.

Hiraya, her younger brother, has a bunch of scars that I know comes from manual labor, training, and childhood shenanigans. The one on his eyebrow comes from an unfortunate careless childhood run in involving the kitchen, his growing horns and being uncoordinated. Lip comes from fighting during his teen years of people who wanted to eliminate his dad and Hira wanted to protect him, the ones on his arms, also training and fighting!

[spark-circuit]

welp. looks like i have big plans this weekend.

[all-pacas]

thinking suddenly of how chase was forced to be a caregiver and parent and take care of his mother and sister and resented them for it, hated them for it, how 20 years later he clearly is not over it at all, how he tries to deal with his problems alone, shutting people out (cursed. the mistake. the tyrant. chase.) because he doesn't believe people will want to help him, or at least that care and love are finite resources, that he will run out and be left alone.

(thinking also about how cameron views care as something of a necessary burden, how her husband's death made her miserable, how the death of her patient in one day one room left her miserable, how her lung cancer patient in acceptance left her miserable. how she frames it as important, necessary, that people should not die forgotten or alone, but she never takes any pride or joy in this: for all that she might be glad her husband didn't die alone, the grief warped and affected her for years; she never walks away unaffected or proud of her work but miserable, burnt out, terrified. how the only real difference between chase's burnout and cameron's is that she keeps choosing it, as some kind of penance or atonement or something: cameron is a martyr but never a happy one, and yet she, i think, wouldn't understand chase's misery over the same thing. it was always her choice. it was always important.)

and thinking also of thirteen and chase talking in s6. about how when thirteen's mother was dying, her father had an affair. chase commiserates: how heartless of him. thirteen counters: she's glad he wasn't alone. she knows she is dying, too. she knows someone will someday be helping her at that moment, how she hopes whoever is burdened with her care isn't alone. has someone else. isn't in a position like chase had to be. how she doesn't romanticize it, but how when it was her brother, she was alone, she tried to deal with it alone, how it almost broke her and then… she told chase. how it wasn't just about i did a murder, me too, but about that burden. that pain. how even if it was out of love, even if it was something she decided (like cameron decided), it tore thirteen apart. no one should be alone for that, she tells chase, and then a year later is alone for that.

i don't have any real conclusions here but - something about how much chase and thirteen's friendship means to me, i guess. how their lives are on such parallel tracks, how they do things and hate themselves for it and take on familial trauma and hate themselves for it and how they mask with drinking and partying and casual sex (and hate themselves for it). no one should deal with that alone, she says, and eventually they aren't, because they can offer it to one another.

[nexus-nebulae]

love watching weather science videos but like. why am i 1000x more interested in tornadoes over hurricanes. they're both spinning air

[definitionsfading]

have this weird tinhatter hunch recently but I feel like GO S3 as an experience/era is going to be as revelatory for Michael and David's relationship, as it is for Aziraphale and Crowley's (obviously in some vastly differing ways, because this is reality vs. fiction)

something is brewing but I don't know what it is. I have historically not bought into rpf rhetoric for these two because of how bugfuck crazy it can get at times, but things feel....different, lately. Michael has been openly talking so much recently about his queer-coded identity or foundational experiences in the media and he CANNOT keep David's name out of his mouth. he specifically speaks about David more than literally anybody else; his partner, his children, his other coworkers, anybody. maybe it's coincidental or nothing out of the ordinary and I'm reading too much into imaginary subtext, but I'm really curious to see how things potentially develop over the next year or two as they film and promo S3 of the show. I did mention a few months back that Michael is coming up on his second Saturn return in the next 2ish years (age 57-60), and I think that will certainly pose an interesting hinge for anything pertinent to swivel on, especially if we don't see S3 of the show until 2027.

[dreams-and-honor]

FUGG, Lighter's banner is the one after this one NOT THAT I CARE OR ANYTHING, but @adoredbyalatus @dearly-beeloved would you guys be interested in me streaming ZZZ in the next few days?

[teh-nos]

okay look i have a vision. i need you to understand my vision.

i am sorry if my vision is too exciting for you. this is the price i accept for being correct about everything.

[rosetta-stoned-bitch]

the fact that taylor not only announced an album called the tortured poets department on grammys which btw resembles the name of group chat in which joe alwyn was in but also dragged a known zionist lana del rey on stage after winning aoty and talked about how she impacted young artists during an ongoing genocide is just not sitting right to me. like, there's already so much hate against joe alwyn who has done nothing but stay silent after all the death threats, god only knows how much it will increase after her new album.

also, the fact that the term poets will be associated with her album rather than dead poets society is just not disappointing

Honestly, I've never cared about Grammys. And while I used to be a swiftie (ik, bleurghhh, everyone makes mistakes at 19, mine just happened to be a white billionaire instead of a boy 🤢), it is now difficult to care about her enough to even hate her.

But the fact that she chooses to stay silent I'm the face of genocide, with allllll this affluence that she's acquired over the years and with no threat to her actual career (let's be fr, who's gonna fire her? She works for herself ffs). And then she brings on stage an actual zionist supporter.... There really is no hope for this punk rock billionaire, at this point I feel bad for her exes.

[violentlydefending]

KEEP LIVING, ICHI............

[abyssalpriest]

Damnit lev lmfao. I was thinking about Shiva wearing corpse ash being resonant for other reasons, something about his relationship with the Bright Skinned Ones and death and whatever. No, no. More fucking importantly: Oh I wonder why Shiva is known for. you know. wearing bodies. his appearance is a mass of bodies joined together. yeah

[gorvamp]

if you saw me rambling about wizardess heart again. no you didn't. i meant to save that to drafts