Joe Paulson
@joepaulson2.bsky.social
250 followers 230 following 6.7K posts
I am from NYC and like to read and engage about a range of subjects, including history, the Supreme Court, politics, and the Mets. Let's see how this goes. Pronouns: He/Him. I have much content online including at Joe's Substack and Teach N Thrive.
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joepaulson2.bsky.social
Remember when the #Mets fans said they would rather play the Dodgers in the playoffs than other teams?
joepaulson2.bsky.social
looking more like a Seattle/LA #WorldSeries
joepaulson2.bsky.social
sounds a bit uncomfortable but probably more threatening things out there #BikePorn
oregonian.com
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls Sunday's naked bike ride in protest of the Portland ICE facility and and Trump troop deployment "the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet"

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...
joepaulson2.bsky.social
Conan's sidekick and Strangers With Candy's lead played two key guest roles. The show itself? Not into it. Fun to see them though.
joepaulson2.bsky.social
"In regions around the country, members of Congress turned to federal judges to take public oaths of office in their home districts. The representatives earlier had taken official oaths in Washington when the current session began"

They "had taken official oaths" earlier.
joepaulson2.bsky.social
Elsbeth's season premiere had Stephen Colbert (as a late-night host) and other familiar faces.
joepaulson2.bsky.social
When was "I won't follow an illegal order" a restraint on U.S. military action?
joepaulson2.bsky.social
I would like Sotomayor or Jackson to at least explain their votes more often.
Reposted by Joe Paulson
mmasnick.bsky.social
I seem to recall that it was the biggest 1st Amendment attack in American history when the Biden admin alerted social media companies to some content and said "hey does this violate your policies?" Will Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and (lol) CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss call this out?
Tweet from Pam Bondi: 

Today following outreach from 
@thejusticedept
, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target 
@ICEgov
 agents in Chicago. 

The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.
joepaulson2.bsky.social
They count until those with power determine that person never legitimately held power. 14A, sec. 3, for instance, was effectively nullified by #SCOTUS.
Reposted by Joe Paulson
audrelawdamercy.bsky.social
wrote about last week's super interesting tribal sovereignty decision in Washington Supreme Court

one justice wrote a standalone concurrence basically saying 'the court applied the law correctly, but also the law is terrible and it's our responsibility to say so'
ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...
A Washington State Supreme Court Justice Condemns Federal Indian Law as Racist and Awful
"Each time a court cites a case that has as its foundation such racist fallacies, it is incumbent on us to call out that racism, even if just in a footnote."
ballsandstrikes.org
joepaulson2.bsky.social
"Barrett makes a cogent case for originalism as the correct method of constitutional interpretation."

Originalism is b.s. Sorry. That alone makes it not the "best 'single book' right now “to give to any lay person who wanted to understand #SCOTUS.”

www.scotusblog.com/2025/10/call...
Callais, originalism, and stare decisis
Justice, Democracy, and Law is a recurring series by Edward B. Foley that focuses on election law and the relationship of law and democracy. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new book, […]
www.scotusblog.com
joepaulson2.bsky.social
It appears Kennedy thinks Roper v. Simmons (18 the line for executions) was wrongly decided. He also opposes cameras, but unclear how audio is different. Also, again, lots of courts here and abroad have cameras. We aren't that precious on that point. #SCOTUS

www.scotusblog.com/2025/10/a-di...
A dive into Justice Kennedy’s new memoir
Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy’s memoir, Life, Law and Liberty, comes out today, Oct. 14. Within the next few weeks, SCOTUSblog will publish a review of the book. To whet readers’ […]
www.scotusblog.com
joepaulson2.bsky.social
(The expert argued it was "unfair" to prosecute someone who took part pursuant to Trump saying it was okay. This seems a bit off to me, but I'm not an expert like the person who said it.)
joepaulson2.bsky.social
Why not? Who is going to stop him?

Even the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has praised his efforts.

A thread by an expert seems to suggest "just following orders" will provide a get out of jail free card.

Trump v. U.S. leaves open impeachment. The Reds had a better shot at the World Series.
gregsargent.bsky.social
Trump is no longer even pretending to have any kind of argument that his murdering of people in the Caribbean Sea has any kind of statutory validity. Just straight up declaring that he has quasi-unlimited power to execute people based on (nominal) suspicion.
joepaulson2.bsky.social
Bears with the very rare back-to-back same score and not a common one at that (25-24). #NFL
Reposted by Joe Paulson
pedsortho.bsky.social
Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....
joepaulson2.bsky.social
The conflict was going to wear itself out, at least in the short term, sometime.
joepaulson2.bsky.social
I am not going to praise TRUMP for the ceasefire agreement. What the heck did he do to further it? Did the leader of Israel, who poisoned things for decades (see John Oliver piece) see him as a fellow traveler and that helped somehow? The net result there is probably going to be bad, if so.