Since Torie dislikes Thatcher polls.

The Committee debate is the SoIA's issues all over again. "It just needs a chance." "We just need to find more for it to do." "All it takes is the right people." We keep shoving more and more onto Committees plates, without any regard for if they're actually useful or not, and with very very very few exceptions, they've been an outright hindrance at worst and a pointless layer of bureaucracy at best. At least streamlining them down to two might result in more fights over seats and more interest in doing things, as opposed to the current situation.

Also, instead of immediately removing people from their positions, why not just do with the President/Vice President/Senators that manage to violate this Amendment the same way you're proposing we deal with inactive Justices? Just throw them into an immediate impeachment vote. I'd be much more likely to support this during ratification if it was built in that way, instead. I'm sure others would be as well.

[two]

I would prefer to keep judicial reform in a separate Amendment, but if we're going to include it, I think it should be a bit more strict than that and more specific (the deliverer of the opinion could easily just lie and claim one of the Justices agreed or dissented, so the last part of this should require separate posting to verify their involvement):

Whenever a Justice of the Supreme shall have failed to participate in the two consecutive rulings issued by said court, an article of impeachment shall be automatically placed before Senate in accordance with Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution and thus considered accordingly.

Participation in a case shall be determined by whether or not the Justice joined, concurred, dissented or recused himself in the case thread, by individual public post, for that particular case.

[Announcement.]

Announcement.

Hi guys! As the Senate session has finally started to get underway in earnest, in the next few days I will write up and deliver a State of the Union speech (since we never get any of those!) in the Atlas Fantasy Elections board, detailing my thoughts on my term thus far, how things are going in the Senate, and what I hope to accomplish with my remaining month-and-three-quarters in office.

In the meantime: Senators, get to work!

I was an idiot kid when I first joined. I don't think this site changed me so much as going away to college, when I broke free from my home and really saw how the rest of the country lived. I suppose I became more compassionate for my fellow man.

I'd say I am a much better person today than when I joined this site 9 years ago. That said, I still have a lot of work to do.

I think this is basically how I feel in terms of how I've changed since I joined Atlas. My politics haven't shifted, they've just been fleshed out. I, as a person, however, have grown up and decided I have little interest in putting on a show or acting like an idiot.

In terms of what about Atlas has changed me, Atlasia probably had the biggest impact on my personal shift in attitude, as I know it probably did for you, too. I just don't have the patience for the drama as I used to, the stress gets to me too easy, and that place can actually really hurt and bring out the worst in people. I don't have an appetite for that these days just in general. I just want to be myself, fight for what I think is the right thing to do, no matter whose toes I step on in the process, and leave it at that.

As a person, I've probably gotten a hell of a lot more boring because of that, and that's just fine. After many years here, I guess I just don't feel like I have to prove myself to anyone anymore. I try to be what is seemingly a rare thing on the internet: a real person. If I was too simple and one-note, I'd be a caricature.

I've really not dramatically changed on much, I've just become more informed and improved my writing skills. I've taken more positions on issues I was formerly ambivalent on due to gaining more knowledge and seeing more events unfold (like gun control), so that's basically the only way I've "evolved" in my time here. The only issue I can think of doing a complete turnaround on has been European Union. The core of my beliefs have remained the same, they've just become more comprehensive and thought out.

I've matured in my beliefs, but they haven't really changed.

Those numbers aren't that good for anyone, really.

Why administration should cooperate? Even if they hide nothing, Republicans will claim they forced the employees which testimonied to lie.

Supposedly the Administration already shared the emails that Boehner is now demanding be released, in a meeting that Boehner refused to attend.

Oh, and this might be the best excuse yet: so maybe the administration did screw up big time. That doesn't matter because Republicans/conservatives were "wrong" about other things. Now that one makes sense.

This was, of course, not at all what I said.

I said that, it's entirely possible there is something buried in there that was a huge blunder or maybe even there is some grand conspiracy at work. There's no real evidence of that, but I'm willing to grant that anything's possible with anything.

Whether or not that is the case, though, it should be understandable why a lot of people view this within the context of all the other "scandals" that have been brought up about this Administration, or just Obama personally, in the last five years. The boy Republican who cried wolf scandal, etc. That has nothing to do with whether or not something happened, because we're schmucks who don't know, but merely understanding the reaction to these never-ending 'investigations.'

Sure, I suppose they could be cooperating more, and yes, I supported looking into all of this and understanding more of what happened since there was a lot of confusion at first (Democrat or Republican), but after 8 months I struggle to think of what more remains to be said.

The PLQ is a horror movie villain that never dies.

Like I said earlier about this, this whole show is an investigation in search of something worth investigating. The most anyone has come up with after 8 months of non-stop freaking out about it is that Administration talking points shifted around a few times in the immediate aftermath of the attack, and some organizations weren't communicating that well with the knowledge of other organizations.

These things are neither substantive, or even anything new, because this is all stuff that the Obama Administration admitted happened in the weeks after the attack or that was uncovered within the first month. Since then, no one can answer what the point of all of this is, except to come up with hypotheticals. "Well what if there was a cover up?" "What if something serious happened?" "What if there was gross incompetence at work?" "What if the government was up to something evil?" There's no consensus on what the hell is actually being investigated or what they hope to find, except that they're all 100% convinced that it's something incomprehensibly sinister.

And even if for the sake of argument there was something actually buried in this whole thing worth holding people to the fire for, the Republican Party and the Conservative movement more broadly have so blown their credibility in the last five years when it comes to coming up with Obama scandals. They have cried wolf about 18,000 times now and 99.975% of those scandals were forgettable or fake.

They can't let anything go, both because they're insane when it comes to trying to find things to go after Obama with (they haven't held 40 Obamacare repeal votes because they actually think they're going to get somewhere), and also because, let's be honest, this is all they have. Like Brittain said, this Administration is squeaky clean compared to the last one, and they're bound and determined to find a world-shattering scandal that so far hasn't existed. More than that, though, they have no likable or compelling leaders or policies to sell to the public. So the only thing left is fear; of the conspiratorial variety.

Oh good, he's not actually a sociopath, just a useless lying troll who enjoys putting on a character for the internet. Phew!

So we have a little over four days left.

I'm a bit confused by Senate procedure; why is that the case? Do treaties have to pass by 2/3rds in Atlasia and does this fall into that category?

Nay

Just doing some rough math in my head, I'm seeing that this program could cost a lot of money, and I don't think there's enough pay-off for it to be worth it. Despite the president's veto, the mood in Atlasia is obviously one in favour of modest tax cuts. If that's going to be the case, we just can't be spending all this money. Sorry.

It would be a few billion at most. It's modeled directly after a program passed in the real-life stimulus back in 2009, one of the most successful programs in the stimulus. It only cost about 2.8 billion, and that program was much more expansive than this one is. If you're voting against it because of costs, you're being disingenuous. We've allotted a max of 2 billion, and the economic benefits far outweigh that piddly number.

As for tax cuts, if you're bringing that argument into this, you're just being petty. I never said I was against modest tax cuts, but that tax bill wasn't satisfactory. And you abstained on it so why are you getting all uppity about taxes anyway. Write a more comprehensive bill, with more careful tax cuts, and the implementation of a rainy day fund, and I'll sign it.

But that's neither here nor there. This program will cost 2 billion dollars, and the economic benefits will be a lot more immediate and impactful than a billions-dollar permanent tax cut would've been.

Nice seeing you show up to the Senate, though.

Don't worry, Yankee. I can still count, and I'll coordinate with Duke now that your old age won't let you.

I was hoping this would be a re-asking of the 2012 election, before I clicked. But oh well.

Mitterrand.

This could very easily go very, very wrong.

That's the hope, I'm sure.

[an awful Chick tract]

Grace's face looks like she could bite Banfield's head off if she were to get too close.  She looks a lioness in the African jungle stalking some Zebra for dinner.

Her face in that gif reminded me of an awful Chick tract.

Which one?

I put the image right there, Shmoo.

I encourage the Senate to vote in favor of this bill.

Athens.

Nix; the candidate waging an actual campaign.

I'm not really a fan of how this decreases the importance of the GM and SoIA, especially considering the latter already has basically nothing unique to do as it is.