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Comment by iron0013 | Hacker News Reader

I would like to hear the arguments of anyone who thinks this is not both illegal and fascistic

I wouldn't argue that it's not "fascistic", except in the sense of semantic gamesmanship, but it wouldn't surprise me to discover that it's not illegal. The law is like a billion lines of Javascript, written by high school students, over decades, without even a single unit test, with the server running continuously.

"Legal" consists entirely of the opinions of lawyers, who are literally trained in law school to see both sides of every problem and construct a defense either way. I suspect the DoJ would have no problem constructing a brief that it's legal.

Ultimately the decision rests entirely with more lawyers on the court, and if they happen to be predisposed, there is no higher power to tell them otherwise. Even a flagrant, direct contradiction of the text is completely irrelevant.

I'm not a lawyer so I don't know how that applies in this case. I just have little doubt that it already has been.

> The law is like a billion lines of Javascript

Best explanation--it's a huge collection of patches. There are key moments that revisit the spirit or unintended consequences but it's a largest legacy codebase that grows faster than the tech debt can be cleaned up.

If you label a rival political other as an enemy of the state, especially when groups that support the state are known be more violent and deadly to Americans (police/white nationalists), that is inherently fascistic.

A fascist government will not announce it is but rather that antifascists are enemies of the state. This has already happened and is simply ramping up. It will lead to stochastic terror and more bloodshed.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how it is illegal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/nyregion/sanctuary-cities...

Another case that may apply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole

It may be illegal, but it's not really clear, it seems like it would need to be decided in court.

Note that that sanctuary city cases was the exception. 3 other federal circuit courts ruled the other way, and so far the Supreme Court has refused to vote, so as it stands, the government can withhold funds from NY but not California or Oregon or Washington.

Go figure why the GOP wishes to add another SCoutUS judge with 1.5 months to the election, unlike precedent set in 2016 by McConnell's senate along with vocal support from Senator Graham.

It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political battle. That's against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do this. Commenting occasionally on political threads while generally using the site as intended is fine, but using it primarily for politics is not fine, because those things will take over the site by default if we allow it, and that's not HN's mandate. If you would please review the rules and use the site as intended, we'd appreciate it.

(On the other hand, I didn't see your account attacking fellow users, calling names, and so on—that's definitely good.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

More explanation about how we moderate this:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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Since Barr doesn't seem to be acquainted with the law, or the Constitution he's not encumbered with such limitations.

His law degree from George Washington University, being a member of the bar, and his having worked for the Washington, D.C., law firm Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge probably refutes your assertion. [1]

1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-P-Barr

There appears to be some controversy at GWU regarding how much that stamp of approval should matter.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2020/06/26/scathing-...

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