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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

> The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland.

Wild. I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.

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>I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.

Presumed by whom? I've always understood Conservatism to be explicitly Christian in its ideology, opposed to womens' rights, "non-traditional" sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion, multiculturalism, pornography, modern art, rock music, drug use and a litany of other things. The freedom to think and act outside of the box of "traditional American values and culture" has rather more often been championed by progressives and leftists.

Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.

> Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.

Which is funny, right? Their whole justification was to fight back if the government becomes authoritarian, when it turns out they love an authoritarian government that enforces their values.

There're more than one justification given. Gun rights supporters, like the Republican party itself (and the Democratic party too, of course), are a coaltion of different interests, and not all self-described convervatives would consider gun rights to be an important issue. Some people support gun rights for self-defense, others for hunting. Really it's only the wingnut conspiracy theorists who are silly enough to believe that they could successfully fight back against the modern militarized state.

Hunting is very much a cultural issue, passed down the generations by family tradition, so you'd be hard pressed to change minds on that.

That does not pass the smell test. If the issue was hunting, they would be fine with restrictions on non hunting guns, background checks etc. Hunting is a sound good excuse.

Keep in mind that politicians receive funding from the military-industrial complex and other lobbying groups, so they don't necessarily represent the interests of their constituents.

Except those constituents punish politicians and opposite party when those go against guns lobby. This is not a case of politicians going against what their constituents want.

That's not how money in politics works. Besides, among the issues that are most important to voters, guns are rarely among them.

Legislating them is important, most people with empathy would like the mass shootings to stop, but there are plenty of selfish people without it who don't see it as a problem.

They've even tried to intellectualize dictatorships by rebranding it as "unitary executive theory". They surround it with philosophical reasoning but it fundamentally boils down to "the president should be able to do whatever he wants guys!!!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

It is ironic that a lot of the gun control laws conservatives rail about in California are a direct result of Reagan’s time as governor with the intent largely to suppress and allow enforcement against black people having guns.

Obamacare is basically a copy of the healthcare system Romney set up as governor of Massachusetts. Republicans running in more liberal states always have to posture a bit to the left in order to have any chance of getting elected, but once they're running on the national stage they can fully move to the right.

The arguments are getting so silly I can’t even follow them now.

What does this have to do with protecting individual rights?

The government already has your data. Whether another part of the government has access versus another seems like splitting hairs?

DOGE is the US government. Whether Jane in the SSA can look up your medical records or whether Big Balls in DOGE can see it is two shades of the same color.

This is not how things normally work. Personal information within government is generally siloed to protect citizens' privacy, someone in the agricultural department who is annoyed about your your complaint letters on one topic cannot take a stroll through your tax return to look for something to threaten you with, by law.

I get that, but if an agencies remit is to root out fraud and abuse, it would seem their function demands access to certain data?

DOGE isn't an agency, a fact which has been extensively publicly discussed. They don't have a Congressional mandate or any of the institutional infrastructure (inspectors general, well-defined rules and procedures etc.) that qould qualify them as an agency. 'Waste fraud and abuse' is a collection of emotionally activating buzzwords with which to score rhetorical points, not an objective standard of the sort employed in auditing.

I am sure you can think of situations where arbitrary and capricious decisions are made and sold to the public or staff at a business in the name of 'security' or 'economic necessity' or whatever, and that these terms are designed to limit discussion and establishment of consensus by creating a false sense of urgency. We should be cautious about letting unknown persons inspect our wallets just because they insist its urgent without clearly specifying how or why.

Here's an example (from the last century) of such rhetorical techniques being proposed specifically for their effectiveness in swaying opinion rather than developing policy: https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html

DOGE absolutely falls under the Dept of Digital Services agency. No different than an office within the CDC like HIV Care Iniative.

“Waste, fraud and abuse” is defined by the OIG well before Trump. Just because you don’t like him means it doesn’t exist or they are “emotional buzzwords”.

https://oig.usaid.gov/node/221

Hence why the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 DOGE can have access - clearly across ideological lines.

We both know you're over-simplifying or outright eliding the reality here, while ignoring points you don't have an answer for. Don't waste my time with such BS.

I directly answered your questions with actual facts that contradict each of your points. I even provided sources.

And also letting the States do most of the governing.

Except California, they're fucking wrong! ;)

The conservative justices have been pretty obvious in their support for the so-called "unitary executive" for a while now, so this isn't anything new

That was never the case, but like it didn't stop the presumption from appearing then, nothing stops from keeping the same presumtion now

Were these the same conservatives trying to argue that chattel slavery should be legal, at the discretion of the state?

Republicans, not conservatives, might rightfully have been the party of protecting individual rights and freedoms. Back in the 1850s.

It's really a stretch to say that "individual freedoms" means protecting my data held by one federal agency from access by another federal agency.

It's fine if you want to call it a bad idea... but stopping this access really doesn't give me the freedom to do anything.

I mean DOGE is ... not a federal agency.

At least that's what the administration says when they want to argue that it's not subject to FOIA.

That was always a lie. Conservatives were always about own right to abuse others and never cared about rights of anyone else.

What does DOGE auditing the Treasury have to do with 'individual freedoms, rights'? Set aside partisanship and explain please.

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