Eddie Coyle’s Only Friend

Read history. Be a helper. BrownU History. Widow of USAFR flight surgeon. Navy brat. Boston strong. Cruelty IS the point for MAGA.

[Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 @RachelBitecofer]

🧵America's Third Founding:
In the wake of whatever Trump does, America needs to get its constitutional house in order

Americans love to debate how to fix our democracy.

End Citizens United. Abolish the Electoral College. Ban partisan gerrymandering. Expand the House of Representatives. Impose congressional term limits. Prevent another corrupt president from abusing the powers of the office.

One of the greatest failures of American civic education is that we teach people what government does, but rarely how government changes. We memorize the three branches of government and the Bill of Rights, yet few Americans understand the difference between constitutional law and ordinary legislation—or why that distinction determines whether a reform is politically possible.

The United States has already been founded twice.

The first founding came in 1787, when the Constitution established a new system of government unlike any the world had seen. The Bill of Rights soon followed as the political compromise that secured ratification, creating the constitutional framework that has endured for more than two centuries.

The second founding came after the Civil War.

The nation nearly destroyed itself over slavery and secession. Four years of unimaginable bloodshed settled the question of whether the Union would survive, but victory on the battlefield was only the beginning. During Reconstruction, Congress required the former Confederate states to ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments before they could fully reclaim representation in the federal government.

Those amendments transformed the Constitution. They abolished slavery, established birthright citizenship, guaranteed equal protection and due process, and prohibited denying the right to vote on the basis of race. The Fourteenth Amendment, in particular, became the constitutional foundation for much of modern American liberty. Many of the civil rights and individual freedoms Americans take for granted today trace directly back to the Second Founding.

Every generation inherits the Constitution, but only one generation has had an opportunity to fundamentally remake it: the Civil War generation.

Today, America faces another constitutional moment, not because states are preparing to leave the Union, but because many of the assumptions built into an eighteenth-century Constitution no longer fit the realities of twenty-first-century politics. Unlimited campaign spending, partisan gerrymandering, an Electoral College that can reject the national popular vote, and growing concerns about presidential accountability have exposed weaknesses the Framers could never have anticipated.

Yet our political debate almost always skips over the most important question.

Can these problems actually be fixed? Some can, most cannot—at least not through ordinary legislation. Congress cannot abolish the Electoral College. It cannot rewrite the constitutional qualifications for the presidency. It cannot simply declare that money is no longer protected political speech if the Supreme Court continues to interpret the First Amendment as it does today.

To do these things the Constitution itself must be changed and the process to do so is arduous- hard to pull off in the best of times and these are not the best of times.

To amend the Constitution you need a 2/3rds vote in both chambers of Congress and ratification by 3/4s of the states. This is why despite passing through both the House and Senate, the Equal Rights Amendment failed to reach ratification.

In a country that can’t even pass a budget through normal legislation those barriers aren’t just hard, they are impossible. The last time we successfully amended the Constitution it was in 1996 and the issue was preventing congress from giving itself current-term pay raises. Hardly controversial.

History teaches us that America’s greatest constitutional reforms have never emerged from ordinary politics. They have emerged from extraordinary crises. The Constitution replaced the failed Articles of Confederation. The Reconstruction Amendments followed the Civil War. Each founding was born from a national reckoning that forced Americans to rethink the rules by which they governed themselves.

If America experiences another constitutional reckoning, we should not waste it. We should already know which reforms would strengthen our democracy—and what it would actually take to achieve them.

That is the purpose of this essay.

[Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 @RachelBitecofer]

I don’t think people appreciate the fact that Trump and the GOP want to defund all your services- including SS and Medicare- and use that money to take the worlds already biggest defense budget and more than double it.

Double it

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

A federal judge just told the New York bar that Todd Blanche may not be fit to practice law. Trump wants that guy running all of law enforcement. Tell the Senate no. 👇
https://t.co/3UI42ydYSq

[Marlene Robertson🇨🇦 @marlene4719]

In a normal world, a sitting US president who paid the woman he raped $5.6M would be historic news.

[Warren @swd2]

If I'm driving my car with my kids in the backseat and masked thugs with guns start screaming at me with guns drawn you can bet your ass I'm trying to get the hell out of there. I'm not sure why this is hard for some of you all to understand.

[Mike Nellis @MikeNellis]

By the way, Susan Collins was the deciding vote to give ICE another $70 billion WITHOUT A SINGLE REFORM — and that vote is coming back to haunt her right now.

[Eddie Coyle’s Only Friend @ozzycat61]

@Juanlittle42 @jasmineweidenb1 @JoyceCarolOates "The moron you answered to..."
Maybe stop drunk-tweeting, Juan.

[Softboy @softboywin]

The World Health Organization has announced that we will start running out of clean water (drinking, showering, laundry, dishes) in the next FEW YEARS. We are officially entering water bankruptcy. This is a direct result of AI. Please stop using it now.

[Rep. Jim McGovern @RepMcGovern]

You just voted to give these thugs another $70 Billion. You’re complicit in this and every other murder committed by Trump’s secret police.

[Joseph O'Neill @JosephONeillx]

This is an instantly impeachable offense. The president abused his office to procure a fraudulent financial settlement. Without precedent in its brazenness and corruption.

[Sarah Ironside 💙 @SarahIronside6]

I am afraid that the United States is getting numb to the fact that we have a federal police force that is extrajudicially executing people in the streets with zero due process or accountability. This must stop!

[Patrick Skinner @SkinnerPm]

That’s not how the War Powers Act works but ok.

[Peter Morley @morethanmySLE]

I'm going to KEEP talking about how Florida Senator Rick Scott, the RICHEST man in all of Congress DEFRAUDED Medicare & is trying to CUT Social Security.

Will you join me?🤚

[Volcaholic 🌋 @volcaholic1]

FRANCE: Watching Fontainebleau Forest burn is heartbreaking.

This is not just a forest. It is a place of incredible history, wildlife, and natural beauty that has survived for centuries.

These ancient woodlands were once the hunting grounds of French kings, and the landscape still holds traces of human history stretching back thousands of years.

In 1861, Fontainebleau became the world’s first protected nature reserve, helping to shape the modern conservation movement.

The damage to wildlife is devastating. This UNESCO biosphere is home to deer, wild boar, and countless species of birds and insects that depend on this unique habitat.

This is the same landscape that inspired artists like Monet, Renoir, and the Barbizon painters. A place that has endured wars, revolutions, and generations of change.

[John Erik Fraker @JohnErikFraker]

@WRyanMcCann We’re speed running the meme

[DulceBiatch @BiatchDulce]

The USA has no universal healthcare, but it does have 49 billionaires who made their wealth from private healthcare.
Connect the dots, folks.

[Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates]

Fox News: "partnership" between US military & Israeli military.

is the next logical step a "Co-Presidency of the US"--T***p merged with Netanyahu?

[Seth Abramson @SethAbramson]

She voted for this

Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, she voted for this

Never forget and never forgive https://t.co/lYqlNdmco8

[Eddie Coyle’s Only Friend @ozzycat61]

@SethAbramson "fearing for public safety..." They knew they couldn't even sell "officer feared for his life..." so they came up with this bullshit. They know it's murder.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

It seems, from all reporting, that ICE today

- shot someone who was not attempting to run them over but, rather, "flee the scene"
- was not the person they were looking for
- who had a 3yr old in the car
- who they dragged out into the street
- all while not wearing body cams