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Ballot Access News reports:
On August 5, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, a Bush Jr. appointee, ruled against Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in their debates lawsuit. The case had been filed on September 28, 2015, and is Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, U.S. District Court, D.C., 1:15cv-1580.
[...] The 27-page decision[Redirects to a PDF] [...] says, "Because Plaintiffs have no standing and because antitrust laws govern commercial markets and not political activity, those claims fail as a matter of well-established law."
[...] Footnote three, based on the judge's own research (or the research of her clerks), has factual errors. The judge relied on election returns published by the FEC, but the FEC returns do not say which candidates were [...] in states with a majority of electoral college votes, and the opinion's list of candidates is erroneous.
[...] Another factual error in the decision is on page 21. The decision says Ralph Forbes, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, lost a case over debates in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998. Actually Forbes was a candidate for U.S. House.
In the comments, Richard Winger notes a similar case.
the lawsuit Level the Playing Field v FEC is still pending, before another judge, in the same court
The presidential debates were previously moderated by the League of Women Voters (1976, 1980, 1984). The Democrats and Republicans screwed things up in 1988. The Commission on Presidential Debates, a corporation controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties, has run each of the presidential debates held since 1988.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday August 08 2016, @09:42PM
I think we should evaluate each individual problem on its own merits and work to solve it,
How old are you, 14?
This ultra-naïve mentality shows you really don't understand politics or how different peoples' thinking is.
You talk about "each individual problem": well, who decides what the problems are in the first place?
I'll name one big, big problem with America: women are allowed to walk around with their faces uncovered in public!! It's horrible! This is completely against the will of Allah! </sarcasm> Now, of course, most Americans probably don't think this is a problem at all, but there are surely some who do. So how are we going to "solve" this "problem"? Pass a law requiring women to wear burqas in order to appease some small religious minority? Or tell the religious minority to stuff it? Well, either of these is now a "problem": in the first case, you're oppressing half the population for the sake of some minority, in the latter case you're oppressing "religious freedom", because you're not allowing those religious people to force their religious views on everyone else. And before you dismiss this as insanity, this is exactly the reasoning that approximately half the nation has about gay marriage: they think that allowing homosexuals to marry each other, or requiring businesses to not discriminate against them (just like they're not allowed to discriminate against racial minorities) constitutes an "attack on their faith". There's some Americans who think businesses should be allowed to discriminate all their want, and that this is forbidden is a "problem"; change that, and now minorities (and others opposed to discrimination) will think it's a "problem" that this discrimination is allowed to happen.
Bottom line: no one can agree on what constitutes a "problem", and if you can't do that, then you can't "fix" it either. This is why we have labels like "left" and "right"; people tend to fall into groups that have similar beliefs, and they form parties based on those shared opinions, and elect representatives to push for their agenda. You're simply not going to get any agreement on some issues between people who are too far apart, so your sentiment of "working [together] to solve" problems is really nonsensical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08 2016, @11:51PM
How old are you, 14?
Stating what we should be doing is entirely different from saying that that's what will actually happen.
You talk about "each individual problem": well, who decides what the problems are in the first place?
Each individual. The point is, people shouldn't be so considered about this meaningless "left" and "right" nonsense, which have no concrete meanings despite what you may think. Looks like you missed that.
so your sentiment of "working [together] to solve" problems is really nonsensical.
That wasn't my position either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:05AM
Yup, no concrete [wikipedia.org] definitions at all [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @09:58PM
None of that is concrete. There's plenty of subjective terminology and differences from culture to culture. Nice try.