this is something stephen breyer opposes, because roe v. wade looks like it is gone. there will be more decisions on gun control etc. just replacing breyer isn t enough, in terms of the long term future of the court. nowhere near. it s a young court and they will be holding sway for decades. in addition, as alexi mentioned, they took a big affirmative action case that is probably a death nail for affirmative action in universities, something breyer was a big fighter for. he was very fiery about it. it s a really big question. as you say, brian was opposed to it. but the bottom line, mehdi, is that it won t happen. whether it should, these concerns on one hand and then the immediate imbalance on the court that is going to last for a few decades, i don t think that the proposals will have purchase. and that s the main point. breyer, as you say, is going to go down as an institutionalist.
stream 2 pipeline. that essentially lifts a national security waiver that had been put in place allowing the pipeline to move forward. this has been a crux of the battle inside of the administration in terms of whether to let that pipeline go forward due to risk of german alliance on resources. the administration decided to put that in place even though president biden opposed to pipeline in order to keep relations with germany in tact. obviously, everything has shifted over the course of the last 24 hours. the germans taking the last action, now the u.s. following up the sanctions. while the certification being put on hold for the nord stream 2 pipeline, the idea that the u.s. is going to put sanctions on the pipeline and corporate officers is more or less a death nail for that project. that is an $11 billion project that has been the corner stone of what president putin has been trying to do in terms of expanding the russian reach
that matters. he doesn t care what any oligarch think, he doesn t want anyone thinks for that matter. the reason you want to sanction the oligarchs, they hold his money for him and they have offshore resources that can be useful to him, particularly his as central bank reserves have been frozen. you want to freeze that money so that money doesn t become available to him as he tries to continue to fund this war. and perhaps that other option, so far the u.s. not banning russian oil, a massive export for the country, would banning oil be the other way to really hurt the economy, get his attention? that would be the death nail. if russia if russia couldn t sell its oil and gas, they would be bankrupt. the country would be bankrupt within months. it s truly they re not they have nothing else other than oil and gas. it would be a true disaster for them. so then what s taking so long? well, the problem is, that you have countries like italy that are 100% dependent on
expansion, it s not a real issue. putin knows that, too. there s no threats next week or next year that ukraine s going to join nato. that makes me fearful this is more of an ultimatum and a pretext for war and tragically in history, including sometimes by american leaders, we ve seen this before. when unobtainable ultimatums are put out the next step is war, and i think people in brussels and washington and kiev should be concerned about that right now. a new op-ed, posted on msnbc.com. columnist noah rothman says, biden s russia dealings may be the death nail of american credibility. how tough is the biden administration being on putin and what are the risks of not being tough enough with a strong man like putin? well, generally speaking, i think what the biden administration has been doing in the last several weeks has been
prosecution herself. the second prosecutor to handle the case not only did he refuse to take action, but he put a letter in the file saying no future prosecutor should either, and normally that s the death nail for a case. we don t see any litigation past that point. what s concerning here is it took prosecutors coming from outside the community to make sure the prosecution was handled correctly. it also took a judge who came from outside the community to make sure justice was handled correctly. it draws a parallel with derek chauvin s trial. they weren t able to get the job don outsiders had to make sure justice was achieved. that indicates we have a long way to go to achieve justice in our system in general. david in georgia there was a law that permitted this, essentially. it was changed after this murder. is there something that prosecutors should be learning from what happened in georgia?