The idea that one branch limiting another requires “popular appeal or a Constitutional Amendment” is a bit misleading.

No, it’s plainly incorrect. I was able to come up with three or four counterexamples immediately, and I’m no kind of Constitutional lawyer.

It rules on whether Consitutionally stated powers and their limits apply to specific executive acts and legislation. So yes.

Yep, straight-up power grab, and neither Congress or the President pushed back.

The Constitution lists a number of checks and balances that don’t require a Constitutional amendment. “Last without popular appeal” is just an assumption that we live in a democracy, it’s true of all government actions in that case, and so is almost tautological.

For example, presidential vetoes are used frequently, limiting the power of the Legislative branch, and not requiring a Constitutional Amendment. Same goes for the advise-and-consent powers that the Legislative branch can exercise over presidential appointments. There are plenty more.

The fact that Section 2 plainly says that Congress can regulate how the Court exercises that appellate jurisdiction?

Yes, the Constitution distinguishes “appellate jurisdiction” and “original jurisdiction.” Some cases go straight to the Supremes: for example, disputes between states. That’s original jurisdiction. They try those cases. But appellate jurisdiction is specifically mentioned as something that Congress can regulate, though Congress never has, just as they have never passed legislation to allow enforcement of the Emoluments Clause.

Here’s Section 2, boldface is my own:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

That’s very much not “all cases.” There is a very clear qualification added to that. It’s an instance of checks and balances that have never been exercised, since the Supreme Court has only done a small number of power grabs over the year-- the biggest being that, absent Congressional action, they granted themselves the power of judicial review, which is a distinct power from appellate jurisdiction. And that has been something that, through inertia, spinelssness or fear of opening cans of worms, Congress has never addressed, despite having the power to do so.

That would require a Constitutional amendment. That’s where the justices’ term length is defined.

And, like term limits, it would have no effect on corruption, though it would reduce institutional knowledge retention. More power to the Heritage Society? That’s how you get it.

Supreme Court justices have very little in common with average Americans.

Our recent experience with Trump should have made it painfully clear that rich people can be bribed too.

So no, we don’t need to pay them more. We need to send them to jail if the accept bribes. And the law that enables that should be passed with a note that it is not subject to judicial review by the Supreme Court.

Wow, that’s some deep thought, there, R D Laing. What if we’re the crazy ones?

People close to me have schizophrenia. It’s as much a disease as cancer is. If you don’t believe that, you’ve never experienced it up close, or you have an inability to learn from direct experience.

He said “we are all culpable” not “I alone am culpable.”

And that’s stupid binary thinking and he was wrong.

You are in no position to determine my degree of culpability, or that of anyone who’s not pulling a trigger.

I’m encouraging others not to waste their lives, when they can accomplish far more by staying alive and engaging.

But if you want to torch yourself and refuse to get professional help, I can’t stop you. Just don’t encourage others to emulate your disordered thinking.

What, are you 16? Do you think this is some kind of life-changing insight?

Well, any act that actually accomplished something would be more effective than a futile gesture.

His goal was to die. Any benefit to the Palestinians was secondary, or more likely, an ad-hoc excuse.

Very few policies are determined by party platforms at election times. There were no pro-civil-rights-movement candidates from the major parties back in the 1960s either. Events drove them, and those events didn’t just randomly happen. There were decades of organizing, recruiting, training, planning, and hard debate that went into them, and people laid their lives on the line in furtherance of actual goals, not empty gestures.

Similarly, neither major party opposed the Vietnam war, or either of the Iraq wars, or the invasion of Afghanistan, or gay rights. That’s all just an excuse for inaction. Public opinion can be changed, even if it sometimes happens too late. But if you’re not willing to get out in the streets, nothing will happen at all.

this totally isn’t just your excuse/rationalization for attacking someone actually willing to take action against genocide

Not speaking for them, but someone committing ineffectual self-destruction isn’t something worthy of emulation.

Anyone who tacitly supports the genocide and doesn’t do everything in their power to bring an end to and oppose the genocide is culpable.

Nothing like a little binary thinking to capture the nuance of a situation.

Here’s a thought exercise: if everyone here in the US who cared even an iota about stopping the genocide were to self-immolate, what difference would it make besides leaving a trail of bereaved people and a small contribution to making climate change even worse? Do you honestly believe that, even if hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans set themselves on fire, the ethno-chauvinist goons in the Likud would give a shit, or American public opinion would be swayed even slightly from its lethargic apathy? Only organizing, engaging in the political process and continuing to publicize the situation, along with BDS, will make any difference. The rest is displacement activity that, at most, will make you feel good about your own righteousness, but which benefits nobody.

The 2-state solution was never viable. The power asymmetry is too great.

There have been more casualties in Ukraine this year than in Gaza.

Ukraine’s population is 36M. Gaza’s, a bit over 2M. So comparing rates rather than absolute numbers might be less bad.

But it’s also a bad idea to get into contests about which catastrophe is worse, when both are appalling crimes against humanity committed by imperialist/colonialist nationalist aggressors.

And what’s happening in Sudan is even larger-scale.