Small nitpick, but I believe this all happened on private, not federal, property. The ICE facility they were protesting at was a private company ICE was contracting with, not an actual federal building.

It doesn't look like the judge cared much

There must be myriad unintended consequences that would come with dumping a whole bunch of water into a desert though? It feels like there's an awful lot of hubris in thinking we could accurately predict all the changes that would cause and know it would have a net positive outcome.

If there are, we should have figured them out by now, since that is the story of California during the 1840s. People redirected a bunch of water to turn the desert into a treasure. Kinda literally, since shortly after they found gold, which destroyed all the positive economic change that was brought.

Or take the Netherlands, that used to be a lot of water and now it is a lot of flat land.

If the Sahara wasn't dry, what would be the knock on effects of losing the dust from it that lands in South America?

The dust, sand, and soil from the Sahara that lands in South American is an enormous source of nutrients and fertilizer for the Amazon rainforest. It would certainly cause vast changes in how that whole ecosystem operates and the impact it makes in other parts of the world.

The knock on effects of those changes to one of the most important and diverse ecosystems on the planet cannot possibly be completely predicted beforehand.

Maybe they mean rather than:

if (thingThatIsTrue):

  // a bunch of logic here...

else:

  // different logic here...

they mean:

if (thingThatIsTrue):

  return doThisWhenTrue()

return dothisWhenFalse()

Just a simple example. I'm not sure if this is what you consider "obfuscating" the branches. Logically the same, but a bit more linear to understand?

Edit: I am bad at formatting comments here.

Putting two spaces before the line formats is as code.

Example:

No space before start of line.

One space before start of line.

  Two spaces before start of line.

Thus, you can put multiple lines of code with indentation as well as long as you put two spaces at the start of the line:

int main() { return 0; }

  int main() {
    return 0;
  }

See https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Oh perfect, thanks!

We tried this already in America and have decided that disallowing entire groups of people from voting is bad for democracy.

What happens when the federal government passes new tax laws that prevent certain genders, racial groups, etc from having to pay income tax? Are they permanently disenfranchised? This would be a system that I think would rapidly move social progress backwards and concentrate power in the hands of a few groups.

Well you could have stronger constitutional protections. Say certain changes needing unanimous support from voters in referendum. Would lock in things, but would remove risks.

And USA already disallows voting based on age. And somehow lot of people find it acceptable. Surely voting should be right from birth?

Alright, what about laws that only levy income taxes on people making $300k or more? That's eliminates millions of Americans without targeting any protected groups. There's no bulletproof method to allow only some people to vote that wouldn't be abused to disenfranchise others.

Also, surely you don't think a four year old should weigh in on who gets to represent them in Congress? We disallow voting on a minimum age, because children are still developing in all sorts of ways, there is no maximum age that takes away your right to vote when you reach it. You can't equate a minimum age to disenfranchisement.

That is why I said taxes. Not just income tax.

And really why should not 4 year old get to decide? How come you think it is right to discriminate against them based on their age? As you said there is no limit on those with limited mental faculties due to old age. So why have one for young age? Isn't it clearly an unacceptable form disenfranchisement? Or are you saying some forms of that are absolutely acceptable and even justified?