Post #2: Supreme Court

 I can never keep my focus while watching long videos, so I decided to read History Channel’s overview of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest, most powerful federal court in America. The SCOTUS is the head of the government’s judicial branch, and has the power to check the actions of the other two branches of government (executive and legislative). It has the ultimate and final jurisdiction over all US laws. On top of this, it is responsible for evaluating the constitutionality of all these laws, which is called Judicial Review.

The Supreme Court was founded and established upon the creation of the US Constitution on March 4, 1789 by Article Three of the US Constitution. This article granted Congress many powers: they were allowed to create federal courts with power under them, and also decide the organization of the Supreme Court. The legislative branch first executed that power with the Judiciary Act of 1789, which was signed by George Washington, the president at the time. It specified that the court would consist of 6 judges that would remain in that job til their death or retirement. The first Supreme Court meeting was on February 2nd, 1790 in NYC.

The chief justice is responsible for presiding over the Supreme Court and setting agenda for the weekly meetings, such as a normal “secretary”. The first 6 members of the Supreme court were Chief Justice John Jay, with Associate Justices John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison and James Wilson.

Through time, the number of seats on the Supreme Court has changed. The lowest number of justices was 5, and the highest was 10. However, ever since 1869, there have only been 9 seats. The current 9 members of the Supreme Court are chief justice John Roberts, Jr. and associate justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch.

Bonus Post: About me!

 I wasn’t sure if this was a required post that we had to have on our blog, but it looked fun, so I decided to do it either way!

Hi everyone, my name is Kathy Xiao, and I have an addiction to bubble tea, coffee, anything strawberry flavored, and all things cute. I’m a Game & Interactive Media Design major and plan on pursuing a minor in CS soon. I try to be super involved on campus; I’m involved with HPU E-Sports, Game Dev Club and Phi Mu! My favorite place to eat on campus is North College Diner,  but nothing beats Shinko Grill :).

I have a passion for both video games and art, so I decided to combine the two and pursue character design in games. A big inspiration of mine is the character art and design in Riot Games’ League of Legends, and I aspire to work at Riot Games one day. 

Over last summer, I did a virtual internship program at Rad Magpie Studio, a nonprofit indie game studio that specializes in supporting underrepresented creators in game design. I spent lots of hours doing character design, learning animation, and working with other college students in creating a vertical slice of a game called Ascend. On top of that, I also volunteered to coach my high school’s color guard team, where I was a captain and rifle line section leader my senior year.

In my free time, I’m playing games with friends, drawing, or watching movies and shows in NQSC’s screening room on weekends. I also stream games and art on Twitch, a live streaming service. I mainly stream League of Legends ranked as well as tournament games, but I also stream art, Stardew Valley, Among Us, and other games with viewers. 

Post #1: My News Sites!

 Source 1: Reddit.com

    I use Reddit the most for news. I use it daily to scroll through various subreddits, and it is easy to access r/news whenever I want to. Reddit also conveniently places the most "Hot/Popular" posts first, so I can see what is trending, like how Twitter does. I can also switch to see the "Top News This Past Week" which is also a really quick and easy feature to find news that I've missed.

Source 2: Twitter.com

    I also use Twitter on a daily basis, so it's really quick and convenient to switch to the "trending" tab to see what's happening in the world today. There is a lot of information that can spread quickly on Twitter; I just have to take the time and care to sort through the facts vs opinions/misinformation. A cool thing about Twitter is that their "trending" news also can feature tweets from regular citizens. It's a really unique and interesting way to see people practice their First Amendment right. Another cool thing is that I get access to news extremely fast. Like in this picture, the featured piece was released 10 minutes previously. 

Source 3: PBS Newshour

    PBS Newshour is my 3rd choice. They do a spectacular job every night at 6 PM and nearly all of their content is on YouTube as well. Their news outlet largely addresses people's concerns of bias news and in my opinion, they make everyone else look like bloggers. What sets them apart is that they don't editorialize everything and they frequently have people with differing views to discuss issues.

Source 4: Fox News 

    I don't watch that much TV, but my mom does at home, and she usually puts on Fox News. Every time I go to my father's house for dinner, he also has it on. I think it's a really popular and accessible news site, though I don't know how biased it is personally.

Source 5: The Associated Press

The Associated Press is a non-profit organization that releases news, and their content gets republished by lots of other news services. They have pretty minimal bias and focus more on the story itself, however, because of this, the tone of the articles can be super dry and boring to read for me.