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Even if they were, I don't see the general problem in this instance. If a staff member disagrees with a President so vehemently that they're willing to particip

Even if they were, I don't see the general problem in this instance. If a staff member disagrees with a President so vehemently that they're willing to participate in an impeachment then there's little reason to assume that they're going to simply return to work and do as instructed from then on. Even if they operated entirely in good faith, nobody in politics just says "Well schucks, I guess my gut was wrong on this one. My bad."

throwaheyy 7y ago
Thanks to non-separation of head of state and head of government, a protest against unethical behavior by the president can be conveniently claimed to be insubordination when it suits him. Examples: Yovanovitch, Vindman. Gotta love the rationalization too. “Oh we allowed your data to be sold on the public market so we’ll just get it there”
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bosswipe 7y ago
"willing to participate" in this case means responding to a lawful subpoena and testifying truthfully.
- dhdjsbsb 7y ago
  And he could have chosen to lawfully refuse, as others have done. Simple.
  - tzs 7y ago
    It is not lawful to refuse a Congressional subpoena [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-congress-subpoena-explainer/explainer-how-powerful-are-congress-subpoenas-contempt-citations-idUSKCN1S81FP https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-congress-subpoe...
    - dhdjsbsb 7y ago
      Gross mischaractarization, that applies to individuals. The executive branch has the power to resist a subpoena. You can call that poor sportsmanship but your same article acknowledges that this bottleneck is real enough that a third choice is usually persued. Except, without a cooperative House and Senate that too can be negated. The reality is that if the Dems had a case they'd be winning in the courts.
      - bosswipe 7y ago
        Honest question, you don't see a danger to our system of checks and balances if the executive gets to block impeachment investigations?
        dhdjsbsb 7y ago
        Not in the current environment no. Historically impeachment has been an optics move by the opposing party, that held true here. If you can't get the legislative branch to act with unity or get a useful case through the SCOTUS then most likely the stakes aren't actually that high in the immediate present. On a more basic level, nothing the current POTUS has done to defend himself is something that the legislative branch couldn't take off the table in time. The country isn't burning down, the economy is fine, by any metric of genuine significance this is just an extremely unpopular president (not that I would claim he's trying to be popular). The problem with the American system is that, short of staging a coup or actually burning the country down, pivoting before problematic people leave is hard. In my opinion this has the benefit that anything that seems like good legislation from the position of the currently weaker party will still seem like good legislation when they become the strong party again. In terms of consequences I'm more concerned about things like both parties having noticed that executive orders are an easy way to circumvent the legislative process. My hope is that after election season is over, we'll see more challenges to executive orders that will result in firmer precedents for what a POTUS can and cannot do with an executive order.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Honest question, you don't see a danger to our system of checks and balances if the executive gets to block impeachment investigations? No, because its pretty clear that there is no system of checks and balances curbing executive abuse except when the systematic overrepresentation designed into the Constitution fails, barring the rare and unstable condition of a partisan disalignment (which has happened only a handful of times in US history), because the systematic factional overrepresentation in the Senate and in the Electoral College are aligned (and the overrepresentation is stronger in the Senate than the Electoral College.) There would only be a system of checks and balances for executive abuse if the decisive actor in removal were the House rather than the Senate.
deleted 7y ago
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throwaheyy 7y ago

Thanks to non-separation of head of state and head of government, a protest against unethical behavior by the president can be conveniently claimed to be insubordination when it suits him. Examples: Yovanovitch, Vindman. Gotta love the rationalization too. “Oh we allowed your data to be sold on the public market so we’ll just get it there”

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bosswipe 7y ago

"willing to participate" in this case means responding to a lawful subpoena and testifying truthfully.

dhdjsbsb 7y ago
And he could have chosen to lawfully refuse, as others have done. Simple.
- tzs 7y ago
  It is not lawful to refuse a Congressional subpoena [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-congress-subpoena-explainer/explainer-how-powerful-are-congress-subpoenas-contempt-citations-idUSKCN1S81FP https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-congress-subpoe...
  - dhdjsbsb 7y ago
    Gross mischaractarization, that applies to individuals. The executive branch has the power to resist a subpoena. You can call that poor sportsmanship but your same article acknowledges that this bottleneck is real enough that a third choice is usually persued. Except, without a cooperative House and Senate that too can be negated. The reality is that if the Dems had a case they'd be winning in the courts.
    - bosswipe 7y ago
      Honest question, you don't see a danger to our system of checks and balances if the executive gets to block impeachment investigations?
      - dhdjsbsb 7y ago
        Not in the current environment no. Historically impeachment has been an optics move by the opposing party, that held true here. If you can't get the legislative branch to act with unity or get a useful case through the SCOTUS then most likely the stakes aren't actually that high in the immediate present. On a more basic level, nothing the current POTUS has done to defend himself is something that the legislative branch couldn't take off the table in time. The country isn't burning down, the economy is fine, by any metric of genuine significance this is just an extremely unpopular president (not that I would claim he's trying to be popular). The problem with the American system is that, short of staging a coup or actually burning the country down, pivoting before problematic people leave is hard. In my opinion this has the benefit that anything that seems like good legislation from the position of the currently weaker party will still seem like good legislation when they become the strong party again. In terms of consequences I'm more concerned about things like both parties having noticed that executive orders are an easy way to circumvent the legislative process. My hope is that after election season is over, we'll see more challenges to executive orders that will result in firmer precedents for what a POTUS can and cannot do with an executive order.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Honest question, you don't see a danger to our system of checks and balances if the executive gets to block impeachment investigations? No, because its pretty clear that there is no system of checks and balances curbing executive abuse except when the systematic overrepresentation designed into the Constitution fails, barring the rare and unstable condition of a partisan disalignment (which has happened only a handful of times in US history), because the systematic factional overrepresentation in the Senate and in the Electoral College are aligned (and the overrepresentation is stronger in the Senate than the Electoral College.) There would only be a system of checks and balances for executive abuse if the decisive actor in removal were the House rather than the Senate.

deleted 7y ago

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