7 ms·

The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country, a corruption created by the judiciary. For it to be legal for the rule of law to not apply to a pri

The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country, a corruption created by the judiciary. For it to be legal for the rule of law to not apply to a privileged class is to eat the rule of law from within. An authority that exempts itself from its own rules bleeds away its legitimacy.

Waterluvian 4y ago
It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  Whether or not the president can pardon himself is not a settled matter in US law.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    Pardons are criminal, QI is about civil liability.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first. QI has nothing to do with being “deputized”, it has to do no with being a public official. It was first articulated in a suit over government cobtracts against White House, non-law-enforcement, officials.
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country... Agreed, and that is why we fought so hard in CO to over-turn it [0] during the BLM riots, which really should have been called overt police abuse riots akin to those in LA in the 90s during the Rodeny King arrest. Which I saw happen in real-time as a child. The fact that the rest of the US didn't follow suit was an immense tragedy, as that was likely the ONLY time that this would have been possible due to COVID and the shutdown slowing down the economy enough for people to realize how far we had fallen and get politically active in their community. Instead it's been a tragic reality come to life rife with more authoritarian encroachment on civil liberties both on and offline. All of this while we see what authoritarian nations like Russia and China do serving as a stark reality of how quickly bad things can get. See, this is the hard part about living in a Republic: you have to place a great deal of faith in the populace to be just as active and as well informed as oneself for it to sustain itself if it's to remain a Republic wherein the Citizen's rights are upheld and the State is suppressed to it's enumerated and outlined duties. I personally never wanted to be an activist, it's incredibly difficult and often sad thing to do because of the harsh realities of Life it exposes you and the emotional and mental toll that it takes, but I realized that without it we can lose what so many fought for to get us to this point in order to advance Society and Civilization as a whole--as flawed as the West may be it is still orders of magnitude better than perhaps any of it's predecessors to date in most capacities, and it's worth fighting for. I fear that that the American experiment placed the most value on this since it's inception, but that much like Rome because of overt corruption and nepotism it's populace became more and more disenfranchised and apathetic as time went on and it devolved into just another imperial plutocracy. I still think the US is remarkable in many ways, but if it's own populace cannot or will not resist against this than what was thought to be an ongoing experiment in self-governance might have ended in my Lifetime. > It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. That's just a platitude and I don't think that was ever anything but a fabrication to tell children and the feeble minded alike to give the illusion of how skewed the Law really is the closer you get to it's source of power (State): Bush et al are all War Criminals [1]. It's worth noting that this all happened when I was a child and I soon realized what a farce this was then, too. Hence the need to get involved in activism. > In recent weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and others have been formulating defenses against possible prosecutions for war crimes and are pressuring Republican members of Congress to pass new laws to protect them. >> As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado-passes-landmark-law-against-qualified-immunity-creates-new-way-to-protect-civil-rights/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado... 1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26669 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26...
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  > it's populace became more and more disenfranchised and apathetic as time went on You see claims like this all the time but they are so blatantly ahistorical its fascinating. No one but white men could vote in the U.S. until the early 1900s when women were given the right to vote. And pretty much only white people were allowed to vote until 1965 when black people, Asians, etc were given the right to vote. The U.S. may call itself the oldest democracy but there are only a handful of democracies that so heavily disenfranchised such significant parts of their population as recently as the US did. It’s been a little more than 50 years where millions of people were not legally disenfranchised, so by any measure the US population has become more enfranchised. Further, as the chart in the Wikipedia page below show, voter turnout has been constantly increasing in the US (at least for Presidential elections) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_Stat... The evidence indicates that the populace is becoming less, not more apathetic.
  - mcclung 4y ago
    > You see claims like this all the time but they are so blatantly ahistorical its fascinating. > No one but white men could vote in the U.S. until the early 1900s when women were given the right to vote. > And pretty much only white people were allowed to vote until 1965 when black people, Asians, etc were given the right to vote. 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote in 1870.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      That is technically true, but literacy tests, poll taxes and other voter suppression methods were legal until 1965. They had the right on paper, but not in practice.
      - Melting_Harps 4y ago
        > That is technically true, but literacy tests, poll taxes and other voter suppression methods were legal until 1965. They had the right on paper, but not in practice. That's making my point for me, all those imbeciles in Qanon were so detached from reality after being propagandized on Facebook by the CCP, Cambridge Analytica et al into thinking that they should vote for Trump or the World would fall apart, only to be left to question their false reality when the results didn't favour their outcome so they did what all disfranchised do when they feel the system is not on their side (which has historically favoured whites in the US), riot. My point stands, and that is that things have gotten past a melting point because no one wants to exit their insulated echo chambers they've resided and then were forced into during COVID rather than get involved and do the heavy lifting that it takes make actual progress. Political means is just one way by which effective change occurs at the local level, I didn't vote in the primary despite being told the red wave was imminent (which means nothing to me as I think it's a false dichotomy): but I have residence in a blue state and instead I took the time to volunteer locally and hand out food for those in need instead. It was a better use of my time and helped lessen misery, if only for a sort period, by feeding people. Moreover, do you know he actual voter participation rate in the US presidential election in 2016/2020? Do you know the demographics, and how few below 40 are actually voting? You speak about race and gender, when you really should be looking at how few non-boomers are involved in politics at all to see how alarming it really is.
HPMOR 4y ago
Absolutely agree. The legislative branch needs to reassert itself here.
- salawat 4y ago
  Though they should do a little something about their specific and conspicuous exclusion from coverage under insider trading laws while they are at it. Just to be self-referentially consistent.

Waterluvian 4y ago

It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first.

P_I_Staker 4y ago
Whether or not the president can pardon himself is not a settled matter in US law.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  Pardons are criminal, QI is about civil liability.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first. QI has nothing to do with being “deputized”, it has to do no with being a public official. It was first articulated in a suit over government cobtracts against White House, non-law-enforcement, officials.

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country... Agreed, and that is why we fought so hard in CO to over-turn it [0] during the BLM riots, which really should have been called overt police abuse riots akin to those in LA in the 90s during the Rodeny King arrest. Which I saw happen in real-time as a child. The fact that the rest of the US didn't follow suit was an immense tragedy, as that was likely the ONLY time that this would have been possible due to COVID and the shutdown slowing down the economy enough for people to realize how far we had fallen and get politically active in their community. Instead it's been a tragic reality come to life rife with more authoritarian encroachment on civil liberties both on and offline. All of this while we see what authoritarian nations like Russia and China do serving as a stark reality of how quickly bad things can get. See, this is the hard part about living in a Republic: you have to place a great deal of faith in the populace to be just as active and as well informed as oneself for it to sustain itself if it's to remain a Republic wherein the Citizen's rights are upheld and the State is suppressed to it's enumerated and outlined duties. I personally never wanted to be an activist, it's incredibly difficult and often sad thing to do because of the harsh realities of Life it exposes you and the emotional and mental toll that it takes, but I realized that without it we can lose what so many fought for to get us to this point in order to advance Society and Civilization as a whole--as flawed as the West may be it is still orders of magnitude better than perhaps any of it's predecessors to date in most capacities, and it's worth fighting for. I fear that that the American experiment placed the most value on this since it's inception, but that much like Rome because of overt corruption and nepotism it's populace became more and more disenfranchised and apathetic as time went on and it devolved into just another imperial plutocracy. I still think the US is remarkable in many ways, but if it's own populace cannot or will not resist against this than what was thought to be an ongoing experiment in self-governance might have ended in my Lifetime. > It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. That's just a platitude and I don't think that was ever anything but a fabrication to tell children and the feeble minded alike to give the illusion of how skewed the Law really is the closer you get to it's source of power (State): Bush et al are all War Criminals [1]. It's worth noting that this all happened when I was a child and I soon realized what a farce this was then, too. Hence the need to get involved in activism. > In recent weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and others have been formulating defenses against possible prosecutions for war crimes and are pressuring Republican members of Congress to pass new laws to protect them. >> As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado-passes-landmark-law-against-qualified-immunity-creates-new-way-to-protect-civil-rights/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado... 1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26669 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26...

rhaway84773 4y ago
> it's populace became more and more disenfranchised and apathetic as time went on You see claims like this all the time but they are so blatantly ahistorical its fascinating. No one but white men could vote in the U.S. until the early 1900s when women were given the right to vote. And pretty much only white people were allowed to vote until 1965 when black people, Asians, etc were given the right to vote. The U.S. may call itself the oldest democracy but there are only a handful of democracies that so heavily disenfranchised such significant parts of their population as recently as the US did. It’s been a little more than 50 years where millions of people were not legally disenfranchised, so by any measure the US population has become more enfranchised. Further, as the chart in the Wikipedia page below show, voter turnout has been constantly increasing in the US (at least for Presidential elections) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_Stat... The evidence indicates that the populace is becoming less, not more apathetic.
- mcclung 4y ago
  > You see claims like this all the time but they are so blatantly ahistorical its fascinating. > No one but white men could vote in the U.S. until the early 1900s when women were given the right to vote. > And pretty much only white people were allowed to vote until 1965 when black people, Asians, etc were given the right to vote. 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote in 1870.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    That is technically true, but literacy tests, poll taxes and other voter suppression methods were legal until 1965. They had the right on paper, but not in practice.
    - Melting_Harps 4y ago
      > That is technically true, but literacy tests, poll taxes and other voter suppression methods were legal until 1965. They had the right on paper, but not in practice. That's making my point for me, all those imbeciles in Qanon were so detached from reality after being propagandized on Facebook by the CCP, Cambridge Analytica et al into thinking that they should vote for Trump or the World would fall apart, only to be left to question their false reality when the results didn't favour their outcome so they did what all disfranchised do when they feel the system is not on their side (which has historically favoured whites in the US), riot. My point stands, and that is that things have gotten past a melting point because no one wants to exit their insulated echo chambers they've resided and then were forced into during COVID rather than get involved and do the heavy lifting that it takes make actual progress. Political means is just one way by which effective change occurs at the local level, I didn't vote in the primary despite being told the red wave was imminent (which means nothing to me as I think it's a false dichotomy): but I have residence in a blue state and instead I took the time to volunteer locally and hand out food for those in need instead. It was a better use of my time and helped lessen misery, if only for a sort period, by feeding people. Moreover, do you know he actual voter participation rate in the US presidential election in 2016/2020? Do you know the demographics, and how few below 40 are actually voting? You speak about race and gender, when you really should be looking at how few non-boomers are involved in politics at all to see how alarming it really is.

HPMOR 4y ago

Absolutely agree. The legislative branch needs to reassert itself here.

salawat 4y ago
Though they should do a little something about their specific and conspicuous exclusion from coverage under insider trading laws while they are at it. Just to be self-referentially consistent.