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> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the Sta
by mikeyouse 1y ago
> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law".
We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive branch departments, and the President can fire them all without consequence or oversight, then it turns out there is no law.
- abirch 1y agoIt defeats the purpose of a veto if the executive branch can ignore the law.
- duxup 1y ago[flagged]
- nerdponx 1y agoAt least I get to feel vindicated. Many many people, including me, have long asserted that the so-called "conservatives" in the Supreme Court are anything but. Historically their decisions have appealed to a certain kind of conservative political base, but the pretense is really starting to wear thin. Limiting the power of the executive branch in general was never the goal, it was only to limit the power of presidents who were willing to challenge the capitalist oligarchy master plan. They know that their job now, along with their allies and Congress, is to simply step aside and manage public outrage while the next phase of the plan is set in motion. I'm not just talking about in recent years either, go back through the Obama and W Bush administrations. You might notice that the conservatives in the court curiously turned more conservative when "their guy" isn't in office.
- wackget 1y agoThey are not conservatives. They are selfservatives.
- watwut 1y ago> have long asserted that the so-called "conservatives" in the Supreme Court are anything but They are conservatives and push for conservative agenda. Conservatives wanted them on the court so that they can make decisions like this.
- actionfromafar 1y agoThey are cons.
- dagss 1y agoI think you and parent comment are just using the word conservative in two different ways. There is conservative values and there is the conservative party, two different things.
- miningape 1y agoGo back far enough and conservative meant "conserve the monarchy"
- afavour 1y agoOften distinguished as "little c" conservatism and "big C" Conservatives.
- watwut 1y agoI am saying that these are real conservative values. It is not true that these would be just something conservative party does while claiming to believe something else. Instead, if you read what conservative people write and say, in journals, books, talk shows, anywhere ... this is exactly what they believe in.
- dagss 1y agoIt may be my European context / political definitions, but at least around here the word "conservative" would include vigorously defending the rule of law and courts (along with property rights and so on). E.g., letting people who attacked police officers on Jan 6 out of prison is about as anti-conservative as you get. I was trying to point out that conservative as a political philosophy != whatever Fox news preaches this month, but perhaps the word is used differently in the US.. Anyway point is, I'm sure the post you responded to used the word conservative more in the way I'm used to (European way?), thus your cross-talk.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- meowface 1y agoWhat we're seeing now isn't exactly the power of capitalist oligarchy but right-wing populist authoritarianism. They forge alliances with wealthy figures to achieve goals and engage in a corrupt patronage system like in an undeveloped country, but if this were a capitalist coup we would not be seeing anything like the absurd and illegal tariffs, brutal response to immigrants, etc. I know leftists like to describe these sorts of phenomena (including Hitler's rise) as all part of the capitalist overlords' master plans, but that's not the most accurate description. Capitalists like Andreessen will cynically exploit it and hop on the bandwagon and benefit from it to the extent they can, but right-wing populist authoritarianism is its own beast, and they're just trying to position themselves as along for the ride rather than in its jaws. The regime is happy to reward capitalist loyalists and I do not deny there is a mutualism occurring, but it is more complex than a movement centered around capitalism.
- mastax 1y agoUp to 2025 they maintained a reasonable facade of impartiality. During Trump's first term they told him no a lot.
- wffurr 1y agoThe answer is impeachment, but when Congress is stuffed with boot licking toadies, then there is no recourse.
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoIf a population decides to let themselves be run this way then who is at fault? People get the leaders they deserve
- jkestner 1y agoWe love to blame the common clay, don't we. You can win a majority of voters and lose an election. There are systemic problems, starting with money in politics, two senators per state, the electoral college and gerrymandering.
- tastyfreeze 1y agoWe already bastardized the senate by electing senators by popular vote. Senators are supposed to represent each states government, not the people of the state. As a single member of the union a state doesn't need more senators. Making ingredients the proportional to population just makes the senate another house. The people have the house. The cap of representatives has also been harmful to the voice of the people being heard. Representatives are the face for too many people for them to truly represent their constituents.
- jkestner 1y agoWell, yes, the senate is useless. It was useful to check the South’s power in the Great Conpromise, but now the most deliberative body is not needed when the House can slow things down all by itself. Unicameral works for me. Representatives would be more representative if not for gerrymandering.
- tastyfreeze 1y ago
- skizm 1y ago> it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch There are plenty of laws being ignored. Tariffs being the most obvious.
- runarberg 1y agoParent’s statement still holds. The laws may exist but if they are not enforced, they don‘t really constraint anyone do they?
- selectodude 1y agoCongress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
- cheema33 1y ago> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then! I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoHow do you mitigate when 2/3rd of voters support, at least tacitly, the lawlessness?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 1y agoYou don't. That's democracy.
- bilekas 1y agoI don't know exactly which support level you mean but https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker would paint a different picture. That said, who knows how valid even these numbers are.
- nimbius 1y ago[flagged]
- jopsen 1y agoEven more reason to let people report such issues. If you don't collect data, you can't brag about it.
- pinnochio 1y ago[dead]
- BoredPositron 1y agoIt's about ignoring due process. If you don't want it repeal the law. They can do it easily but ignoring it sends a different message...
- mikeyouse 1y agoThis is exactly right - the Trump admin claims to have a mandate to do all sorts of things, and they're just unilaterally doing so - in plain violation of the law. If they actually the mandate they say they do, they'd pass laws repealing the requirements they don't like and defunding the programs they dislike rather than illegally impounding the funds and illegally killing programs like this one. Except it turns out that "illegal" is only important if there's someone capable of enforcing the law and under this Supreme Court's clearly insane reading of our laws and constitution, there is nobody that can constrain the President.
- Joeri 1y agoWhen a different side takes control of the justice department they may choose to go after all those who broke the law by order of this president. The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not. This administration has set the standard that the justice department can be weaponized against political enemies. The ratchet only goes one way in American politics, presidents never relinquish the powers claimed by their predecessors.
- kranke155 1y agoThere are some signs that the current Administration has no intention of allowing “a diferente side” to retake power. Trump third term being one.
- throw0101c 1y ago> The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not. Unless they are granted a blanket pardon beforehand. Then all you can really do is an "audit" for who did what, from which no charges can be laid.
- zippyman55 1y agoThat does not allow escaping from international laws.
- terminalshort 1y agoInternational law makes traffic cops look like Judge Dredd
- actionfromafar 1y agoCan't escape State law either.
- jayd16 1y agoTrump seems to have been able to.
- ModernMech 1y agoThe Constitution constrains the executive, it doesn't give him very many powers at all. Frankly, the Constitution bars him from having run in the 2024 election for having caused an insurrection against the United States. Aside from that, he should have been impeached and removed and barred from running again for extorting a bribe from a foreign government. We have the necessary laws to have prevented this but money and power and bigotry won the day, as usual. Don't look to laws to fix this, no amount of laws will fix voting in a felon, adjudicated rapist who tried to kill his own VP. At that point you have to fix the society, because it's sick.
- wat10000 1y agoPeople have been saying for decades that Congress has delegated far too much power to the executive and that it's ripe for abuse if a malevolent president ever takes office. Hey guess what, a malevolent president took office and is now abusing all that power delegated by Congress. Who could have foreseen this. (Yes, his predecessors also abused that power in various malevolent ways, but there's a massive difference in degree now.)
- rayiner 1y agoYour comment reflects a common, but fundamentally mistaken, understanding of the constitution. You're thinking of the government like an operating system with a microkernel that is trusted to neutrally enforce the "law," with the three branches of government running in userspace. That's not the system the founders created! They understood that everyone is political, and no one can be trusted. The founders understood the "who watches the watchers" problem and created a system without any such single point of failure. The ultimate backstop in our political system is not the law, but instead frequent elections. Congress writes the law, the President enforces the law, and the Judiciary interprets the law. If the President does a bad job of enforcing the law, the recourse is elections (or, as a last resort, impeachment).
- kranke155 1y agoThey’ve created enough of a digital system to manage public opinion (through brain rot, manipulation, bots, psychometrics) that they’re less and less afraid of elections.
- rayiner 1y agoWho is “they?”
- kranke155 1y agoI assume multiple competing systems at this point. You have Team Jorge (and many others) in Israel, Robert Mercer’s rebranded SCL Group and offshoots, whatever Elon Musk has done to X (who he himself said he used to help Trump win). In Portugal there are bot armies and influence operations on every social network - Facebook and Reddit most of all.
- kridsdale1 1y agoA lot of the members of this very forum, honestly.
- drob518 1y agoJust a quibble, but we should only be impeaching Presidents for illegal acts, not mere opinions about job performance, which members of the opposite party will almost always disagree with. The remedy for doing a bad job is the ballot box.
- pwarner 1y agoit turns out there aren't really any laws
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y agoOh there are, but only for the Democrats. Same with the media: Trumps brain is openly turning to soup and the media can’t help but cover for him. Yet Biden, when he too was clearly way too old for the job, got constantly attacked for it. The double standard is bizarre.
- softwaredoug 1y agoTBH The Right in the US has such a structural advantage, that Congress's silence becomes de-facto acceptance. Congress choosing to not do oversight becomes a de-facto repeal of the law. The only other option is to find someone with standing being harmed and sue. And that will take time to wind through the courts, with not great chances at SCOTUS.
- rayiner 1y ago> Congress's silence becomes de-facto acceptance. Congress choosing to not do oversight becomes a de-factor repeal of the law. Yes, but why is that surprising? If a majority of any legislature doesn't care to see a law enforced, they could vote to repeal the law anyway. It's only because of the artifice of the filibuster in the U.S. system that there's a meaningful difference between those two things.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- softwaredoug 1y agoI agree, I'm not sure it is surprising. (there would be tremendous oversight if the GOP was in power in Congress, and the President was a Dem)
- titzer 1y ago"oversight" Like the Benghazi and Hunter Biden investigations. In other words, sideshows.
- walkabout 1y agoOne nice thing about pointless witch hunts that go nowhere despite enormous efforts is that you can be sure a much-quicker process ending with something like actual consequences would ensue if there were real criminality to investigate. If all they can come up with is bullshit, things must be going ok, and if they’re committed to pursuing bullshit, odds are good they’d be thrilled to find something real to attack, if they could. Similar deal with Republican election complaints: if they don’t bother to investigate when they can, or find nothing substantial when they do, those concerns can be safely dismissed, which is nice.
- b33j0r 1y agoI am so mad that I spent that much time watching an anthropomorphized bill moving through congress. Useless knowledge. “And we’ll make ted kennedy payyyy “If he fights back, we’ll just say that he’s gayyyy
- blurbleblurble 1y agoSeems like laws exist, they're just perverted or ignored. For example, this applies to the executive branch: (a)Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully— (1)falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2)makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3)makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years. (b)Subsection (a) does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding, or that party’s counsel, for statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding. (c)With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to— (1)administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or (2)any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 749; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147; Pub. L. 104–292, § 2, Oct. 11, 1996, 110 Stat. 3459; Pub. L. 108–458, title VI, § 6703(a), Dec. 17, 2004, 118 Stat. 3766; Pub. L. 109–248, title I, § 141(c), July 27, 2006, 120 Stat. 603.) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
- blurbleblurble 1y agoCurious about the downvotes, I'm interested in hearing peoples' negative reaction to this law?
- Consultant32452 1y agoI don't see how anything has changed in a meaningful way. George Bush "tortured some folks" and Obama assassinated US citizens abroad. The status quo is literal evil and Trump is behaving in accordance with the status quo.
- dragonwriter 1y agoIf you don't see any distinctions beyond “there is some evil” vs. “there is no evil”, all of human history must seem to be a flat, undifferentiated blob to you.
- Consultant32452 1y agoThere's no moral equivalency between the US directly torturing prisoners of war/assassinating its own citizens and a website being taken down.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yks 1y agoThat's why the future looks so bleak. Republicans support absolutely any amount of crime and corruption, because "some" crime and corruption has happened under Democrats. Meanwhile half of the rest of Americans wouldn't support Democrats because "some" crime is infinitely worse than "no crime" in their view. Criminals enjoy an absolutely stunning structural advantage in this country.
- Consultant32452 1y agoA website was taken down. This might technically violate some paperwork law, but the real problem is we don't actually prosecute war crimes/human rights violations. So what difference does it make if some website went down?
- gigatexal 1y agoA very, very bad place indeed.
- harrall 1y agoLaws can’t fix this problem. The branches check each other but citizens are supposed to check the branches. “Can’t fix a non-engineering problem with engineering.” But your average citizen is consuming news sources like Fox News that present a rosy picture. In their world, things are going well (and all problems are due to one party). That’s why dysfunction in the branches can go so far. The basis of American governance, and probably any kind of governance to be honest, is vigilance. If everyone was fully informed on what was happening everyday and behind closed doors, everyone would vote differently. Instead we vote based often on out-of-context bits that we hear, and surprisingly we all get completely sets of bits. The system — voting, checks and balances — is still solid but the input into it is not great. The founding fathers did not anticipate the modern media world.
- notahacker 1y agoThe founding fathers lived in a world where the average citizen would have no idea what was going on in Washington. They just didn't expect it to be exploited quite so brazenly
- kelnos 1y agoThe finding fathers also set up a system where most people could not vote, so that wasn't a big problem for them.
- itsoktocry 1y ago>But your average citizen is consuming news sources like Fox News that present a rosy picture. In their world, things are going well (and all problems are due to one party). As usual, you see this as a "they are dumb" problem. Look within.
- altcognito 1y agoBy design, the current administration moves as fast as it possibly can because it knows that the public will take time to catch up. The key to countering is consistent pressure that does not relent to fix the mechanisms that are broken: (congress, the white house, the "deep state" side note: the deep state always existed, it was just a convenient shorthand for "the part of the US government that faithfully implements the laws as passed by congress". That portion has been gutted and replaced with sycophants, and it will now take time to undo it) Things like the Supreme Court, term limits, election funding also need updating. We all need to do a better job reviewing the fundamentals of government.
- alexashka 1y agoIt will always boil down to people. This fantasy of free markets, laws, branches or anything else solving what Plato wrote about in The Republic thousands of years ago is pure folly. If it is of any comfort - it's always been this way and it's not going to get any better :) We have technological progress, not progress in wisdom. People are better behaved because well fed humans behave better than hungry humans - everything else is as it's always been.
- munificent 1y ago> there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. Laws don't do things, people do. It doesn't matter what's written down on paper if the people in power ignore it and the masses don't have enough organized collective power to prevent them from doing so.
- isodev 1y agoDo you expect elections are still a viable option in this circumstance? It's beginning to sound like the results will be just set to a default, like the last presidential election in Russia: "78%+ for Putin/Trump".
- riazrizvi 1y agoThe context of all US law is that it is the implementation of the will of the people. There is currently political will to shift focus in the military to effective fighting power, as opposed to progressive values. I think this is because the electorate recognizes that military threats around the world are getting worse. Ukrainians will tell you now, you can’t have peace without strength. Europeans are also beginning to realize this due to American leadership, hence they have all (but one) doubled NATO funding limits this year.
- atypicaluser 1y ago> ...it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. There are, but the executive for decades (centuries?) has ignored law inconvenient to its goals, and the legislative has generally shrugged it off, hoping their guy will do the same down the road. One such restraint? Declaring war. Yet how often has this power been abused by the executive since World War 2? Korea anyone? Vietnam? Central America? The Middle East? There's been a lot of hand-wringing in this thread about what Trump has done and is doing. Truth is, he's just the latest player in the game we've all participated in, and he's good at it. To stop him, we'd have to change the rules of the game, as Congress did in 2017 with the Russia sanctions bill.[1] I just don't see that happening 'cause... we're all hoping our guy will do the same (as Trump) down the road. [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_America%27s_Adversaries_Through_Sanctions_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_America%27s_Adversa...>
- kridsdale1 1y agoThis is not a reply to your message, but I can’t help but dive in to this opportunity to be extremely pedantic. Is the correct plural acronym here “IGs”, or “Is-G” (Inspectors General)?