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In the US, we are witnessing one of the flaws of the Constitution. The Executive branch, which is supposed to carry out the laws, is ignoring the law. Both Co

In the US, we are witnessing one of the flaws of the Constitution. The Executive branch, which is supposed to carry out the laws, is ignoring the law. Both Congress and the Supreme Court are acquiescing. The only people who are pushing back are the lower courts (which again are ignored by the Executive branch). This is dysfunction on a national level.

gregbot 9mo ago
So do you oppose DACA? That was the executive deliberately refusing to enforce the law as passed by congress. Edit: Here’s what a federal judge had to say in 2023: "The solution for these deficiencies lies with the legislature, not the executive or judicial branches. Congress, for any number of reasons, has decided not to pass DACA-like legislation ... The Executive Branch cannot usurp the power bestowed on Congress by the Constitution — even to fill a void." https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199428038/federal-judge-again-declares-that-daca-is-illegal https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199428038/federal-judge-agai... > Also, as an aside, if the bad actors in government who were screeching about DACA's constitutionality put even a fraction of that effort into protecting the Constitution when the First and Fourth Amendments were on the line, that would be great. This is actual whataboutism
- aappleby 9mo ago
  Oh boy, whataboutism!
- plagiarist 9mo ago
  I'm reading through the Wikipedia and you'll have to explain this because it looks like that version of the federal government respected injunctions that were issued. Or we can drop the pretense that you want to start a discussion in good faith with this whataboutism, that's fine with me too. Also, as an aside, if the bad actors in government who were screeching about DACA's constitutionality put even a fraction of that effort into protecting the Constitution when the First and Fourth Amendments were on the line, that would be great.
- wan23 9mo ago
  Obama deported more people than Bush or Clinton, but chose to deprioritize (defer action) on the most sympathetic and focused more on troublemakers. Some might call that pragmatic use of limited resources.
  - pjc50 9mo ago
    And - crucially - did not have indiscriminate sweeps or raids. The number of false positives, people deported or arrested who had a legitimate right to remain, was nowhere near as high. Almost everywhere has immigration enforcement. Most of those will do the occasional raid on homes or workplaces. Very rarely do you see the kinds of conflict that ICE is (IMO intentionally) causing.
tokai 9mo ago
Who would have know it would be a disaster to base your system on the Roman Republic?!
- AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
  Well, that gave us a system that worked (with some modifications) for over 200 years, so that's still pretty good?
  - nh23423fefe 9mo ago
    lol civil war (just like the romans loved to do) within 80 years of founding isnt great.
pjc50 9mo ago
All three parts are controlled by the same party, so of course it collapses to a unitary executive. It's not dysfunction, either. It's functioning exactly as intended, by the people who spent years setting it up, and is delivering their goals. Top of which was abortion bans, which required spending years patiently stacking the Supreme Court. That the goals are stupid and evil and incoherent is a separate problem.
- dylan604 9mo ago
  The patience of waiting for "their guy" to be given 3 posts to SCOTUS in one term was the ultimate pay off. It just so happened that "their guy" has got to be one of the most malleable to anyone's position as he has no position of his own other than being "the guy".
  - markoman 9mo ago
    I really wonder how history will view DJT -- surely one of the most flawed yet consequential figures in American history -- who nonetheless had the good fortune of two untimely deaths (Scalia & Ginsburg) and some arm-twisting (Kennedy) which he parlayed into fantastic 'success' in the SCOTUS. This includes primarily the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and the incredible Presidential Immunity doctrine, which is essentially legislation via judicial decision. The falsity of how the SCOTUS was captured by the executive branch was ultimately rooted in lies. Trump's three nominees all lied about their position on Roe v. Wade during their confirmations. As a case in point, consider Justice Brett Kavanaugh who wrote that Roe was "wrongly decided" in a concurring opinion on Dobbs (2022). Yet in his 2018 confirmation hearing he testified that Roe v. Wade was "important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times" and went on to discuss the importance of judicial precedent. Of course the Kavanaugh hearing was an utter circus in every sense, but it was obvious that he had lied during a number of exchanges with senators. Let's not forget that just a few months ago in a decision, it was Kavanaugh who gave us the 'Kavanaugh stop' which is a law enforcement practice in the United States in which federal agents can stop and detain a person based on their perceived ethnicity, spoken language, and occupation. This doctrine reset what constituted 'reasonable suspicion' for any police stop.
paganel 9mo ago
The Constitution without the people willing to "respect" it is just a piece of dead wood, it has always been like that. That applies to all Constitution-like covenants, no matter the time and the geographical location. What's changed now, compared to the past, it's that the people deciding that what's written there is bogus have started changing things a little bit faster compared to the usual, hence all the brouhaha. Also a reminder that the Slavery System was very much alive and all under this same US Constitution for more than half a century, which goes to show that's it's really just a piece of dead wood.
psunavy03 9mo ago
The Supreme Court has told Trump to pound sand as often as it's upheld his policies. As dangerous as many of the things the Trump administration is doing are, there are other dangerous narratives out there, and the caricaturing of the Supreme Court is one of those. There's a huge difference between "I disagree with this legal rationale" and "this court is illegitimate." Like it or not, every Justice on the Court is there legitimately. One of them via bare-knuckle hardball politics, to be sure. But according to the rules.
- dylan604 9mo ago
  One of them is there because Congress made up rules to deny a sitting president his legitimate right to make a nomination. So I would say that judge is illegitimate to a lot of people.
  - psunavy03 9mo ago
    The President made a nomination. The Senate refused it. It's the Senate's prerogative to deny confirmation to the nominee.
    - ceejayoz 9mo ago
      The Senate made it very clear they would refuse any nomination. Which is a scenario it seems the Founders didn't really anticipate.
    - dylan604 9mo ago
      There's a difference between putting a nomination to a vote and denying versus "we don't accept nominations in last year of an outgoing POTUS" yet turned right around and did it for Trump's third nomination. In that sense, 2 out of 3 would be deemed illegitimate on the same rule being applied in opposite ways. If you can't see the hypocrisy in that, then we really can't have an honest conversation
- pjc50 9mo ago
  Do they get to stay there legitimately regardless of what outside influence they receive? https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022846/a-running-list-of-clarence-thomas-scandals https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022846/a-running-list-of-clare... (Thomas was appointed by GHW Bush, pre-dating the first Iraq war)
Yizahi 9mo ago
You are forgetting about legislative branch too. Congress fist voluntarily "gifted" their right to the executive branch, in the form of the eCaNoMic ImErGenCy. And then Congress passed a measure which blocked every single member of Congress from legally questioning that "gift", in the form of legislation that whole year 2025 is one single calendar day, and thus a legal requirement of waiting 10 (or 15?) days before protest couldn't pass. Essentially Congress blatantly broke Constitution twice. At minimum.
- Herring 9mo ago
  They had no choice. Trump literally rewrote the republican party in his image. Congressmen who weren't falling in line got fired or forced to retire. Many many times, eg see Liz Cheney. The last time a purge like this happened was at the time of the Civil War. Even super-popular FDR tried taking out conservative democrats but wasn't successful (democrats don't have that kind of tribal discipline).
  - Yizahi 9mo ago
    Well, they did had a choice. And all of them are directly complicit in this situation by not reforming electoral college and first part the post election system. All current and past congressmen are guilty in that, since they have preserved a broken system so long as it benefited them personally.
    - Herring 9mo ago
      Maybe I misspoke, I mean it's an institutional+cultural failure. Looking forward, if we're to ever get out of this, it'll need something real big. Like another great depression leading to FDR's New Deal. Or Europe's hundreds of millions dead in two world wars. Heroism from individual congressmen isn't gonna cut it.
PaulHoule 9mo ago
Yeah but how legitimate is the Constitution really? Nobody alive has given their consent to it! The average American sees the system producing bad results, at some level people still worship the Constitution like a god when it says something they agree with, on an other level the system can feel like an exhausting and dispiriting legalistic hellscape. How bad the results we are getting is open to debate. People today seem to be really angry about inflation and cost of living issues although the official numbers don't look too terrible. There's the explanation that the numbers are wrong and the explanation that the perception is wrong. There's probably some truth in both, but more fundamentally people don't find centrist politics of any kind emotionally satisfying anywhere anymore but when you get emotionally satisfying politics you wake up with a hangover the next day. I think a lack of meaning is a part of it. If you're not really sure your citizenship is worth something or that you're part of something you're proud of, it's easy to get worked up about illegal immigration. If you don't have a sense of purpose, what is there to be concerned about than the price of eggs? Purposelessness turns the slightest irritation into an existential threat.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  It's not a question of whether the Constitution is legitimate. It's that it's the only plausible thing that authorizes our government to exist. If they aren't following the constitution then they're just a collection of people LARPing in costumes while initiating violence on others.
- 1718627440 9mo ago
  > Yeah but how legitimate is the Constitution really? Nobody alive has given their consent to it! You do by being a citizen. You can renounce your citizenship, if you don't want a constitution to bind you. You can always ask another country whether they want you as a citizen, if you prefer their constitution. > emotionally satisfying Democracy is not supposed to be "emotionally satisfying", Democracy is boring. That's what makes it great. If you want "emotionally satisfying", than you have better lack with a monarchy, dictatorship or civil war.
  - PaulHoule 9mo ago
burnt-resistor 9mo ago
Something perhaps Gödel identified but failed to disclose. Also, a large problem is the self-reinforcing pattern of corruption and influence peddling.

gregbot 9mo ago

So do you oppose DACA? That was the executive deliberately refusing to enforce the law as passed by congress. Edit: Here’s what a federal judge had to say in 2023: "The solution for these deficiencies lies with the legislature, not the executive or judicial branches. Congress, for any number of reasons, has decided not to pass DACA-like legislation ... The Executive Branch cannot usurp the power bestowed on Congress by the Constitution — even to fill a void." https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199428038/federal-judge-again-declares-that-daca-is-illegal https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199428038/federal-judge-agai... > Also, as an aside, if the bad actors in government who were screeching about DACA's constitutionality put even a fraction of that effort into protecting the Constitution when the First and Fourth Amendments were on the line, that would be great. This is actual whataboutism

aappleby 9mo ago
Oh boy, whataboutism!
plagiarist 9mo ago
I'm reading through the Wikipedia and you'll have to explain this because it looks like that version of the federal government respected injunctions that were issued. Or we can drop the pretense that you want to start a discussion in good faith with this whataboutism, that's fine with me too. Also, as an aside, if the bad actors in government who were screeching about DACA's constitutionality put even a fraction of that effort into protecting the Constitution when the First and Fourth Amendments were on the line, that would be great.
wan23 9mo ago
Obama deported more people than Bush or Clinton, but chose to deprioritize (defer action) on the most sympathetic and focused more on troublemakers. Some might call that pragmatic use of limited resources.
- pjc50 9mo ago
  And - crucially - did not have indiscriminate sweeps or raids. The number of false positives, people deported or arrested who had a legitimate right to remain, was nowhere near as high. Almost everywhere has immigration enforcement. Most of those will do the occasional raid on homes or workplaces. Very rarely do you see the kinds of conflict that ICE is (IMO intentionally) causing.

tokai 9mo ago

Who would have know it would be a disaster to base your system on the Roman Republic?!

AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
Well, that gave us a system that worked (with some modifications) for over 200 years, so that's still pretty good?
- nh23423fefe 9mo ago
  lol civil war (just like the romans loved to do) within 80 years of founding isnt great.

pjc50 9mo ago

All three parts are controlled by the same party, so of course it collapses to a unitary executive. It's not dysfunction, either. It's functioning exactly as intended, by the people who spent years setting it up, and is delivering their goals. Top of which was abortion bans, which required spending years patiently stacking the Supreme Court. That the goals are stupid and evil and incoherent is a separate problem.

dylan604 9mo ago
The patience of waiting for "their guy" to be given 3 posts to SCOTUS in one term was the ultimate pay off. It just so happened that "their guy" has got to be one of the most malleable to anyone's position as he has no position of his own other than being "the guy".
- markoman 9mo ago
  I really wonder how history will view DJT -- surely one of the most flawed yet consequential figures in American history -- who nonetheless had the good fortune of two untimely deaths (Scalia & Ginsburg) and some arm-twisting (Kennedy) which he parlayed into fantastic 'success' in the SCOTUS. This includes primarily the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and the incredible Presidential Immunity doctrine, which is essentially legislation via judicial decision. The falsity of how the SCOTUS was captured by the executive branch was ultimately rooted in lies. Trump's three nominees all lied about their position on Roe v. Wade during their confirmations. As a case in point, consider Justice Brett Kavanaugh who wrote that Roe was "wrongly decided" in a concurring opinion on Dobbs (2022). Yet in his 2018 confirmation hearing he testified that Roe v. Wade was "important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times" and went on to discuss the importance of judicial precedent. Of course the Kavanaugh hearing was an utter circus in every sense, but it was obvious that he had lied during a number of exchanges with senators. Let's not forget that just a few months ago in a decision, it was Kavanaugh who gave us the 'Kavanaugh stop' which is a law enforcement practice in the United States in which federal agents can stop and detain a person based on their perceived ethnicity, spoken language, and occupation. This doctrine reset what constituted 'reasonable suspicion' for any police stop.

paganel 9mo ago

The Constitution without the people willing to "respect" it is just a piece of dead wood, it has always been like that. That applies to all Constitution-like covenants, no matter the time and the geographical location. What's changed now, compared to the past, it's that the people deciding that what's written there is bogus have started changing things a little bit faster compared to the usual, hence all the brouhaha. Also a reminder that the Slavery System was very much alive and all under this same US Constitution for more than half a century, which goes to show that's it's really just a piece of dead wood.

psunavy03 9mo ago

The Supreme Court has told Trump to pound sand as often as it's upheld his policies. As dangerous as many of the things the Trump administration is doing are, there are other dangerous narratives out there, and the caricaturing of the Supreme Court is one of those. There's a huge difference between "I disagree with this legal rationale" and "this court is illegitimate." Like it or not, every Justice on the Court is there legitimately. One of them via bare-knuckle hardball politics, to be sure. But according to the rules.

dylan604 9mo ago
One of them is there because Congress made up rules to deny a sitting president his legitimate right to make a nomination. So I would say that judge is illegitimate to a lot of people.
- psunavy03 9mo ago
  The President made a nomination. The Senate refused it. It's the Senate's prerogative to deny confirmation to the nominee.
  - ceejayoz 9mo ago
    The Senate made it very clear they would refuse any nomination. Which is a scenario it seems the Founders didn't really anticipate.
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    There's a difference between putting a nomination to a vote and denying versus "we don't accept nominations in last year of an outgoing POTUS" yet turned right around and did it for Trump's third nomination. In that sense, 2 out of 3 would be deemed illegitimate on the same rule being applied in opposite ways. If you can't see the hypocrisy in that, then we really can't have an honest conversation
pjc50 9mo ago
Do they get to stay there legitimately regardless of what outside influence they receive? https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022846/a-running-list-of-clarence-thomas-scandals https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022846/a-running-list-of-clare... (Thomas was appointed by GHW Bush, pre-dating the first Iraq war)

Yizahi 9mo ago

You are forgetting about legislative branch too. Congress fist voluntarily "gifted" their right to the executive branch, in the form of the eCaNoMic ImErGenCy. And then Congress passed a measure which blocked every single member of Congress from legally questioning that "gift", in the form of legislation that whole year 2025 is one single calendar day, and thus a legal requirement of waiting 10 (or 15?) days before protest couldn't pass. Essentially Congress blatantly broke Constitution twice. At minimum.

Herring 9mo ago
They had no choice. Trump literally rewrote the republican party in his image. Congressmen who weren't falling in line got fired or forced to retire. Many many times, eg see Liz Cheney. The last time a purge like this happened was at the time of the Civil War. Even super-popular FDR tried taking out conservative democrats but wasn't successful (democrats don't have that kind of tribal discipline).
- Yizahi 9mo ago
  Well, they did had a choice. And all of them are directly complicit in this situation by not reforming electoral college and first part the post election system. All current and past congressmen are guilty in that, since they have preserved a broken system so long as it benefited them personally.
  - Herring 9mo ago
    Maybe I misspoke, I mean it's an institutional+cultural failure. Looking forward, if we're to ever get out of this, it'll need something real big. Like another great depression leading to FDR's New Deal. Or Europe's hundreds of millions dead in two world wars. Heroism from individual congressmen isn't gonna cut it.

PaulHoule 9mo ago

Yeah but how legitimate is the Constitution really? Nobody alive has given their consent to it! The average American sees the system producing bad results, at some level people still worship the Constitution like a god when it says something they agree with, on an other level the system can feel like an exhausting and dispiriting legalistic hellscape. How bad the results we are getting is open to debate. People today seem to be really angry about inflation and cost of living issues although the official numbers don't look too terrible. There's the explanation that the numbers are wrong and the explanation that the perception is wrong. There's probably some truth in both, but more fundamentally people don't find centrist politics of any kind emotionally satisfying anywhere anymore but when you get emotionally satisfying politics you wake up with a hangover the next day. I think a lack of meaning is a part of it. If you're not really sure your citizenship is worth something or that you're part of something you're proud of, it's easy to get worked up about illegal immigration. If you don't have a sense of purpose, what is there to be concerned about than the price of eggs? Purposelessness turns the slightest irritation into an existential threat.

mothballed 9mo ago
It's not a question of whether the Constitution is legitimate. It's that it's the only plausible thing that authorizes our government to exist. If they aren't following the constitution then they're just a collection of people LARPing in costumes while initiating violence on others.
1718627440 9mo ago
> Yeah but how legitimate is the Constitution really? Nobody alive has given their consent to it! You do by being a citizen. You can renounce your citizenship, if you don't want a constitution to bind you. You can always ask another country whether they want you as a citizen, if you prefer their constitution. > emotionally satisfying Democracy is not supposed to be "emotionally satisfying", Democracy is boring. That's what makes it great. If you want "emotionally satisfying", than you have better lack with a monarchy, dictatorship or civil war.
- PaulHoule 9mo ago

burnt-resistor 9mo ago

Something perhaps Gödel identified but failed to disclose. Also, a large problem is the self-reinforcing pattern of corruption and influence peddling.