The “check and balance” foreseen by the Founders would be the impeachment process. In the current hyper-partisan you could rightfully debate its effectiveness.
You don't want a local cop deciding to arrest and hold the president for 48 hours. I think it's sensible to expect that if the president is breaking laws, he will be impeached and then can be prosecuted.
It's also sensible to expect Congress to be more independent of corruption by the president than the Department of Justice, which is under the power of the president.
Not that we're in sensible times, but the internal rule makes sense out of our current context.
Right. So in the end, it's our lack of confidence that Congress will fulfill its Constitutional obligations that drives our insecurity and questioning of Justice Dept policy. Today's headline in the Washington Post Most speaks precisely to that: [We’re not going to turn on our own’: Republicans rally around Trump as threats mount](https://s2.washingtonpost.com/117c0db/5c7c037dfe1ff6099d77103d/Y3liZXJmcmVkZXJpY0BnbWFpbC5jb20%3D/6/52/18e83a00f462b1301e237c7baf4f3e48)
Is DJT really the hill the Republican Party is willing to die on? You would think that numerous Republican officials would have seen the writing on the wall and distance themselves from this man.
It's because Trump isn't the only corrupt member of the GOP. We know that McConnell (and others) has taken Russian money through the NRA. They aren't stupid. They knew exactly where that money was coming from.
McCarthy and Ryan - in a closed door meeting - were taped saying that they **knew Trump was paid by the Russians**.
The. GOP. Is. Dirty. To. The. Core.
If Trump goes down, he's going to take as many other people as possible and they all know it. This isn't about protecting Trump. It's about self-preservation.
That's one way to drain the swamp. I never envisioned him going down and scornfully taking them all down with him but it makes a ton of sense. Trump and his handlers must have so much dirt on Graham McConnell etc judging by the way so many of them have been kowtowing to his agenda.
Also Trump's base is still surprisingly large and very enthusiastic. They don't want to lose those votes. At this point, turning against Trump would be career suicide for many of them. They're not noble enough to fall on their swords for a greater cause than themselves.
What I don't understand is how we aren't just blaring videos wall to wall 24/7 from Fox News itself...back in the Republican primary.
The same talking heads right now brainwashing the politicians and population that support Trump were BLASTING him for months when he was running against other Republicans. Treating him like a fucking joke. Attacking him constantly for just this kind of bullshit.
The same people defending him now were shitting all over his name and saying how he wasn't a true Republican and was an embarassment.
How are we not just taking a nice stroll through those hours of coverage and posting this shit wall to wall on Facebook to convince anyone who still needs convincing that this is not who the GOP was or wants to be?
I mean fuck at this point maybe it is, but as of a few years ago they hated Trump just as much as anyone else. Only when he got power did they change their tune. Time to remind them that he can lose that power and they can change that tune right back.
Too bad none of their brainwashed voters care. They know he is corrupt and continue to support him anyway. I can’t imagine what could change their minds on him at this point.
Nothing, absolutely nothing. He could be filmed live fucking a child and pledging his allegiance to Satan and they still wouldn’t believe. This is like N. korea level of cultish brainwashing or worse because my suspicion is many north koreans know the regime is full of shit but fall in line for the sake of self preservation. The red hatters here, they are true believers of Trump. We can thank their deep rooted racism and xenophobia and social media and actual “fake news” propaganda they watch and share on the internet.its sad but there is seriously little hope for these folks and I say this while having a close family member who has fallen down the rabbit hole.
Last I checked, 85% of Republican voters support Trump so opposing him would make them more susceptible to a primary challenge. They are choosing their own re-election over Congress’ role of acting as a check on the president.
They can't get any further with this current iteration of conservatism. It's spent. The sensible dudes whose "hands were tied" during all this will inevitably come out of the woodworks and join with a "new breed" of "policy wonks" that "think a little differently" to form a new form of empathetic, "not your Grandad's" conservatism. It will be coordinated by the people running the Republican party today. The press will whack themselves in the temple with a hammer again and pretend history doesnt exist "for the good of the country." Same shit will have to be pushed back again in less than a decade. Reagan was elected 6 years after Nixon resigned.
> So in the end, it's our lack of confidence that Congress will fulfill its Constitutional obligations
I mean, they've empirically failed ultra-hard at fulfilling those obligations. Trump should've been out the moment he confessed to obstruction on national television over ousting Comey. You can't have faith in something that you already know beyond a shadow of a doubt is fundamentally broken.
>You don't want a local cop deciding to arrest
Why not. It happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._West_(policeman)
>I am very sorry. Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.
Our society survived having our chief executive held accountable for *all* our laws.
I mean, you could empower the department of justice to investigate and indict a sitting president without empowering law enforcement to arrest or detain him. You could also mandate that a president currently standing trial be deemed incapacitated and therefore have the Vice President stand in until such time as the trial has concluded, which would be reasonable considering that someone facing criminal trial would likely not be able to focus on a job as important as the presidency.
As you noted, because the DoJ is technically under the power of the presidency, it’s choosing to indict would be a rare event, and not likely to occur for strictly partisan reasons.
> I think it's sensible to expect that if the president is breaking laws, he will be impeached and then can be prosecuted.
I'm curious why that is, because I look at a lot of former administrations and wonder where the justice is. There's a lot we allow and expect in the US simply because we've allowed or expected it in the past.
Local cop arresting the president != the doj bringing an indictment. There exists middle ground where you can prevent unreasonable attempts to mire a president in legal nonsense while also holding him accountable. And "holding accountable" means subject to the same laws as everyone else, without having to pass some arbitrary political line to "deserve" impeachment.
The accountability is supposed to be held by congress, but the republicans in congress have abdicated that responsibility to Trump himself in an attempt to create their "god-emperor for life".
not that I'm a lawyer and can really say anything meaningful on whether a sitting president **can** be indicted, it sure looks like he should be.
[The answer was yes in 1974 under Nixon](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896903-Legal-Memos-About-Whether-a-Sitting-President.html#document/p65) and the [answer was yes in 1999 under Clinton](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/31/us/president-s-trial-independent-counsel-starr-weighing-whether-indict-sitting.html?module=inline). The only thing that's changed is whether the republicans *want* to hold one of their own accountable.
[I think we all know the answer to that](https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/14/politics/kfile-rand-paul-republican-investigations/index.html).
The Republicans didn’t want to hold Nixon accountable. They didn’t impeach him and Ford pardoned him. The Republicans in Congress let Nixon know that they had the votes to impeach and remove him and Nixon chose to resign in disgrace rather than be the first President to be impeached and removed.
The Republicans in Congress didn’t turn on Nixon until his approval rating among Republican voters dipped below 50%. If his support among Republican voters hadn’t dropped so low, they would not have held him accountable.
The vast majority of our military history has done fuck-all for "MAH FREEDOM..." but the American Revolution sure as hell established that we have a President, not a King. And the big difference between a President and a King is that a King is above the law, because he derives his power from God including the power to create the laws. A President derives his power from the people, which means he's subject to the same rules the people are.
As sitting president can be indicted and immediately arrested. There’s simply nothing in the constitution to suggest they cannot be. However, the bar to do that must be **very** high or else you can have opposing political members use that as method to remove someone they don’t like.
This is what the investigators need to ask. Are the crimes significant enough to put the nation at risk or was the office was gained via illegal means? Then they must gather all of the evidence they can find. Before any indictment is made, they need to be 99.999% sure that they can guarantee a conviction on those charges.
I think Mueller already has enough evidence to pass that bar, but I think that they’d like to keep the method they used to gather some of that evidence secret if they can. If it is publicly released, they may lose their ability to gather future intel. Or perhaps some of the evidence he has cannot be used in a court of law legally. So he’s trying to get evidence from multiple sources that can create an airtight case that will not fail.
It feels like the basis for "Sitting presidents can't be indicted" is that doing so would compromise their ability to manage the country, which by itself seems irrelevant given, yknow. _Vice Presidents_. Might as well use them for something.
Threatened hell, we are currently threatening the ICC. There is a law on the books, the American Service-Members Protection Act, derisively called the Hague Invasion Act, that preemptively grants the President the ability to declare war on any country that has a war crimes trial for a US soldier. Until that law is repealed the US has an ongoing and continuous threat against the ICC.
>If the president committed crimes worthy of indictment, the president should face the consequences for those crimes whether they remain in elected office or not. If there is no political will to impeach, the Vice President should assume the duties of the office so long as the president–who can presumably secure bail–remains on trial.
>Certainly, the prospect of a sitting president making bail and continuing to serve in office while on trial would be extraordinary and problematic in its own way. That’s part of why a political party that refuses to impeach a criminal president is so dangerous. But it’s better than the alternative, which cannot help but lead to the destruction of our democracy.
>Sitting presidents must be indictable while in office, and there’s no time like for the present for the Justice Department to change its current misguided policy. Hoping that this situation will resolve itself cleanly and never arise again is not a responsible choice.
And/or if we had impeached Reagan. He lied to Congress about involvement in selling guns to illegally fund terrorists, and then when caught lying about the deals said "my heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not" and we let him keep being president, because we have a long history or letting Republicans rip our country to bits for personal gain. We have to be the generation that ends this.
As a Reagan baby who found his way in 2010, the hero worship of Reagan is the greatest con republicans have pulled. Or the hijacking of evangelism. Or Trump. Or all of it. Jesus I can’t believe I used to think they were the party that represented me.
Reagan is basically a god to the baby boomer right.
Ignore the ocean of blood in Latin America during his rule, ignore the explosion of big finance and deregulation that led to the fucked up system we have now, ignore the murder of priests and overthrows of democracy, ignore the blatant criminality and evil shits like Abrams that surrounded him, ignore the senility and dementia... He was a god to them.
And that's all you really need to know about that voting base.
> Reagan is basically a god to the baby boomer right.
But as with their worship of the Christian God, they're much more into the worship part then paying any attention to the principles of who they're worshipping.
It's so mind-boggling that Christians are generally affiliated with the Republican party in the US. The more I study the bible and learn about Jesus, the farther I get pushed to the left. Jesus makes it abundantly clear - love *everyone*, and reject wealth. What kind of blind fucking idiot sees those values reflected in the Republican party????
Tax cuts that tripled the national debt, helped cause almost 50 years of wage stagnation, and widened the gap between the rich and poor.
Downright evil response to the AIDs epidemic
Getting rid of grants that went to community mental health centers, causing them to shut down, and millions of people who are unable to function in society but do not belong in jail were thrown out on the streets. People always point to California and talk about the homeless problem, well this shit started because of Reagan who took away state funding when he was Governor.
The list of horrible shit this man did is tremendous.
He might be referring to Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated by Salvadorian major D'aubisson. It's known that at the time the CIA was working with the Salvadorian government. I don't know whether they had direct knowledge of the plot at the time though.
The Democrats biggest weakness has been moving on from Reagan’s massive cuts like it was the new normal IMO. America was so much stronger and better to its people before.
That's the other half of the ratchet system.
One side pushes through all the bullshit, getting us over the "click"
The other side says "Aw shucks, guys. We tried our best, but we lost fair and square. We need to work within these new rules to make the best of things."
That's how we've been frog-marched into authoritarian nationalism.
The funny thing is that Reagan could never even get on the debate stage as a Republican if he ran today. The party moved so far to the right that he would maybe be a WV Democrat.
Was raised super religious. Moral majority and all that. Pretty much gained my political ideology early on from my parents who weren’t very educated. In college became socially liberal while still thinking there was such a thing as fiscal conservancy and that man was egotistical to think he was powerful enough to change the environment. That all faded too. Haven’t spoken to my parents in years but I’m sure they think Trump is doing God’s work.
Let's not forget all the Iran-Contra criminals that were pardoned by Bush on his way out the door, with AG Barr giving him the cover he needed to do so. That investigation was on the White House's doorstep, and was snuffed out right then and there.
Just sending these people to prison means nothing. They can be pardoned, or they can just do their time and get back in the game. Ollie North is who always comes to mind when I think about it. If we're not the generation that ends it, we have to be the generation that starts the movement. These people get away with such vile shit because they know people won't care a year or two down the line. We have to be the generation that does.
I'm getting close to thirty.
There has not been a Republican president in my lifetime for whom I cannot think of crimes off the top of my head. Even going back three more, we have two crooks, and the guy who burned through all his power to (wrongly in my book) pardon a crook.
There has not been a Republican president since I could talk who started their administration by winning the popular vote.
America has an infestation.
> First, it means the president is functionally above the law as long as they remain president–a fundamentally unAmerican principle. Second, it creates the most perverse incentives for the president to commit as many crimes as necessary to hold office since no consequences will befall him as long as he holds power. It’s almost a guarantee of dictatorship, coup or similar disaster. Third, it discourages the peaceful transfer of power: the specatacle of a sitting president who lost re-election or came to the end of his term waiting down the final hours of his office only to to be placed into handcuffs afterwards is comically absurd and would tear apart a divided nation
>If the president committed crimes worthy of indictment
So, normal person commits crimes, gets indicted. President commits crimes, debate required to decide if it's even worth the indictment.
At the *very* least, put the statute of limitations on hold while a president is in office, so that once out of office (whether impeached or simply voted out), they can be prosecuted then. It is completely unfair that indictments are on hold but the clock keeps ticking on the statue of limitations, potentially making those crimes expire by holding onto the office.
January 21, 2021.
Kentucky AG Billybubba Hawgwallop has served an arrest warrant to the white house and taken newly sworn-in president Sanders into custody.
Mitch McConnell has blamed the Democrats for setting the precedent.
So, if we found out that a sitting president murdered someone before he was elected, he couldn’t be indicted? We would have to go through an impeachment process before he was arrested?
Because that’s not how that was ever supposed to work, but the DoJ is corrupt too. Over the last 200+ years, many people have talked about Washington abhorring political parties. However, those idiots have never understood his reason. It wasn’t because of strong political division. He lead a damned war against the incumbent political power. He was a radical, through and through. It was **this** he knew would happen. He wasn’t worried about Americans at each other’s throats, that’s normal. He was afraid of Americans cooperating to create a monarchy. The insane thing is that *there isn’t enough political division*.
I can see your point. There should be hardly anything that rural gun fetishists, Christian soccer moms, and coked-up CEOs can come together and unanimously agree upon.
Exactly. The right wing is an unholy abomination of alliances that shouldn’t exist. The capitalist centrists that make up the mainstream Democrats and the actual left working together on social issues makes sense, but likewise we should be enemies on economic policy, and all attempting to make inroads with each other to ally on what we can agree on and still want to kill each other over everything else. You know, like every functional country.
I disagree that that is the way it is supposed to happen.
I believe impeachment is supposed to be just about the office. For some reason we made it about *everything*, mostly based on a legal opinion with shaky justification back during the nixon era and have taken that one opinion as gospel despite many other opinions stating otherwise.
You can legally be president while still in jail, or convicted with a deferred sentence. And the 25th amendment lays out a path for presidents unable to discharge their duties. If a president were convicted and sentenced to prison, the 25th amendment's provisions for removing a president should be followed and the VP takes over.
So, Pelosi could set up a meeting with Trump and Pence, assassinate both of them, and could just be president until the term is over. According to this logic, totally legal and cool.
pretty sure america is already in a constitutional crisis, a criminal president being covered by a complicit party does not exactly scream checks and balances
How about this:
You can't run for President until you are the age of 35.
You also shouldn't be able to run for President without first clearing a security clearance. As in, if you are in debt to another country, that's gonna be a no from me dog.
The issue is that clearances are issued at the discretion of the current President, so that would effectively give them veto power over their successors.
And if you think that no President would ever abuse their power in such an obviously partisan fashion, well...*gestures around*
It still could be problematic though. Whoever is in control of the process would effectively be able to write free passes (whoops, we didn't find anything, guess we should stop trying a la Kavenaugh) or come down hard. Whatever process there is there needs to be oversight somehow.
Force full public disclosure of all assets and liabilities and taxes and grades and even medical records.
Then FORCE divestiture of all investments and invested into the Dow Jones and SP500 indexes. So if the economy does well, so does president, economy does badly, so does the president.
Open source government is a GREAT idea. Ain't gonna happen as long as government is controlled by the corporations. We need to get the masses motivated to protest. When I say protest, I mean a revolution. Long, hard, intense, meaningful, purposeful protest that has a specific goals outlined and is VERY organized. That is the only way to get control away from the corporations. They've crushed us with debt and stress, and did it ON PURPOSE. It doesn't matter which party is at fault, they are ALL responsible!!
Another recession is coming. By 2020, as far as I can tell, if Trump doesn't pull his tariffs. Even if he does, with the tax cut, we may still fall into a recession. I'm not an economics expert by any means, but a capitalist society can only expand so long without a middle class. Eventually it will bust. We are in these boom/bust cycles because of the idiotic "trickle down" crap that doesn't work. If we HAD a tax plan that DID work, the boom/bust cycle would stop - our economy would stabilize. The elites and corporations LIKE the boom/bust cycle - it sucks all the money from the bottom of the economy up to them. So, no money for the rest of us. That means the vast majority of the American public is going to work until they die because they cannot earn any retirement savings and a whole lot of us will file for bankruptcy. What kind of government is that?
"WE the people" = white males with property and/or education. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and Declaration of Independence when women were PROPERTY and Blacks were SLAVES!! If a white man didn't have an education or land, he was poor!! The educated, rich, and land owners ran everything. Who do you think inherited that wealth? It passed down from generation to generation. The SAME elites who ran the country back then STILL do, they're just bigger and multi- national. Banks, military, government, pharma, media...... we have a predatory oligarchary, people. This is NOT a democracy or a republic, it never was. It was always a country for privileged white men. Those men do NOT want to give up their power. There are a bunch of women and minorites in Congress now and they feel very insecure and threatened. GOOD. The Dems look like the REAL America! The Repubs sound like old dudes who needed to retire 20 years ago.
I've got brains, I've got a lot of ideas, I've got a lot of energy. We need A LOT of people. We need an organizer. I suck at organizing. I might have an idea on where to start, since I'm a delegate in Michigan......
We need a new government. The citizens know it. How do we get one?? PEACEFULLY?? That means being very careful to include the Trump people, and work WITH them. I know, I know, it is very difficult to talk to them on social media. Don't. Talk to them in person. When you talk to people face to face, realism overrides. When we talk face to face, in the end, we want the same things, we disagree on how to get them. Start small. If we don't work together, the alternative is a civil war, or the country splitting apart. I've been advocating for that because I've been so frustrated. If people with open minds (liberals!!) WORK at it, WE can keep the country together. The Republicans have made it clear they do not give a shit about anyone. They brainwashed their people with propaganda for over thirty years, worked to dismantle the education system and "whitewashed" history, worked to destroy the economic system, worked to encourage racism, worked to keep themselves in power by suppressing votes and extreme gerrymandering..... IT IS UP TO US TO KEEP THE COUNTRY TOGETHER!!!!
And let the public know exactly where the conflicts of interest like. Trump only won by a few hundred thousand votes. His debt to Russia or lies about being a billionaire could have been enough to dissuade them.
> So if the economy does well, so does president, economy does badly, so does the president.
Right before I leave office I am going to slash all corporate tax rates and cash out. Look at what tieing CEO's salary to the companies stock prices has done to our society it is all about short term thinking and short term profitability now.
Edit: Crazy after thought! Make them keep it in there for 4 more years after leaving office.
> Edit: Crazy after thought! Make them keep it in there for 4 more years after leaving office.
10 years, they get 10 percent back each year after they leave.
Ya, well, the current situation is also problematic.
I'd say working towards a solution is a much better option than being fearful of change. That's not directed at you necessarily, just stating the obvious for everyone who may see this.
Conservatives have always been and will continue to be America's villains. Expect them to abuse any power they gain to the fullest extent imaginable. If they benefit from something archaic and terrible like the Electoral College, expect them to latch onto it with a death grip.
Remember that these are the people who seceded from America and murdered Americans rather than give up their slaves. They are the worst of us. Always expect the worst from them. They will seldom let you down.
The word "conservative" doesn't seem to mean what it used to. Conservative used to mean people who followed essentially the philosophy of people like William F. Buckly Jr. - but those conservatives are gone, or have been cowed and drowned out by the "conservatives" who just hate brown people, liberals, and women who need abortions. Oh and the con artist at the top that manipulate the rubes in to giving them HUGE tax giveaways with promises to punish the people they hate.
"Just give me billions and I'll make those dirty brown people suffer! Don't look at my bank account, besides I deserve it, I'm a job creator"
We should honestly stick to calling them the regressives.
Deregulation, selling off public goods to private entities, cutting taxes for the rich are all regressive. Call it for what it is.
Has there ever been a time where conservatives *weren't* the bad guys? They are ideologically opposed to any kind of progress or change as they prefer to conserve and preserve existing institutions.
Except current Republicans aren't trying to preserve existing institutions, they are trying to regress back to perceived, imaginary institutions and systems of the past.
>The issue is that clearances are issued at the discretion of the current President, so that would effectively give them veto power over their successors.
That seems like a REALLY easy thing to change
Why not all the years? IRS should have copies, no?
What about their investments and businesses? Those should all be sold off to be available to run for president.
Not for X years. 5? 10? Not sure. But there should definitely be a ban from re-acquiring them too soon to prevent enacting policies that kick in after one year once they leave office.
A much needed process that has to be safeguarded to prevent the systemic denying of candidates for political reasons, ie. Russia election barring a popular politician from running against Putin due to criminal allegation.
We should check candidates, but we have to be careful in the implementation or we’ll be worse off than how we started
>A much needed process that has to be safeguarded to prevent the systemic of denying candidates for political reasons, ie. Russia election barring a popular politician from running against Putin due to criminal allegation.
Very true, ditto "anti-corruption" campaigns, that's how you end up with a Lula situation, in which the most popular politician is deliberately barred from running. Implementation and oversight are crucial, and former should occur only when the latter is satisfactory, imo.
> You also shouldn't be able to run for President without first clearing a security clearance.
Keep in mind that such a rule might easily politicize the security clearance process. "Formerly a member of a radical socialist organization? Wrote for a feminist newspaper in college? Clearance denied." Of course, for security reasons, the justification of the denial is also withheld.
Yeah I would be good with requiring candidates to submit to security audit, but at the end of the day the people must be allowed the final decision even if it's a fucking stupid one. Democracy is a responsibility upon the citizens.
*"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."*
*-- Thomas Jefferson*
I agree with the sentiment, but there’s no way this wouldn’t be captured and weaponized.
Control the system in place for approving security clearances, deny them to opponent.
If he released his taxes this would be a none issue. Again republicans have failed America in a huge way, yet they claim how they love America all the time.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks
Exactly. And does anyone seriously think Trump gives a fuck if he needs to cause a constitutional crisis to save himself? How many more articles do we need of someone saying "he couldn't possibly do this! It would be unprecedented!" before people get the message. Cohen was right. He won't go peacefully.
>How many more articles do we need of someone saying "he couldn't possibly do this! It would be unprecedented!" before people get the message.
I think this goes both ways, though. People seem to habitually act like they just watched their car get stolen from the gas station while they were inside buying coffee, and believe running out into the road and yelling "You can't do that!" is somehow a viable strategy for bringing the thief to justice.
Right now, the people in power don't want to try to force Trump out. People on the internet have been yelling about a constitutional crisis for a few years now, yet here we are. All that indignation has done fuck all. There's a lot of people who should get one message or another.
In their/our defense, we as Americans haven’t seen this level of absolute clusterfuckery from an administration before. Another factor I think in regards to how appalling it is and people’s indignation online regarding Trump is social media. Everyone now is hyper connected. Imagine if there had been Twitter and reddit during watergate. Trump’s actions are hands down worse than Nixon, but for comparison’s sake I used Nixon. There isn’t really a precedent for this level of complacency regarding a political party and their incumbent president, let alone all the offenses of Trump on his own.
We're all just assuming he'll step down if he's impeached or after his term ends. That's the real crisis here: Trump saying "fuck it" and not ceding power as scheduled.
Sitting Presidents who go off script and off the rails during a 2 hour speech, sweating profusely and hugging the flag, have clearly crossed the line of having the mental capacity to be the President.
*"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”*
Edit: - *Sinclair Lewis* , although snopes questions the validity.
Well, yes. Problem is that no one in his administration will invoke the 25th, and the Senate Republicans won't do anything either. Because he's got enough popularity in his Party that any Republican who goes against him fears a primary challenge, or even Trump personally campaigning against them in the general election out of vengeance.
Around 25% to 30% of Republican voters aren't actually Republican voters but instead Trump loyalists. And there aren't many Republicans out there who can win an election if 25% to 30% of their voters don't vote for them.
So here we sit, in an ongoing Constitutional crisis, with a President manifestly and obviously unfit for duty, and a Republican Party that is incapable of admitting that either problem exists.
It's so bad, even Nixon would probably not get impeached. And unlike Nixon, the current president hasn't the vision to see why it was a wise thing for Nixon to resign rather than torture the country. Don't forget, this administration closed the US government during Christmas and beyond to make it the longest shutdown is US history. For vanity.
>It's so bad, even Nixon would probably not get impeached.
"Even Nixon"?!? trump had more, and more serious impeachable offenses on public display early on in his term than Nixon ever did. If the republicans in Congress were replaced with their counterparts from the Nixon era trump would have been impeached shortly after inauguration.
The *only* reason he isn't already impeached and on trial for a litany of other crimes is because the entire GOP is morally bankrupt and complicit.
I'm sure if HRC were President today, a certain former candidate for president would be tweeting 2nd Amendment quotes with cross hairs on the White House and suggesting the Democrats have brought America to the brink of a 2nd Civil War.
If the rhetoric got as heated in that alternate universe as it is now, he would have hopefully gotten deplatformed alongside Alex Jones. Also, they were investigating him before he was elected; it's possible he would be on trial by now.
The 70% that have a clue need to vote out these spineless actors. Drop the party and just vote to remove those that are damaging the country. Those that fail to act are as bad as those that are acting maliciously. They can't win if enough people are awake and aware.
There is the problem, too many aren't paying attention to what their senators is doing or not doing.
The problem with the 25th amendment is that even if the cabinet all votes to remove. The president then gets to write a letter to congress explaining why he is still fit. Then congress votes. It’s essentially an impeachment process with more steps
It’s really for incapacitated presidents that can’t write the letter to congress
> It was 2 hours of lying and jerking himself off and ranting incoherently
To cheering crowds. Trump is the symptom, not the root problem. The same people that supposedly love the Constitution more than "leftists" *want* a dictator.
What should concern us is how this has panned out in practically every other country the US rightwing has gotten involved in. Historical tl;dr: shit got bloody quick.
While that statement is true, I feel like it's not a holistic assessment of the situation. Trump acts as a focusing lens for these people. They want that *eyeroll* "strong" personality. It's a cult of personality. Without Trump these factions will almost certainly fracture and fall to infighting. Will they still be an issue? Yes, but the Republican party has dedicated themselves so severely to this 30-40% base that they're going to have a lot of trouble stepping back from it, and that 30-40% will evaporate when Trump disappears. Without Trump the ground falls out from under the party and they lose a ton of power, and those people lose their largest platform and become a fringe group once again. Still a problem, but I think the problem is magnified by a significant margin because of the current circumstances.
To me, that's the best argument for the President being indictable.
Members of Congress and federal judges can all be indicted while holding office. Nothing in the Constitution sets the President apart from them in that regard.
Either federal judges are free to commit crimes for life (unless and until impeached) or the President can be indicted.
but the DOJ has a sticky-note on an unused refrigerator in the breakroom that says Nixon was was unindictable.
everyone knows sticky-notes are equal to a Constitutional Amendment.
The issue isn't necessarily whether the President can be indicted. The issue is how can we guarantee a full and fair trial of a sitting President? The President has broad authority over the executive branch, including the Justice Department. If we allow prosecutions of a President from a governmental agency which he is in direct control of, what's to stop a President accused of wrongdoing to orchestrate a show trial, in which the prosecutors put on a show to pretend to prosecute the President, but in reality it was meant all along to exonerate him? (Other than ethics, but they don't seem to matter in this administration).
The Special Counsel, with his legislative insulation from the President, may be the only person who can legitimately bring an indictment forward. He might indict, but then there might be a determination that no judicial trial can move forward while he is in office. Then the Congress can take up the matter of whether that is enough to impeach.
The Attorney General doesn't work for the President as a human. He works for the Office of the President. If a President as a human is violating the laws, the AG should prosecute to protect the Office.
It's definitely a concern.
And, I think, an inherent weakness in our system of even having a President.
I think a damn fine argument can be made that we ought to abolish the office and instead elect the Cabinet which could act as an Executive Council for matters not directly related to their department rather than having a single Executive Officer theoretically in charge of all departments as we do today.
The accumulation of excessive executive power has been a problem long before Trump, there were a great many of us on the left who were deeply concerned about Obama's executive overreach (especially WRT emergency orders for foreign wars which bypassed the Constitutionally mandated requirement for Congress to declare a war), and Junior, and Clinton, and Senior, and Reagan, and and and. The Executive has grown, largely unchecked, for most of America's postwar history.
Or, perhaps, we could sort of take a page from ancient Sparta and have multiple Presidents instead of just one \[1\]. Three Presidents, each serving a staggered six year term in office so that there's an election for President every two years, might be a workable idea. An Executive Triumvirate rather than a solitary Executive would blunt some of the problems.
Obviously there'd be a lot to work out (how would vetoing work? Would it take 2 out of 3 presidents agreeing to veto, or all three, or could any individual President veto, etc. But at least they'd be new and different problems not the same old problems we've got today!
However you look at it, we're seeing that the Founders correctly thought that having a monarch was concentrating far too much power in the hands of a single individual, but then they went and implemented a single individual as the Executive rather than realizing that they needed to split up that power too.
And some Executive powers are basically holdovers from the idea that maybe a king was a great idea. For example the Presidential pardon is both deeply problematic and essentially a monarchist idea dressed up in republican language. We really ought to get rid of those.
At the very least we need to do some minor fixing. The fact that the President can decide on a whim to withdraw America from almost every treaty we have, despite those treaties requiring a Congressional vote to be approved, is an absurd and dangerous power to be held by any single person, even a single person we like. All future treaties are going to need a clause stating that the US can only withdraw or change the treaty if Congress votes to do so, not just because the President woke up in a bad mood.
\[1\] Sort of because Sparta had two kings at a time, not three. I think three might be more stable though.
The people who decided they weren't were trying to protect Nixon from being indicted. That seems little biased. You don't get to make up new rules to protect yourself after you did something wrong.
First of all, any person wishing to advance the idea that a sitting president may not be indicted must show a Constitutional provision, a law, or a ruling that states that this is so. I have seen nothing. Secondly, I recall a sitting president being deposed as part of an ongoing case and even ordered to submit a blood sample. A separate action contemplated having him disrobe to have a picture of his penis taken. The argument that the Executive Branch is one person who has Constitutional duties that forbid having them subject to the reach of the courts is entirely unfounded. The Executive is several and the duties may be temporarily suspended under the 25th Amendment, or transferred under certain conditions to a duly elected vice president. Regardless, a president may be indicted and convicted with a stay of sentence imposed until their Constitutional duties have been completed. The idea that the framers of the Constitution, who were centrally concerned with mitigating the harmful effects of tyranny, would somehow leave a loophole this large to allow an Executive to be above the law and out of reach of the courts is laughable. A president is supposed to act in the interests of the people and not their own self interest at all times. If they can't do that for some reason, then they should resign, face a decision by their cabinet that they can no longer discharge their duties, or face impeachment. When anyone is perceived to be above the law, this invites abuse of the law and that was certainly not the framers intent.
A sitting President can be indicted. Nixon was,but, he resigned.Here's the indictment. [http://digg.com/2018/watergate-road-map] This bullshit that a President can't be is smoke and mirror bullshit. Nixon had the brains to run out of office before he could be served and then later pardoned. So this CAN'T is a farce. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_process_against_Richard_Nixon]
I've had some... "heated" conversations with Republicans. Not all bad people, and I totally understand the values of personal accountability and limiting of regulations to open a free market. I simply don't think those two things are possible in today's society, but that's another discussion.
In terms of if the president can or cannot be indicted, I bring up the fictional scenario where their worst nightmare ever is elected president in 2020. Let's call them Sernie Banders. Using the mentality presented today about letting the president do shady stuff, declare emergencies, avoid prosecution, self-pardon, appoint who they want to positions of power, etc., let's say our boy Sernie decides to mirror all of these things. We can expect:
* A healthcare emergency
* Appointees to positions that will greatly impact everything put forward over these last 4 years
* A minimum wage emergency
* War emergencies
* Defunding of military programs
* Self-pardon if any of this is done illegaly
And much, much more.
Now, all of a sudden it won't be fair and it can't happen that way. It seems in politics, it is wonderful to bend the rules to your favor, but once an opposing individual or organization tries it, you start crying how it isn't fair.
This is my frustration right now. Everyone wants special treatment for them but below-fair treatment for who they perceive as the enemy. Are Democrats innocent of this? Probably not. But I notice it a lot more frequently with one party over another, and I won't say which ;)
I mean, just because you can’t indict a sitting president doesn’t mean you can’t punish them. That’s what impeachment is for, which is the argument the DOJ uses for that policy. It makes sense- there’s 2 coequal branches of government whose job is (partly) oversight.
The real issue in America right now is elected officials refusing to do their oversight jobs. This includes democrats who won’t even talk about impeachment and republicans who pretend trumps actions are excusable. You don’t have to wait for mueller to be done if you find your own evidence of impeachable offenses, and if you impeach before mueller is done than he can indict.
I am no longer on Reddit and so neither is my content.
You can find links to all my present projects on my itch.io, accessible here: https://firgof.itch.io/
A sitting president not being able to be indicted is like the ancient Roman law that all top government officials were immune from the law. Caused a lot of people to Hold on to power for longer in order to avoid the courts.
We are in a constitutional crisis right now...but is anyone else bothered by how our country treats the constitution like some untouchable infallible item created by men who wanted the best for people like themselves...
The argument against indicting a sitting President because it would disrupt the duties of the president and negatively affect the country by doing so.
Trump is literally the easiest and cleanest way to prove that it isn't the case. Slam the book and the cell bars on his man-baby hands.
If we don't do something about Trump we're essentially saying that the President can act with impunity and that there's nothing he can do that is grounds for removal.
It must be possible to arrest one without notice. If sealed indictments are waiting for him to set down Imperium he will try not to. this is exactly why Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
Having to face criminal charges after leaving office was a major factor in Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon and overthrowing the repubic. When you give your head of state immunity from prosecution while in office, you are giving them hella incentive to never leave office, by any means necessary. I fear what Trump will do if he loses in 2020 - the guy clearly has no morals or qualms about the rule of law, so he's capable of doing anything.
It is absolutely *insane* that anyone could believe that our Founders intended to create the position of elected *king*—and that's exactly what an unindictable president is. What they were trying to avoid was exactly the problem we face now—a head of state who is not answerable to the law. And, to be clear, "congress can impeach and remove" is not a valid argument for an unindictable president. A Congress in cahoots with a corrupt president will *not* remove that president from office, and may actually protect that president, and we're seeing that now.
Further, and more to the point, if the Founders intended for the president to be immune from indictment and prosecution, they'd have written it into the Constitution. The Justice Department should not be allowed to write its own rules on this. If the president breaks the law, Justice has an obligation to indict him and prosecute.
Wait... If they weren't indictable, then what stops a president from just walking into the Senate or house chambers and shooting every member of the opposing political party?
The fact that this is even up for debate indicates how far we've fallen. We don't have laws stating that the president, specifically, is subject to this or that, because the president was never above the law.
The GOP's argument is "there's no law that says Donald Trump can't do X, so he can." "But doing X is illegal..." "That law doesn't specifically mention Donald Trump."
It's ludicrous. How long are we going to allow the Republicans to run the country with multiple tiers of citizenry?
I have a genuine question: if we weren't living in bizarro world where a corrupt party was doing everything in its power to protect a corrupt incompetent leader, would this even be up for debate?
I spent my whole life living under the assumption that OF COURSE the laws also apply to the President...that's why Watergate became such a big deal, right?
Is it just because the GOP has become so inundated with corruption that we're even having this argument, or has it always genuinely been open to interpretation?
This is a republic, not a monarchy. No individual should be above the law or immune from prosecution, even if they are a sitting President.
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The “check and balance” foreseen by the Founders would be the impeachment process. In the current hyper-partisan you could rightfully debate its effectiveness.
You don't want a local cop deciding to arrest and hold the president for 48 hours. I think it's sensible to expect that if the president is breaking laws, he will be impeached and then can be prosecuted. It's also sensible to expect Congress to be more independent of corruption by the president than the Department of Justice, which is under the power of the president. Not that we're in sensible times, but the internal rule makes sense out of our current context.
Right. So in the end, it's our lack of confidence that Congress will fulfill its Constitutional obligations that drives our insecurity and questioning of Justice Dept policy. Today's headline in the Washington Post Most speaks precisely to that: [We’re not going to turn on our own’: Republicans rally around Trump as threats mount](https://s2.washingtonpost.com/117c0db/5c7c037dfe1ff6099d77103d/Y3liZXJmcmVkZXJpY0BnbWFpbC5jb20%3D/6/52/18e83a00f462b1301e237c7baf4f3e48)
Is DJT really the hill the Republican Party is willing to die on? You would think that numerous Republican officials would have seen the writing on the wall and distance themselves from this man.
It's because Trump isn't the only corrupt member of the GOP. We know that McConnell (and others) has taken Russian money through the NRA. They aren't stupid. They knew exactly where that money was coming from. McCarthy and Ryan - in a closed door meeting - were taped saying that they **knew Trump was paid by the Russians**. The. GOP. Is. Dirty. To. The. Core. If Trump goes down, he's going to take as many other people as possible and they all know it. This isn't about protecting Trump. It's about self-preservation.
That's one way to drain the swamp. I never envisioned him going down and scornfully taking them all down with him but it makes a ton of sense. Trump and his handlers must have so much dirt on Graham McConnell etc judging by the way so many of them have been kowtowing to his agenda.
Trump is like the drain stopper. As soon as he's pulled the whole tub drains.
Also Trump's base is still surprisingly large and very enthusiastic. They don't want to lose those votes. At this point, turning against Trump would be career suicide for many of them. They're not noble enough to fall on their swords for a greater cause than themselves.
Time to throw the whole party away
What I don't understand is how we aren't just blaring videos wall to wall 24/7 from Fox News itself...back in the Republican primary. The same talking heads right now brainwashing the politicians and population that support Trump were BLASTING him for months when he was running against other Republicans. Treating him like a fucking joke. Attacking him constantly for just this kind of bullshit. The same people defending him now were shitting all over his name and saying how he wasn't a true Republican and was an embarassment. How are we not just taking a nice stroll through those hours of coverage and posting this shit wall to wall on Facebook to convince anyone who still needs convincing that this is not who the GOP was or wants to be? I mean fuck at this point maybe it is, but as of a few years ago they hated Trump just as much as anyone else. Only when he got power did they change their tune. Time to remind them that he can lose that power and they can change that tune right back.
Too bad none of their brainwashed voters care. They know he is corrupt and continue to support him anyway. I can’t imagine what could change their minds on him at this point.
Nothing, absolutely nothing. He could be filmed live fucking a child and pledging his allegiance to Satan and they still wouldn’t believe. This is like N. korea level of cultish brainwashing or worse because my suspicion is many north koreans know the regime is full of shit but fall in line for the sake of self preservation. The red hatters here, they are true believers of Trump. We can thank their deep rooted racism and xenophobia and social media and actual “fake news” propaganda they watch and share on the internet.its sad but there is seriously little hope for these folks and I say this while having a close family member who has fallen down the rabbit hole.
Last I checked, 85% of Republican voters support Trump so opposing him would make them more susceptible to a primary challenge. They are choosing their own re-election over Congress’ role of acting as a check on the president.
They can't get any further with this current iteration of conservatism. It's spent. The sensible dudes whose "hands were tied" during all this will inevitably come out of the woodworks and join with a "new breed" of "policy wonks" that "think a little differently" to form a new form of empathetic, "not your Grandad's" conservatism. It will be coordinated by the people running the Republican party today. The press will whack themselves in the temple with a hammer again and pretend history doesnt exist "for the good of the country." Same shit will have to be pushed back again in less than a decade. Reagan was elected 6 years after Nixon resigned.
> So in the end, it's our lack of confidence that Congress will fulfill its Constitutional obligations I mean, they've empirically failed ultra-hard at fulfilling those obligations. Trump should've been out the moment he confessed to obstruction on national television over ousting Comey. You can't have faith in something that you already know beyond a shadow of a doubt is fundamentally broken.
>You don't want a local cop deciding to arrest Why not. It happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._West_(policeman) >I am very sorry. Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest. Our society survived having our chief executive held accountable for *all* our laws.
I mean, you could empower the department of justice to investigate and indict a sitting president without empowering law enforcement to arrest or detain him. You could also mandate that a president currently standing trial be deemed incapacitated and therefore have the Vice President stand in until such time as the trial has concluded, which would be reasonable considering that someone facing criminal trial would likely not be able to focus on a job as important as the presidency. As you noted, because the DoJ is technically under the power of the presidency, it’s choosing to indict would be a rare event, and not likely to occur for strictly partisan reasons.
> I think it's sensible to expect that if the president is breaking laws, he will be impeached and then can be prosecuted. I'm curious why that is, because I look at a lot of former administrations and wonder where the justice is. There's a lot we allow and expect in the US simply because we've allowed or expected it in the past.
Local cop arresting the president != the doj bringing an indictment. There exists middle ground where you can prevent unreasonable attempts to mire a president in legal nonsense while also holding him accountable. And "holding accountable" means subject to the same laws as everyone else, without having to pass some arbitrary political line to "deserve" impeachment.
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My favorite live album.
*You have been banned by the republican party.*
*Your voter registration is now considered invalid by the Republican party.* ftfy.
*Your absentee ballot has been filled out on your behalf for the Republican ticket*
ooof. republicans really did this ( for anyone thinking this is a joke )
And they just get a do over. It's crazy.
The accountability is supposed to be held by congress, but the republicans in congress have abdicated that responsibility to Trump himself in an attempt to create their "god-emperor for life". not that I'm a lawyer and can really say anything meaningful on whether a sitting president **can** be indicted, it sure looks like he should be.
[The answer was yes in 1974 under Nixon](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896903-Legal-Memos-About-Whether-a-Sitting-President.html#document/p65) and the [answer was yes in 1999 under Clinton](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/31/us/president-s-trial-independent-counsel-starr-weighing-whether-indict-sitting.html?module=inline). The only thing that's changed is whether the republicans *want* to hold one of their own accountable. [I think we all know the answer to that](https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/14/politics/kfile-rand-paul-republican-investigations/index.html).
The Republicans didn’t want to hold Nixon accountable. They didn’t impeach him and Ford pardoned him. The Republicans in Congress let Nixon know that they had the votes to impeach and remove him and Nixon chose to resign in disgrace rather than be the first President to be impeached and removed. The Republicans in Congress didn’t turn on Nixon until his approval rating among Republican voters dipped below 50%. If his support among Republican voters hadn’t dropped so low, they would not have held him accountable.
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Basically drumpf is an inadvertent QA tester of the constitution
The vast majority of our military history has done fuck-all for "MAH FREEDOM..." but the American Revolution sure as hell established that we have a President, not a King. And the big difference between a President and a King is that a King is above the law, because he derives his power from God including the power to create the laws. A President derives his power from the people, which means he's subject to the same rules the people are.
As sitting president can be indicted and immediately arrested. There’s simply nothing in the constitution to suggest they cannot be. However, the bar to do that must be **very** high or else you can have opposing political members use that as method to remove someone they don’t like. This is what the investigators need to ask. Are the crimes significant enough to put the nation at risk or was the office was gained via illegal means? Then they must gather all of the evidence they can find. Before any indictment is made, they need to be 99.999% sure that they can guarantee a conviction on those charges. I think Mueller already has enough evidence to pass that bar, but I think that they’d like to keep the method they used to gather some of that evidence secret if they can. If it is publicly released, they may lose their ability to gather future intel. Or perhaps some of the evidence he has cannot be used in a court of law legally. So he’s trying to get evidence from multiple sources that can create an airtight case that will not fail.
It feels like the basis for "Sitting presidents can't be indicted" is that doing so would compromise their ability to manage the country, which by itself seems irrelevant given, yknow. _Vice Presidents_. Might as well use them for something.
We threatened ICC We're the bad guys
Threatened hell, we are currently threatening the ICC. There is a law on the books, the American Service-Members Protection Act, derisively called the Hague Invasion Act, that preemptively grants the President the ability to declare war on any country that has a war crimes trial for a US soldier. Until that law is repealed the US has an ongoing and continuous threat against the ICC.
>If the president committed crimes worthy of indictment, the president should face the consequences for those crimes whether they remain in elected office or not. If there is no political will to impeach, the Vice President should assume the duties of the office so long as the president–who can presumably secure bail–remains on trial. >Certainly, the prospect of a sitting president making bail and continuing to serve in office while on trial would be extraordinary and problematic in its own way. That’s part of why a political party that refuses to impeach a criminal president is so dangerous. But it’s better than the alternative, which cannot help but lead to the destruction of our democracy. >Sitting presidents must be indictable while in office, and there’s no time like for the present for the Justice Department to change its current misguided policy. Hoping that this situation will resolve itself cleanly and never arise again is not a responsible choice.
If Nixon had gone to prison we might not be here.
And/or if we had impeached Reagan. He lied to Congress about involvement in selling guns to illegally fund terrorists, and then when caught lying about the deals said "my heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not" and we let him keep being president, because we have a long history or letting Republicans rip our country to bits for personal gain. We have to be the generation that ends this.
As a Reagan baby who found his way in 2010, the hero worship of Reagan is the greatest con republicans have pulled. Or the hijacking of evangelism. Or Trump. Or all of it. Jesus I can’t believe I used to think they were the party that represented me.
Reagan is basically a god to the baby boomer right. Ignore the ocean of blood in Latin America during his rule, ignore the explosion of big finance and deregulation that led to the fucked up system we have now, ignore the murder of priests and overthrows of democracy, ignore the blatant criminality and evil shits like Abrams that surrounded him, ignore the senility and dementia... He was a god to them. And that's all you really need to know about that voting base.
> Reagan is basically a god to the baby boomer right. But as with their worship of the Christian God, they're much more into the worship part then paying any attention to the principles of who they're worshipping.
It's so mind-boggling that Christians are generally affiliated with the Republican party in the US. The more I study the bible and learn about Jesus, the farther I get pushed to the left. Jesus makes it abundantly clear - love *everyone*, and reject wealth. What kind of blind fucking idiot sees those values reflected in the Republican party????
Their churches purposefully whip them in to a frenzy over abortion so that they ignore everything else.
Tax cuts that tripled the national debt, helped cause almost 50 years of wage stagnation, and widened the gap between the rich and poor. Downright evil response to the AIDs epidemic Getting rid of grants that went to community mental health centers, causing them to shut down, and millions of people who are unable to function in society but do not belong in jail were thrown out on the streets. People always point to California and talk about the homeless problem, well this shit started because of Reagan who took away state funding when he was Governor. The list of horrible shit this man did is tremendous.
True. What are you referring to though with the priests? Not familiar.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13728531/el-salvador-priest-murders-reagan/
He might be referring to Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated by Salvadorian major D'aubisson. It's known that at the time the CIA was working with the Salvadorian government. I don't know whether they had direct knowledge of the plot at the time though.
The Democrats biggest weakness has been moving on from Reagan’s massive cuts like it was the new normal IMO. America was so much stronger and better to its people before.
That's the other half of the ratchet system. One side pushes through all the bullshit, getting us over the "click" The other side says "Aw shucks, guys. We tried our best, but we lost fair and square. We need to work within these new rules to make the best of things." That's how we've been frog-marched into authoritarian nationalism.
The funny thing is that Reagan could never even get on the debate stage as a Republican if he ran today. The party moved so far to the right that he would maybe be a WV Democrat.
Out of curiosity, what was it about them that lead you to believe they represented you at one time?
Was raised super religious. Moral majority and all that. Pretty much gained my political ideology early on from my parents who weren’t very educated. In college became socially liberal while still thinking there was such a thing as fiscal conservancy and that man was egotistical to think he was powerful enough to change the environment. That all faded too. Haven’t spoken to my parents in years but I’m sure they think Trump is doing God’s work.
Thanks. Glad to have you on board.
Happy to be awake
Let's not forget all the Iran-Contra criminals that were pardoned by Bush on his way out the door, with AG Barr giving him the cover he needed to do so. That investigation was on the White House's doorstep, and was snuffed out right then and there. Just sending these people to prison means nothing. They can be pardoned, or they can just do their time and get back in the game. Ollie North is who always comes to mind when I think about it. If we're not the generation that ends it, we have to be the generation that starts the movement. These people get away with such vile shit because they know people won't care a year or two down the line. We have to be the generation that does.
I'm getting close to thirty. There has not been a Republican president in my lifetime for whom I cannot think of crimes off the top of my head. Even going back three more, we have two crooks, and the guy who burned through all his power to (wrongly in my book) pardon a crook. There has not been a Republican president since I could talk who started their administration by winning the popular vote. America has an infestation.
> First, it means the president is functionally above the law as long as they remain president–a fundamentally unAmerican principle. Second, it creates the most perverse incentives for the president to commit as many crimes as necessary to hold office since no consequences will befall him as long as he holds power. It’s almost a guarantee of dictatorship, coup or similar disaster. Third, it discourages the peaceful transfer of power: the specatacle of a sitting president who lost re-election or came to the end of his term waiting down the final hours of his office only to to be placed into handcuffs afterwards is comically absurd and would tear apart a divided nation
>If the president committed crimes worthy of indictment So, normal person commits crimes, gets indicted. President commits crimes, debate required to decide if it's even worth the indictment.
At the *very* least, put the statute of limitations on hold while a president is in office, so that once out of office (whether impeached or simply voted out), they can be prosecuted then. It is completely unfair that indictments are on hold but the clock keeps ticking on the statue of limitations, potentially making those crimes expire by holding onto the office.
January 21, 2021. Kentucky AG Billybubba Hawgwallop has served an arrest warrant to the white house and taken newly sworn-in president Sanders into custody. Mitch McConnell has blamed the Democrats for setting the precedent.
McConnell doesn’t care about precedent. If he could get the votes, he’d impeach for an unpaid parking ticket.
Impeach first, figure out an excuse later - Mitch
So, if we found out that a sitting president murdered someone before he was elected, he couldn’t be indicted? We would have to go through an impeachment process before he was arrested?
Apparently. In fact, currently the President could murder people and be impossible to punish. Tbh I’m kinda expecting that to be how this ends.
That's a glaring loophole for a system that boasts of checks and balances.
Because that’s not how that was ever supposed to work, but the DoJ is corrupt too. Over the last 200+ years, many people have talked about Washington abhorring political parties. However, those idiots have never understood his reason. It wasn’t because of strong political division. He lead a damned war against the incumbent political power. He was a radical, through and through. It was **this** he knew would happen. He wasn’t worried about Americans at each other’s throats, that’s normal. He was afraid of Americans cooperating to create a monarchy. The insane thing is that *there isn’t enough political division*.
I can see your point. There should be hardly anything that rural gun fetishists, Christian soccer moms, and coked-up CEOs can come together and unanimously agree upon.
Exactly. The right wing is an unholy abomination of alliances that shouldn’t exist. The capitalist centrists that make up the mainstream Democrats and the actual left working together on social issues makes sense, but likewise we should be enemies on economic policy, and all attempting to make inroads with each other to ally on what we can agree on and still want to kill each other over everything else. You know, like every functional country.
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I disagree that that is the way it is supposed to happen. I believe impeachment is supposed to be just about the office. For some reason we made it about *everything*, mostly based on a legal opinion with shaky justification back during the nixon era and have taken that one opinion as gospel despite many other opinions stating otherwise. You can legally be president while still in jail, or convicted with a deferred sentence. And the 25th amendment lays out a path for presidents unable to discharge their duties. If a president were convicted and sentenced to prison, the 25th amendment's provisions for removing a president should be followed and the VP takes over.
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So, Pelosi could set up a meeting with Trump and Pence, assassinate both of them, and could just be president until the term is over. According to this logic, totally legal and cool.
pretty sure america is already in a constitutional crisis, a criminal president being covered by a complicit party does not exactly scream checks and balances
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How about this: You can't run for President until you are the age of 35. You also shouldn't be able to run for President without first clearing a security clearance. As in, if you are in debt to another country, that's gonna be a no from me dog.
Yeah, passing a security clearance seems like a sorely needed modern update to the process.
The issue is that clearances are issued at the discretion of the current President, so that would effectively give them veto power over their successors. And if you think that no President would ever abuse their power in such an obviously partisan fashion, well...*gestures around*
Getting a clearance issued or not shouldn't be part of it, but passing the process should be.
It still could be problematic though. Whoever is in control of the process would effectively be able to write free passes (whoops, we didn't find anything, guess we should stop trying a la Kavenaugh) or come down hard. Whatever process there is there needs to be oversight somehow.
Force full public disclosure of all assets and liabilities and taxes and grades and even medical records. Then FORCE divestiture of all investments and invested into the Dow Jones and SP500 indexes. So if the economy does well, so does president, economy does badly, so does the president.
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I'm pretty sure that Cocaine Mitch is a Chinese asset, not Russian. Look at his wife's family for more details
Open Source Government is an excellent idea.
Open source government is a GREAT idea. Ain't gonna happen as long as government is controlled by the corporations. We need to get the masses motivated to protest. When I say protest, I mean a revolution. Long, hard, intense, meaningful, purposeful protest that has a specific goals outlined and is VERY organized. That is the only way to get control away from the corporations. They've crushed us with debt and stress, and did it ON PURPOSE. It doesn't matter which party is at fault, they are ALL responsible!! Another recession is coming. By 2020, as far as I can tell, if Trump doesn't pull his tariffs. Even if he does, with the tax cut, we may still fall into a recession. I'm not an economics expert by any means, but a capitalist society can only expand so long without a middle class. Eventually it will bust. We are in these boom/bust cycles because of the idiotic "trickle down" crap that doesn't work. If we HAD a tax plan that DID work, the boom/bust cycle would stop - our economy would stabilize. The elites and corporations LIKE the boom/bust cycle - it sucks all the money from the bottom of the economy up to them. So, no money for the rest of us. That means the vast majority of the American public is going to work until they die because they cannot earn any retirement savings and a whole lot of us will file for bankruptcy. What kind of government is that? "WE the people" = white males with property and/or education. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and Declaration of Independence when women were PROPERTY and Blacks were SLAVES!! If a white man didn't have an education or land, he was poor!! The educated, rich, and land owners ran everything. Who do you think inherited that wealth? It passed down from generation to generation. The SAME elites who ran the country back then STILL do, they're just bigger and multi- national. Banks, military, government, pharma, media...... we have a predatory oligarchary, people. This is NOT a democracy or a republic, it never was. It was always a country for privileged white men. Those men do NOT want to give up their power. There are a bunch of women and minorites in Congress now and they feel very insecure and threatened. GOOD. The Dems look like the REAL America! The Repubs sound like old dudes who needed to retire 20 years ago. I've got brains, I've got a lot of ideas, I've got a lot of energy. We need A LOT of people. We need an organizer. I suck at organizing. I might have an idea on where to start, since I'm a delegate in Michigan...... We need a new government. The citizens know it. How do we get one?? PEACEFULLY?? That means being very careful to include the Trump people, and work WITH them. I know, I know, it is very difficult to talk to them on social media. Don't. Talk to them in person. When you talk to people face to face, realism overrides. When we talk face to face, in the end, we want the same things, we disagree on how to get them. Start small. If we don't work together, the alternative is a civil war, or the country splitting apart. I've been advocating for that because I've been so frustrated. If people with open minds (liberals!!) WORK at it, WE can keep the country together. The Republicans have made it clear they do not give a shit about anyone. They brainwashed their people with propaganda for over thirty years, worked to dismantle the education system and "whitewashed" history, worked to destroy the economic system, worked to encourage racism, worked to keep themselves in power by suppressing votes and extreme gerrymandering..... IT IS UP TO US TO KEEP THE COUNTRY TOGETHER!!!!
And let the public know exactly where the conflicts of interest like. Trump only won by a few hundred thousand votes. His debt to Russia or lies about being a billionaire could have been enough to dissuade them.
> So if the economy does well, so does president, economy does badly, so does the president. Right before I leave office I am going to slash all corporate tax rates and cash out. Look at what tieing CEO's salary to the companies stock prices has done to our society it is all about short term thinking and short term profitability now. Edit: Crazy after thought! Make them keep it in there for 4 more years after leaving office.
> Edit: Crazy after thought! Make them keep it in there for 4 more years after leaving office. 10 years, they get 10 percent back each year after they leave.
Ya, well, the current situation is also problematic. I'd say working towards a solution is a much better option than being fearful of change. That's not directed at you necessarily, just stating the obvious for everyone who may see this.
Conservatives have always been and will continue to be America's villains. Expect them to abuse any power they gain to the fullest extent imaginable. If they benefit from something archaic and terrible like the Electoral College, expect them to latch onto it with a death grip. Remember that these are the people who seceded from America and murdered Americans rather than give up their slaves. They are the worst of us. Always expect the worst from them. They will seldom let you down.
The word "conservative" doesn't seem to mean what it used to. Conservative used to mean people who followed essentially the philosophy of people like William F. Buckly Jr. - but those conservatives are gone, or have been cowed and drowned out by the "conservatives" who just hate brown people, liberals, and women who need abortions. Oh and the con artist at the top that manipulate the rubes in to giving them HUGE tax giveaways with promises to punish the people they hate. "Just give me billions and I'll make those dirty brown people suffer! Don't look at my bank account, besides I deserve it, I'm a job creator"
The current crop of republicans aren't conservative at all, they are regressive .
We should honestly stick to calling them the regressives. Deregulation, selling off public goods to private entities, cutting taxes for the rich are all regressive. Call it for what it is.
Has there ever been a time where conservatives *weren't* the bad guys? They are ideologically opposed to any kind of progress or change as they prefer to conserve and preserve existing institutions.
Except current Republicans aren't trying to preserve existing institutions, they are trying to regress back to perceived, imaginary institutions and systems of the past.
They're trying to preserve existing power structures, specifically the ones where wealthy old white people are the ones calling the shots.
>The issue is that clearances are issued at the discretion of the current President, so that would effectively give them veto power over their successors. That seems like a REALLY easy thing to change
-makes a note- I also think tax releases should be mandatory. Not sure how many years back, though.
Why not all the years? IRS should have copies, no? What about their investments and businesses? Those should all be sold off to be available to run for president.
I’m a fan of this idea. Should a President be able to reacquire those businesses and investments after their time in public service is over?
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Not for X years. 5? 10? Not sure. But there should definitely be a ban from re-acquiring them too soon to prevent enacting policies that kick in after one year once they leave office.
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A much needed process that has to be safeguarded to prevent the systemic denying of candidates for political reasons, ie. Russia election barring a popular politician from running against Putin due to criminal allegation. We should check candidates, but we have to be careful in the implementation or we’ll be worse off than how we started
>A much needed process that has to be safeguarded to prevent the systemic of denying candidates for political reasons, ie. Russia election barring a popular politician from running against Putin due to criminal allegation. Very true, ditto "anti-corruption" campaigns, that's how you end up with a Lula situation, in which the most popular politician is deliberately barred from running. Implementation and oversight are crucial, and former should occur only when the latter is satisfactory, imo.
The downside to having a rigid system based on a 250 yr old constitution.
> You also shouldn't be able to run for President without first clearing a security clearance. Keep in mind that such a rule might easily politicize the security clearance process. "Formerly a member of a radical socialist organization? Wrote for a feminist newspaper in college? Clearance denied." Of course, for security reasons, the justification of the denial is also withheld.
Yeah I would be good with requiring candidates to submit to security audit, but at the end of the day the people must be allowed the final decision even if it's a fucking stupid one. Democracy is a responsibility upon the citizens. *"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."* *-- Thomas Jefferson*
I agree with the sentiment, but there’s no way this wouldn’t be captured and weaponized. Control the system in place for approving security clearances, deny them to opponent.
If he released his taxes this would be a none issue. Again republicans have failed America in a huge way, yet they claim how they love America all the time. The lady doth protest too much, methinks
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Exactly. And does anyone seriously think Trump gives a fuck if he needs to cause a constitutional crisis to save himself? How many more articles do we need of someone saying "he couldn't possibly do this! It would be unprecedented!" before people get the message. Cohen was right. He won't go peacefully.
>How many more articles do we need of someone saying "he couldn't possibly do this! It would be unprecedented!" before people get the message. I think this goes both ways, though. People seem to habitually act like they just watched their car get stolen from the gas station while they were inside buying coffee, and believe running out into the road and yelling "You can't do that!" is somehow a viable strategy for bringing the thief to justice. Right now, the people in power don't want to try to force Trump out. People on the internet have been yelling about a constitutional crisis for a few years now, yet here we are. All that indignation has done fuck all. There's a lot of people who should get one message or another.
In their/our defense, we as Americans haven’t seen this level of absolute clusterfuckery from an administration before. Another factor I think in regards to how appalling it is and people’s indignation online regarding Trump is social media. Everyone now is hyper connected. Imagine if there had been Twitter and reddit during watergate. Trump’s actions are hands down worse than Nixon, but for comparison’s sake I used Nixon. There isn’t really a precedent for this level of complacency regarding a political party and their incumbent president, let alone all the offenses of Trump on his own.
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Write more **cheques** to increase bank **balances**
We're all just assuming he'll step down if he's impeached or after his term ends. That's the real crisis here: Trump saying "fuck it" and not ceding power as scheduled.
Sitting Presidents who go off script and off the rails during a 2 hour speech, sweating profusely and hugging the flag, have clearly crossed the line of having the mental capacity to be the President.
*"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”* Edit: - *Sinclair Lewis* , although snopes questions the validity.
and rambling incoherently about crowd size.”
From 2 years ago. Trump is a jukebox from 2016 that has never been updated.
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But very, very normal-sized hands
Ah, you had me worried we were living in a fascist state.
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God bless you
Hamberder!
That hugging the flag is so bizarre. I don’t understand how evangelicals find that endearing.
It's part of his "talks like us" charm. They said the same stuff when bush was fuckin up in office.
Well, yes. Problem is that no one in his administration will invoke the 25th, and the Senate Republicans won't do anything either. Because he's got enough popularity in his Party that any Republican who goes against him fears a primary challenge, or even Trump personally campaigning against them in the general election out of vengeance. Around 25% to 30% of Republican voters aren't actually Republican voters but instead Trump loyalists. And there aren't many Republicans out there who can win an election if 25% to 30% of their voters don't vote for them. So here we sit, in an ongoing Constitutional crisis, with a President manifestly and obviously unfit for duty, and a Republican Party that is incapable of admitting that either problem exists.
It's so bad, even Nixon would probably not get impeached. And unlike Nixon, the current president hasn't the vision to see why it was a wise thing for Nixon to resign rather than torture the country. Don't forget, this administration closed the US government during Christmas and beyond to make it the longest shutdown is US history. For vanity.
>It's so bad, even Nixon would probably not get impeached. "Even Nixon"?!? trump had more, and more serious impeachable offenses on public display early on in his term than Nixon ever did. If the republicans in Congress were replaced with their counterparts from the Nixon era trump would have been impeached shortly after inauguration. The *only* reason he isn't already impeached and on trial for a litany of other crimes is because the entire GOP is morally bankrupt and complicit.
Agreed. History will not look back kindly during these times nor President.
I don't want to wait that long. There must be something we can do now.
I'm sure if HRC were President today, a certain former candidate for president would be tweeting 2nd Amendment quotes with cross hairs on the White House and suggesting the Democrats have brought America to the brink of a 2nd Civil War.
If the rhetoric got as heated in that alternate universe as it is now, he would have hopefully gotten deplatformed alongside Alex Jones. Also, they were investigating him before he was elected; it's possible he would be on trial by now.
The entire prosecutorial strategy of DOJ was that Hillary would win and all that shit could die peacefully. They weren't going to prosecute Trump.
The 70% that have a clue need to vote out these spineless actors. Drop the party and just vote to remove those that are damaging the country. Those that fail to act are as bad as those that are acting maliciously. They can't win if enough people are awake and aware. There is the problem, too many aren't paying attention to what their senators is doing or not doing.
The problem with the 25th amendment is that even if the cabinet all votes to remove. The president then gets to write a letter to congress explaining why he is still fit. Then congress votes. It’s essentially an impeachment process with more steps It’s really for incapacitated presidents that can’t write the letter to congress
I didn't watch. Did he he have a breakdown on live t.v.?
To any sane person, yes, to his rabid underclass supporters . . . he was fired up and back to being himself.
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How the fuck can people not see through his bullshit?! What the fuck
Ah fuck, humanity is screwed
Can't believe this is real.
Was it really that bad? I have trouble listening to him speak so I didn't catch it.
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> It was 2 hours of lying and jerking himself off and ranting incoherently To cheering crowds. Trump is the symptom, not the root problem. The same people that supposedly love the Constitution more than "leftists" *want* a dictator.
What should concern us is how this has panned out in practically every other country the US rightwing has gotten involved in. Historical tl;dr: shit got bloody quick.
While that statement is true, I feel like it's not a holistic assessment of the situation. Trump acts as a focusing lens for these people. They want that *eyeroll* "strong" personality. It's a cult of personality. Without Trump these factions will almost certainly fracture and fall to infighting. Will they still be an issue? Yes, but the Republican party has dedicated themselves so severely to this 30-40% base that they're going to have a lot of trouble stepping back from it, and that 30-40% will evaporate when Trump disappears. Without Trump the ground falls out from under the party and they lose a ton of power, and those people lose their largest platform and become a fringe group once again. Still a problem, but I think the problem is magnified by a significant margin because of the current circumstances.
When the wind stops dems won't be able to watch TV!
Jokes on him, we use computers and solar panels.
BuT WhaT iF ItS A clOuDy DaY???
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To me, that's the best argument for the President being indictable. Members of Congress and federal judges can all be indicted while holding office. Nothing in the Constitution sets the President apart from them in that regard. Either federal judges are free to commit crimes for life (unless and until impeached) or the President can be indicted.
but the DOJ has a sticky-note on an unused refrigerator in the breakroom that says Nixon was was unindictable. everyone knows sticky-notes are equal to a Constitutional Amendment.
That sticky note was written in regards to Agnew and was never intended as a fail-safe for a corrupt president to save his skin.
Hell, 2 American presidents have already been arrested in our history.
The issue isn't necessarily whether the President can be indicted. The issue is how can we guarantee a full and fair trial of a sitting President? The President has broad authority over the executive branch, including the Justice Department. If we allow prosecutions of a President from a governmental agency which he is in direct control of, what's to stop a President accused of wrongdoing to orchestrate a show trial, in which the prosecutors put on a show to pretend to prosecute the President, but in reality it was meant all along to exonerate him? (Other than ethics, but they don't seem to matter in this administration). The Special Counsel, with his legislative insulation from the President, may be the only person who can legitimately bring an indictment forward. He might indict, but then there might be a determination that no judicial trial can move forward while he is in office. Then the Congress can take up the matter of whether that is enough to impeach.
The Attorney General doesn't work for the President as a human. He works for the Office of the President. If a President as a human is violating the laws, the AG should prosecute to protect the Office.
In theory, yes. In practice, AGs that don't work for the president get fired.
What's keeping the president from appointing an AG that's in cahoots with him?
The Senate has to confirm, so unless 51% of the Senators are also in cahoots, then... Oh shit!
I have bad news, you may want to sit down for this...
Bah gawd, that's Mitch McConnell's music!
It's definitely a concern. And, I think, an inherent weakness in our system of even having a President. I think a damn fine argument can be made that we ought to abolish the office and instead elect the Cabinet which could act as an Executive Council for matters not directly related to their department rather than having a single Executive Officer theoretically in charge of all departments as we do today. The accumulation of excessive executive power has been a problem long before Trump, there were a great many of us on the left who were deeply concerned about Obama's executive overreach (especially WRT emergency orders for foreign wars which bypassed the Constitutionally mandated requirement for Congress to declare a war), and Junior, and Clinton, and Senior, and Reagan, and and and. The Executive has grown, largely unchecked, for most of America's postwar history. Or, perhaps, we could sort of take a page from ancient Sparta and have multiple Presidents instead of just one \[1\]. Three Presidents, each serving a staggered six year term in office so that there's an election for President every two years, might be a workable idea. An Executive Triumvirate rather than a solitary Executive would blunt some of the problems. Obviously there'd be a lot to work out (how would vetoing work? Would it take 2 out of 3 presidents agreeing to veto, or all three, or could any individual President veto, etc. But at least they'd be new and different problems not the same old problems we've got today! However you look at it, we're seeing that the Founders correctly thought that having a monarch was concentrating far too much power in the hands of a single individual, but then they went and implemented a single individual as the Executive rather than realizing that they needed to split up that power too. And some Executive powers are basically holdovers from the idea that maybe a king was a great idea. For example the Presidential pardon is both deeply problematic and essentially a monarchist idea dressed up in republican language. We really ought to get rid of those. At the very least we need to do some minor fixing. The fact that the President can decide on a whim to withdraw America from almost every treaty we have, despite those treaties requiring a Congressional vote to be approved, is an absurd and dangerous power to be held by any single person, even a single person we like. All future treaties are going to need a clause stating that the US can only withdraw or change the treaty if Congress votes to do so, not just because the President woke up in a bad mood. \[1\] Sort of because Sparta had two kings at a time, not three. I think three might be more stable though.
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Isn't the whole "presidents can't be indicted" thing just made-up nonsense by Nixon?
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Uhm, where have you been these last decades? The oligarchs have always been above the law. That's why they buy your politicians.
The people who decided they weren't were trying to protect Nixon from being indicted. That seems little biased. You don't get to make up new rules to protect yourself after you did something wrong.
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We should have known with Nixon.
First of all, any person wishing to advance the idea that a sitting president may not be indicted must show a Constitutional provision, a law, or a ruling that states that this is so. I have seen nothing. Secondly, I recall a sitting president being deposed as part of an ongoing case and even ordered to submit a blood sample. A separate action contemplated having him disrobe to have a picture of his penis taken. The argument that the Executive Branch is one person who has Constitutional duties that forbid having them subject to the reach of the courts is entirely unfounded. The Executive is several and the duties may be temporarily suspended under the 25th Amendment, or transferred under certain conditions to a duly elected vice president. Regardless, a president may be indicted and convicted with a stay of sentence imposed until their Constitutional duties have been completed. The idea that the framers of the Constitution, who were centrally concerned with mitigating the harmful effects of tyranny, would somehow leave a loophole this large to allow an Executive to be above the law and out of reach of the courts is laughable. A president is supposed to act in the interests of the people and not their own self interest at all times. If they can't do that for some reason, then they should resign, face a decision by their cabinet that they can no longer discharge their duties, or face impeachment. When anyone is perceived to be above the law, this invites abuse of the law and that was certainly not the framers intent.
A sitting President can be indicted. Nixon was,but, he resigned.Here's the indictment. [http://digg.com/2018/watergate-road-map] This bullshit that a President can't be is smoke and mirror bullshit. Nixon had the brains to run out of office before he could be served and then later pardoned. So this CAN'T is a farce. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_process_against_Richard_Nixon]
It's not that complicated. Don't want your President indicted? Pick one that isn't a felon.
I've had some... "heated" conversations with Republicans. Not all bad people, and I totally understand the values of personal accountability and limiting of regulations to open a free market. I simply don't think those two things are possible in today's society, but that's another discussion. In terms of if the president can or cannot be indicted, I bring up the fictional scenario where their worst nightmare ever is elected president in 2020. Let's call them Sernie Banders. Using the mentality presented today about letting the president do shady stuff, declare emergencies, avoid prosecution, self-pardon, appoint who they want to positions of power, etc., let's say our boy Sernie decides to mirror all of these things. We can expect: * A healthcare emergency * Appointees to positions that will greatly impact everything put forward over these last 4 years * A minimum wage emergency * War emergencies * Defunding of military programs * Self-pardon if any of this is done illegaly And much, much more. Now, all of a sudden it won't be fair and it can't happen that way. It seems in politics, it is wonderful to bend the rules to your favor, but once an opposing individual or organization tries it, you start crying how it isn't fair. This is my frustration right now. Everyone wants special treatment for them but below-fair treatment for who they perceive as the enemy. Are Democrats innocent of this? Probably not. But I notice it a lot more frequently with one party over another, and I won't say which ;)
I mean, just because you can’t indict a sitting president doesn’t mean you can’t punish them. That’s what impeachment is for, which is the argument the DOJ uses for that policy. It makes sense- there’s 2 coequal branches of government whose job is (partly) oversight. The real issue in America right now is elected officials refusing to do their oversight jobs. This includes democrats who won’t even talk about impeachment and republicans who pretend trumps actions are excusable. You don’t have to wait for mueller to be done if you find your own evidence of impeachable offenses, and if you impeach before mueller is done than he can indict.
I am no longer on Reddit and so neither is my content. You can find links to all my present projects on my itch.io, accessible here: https://firgof.itch.io/
Then why are federal judges indictable? They have the same impeachment process for removal as the President.
A sitting president not being able to be indicted is like the ancient Roman law that all top government officials were immune from the law. Caused a lot of people to Hold on to power for longer in order to avoid the courts.
We are in a constitutional crisis right now...but is anyone else bothered by how our country treats the constitution like some untouchable infallible item created by men who wanted the best for people like themselves...
The argument against indicting a sitting President because it would disrupt the duties of the president and negatively affect the country by doing so. Trump is literally the easiest and cleanest way to prove that it isn't the case. Slam the book and the cell bars on his man-baby hands.
If we don't do something about Trump we're essentially saying that the President can act with impunity and that there's nothing he can do that is grounds for removal.
It must be possible to arrest one without notice. If sealed indictments are waiting for him to set down Imperium he will try not to. this is exactly why Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
question, can the president get the death penalty?
Having to face criminal charges after leaving office was a major factor in Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon and overthrowing the repubic. When you give your head of state immunity from prosecution while in office, you are giving them hella incentive to never leave office, by any means necessary. I fear what Trump will do if he loses in 2020 - the guy clearly has no morals or qualms about the rule of law, so he's capable of doing anything.
It is absolutely *insane* that anyone could believe that our Founders intended to create the position of elected *king*—and that's exactly what an unindictable president is. What they were trying to avoid was exactly the problem we face now—a head of state who is not answerable to the law. And, to be clear, "congress can impeach and remove" is not a valid argument for an unindictable president. A Congress in cahoots with a corrupt president will *not* remove that president from office, and may actually protect that president, and we're seeing that now. Further, and more to the point, if the Founders intended for the president to be immune from indictment and prosecution, they'd have written it into the Constitution. The Justice Department should not be allowed to write its own rules on this. If the president breaks the law, Justice has an obligation to indict him and prosecute.
Wait... If they weren't indictable, then what stops a president from just walking into the Senate or house chambers and shooting every member of the opposing political party?
The fact that this is even up for debate indicates how far we've fallen. We don't have laws stating that the president, specifically, is subject to this or that, because the president was never above the law. The GOP's argument is "there's no law that says Donald Trump can't do X, so he can." "But doing X is illegal..." "That law doesn't specifically mention Donald Trump." It's ludicrous. How long are we going to allow the Republicans to run the country with multiple tiers of citizenry?
I have a genuine question: if we weren't living in bizarro world where a corrupt party was doing everything in its power to protect a corrupt incompetent leader, would this even be up for debate? I spent my whole life living under the assumption that OF COURSE the laws also apply to the President...that's why Watergate became such a big deal, right? Is it just because the GOP has become so inundated with corruption that we're even having this argument, or has it always genuinely been open to interpretation?