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Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#111

Post by sremani »

zzleeper wrote: post #78
jbyers wrote: post #73

Respectfully, can we maintain the political detox on Hacker News? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 I'm personally as engaged in reading and debating politics as I ever have been, but elsewhere. As dang put it: "Political conflicts cause harm here."

From news.istambulcombinator.com.tr , circa 2012 : >Respectfully, can we maintain the ban on political articles on Istambul Hacker News? Sure, we can close our ears, and also we can argue that here we only discuss tech all the time. But as long as the world we live in influences tech, and all of us, there should be a political discussion here. HN comments are one of the sharpest for online forums, and it is a shame t…

This is one of many feeds of information for me, and I assume for most of us. Currently, all my other feeds are overly politicized. Yes, I have a political opinion and understand the need for discourse, but we are currently in a hyper-partisan political cycle and in which there is no winner. The gap is so wide, it is hard for one group to engage the other. So now all we get in these "political discussions" is hyper virtue signaling. I am talking about all sides.

This is not the time for discussion, because in our minds the battle lines are drawn.

I wish HN enforces a month of political moratorium. I will live and die on HN and will not make a single low info comment!

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#112

Post by nikdaheratik »

TenOhms wrote: post #40
ouid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Although the attorney general advises the president, the basic authority of the office is derived from Congress and the functions of the office are subject to congressional control. In addition, the attorney general is a member of the bar and therefore an officer of the court subject to the directives of the judicial branch." - http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Attorney+Gener...

What I find worrying is she ordered that the DOJ not support the President without any clear conviction that the law was unconstitutional, it smelled of an entirely politically motivated action not grounded in US law.

Except that it isn't a law. It's an executive order. The President isn't a dictator and doesn't get to rule any department by decree. If the secretary feels that the order is illegal, they can refuse to follow it, and get forced to resign, but then the President would still need to find someone else to follow the order.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#113

Post by cookiecaper »

davidw wrote: post #102
cookiecaper wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If she is unable to faithfully discharge her duty to execute U.S. law, she should resign. She offers no argument to support her claim that the order was not lawful, other than her self-evident personal disagreement. Do you know of a credible legal argument that the president is not allowed to issue instructions to the Department of Homeland Security via executive order? Ms. Yates apparently does, but she doesn't wish…

She signed an oath to defend the constitution, not an oath of loyalty to Trump.

And what's the Constitutional argument that the President is not allowed to issue EOs of this type? What's the argument that Mr. Trump's EO specifically violates the Constitution?

Law enforcement is not the judiciary. They are part of the the executive branch. Their job is to enforce the law under the direction of the chief executive, at the moment President Trump, who was clearly installed by Constitutional means.

Unless Ms. Yates can highlight a clear and present Constitutional violation that justifies disregarding the also-Constitutional obligation to uphold and respect the peoples' elected chief executive, there's simply nothing to go on here.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#114

Post by nikdaheratik »

cookiecaper wrote: post #97
siidooloo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She said that she felt the order was illegal. Should she follow orders and obey something she thinks is illegal?

If she is unable to faithfully discharge her duty to execute U.S. law, she should resign. She offers no argument to support her claim that the order was not lawful, other than her self-evident personal disagreement. Do you know of a credible legal argument that the president is not allowed to issue instructions to the Department of Homeland Security via executive order? Ms. Yates apparently does, but she doesn't wish…

It isn't a law, it's an executive order. If it was something passed by Congress, I would agree with your point, but it is not. So it is down to the acting attorney general's judgement on whether to defend the order.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#115

Post by throwaway5752 »

workerIbe wrote: post #86
aub3bhat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel will go down in history as Trump/Bannon's useful idiot. He might have come up in short term betting correctly on Trump but he is down on long. If he thinks that he is going to get a piece of the pie after Kushner/Tillerson/Preibus(establishment) have had their take, then he is in for a cake.

What I think alot of Trump supporters are taking seriously is the phenomena that is the left feeding off It's own hyperbole, it's pretty disturbing.

And a lot of us on both sides of the former partisan political spectrum are wonder what - if any - boundaries Trump supporters have past which they would not defend the actions of this administration.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#116

Post by cookiecaper »

conistonwater wrote: post #87
cookiecaper wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* The ban is a temporary measure and has nothing to do with religion. President Obama signed a list of countries into law for enhanced visa scrutiny and President Trump used that exact list without modification, directly referencing the statute in which it was codified. They'd already been identified as terrorism hotspots that warranted additional scrutiny from immigration officials by the Obama administration. Trump…

> The ban is a temporary measure and has nothing to do with religion. As an example, Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have been involved in drafting it, explains that it does: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr... and also explains why the language of the order does not contain a religious test. > Alien permanent residents from the affected countries are not currently banned. They never were. Thi…

>As an example, Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have been involved in drafting it, explains that it does

From the article: "And what we did was, we focused on, instead of religion, danger — the areas of the world that create danger for us,” Giuliani told Pirro. “Which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible. And that's what the ban is based on. It's not based on religion. It's based on places where there are substantial evidence that people are sending terrorists into our country.”

You're sending me an article that quotes Giuliani as explicitly stating "it's not about religion, it's about terrorists" as proof that it's about religion? Am I reading this right?

>This is just plain false, the "immigrant and non-immigrant" text was part of the original executive order, and the DHS spokeswoman said it applied to greencard holders.

I addressed that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13507180

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#117

Post by pcwalton »

cookiecaper wrote: post #97
siidooloo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She said that she felt the order was illegal. Should she follow orders and obey something she thinks is illegal?

If she is unable to faithfully discharge her duty to execute U.S. law, she should resign. She offers no argument to support her claim that the order was not lawful, other than her self-evident personal disagreement. Do you know of a credible legal argument that the president is not allowed to issue instructions to the Department of Homeland Security via executive order? Ms. Yates apparently does, but she doesn't wish…

> There is nothing in Trump's EO that singles anyone out by religious affiliation or background.

This is false. It has explicit exceptions for "religious minorities".

Wikipedia: "After the resumption of USRAP, refugee applications will be prioritized based on religion-based persecutions only in the case that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in that country."

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#118

Post by pfooti »

jbyers wrote: post #73

Respectfully, can we maintain the political detox on Hacker News? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 I'm personally as engaged in reading and debating politics as I ever have been, but elsewhere. As dang put it: "Political conflicts cause harm here."

Consider for a moment an unmoderated forum. HN isn't, but it is lightly moderated, so it is reasonable to consider. An HN where most users agreed with you would be an HN where political posts rapidly fell off the front page, and simply get ignored by most.

Like or not, it is quite difficult to disentangle politics from everything else. A desire to remain apolitical is pretty political in itself.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#119

Post by throwaway5752 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #113
davidw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She signed an oath to defend the constitution, not an oath of loyalty to Trump.

And what's the Constitutional argument that the President is not allowed to issue EOs of this type? What's the argument that Mr. Trump's EO specifically violates the Constitution? Law enforcement is not the judiciary. They are part of the the executive branch. Their job is to enforce the law under the direction of the chief executive, at the moment President Trump, who was clearly installed by Constitutional means. U…

Perhaps you can educate us, then, when the executive branch gained the power to create law in the form of executive orders?

Thought experiment: if Obama had issued an EO stating that his interpretation of the 2nd amendment referred only to state militias, and as a result he was proceeding to forcibly confiscated all privately owned firearms, would that be constitutional?

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#120

Post by jacquesm »

sremani wrote: post #111
zzleeper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From news.istambulcombinator.com.tr , circa 2012 : >Respectfully, can we maintain the ban on political articles on Istambul Hacker News? Sure, we can close our ears, and also we can argue that here we only discuss tech all the time. But as long as the world we live in influences tech, and all of us, there should be a political discussion here. HN comments are one of the sharpest for online forums, and it is a shame t…

This is one of many feeds of information for me, and I assume for most of us. Currently, all my other feeds are overly politicized. Yes, I have a political opinion and understand the need for discourse, but we are currently in a hyper-partisan political cycle and in which there is no winner. The gap is so wide, it is hard for one group to engage the other. So now all we get in these "political discussions" is hyper v…

> This is not the time for discussion, because in our minds the battle lines are drawn.

Yes, and discussion can make those battle lines disappear by finding common ground if possible and if not possible it will at least help assess how far the damage from all this bs can spread.

Sticking your head in the ground is not going to make the problem go away, in fact might make it fractionally worse.

On another note, in the US the choice has been made, but there are other places in the world where it is not too late and discussing this might throw up an argument or two that could be used to deflect disaster elsewhere.

> I wish HN enforces a month of political moratorium.

Because it's too much trouble to not click on links about subjects you wish were not discussed?

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