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Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#121

Post by nikdaheratik »

rphlx wrote: post #93
whyileft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering it is illegal for companies to do what Trump ordered[0], I'm not sure that would be the best analogy. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm

She was fired for outright refusing to do her job [1], encouraging her subordinates to the same, and for going public about it. [1] "to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned"

No, her job is to help follow the laws of the country, not to do whatever the President says. The President is not a dictator or a CEO.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#122

Post by couchand »

mikekchar wrote: post #96
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."

I agree. It appears as though shocking political news stories are going to be the norm in the short to mid term. As interesting as they are and as useful as it is to discuss things with a sensible crowd like HN, I fear that the focus will inevitably be pulled away from the main topic at hand. There are lots of other venues to discuss these issue if one so wishes.

I'll respectfully disagree with both of you.

My understanding of current events would be significantly worsened if I didn't regularly get the thoughtful perspective of dragonwriter, tptacek, bluejekyll, throwaway8383495, and so many others.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#123

Post by cookiecaper »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #114
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…

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.

While it is true that EOs are not statutes enacted by Congress, they are usually binding law. As a layman, I'm not qualified to argue the matter in detail, but it's obtuse to pretend otherwise. EOs with the force of law are not new and have well-established precedent. This appears to be a good overview. [0]

[0] http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/executive-orders-in-court

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#124

Post by pfooti »

hueving wrote: post #13
ivl wrote: post #2

If I understand it right this is the first time an AG has been relieved for purely political reasons. If the AG doesn't think it's likely they'll win a defense, that usually doesn't cause an issue. As an edit: it probably wouldn't have been reasonable for her to put up an intentionally weak case, but if the order isn't able to stand up in court, then what? The major worry for me is Trump's seeking to punish anyone wh…

>The major worry for me is Trump's seeking to punish anyone who shows disloyalty. This shouldn't be surprising nor worrying. This is how hierarchical leadership works and it's fully expected that anyone under the President may be forced to do whatever the President wants. It's the entire reason there are 2 other branches of government.

And of course the reason why CBP ignored the judiciary when federal judges issued orders about the EO. Conspiracy-theory wise, it is why the Trump White House page deleted the judicial branch from its sitemap (still has legislative).

And of course, keep in mind that 'following orders' is never a particularly good reason to break with your own morality.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#125

Post by avenoir »

nemo wrote: post #5
fullshark wrote: post #3

His base will love this

His opposition will love this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

Care to explain how Nixon tapping someone who could fire Special Prosecutor Cox to prevent him from conducting investigation of the Watergate scandal has any relevance at all to the issue at hand here?

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#126

Post by explainthisth »

aub3bhat wrote: post #76
danhak wrote: post #45

“I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally. And so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment or things like that, the question is not ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is ‘We’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.’" -Peter…

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.

If the Department of Labor drops their lawsuit against Palantir, he will have already gotten his money's worth.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#127

Post by cookiecaper »

mwpmaybe wrote: post #110
cookiecaper wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter for the judiciary to determine exactly whether an obscure law is contradicted or not and whether that law supersedes the President's authority to issue EOs to the contrary. Not the AG's role, especially since the matter at hand is not prosecutorial discretion but merely the DoJ's ability to prepare a fair legal defense for President Trump's order. Why should a judge not be able to hear what the DoJ can…

I am merely pointing out the flaw in your argument that the Trump administration's order is in any way acceptable simply because they're working off the same list of countries that the Obama administration used for a past order.

I fail to see the flaw. Many people are pretending that Trump explicitly selected these countries because they didn't interfere with his business interests, or that he selected them specifically because they are home to many Muslims (in fact, the nations with the 5 largest Muslim populations are totally unaffected by the order).

The Trump administration wisely chose to use a list of countries that had been previously identified as terrorist hotspots by President Obama, which fully obviates the implication that Trump selected the countries due to their religious makeup, etc., because the fact is that Trump did not select the specific countries involved at all, and merely relied on the evaluation codified into law under the Obama admin.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#128

Post by pfooti »

rtkwe wrote: post #70
hprotagonist wrote: post #26

From 0 to Saturday Night Massacre, in 10 days. That's not really a record one ought to be proud of. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

I feel like the comparisons to Nixon's actions are quite a bit strained. At the very least the magnitude of the actions is vastly different. Nixon was shopping around for a AG that would remove a special prosecutor investigating him.

And what kind of message does this send, given the ongoing russia-related investigations underway? I mean, if he fires people and breaks the chain of succession to shop for a sock puppet over an executive order?

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#129

Post by sfifs »

ivl wrote: post #2

If I understand it right this is the first time an AG has been relieved for purely political reasons. If the AG doesn't think it's likely they'll win a defense, that usually doesn't cause an issue. As an edit: it probably wouldn't have been reasonable for her to put up an intentionally weak case, but if the order isn't able to stand up in court, then what? The major worry for me is Trump's seeking to punish anyone wh…

Can Sally Yates sue for wrongful termination?

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#130

Post by grzm »

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."

Flag submissions you consider inappropriate for HN. If you recall Political Detox Week, it was very chaotic and noisy. It's very difficult to find widespread agreement as to what's politics and what's not, and what's an exception because it's really really important.

'dang summarized the results of the detox week and has made some recent comments on it as well. I'll dig around for them and update this comment with links to them in a bit to provide more context.

Edit: Here are some, with some identifiable snippets only so it's not a list of links. I encourage you to read the comments themselves. They don't all directly address this, but I think they all shed some light on the topic.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969

There's no satisfying anybody about this: not the readers who want more politics, not the readers who want less, and certainly not the partisans on an issue.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433

There's a lot more politics on HN right now than there usually is, which is appropriate since it reflects what's going on right now.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969

When there's a deluge of political stories, as in the last couple days, users heavily flag most of them. But there have still been plenty of major threads spending plenty of time on the front page. That's the status quo for HN: most politics are off topic, but not all. It's a delicate balance and an important one. Letting politics overrun this site would kill it.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463480

On downsides of the Political Detox Week experiment: there are two comments in the thread.

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