"Ms. Yates (new AG) was the only person at the Justice Department authorized to sign applications for foreign surveillance warrants. Administrations of both parties have interpreted surveillance laws as requiring foreign surveillance warrants be signed only by Senate-confirmed Justice Department officials. Mr. Boente was Senate-confirmed as United States attorney and, though the situation is unprecedented, the White House said he was authorized to sign the warrants."
Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
161–170 of 498 posts
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which venues would you suggest?
It occurs to me that reddit is built specifically to deal with this kind of topic. It also attracts a politically oriented clientele.
I can appreciate that one of the attractions of using HN for this kind of topic is because the normal clientele are not overly political. A more reasoned discussion is possible. I'm old enough to remember a time when this was also true of Slashdot. I couldn't even imagine seeing the kind of discussion going on there today. Beware.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Trimp is shopping around for an AG that won't investigate him.
Do you have a reference for this? The last I heard, Sessions was still his pick.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
has nothing to do with religion. After what Giuliani has publicly stated and explained, how can you say this?
Did you read what Giuliani stated, or just go off the headline? He explicitly said it wasn't about religion. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527870 . This is "seriously, but not literally". Trump seriously meant he wanted to halt immigration from terrorists hotspots (which, yes, at the moment, are predominantly Muslim -- but that doesn't mean Muslims are predominantly terrorists). He asked his people to ta…
I didn't just read it, I watched it. I heard it from his own mouth.
Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlibiQIy298
Let's put this in context
Donald Trump's quote: "Donald J. Trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."
Or the wording on his website: https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/11...
We can let the viewers at home decide.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's not unprecedented for policies to be applied in phases, starting with a more palatable version before expanding it.
> 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.
You're making it sound like Trump was restricted to just that list. Trump isn't a civil servant carrying out the stated orders of the President, he is the President, and is not bound to follow the details of the EO of the previous president.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#166Almost my whole adult life, I looked up to America. Whatever I know and my life's value system is mostly because of the books I read by American authors. I couldn't belive the news when I heard that Americans chose Trump. When did America become so stupid to vote in these people?
We didn't choose Trump. He trailed the leading candidate by almost three million votes, an unprecedented amount. Making such statements is a slap in the face of the majority of American voters. There are also still substantial questions remaining as to how much assistance Trump may have received from foreign governments in achieving his victory.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
>Perhaps you can educate us, then, when the executive branch gained the power to create law in the form of executive orders?
The Wikipedia article looks like a pretty good general overview. While it is true that EOs as such are not explicitly accommodated by the Constitution, EO-equivalents with the force of law have been enacted by presidents from George Washington onward. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order . If you want more information, please consult Google. EOs are not new.
>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?
Trump is not re-interpreting the Constitution via EO. He is not overriding binding precedent from SCOTUS by EO (only Congress can do that, and sometimes it requires a Constitutional amendment). He is not running a national confiscation program by EO (though FDR did do this when he used EOs to make it illegal for Americans to own gold) [0].
He is doing something that is considered well within presidential power -- directing the Department of Homeland Security in its duty to vet and screen potential entrants to the United States. Foreign nationals have no right, implicit or explicit, to enter the United States.
Border control is a universally recognized duty that every country not only acknowledges, but actively enforces (and many of our first-world peers are much more aggressive than us). Without such screening, borders are irrelevant. Within U.S. law specifically, it's undisputed that such matters are under the DHS's purview, and that the DHS is under the executive branch's purview.
It seems, therefore, that an EO directing the DHS in these duties would be completely logical, right? President Obama issued several addressing the same fundamental types of issues, though his EOs generally liberalized migration policies rather than tightening them. Why is it legal for Obama to give orders of this nature, but not Trump?
I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if there are specific statutory details imposed upon the DHS in its screening process, but it doesn't appear obvious to anyone that anything about Trump's EO conflicts with any existing law. Even Ms. Yates is unable to elucidate the nature of her purported legal argument.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really believe what you posted? If tomorrow he says something to disprove one of your points, you will further twist your argument to somehow appears as if he is still doing the right thing. I don't think anyone but yourself can convince you of what is really going on.
I have no position on whether or not President Trump's order is "the right thing". I am merely saying that he is seriously, but not literally, fulfilling the promises he made during the campaign. That's what the comment I was replying to was discussing. Trump has not literally banned Muslims, nor has he literally begun construction on a wall that rivals the Great Wall of China (and indications are that he doesn't int…
You're doing a lot of arguing For someone who has no position on it.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I haven't heard anything about Trump looking for someone other than Sessions, who's been his pick for a while now. Have you heard otherwise?
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
any what exactly does this EO accomplish? just because Obama identified countries as a potential threat doesn't necessitate that we be recklessly suspicious of anyone who comes from them. it's disingenuous to say it's just a"step forward" by permanent residents i assume you mean green card holders in which case they 100% were affected unless you believe the white house spin.
>any what exactly does this EO accomplish? I mean, is there some mystery to this? The EO explicitly states its purpose in its text. It gives the Trump administration time to evaluate the procedures used to vet nationals from these hotbeds of terrorist activity. Are you concerned that it doesn't do this, or do you simply not agree that this is a worthwhile thing to do? >by permanent residents i assume you mean green c…
> It gives the Trump administration time to evaluate the procedures used to vet nationals from these hotbeds of terrorist activity. Are you concerned that it doesn't do this, or do you simply not agree that this is a worthwhile thing to do?
There are many things wrong with the excuse of requiring more vetting:
1. The countries included in the ban have not been responsible for causing damage to the US. The countries with nationals that were involved in such acts were not included. Which makes it rather suspicious that "more vetting" or "preventing dangerous guys" from entering the country was the point of the EO.
2. There is ALREADY an extremely rigorous process to determining the suitability of people before they obtain a Visa/Asylum in the US. If there was anything specifically wrong with the procedure itself that the Trump administration had identified, it would make a lot more sense. They have given no details, and just like Trump's lies about having military plans to defeat ISIS, this seems like the same.
> It's not White House spin. Green card holders were never banned. The media falsely reported a statement from a DHS spokesperson, literally not even quoting a full sentence, to try to cause a panic (and they obviously succeeded). After a few hours, they were forced to fix their erroneous reporting when the White House began issuing corrections (that wouldn't have been needed if the media hadn't intentionally misconstrued the story in the first place).
This is just not true. Other commenters have posted/commented on how Bannon overruled the initial order saying that GC holders were INCLUDED, but the WH had to change that later.