is there an option like "i don't really care about politics, US especially" anywhere on this site?
If you feel a submission is inappropriate for HN, you can flag it. Edit to add: Or hide it, an option that doesn't get a lot of attention.
Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
201–210 of 498 posts
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
The American people chose Trump. Sorry, there is no way around that. The US doesn't elect its president based on the popular vote.
Right, which is why the American people did not choose Trump. The electoral college did. It's not fair to point the finger at the people when the system was the most likely cause of the outcome.
I think placing blame solely on electoral college system is detracting from the real problem, which is that there is a polarized division. Electoral college can be a fair system most of the time, and I hold benefit of the doubt that there was no systematic gerrymandering going on specifically for this election.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ki…
> It occurs to me that reddit is built specifically to deal with this kind of topic. It also attracts a politically oriented clientele.
Are you serious? Have you been to /r/worldnews?
I get more insight here than any reddit sub.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#204Earlier 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…
> It's a matter for the judiciary to determine I'm pretty sure any oath of office, including those in the executive, include the protection of the constitution and bill of rights. To leave the defence of the constitution solely in the hands of the judiciary is terribly dangerous, especially considering how politicised that branch has become. > It seems perfectly sensible [..] to temporarily suspend travel to/from suc…
Nitpicks over specific laws do not justify invocation of the oath of office. Despite what this thread is trying to pretend, it is not conventional for the AG to play SCOTUS and pre-emptively declare the administration's position indefensible.
Ms. Yates has not offered any legal rationale for her position. She is failing to uphold the Constitution by undermining the operation of the executive branch and the authority of the chief executive without a compelling constitutional cause.
In principle, you're correct that AGs should decline to participate in the implementation of clearly unconstitutional instructions. However, no such plain and obvious unconstitutionality exists in this case. There's nothing even close. All actual legal complaints raised to this point involve potential collisions with obscure, decades-old laws. It's the judiciary's role to handle that type of conflict.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What are the legal rights of green card holders, then? Was the EO consistent with existing US law?
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are three things you can say about the popular vote in the 2016 US Presidential Election: - the result of the popular vote and the electoral college were not the same - the popular vote/electoral college split confirms that the country is very split and that Trump does not have a mandate. - the electoral college may not be the best way to elect the president What is much harder to argue is that the results of t…
All of that may be true, but it's still valid to point out the popular vote discrepancy as a response to the claim that the American people chose Trump. As an American voter who opposed Trump during the election, I feel especially entitled to do so in response to someone who criticizes us as being "stupid" for having done something that many of us don't feel responsible for having done. Indeed, if further evidence su…
I completely understand where you're coming from. I also know that phrasing it the way you have, without any additional context, very often results in semantic, distracting discussions like those that followed, distracting from the very valid point you're making.
When making a similar point, I focus on how clearly split the country is and the record-low unfavorability of both major party candidates. Hard to argue with either of those, and clearly demonstrates that Trump can't accurately be described as having a mandate. It's also generally non-partisan.
It also reminds everyone that Clinton was by no means a great candidate either, which also is well worth keeping in mind. So much of the rhetoric on either side during the campaign was "how can you vote for that candidate?", pointing out the flaws, rather than extolling the virtues of the candidate one was going to vote for. If Clinton had carried the Electoral College, we wouldn't be discussing this under "Trump Fires Acting Attorney General", but the split and polarization of the country would likely be just as strong, just on different topics.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a matter for the judiciary to determine I'm pretty sure any oath of office, including those in the executive, include the protection of the constitution and bill of rights. To leave the defence of the constitution solely in the hands of the judiciary is terribly dangerous, especially considering how politicised that branch has become. > It seems perfectly sensible [..] to temporarily suspend travel to/from suc…
Nitpicks over specific laws do not justify invocation of the oath of office. Despite what this thread is trying to pretend, it is not conventional for the AG to play SCOTUS and pre-emptively declare the administration's position indefensible. Ms. Yates has not offered any legal rationale for her position. She is failing to uphold the Constitution by undermining the operation of the executive branch and the authority…
See above: Green Cards confer full protection of law, including entry, to the extend of rights afforded to citizens. The exceptions are limited to people committing crimes or leaving the US for prolonged times. That is an exhaustive list (other laws include a generic clause like "and as deemed necessary by the Department of...").
EO cannot break laws, only modify their implementation. There is no room for interpretation. You could argue that the right of entry is not in the constitution – but I'm pretty sure even Scalia would have found a way to argue that US citizens have constitutional right to entry into the US (It's probably not in the bill of rights because it's too obvious)
See also the Watergate precedent: the AG refused to fire the special prosecutor investigating Nixon, in defiance of a direct order by the President. His replacement also refused and was fired, only the third in line complied. Those sacrifices went a long way to create the political climate in which the (now universally recognised as such) crook Nixon had no choice but to resign.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#208“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…
Matt Levine commented on how Thiel's observation has worked out so far [1]:
> And what has happened so far? Immigration bans (with more to come), abandoned trade agreements, "alternative facts," unprompted promises to bring back torture. And what has not happened so far? Tax policy is a complete mystery, with an unclear and walked-back promise to impose a border tax. Health-care policy is even more mysterious. Trump has made vague promises to cut regulations by 75 percent, but his specific regulatory focus seems to be on increasing penalties on companies that move operations abroad. Everything Trump literally said is coming literally true; everything the serious people heard remains an unserious hope. Businesses may eventually get the tax and regulatory reform they wanted, but it's not a priority.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-30/immigrati...
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#209“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…
I think Thiel overall was right, in that Trump would still be liked by his base even if he didn't build a literal wall. By talking about the wall, Trump was signaling his priorities, and his base were just happy to have someone who they felt had the right priorities, whether or not a literal wall would get built. I think Thiel just didn't think Trump would go through with it after winning, because he thinks Trump wou…
I thought Thiel had cut to the heart of the matter with that statement before the election, but now think he is wrong, for exactly the reasons you state. His statement implies that we should not worry about Trump's crazier ideas, because he'll be tempered by advisors and feedback. The assumption there is that he listens and acts on advice, and that he chooses the right advisors.
The evidence so far points to this not being the case. Trump's statements past and present should be taken literally, at face value. What he says and has said is what you will get, and he is making a strenuous effort to deliver on every single one of his promises (even crazy ones), because he believes them to be correct. After this week I now firmly believe if he could ban all muslims tomorrow, he would do so, and damn the consequences. Rescinding green cards en-masse is incredibly destructive to the reputation of America, it is really quite reckless as well as cruel.
So it turns out Thiel was wrong - Trump has been and will continue to go through with his promises to the letter in many important areas. There are some areas (like healthcare or prosecuting Hilary Clinton) where Thiel was probably right in that he won't really bother with them, but only because Trump really doesn't care about them.
Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
The orders only have the force of law if they are based in laws already passed by Congress. If the order conflicts with these laws or the Constitution, it's the order that gets ignored, not the laws. The law passed by Congress in this case states that the immigration department is not allowed to discriminate based by country of origin. The Constitution also states that people are required to have due process before t…
>The law passed by Congress in this case states that the immigration department is not allowed to discriminate based by country of origin.
See Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act:
"(f) Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
Case closed.