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Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#331

Post by FireBeyond »

wtbob wrote: post #277
FireBeyond wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't seem typical for presidents to seek to install such instructions by legislative action. President Obama issued several EOs of a similar nature while Ms. Yates was present at the DoJ. Why did she not resign then? A pretty critical point: Obama used Executive Orders because in part he had a Congress that, courtesy of Mitch McConnell, stated openly that they had no intention of passing Bills on the Presiden…

> Obama used Executive Orders because in part he had a Congress that, courtesy of Mitch McConnell, stated openly that they had no intention of passing Bills on the President's behalf, even if good. So? Mr. Obama's executive orders were in many cases inconsistent with the law and the Constitution. 'They won't be nice to me!' is insufficient reason for any president to violate his oath of office, whether Mr. Bush, Mr.…

Please point to Obama's EOs that have been shown (or even suspected) to be unconstitutional. It's hard to find without being bombarded with partisan opinion pieces or quotes to Trump threatening to strike down "unconstitutional EOs"

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#332

Post by cookiecaper »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #205
cookiecaper wrote: post #167

Earlier 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? 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?

I'm not an immigration lawyer and I don't know. Does the AG normally deny the president access to the DoJ based on an unspecified, ethereal debate over the potential conflict behind a few statutes?

People are claiming that she had a constitutional obligation to do this which superseded her other constitutional obligation to serve the duly-elected chief executive. Do you contend that any potential statutory conflict rises to that level? If so, it would appear that the AG can only act on laws that had been fully adjudicated and for which there is currently no controversy or unsettled questions of law.

Remember, this is not about prosecutorial discretion; this is the acting AG denying the president access to resources that would typically be available to present his case to the judiciary, whose actual job is to make these determinations.

You seem to be radically redefining the role of the AG/DoJ.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#333

Post by LordKano »

wavefunction wrote: post #72
TenOhms wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The decision to prosecute a defendant or not (or defend a statute, or not) is at the discretion of the prosecutor, barring some sort of statutory requirement. The President isn't a king, whose orders are to be followed regardless of the Constitution or prevailing law. Both the President and the AG serve at the pleasure of the People of the United States, and Trump is about to find that out the hard way.

Both the President and the AG serve at the pleasure of the People of the United States, and Trump is about to find that out the hard way.

Trump has the support of roughly half of the country.

Regardless of how loud the opposition is, don't confuse their passion for widespread support.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#334

Post by alphadevx »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #324
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…

There is an expression that gained currency in Russia in recent years: negative selection. The Russian president nominates the worst possible people to the top jobs of government--people who take bribes, people who are incompetent and are known to have committed grave mistakes--because those are the people most likely to be loyal to him to the end. Any show of competence and independence leads to a summary dismissal.

I have worked with some managers that defensively promote others loyal to them around themselves in a similar fashion, but had not heard the term before "negative selection" but it explains it beautifully.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#335

Post by logicalmind »

flukus wrote: post #175
davesque wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's impossible to say what the vote count would have been had the rules been different. There are a lot of potential trump voters in very populous states that likely stayed at home.

Here's alternative way to think about this. If you consider the fact that a lot of states are oppressive to their people(minority suppression, anti-choice, anti-environment, etc.) you see that people who can't live under those rules move elsewhere. Often to larger states/cities. The problem with this is that it only sways the electoral college more in the direction of the oppressors. Non-oppressive states get bigger, more inclusive and more open. Oppressive states push a single minded, and often single party, mentality. This essentially locks the power of the electoral college into the hands of the more oppressive states.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#336

Post by refurb »

becarefulyo wrote: post #235
refurb wrote: post #174

Earlier 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.

The electoral college was created in part to prevent unqualified candidates from becoming president. It failed spectacularly.

Unqualified by which definition? The one the Democrats hold?

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#337

Post by zigzigzag »

what013117 wrote: post #247
zigzigzag wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think fake news is a useful term, it never has been. The media has been flooded with both outright fake news and more importantly missing news for years, when it was supporting the Democrat world view. For instance, just go look at how often you can read the Russia "invaded" Ukraine or Russia "invaded" Crimea. The Russian army is huge and what's left of the Ukrainian army is made of fresh conscripts. If those…

I am speechless at this revisionist view of recent history. Two things: 1. If anyone is confused about the Crimea invasion simply go back and read the primary sources. Read newspapers from overseas, especially those in different languages. No one believed that the recent invasion of Crimea began as a civil war/proxy war. It had become that, sure, but let's keep the facts straight. 2. To the poster: how can you be so…

I did read the sources, at the time it was happening. And I, too, am shocked at the total and successful rewrite of recent history the western media and government establishments have pulled off. It is stunningly Orwellian and extremely scary.

Now. Please show me where a shot was fired during this so-called "invasion" of Crimea? Please explain to me why all the evidence suggests that the people who live there are happy to have been "invaded"? These are simply not normal uses of the word "invasion", which normally involve shooting rather than voting.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-af...

2. How can I be so sure? I remember what was reported at the time. There were plenty of news stories that covered what was happening. I remember fact checking and them often discovering blatant propaganda inside, but the whole "Russia invaded Ukraine and Crimea and you're crazy if you remember otherwise" line didn't start until long after the events in question. If you go back and read the stories in the press at the time they only talked about "pro Russian forces" or "pro Russian rebels". No invasion, no army.

I remember noticing newspapers just starting to repeat one day that what had happened was not in fact a civil war between pro-EU and pro-Russian forces, it was an invasion, but that happened after Ukraine had dropped out of the daily news cycle. I remember at the time the sequence of events that led to the breakout of civil war there. The overthrow of the rather poor but still democratically elected government by people who wanted Ukraine to align with the EU, the outbreak of fighting, the supposedly free and fair "elections" that happened whilst the revolutionary government was busy shelling its own citizens. The flight of refugees from east Ukraine towards Russia instead of away from it.

What actually happened is not a secret. You can go re-read original coverage, original sources, go do some research. Here, I'll help you. Here's a story from 2014 in the fanatically pro-EU and anti-Russian Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/10/donetsk-refere...

Read this article and observe the following things:

1. The fight is described as being between Kiev and separatists/pro-Russian forces, or in Kiev's term, "terrorists". Not the Russian army.

2. The only mention of Putin or the Russian government is in a paragraph saying the separatists had possibly wanted to delay the independence referendum they were trying to organise there, because Putin was signalling he was not willing to lend them military support or absorb the region.

Where in this story is there discussion of a Russian invasion? It isn't there because no such invasion ever happened. At most, small groups of special forces were sent in to aid the rebels covertly in a proxy war, which is no more than what the west did (the US and UK sent soldiers and equipment to support the Ukrainian army). Talk of an actual invasion appeared much later.

Now, saying my viewpoint is the accepted perspective of the Russian government is pure ad hominem. So what? By stating that my views are revisionism and that in fact there was an invasion, you are doing the same thing: repeating the words of clearly self interested parties, namely the western governments and the media who support them, who want Ukraine to have close relations with the EU instead of Russia.

You can read an essay with a similar viewpoint by an American journalist here:

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/09/wretched-us-journalism...

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#338

Post by jacquesm »

sangnoir wrote: post #221
glandium wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> headed for an impeachment (hopefully sooner than later). Not a rethorical question, I just don't know. If there is impeachment and Trump is removed from office, what's supposed to happen? VP replaces him? That doesn't really sound like an improvement.

> That doesn't really sound like an improvement Perhaps not to Americans, but to the rest of the world the VP seems like the stabler choice. The administration's alignment would move from Chaotic to Lawful. I happen to value predictability and forces that can be reasoned with.

I suspect this is part of someone's game plan. Get the disaster elected then impeach him so someone else who would never in a lifetime manage to be elected president on his own power can take over to then do a whole bunch of stuff that would have never happened otherwise.

Trump was using the GOP just as much as the GOP was trying to use Trump, the question now is how is the GOP going to control the problem they created without ending up in the gutter themselves. They are all scared and probably with good reason, any impeachment proceedings with Trump as the subject will automatically include a horde of very angry and potentially dangerous people. Right now they might be wondering if it is better to let things go to hell under Trump than to risk the wrath of a good 30% of the population.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#339

Post by croon »

robbiep wrote: post #272
croon wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I was President/General/CEO and someone doesn't do the thing I have ordered, i'm going to fire them as well. It's a good thing you're not a CEO then. Ignoring the expertise within the company, and preventing employees from doing their job (which in her case was to try Trumps order), would be quite foolish. I'm going to suggest that you consider how the Volkswagen diesel scandal came about. Which is most likely:…

I am a CEO. And yes I recognise the foolishness of poor management practices, as well as acting in a shortsighted or criminal manner. Perhaps we should differentiate between insubordination/disloyalty, which is what the parent comment is about, and some version of the Nuremberg defence, namely, I was told to do it and failed to process that it was an immoral or criminal act. Both may get you fired; morally one is cor…

So if you ordered something of dubious legality, and your top corporate lawyer suggested it was unlikely to pass a trial, you would just sack them and ask the next one the same thing again? Like you said in the parent comment.

This isn't behavior that should be encouraged, neither in you nor in Trump, and your original sentiment that we shouldn't worry about it isn't something I'd subscribe to.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#340

Post by cookiecaper »

bobwaycott wrote: post #299
wtbob wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She signed an oath to defend the constitution, not an oath of loyalty to Trump. Yes, indeed: and the choice available which is consistent with that oath is to resign.

Resigning neither defends nor upholds the Constitution. It should be expected that one would go as far as one could, until such time as one could go no further (like, by being fired), to uphold and defend the Constitution. If everyone simply resigned, the oath would be meaningless, and the republic would fall. Inconvenient as it often is, we need people to stand up and refuse to resign when they feel the Constitution…

Ms. Yates has presented no Constitutional argument against President Trump's order. She has not even presented a basic legal argument against it. Her one-page letter [0] cites no statute, no section of the Constitution, no precedent or case law. It does not claim that she is bound to defy President Trump in order to remain fast to her oath of office.

It merely asserts that it is her duty to ensure that the DoJ "always seeks justice" and that she does not feel that allowing DoJ resources to compile an argument in support of Mr. Trump's order is consistent with that.

Remember, as a member of the executive branch, she also has an obligation to respect and serve the chief executive duly elected and installed by the American people. Ms. Yates is [was] an unelected appointee.

While I agree in principle that blatant and serious constitutional violations (the only type someone who is not a member of the judiciary can recognize) require real defiance, if there truly is a cogent Constitutional defense to be made here, would one not expect it to be presented? Ms. Yates does not appear to be defending the Constitution in any meaningful way here, and indeed, she does not claim to be doing so in her letter.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/30/us/document-L...

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