71–80 of 493 posts
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Question for history buffs: What are some instances where you'd say, "Gee, I'm glad Presidential pardon was available"?
Carter pardoning all of the draft dodgers from Vietnam was a decent use of the power. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/21/president-carter-p...
You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting…
VOTING is the penalty for many of these transgressions...
You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting…
You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting…
The problem with your idea is that the court is sometimes weighing/balancing competing rights and responsibilities from separate parts of the Constitution. For example, when is a church’s hiring practice an equal protection violation? Or is it an exercise of freedom of religion?
With your example, if it is found that the law was crafted with intentional ignorance of freedom of religion, then the lawmakers that introduced it should face punishment, if the judge also intentionally ignored this right (and this can be proven) not because of their understanding of the law but because their intentional ignorance of the right, that judge should be punished. And a law enforcer that intentionally violates citizens' rights should also face punishment.
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> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no highe…
We can and do love building prisons.
Not so much any longer. The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling. We've been reducing the prison population for a decade now.
For example the black male imprisonment rate began declining finally during the second year of George W Bush's Presidency. It has dropped by around 36% since the year 2001.
The US incarceration rate began declining about the same time we began building more private prisons (for the record, I'm ideologically against private prisons), which entirely goes against the common propaganda that private prisons would result in a lot more people in prison. Turns out, of course, that it was evil government actions and policies that did all those very bad things, like the war on drugs and putting millions of people in prison unjustly and holding them there for excessive durations of time (mandatory minimum sentencing laws).
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Question for history buffs: What are some instances where you'd say, "Gee, I'm glad Presidential pardon was available"?
Biden's promising to pardon all non-violent drug crimes, is he not? Though not historical, if it were to happen that could mark a turning point for our country. Though one could also use that same pardon power to avoid prosecution for domestic terrorists that support your agenda or crimes of election fraud. So I'm definitely on the side of revoking one person's power to override the entire judiciary for arbitrary rea…
I did find https://joebiden.com/justice/ saying:
> Biden believes no one should be in jail because of cannabis use. As president, he will decriminalize cannabis use and automatically expunge prior convictions. And, he will support the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes, leave decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the states, and reschedule cannabis as a schedule II drug so researchers can study its positive and negative impacts.
> Biden believes that no one should be imprisoned for the use of illegal drugs alone. Instead, Biden will require federal courts to divert these individuals to drug courts so they receive treatment to address their substance use disorder.
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expungement
> A very real distinction exists between an expungement and a pardon. When an expungement is granted, the person whose record is expunged may, for most purposes, treat the event as if it never occurred. A pardon (also called "executive clemency") does not "erase" the event; rather, it constitutes forgiveness. In the United States, an expungement can be granted only by a judge, while a pardon can be granted only by the President of the United States for federal offenses
I have no clue how Biden can promise to automatically expunge prior convictions if only judges can expunge a record.
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Question for history buffs: What are some instances where you'd say, "Gee, I'm glad Presidential pardon was available"?
Throwing out a prediction: If the Biden/Harris ticket wins in 2020 and Trump is charged with anything, expect a pardon from the president. People will rage for a bit, get tired, run out of attention span, and move on to the next controversy.
You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting…
> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no highe…
Technically, that higher authority is the people themselves. Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
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> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no highe…
We can and do love building prisons.
Huh? What's that supposed to mean in this context?
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What updates does the US constitution need? I think if we were to rewrite it today it would become largely the same, maybe with a footer that says “and this time we really mean it”
I'd say the Second Amendment would need to be tweaked. Our gun control laws are honestly really in breach, and I think they are very sensible pieces of legislation, so we should make everything consistent.