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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#561

Post by vmception »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #523
vmception wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay attention to that list, each pardon has a list of people who supported each pardon. Nobody from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU is on that list. We are wasting our time and energy caring about either of those organizations. Let them stick to filing Amicus Briefs in courts, but they clearly have no pull or influence or backchannel despite our tech scene thinking they do.

What a strange criticism. That these orgs are useless because they couldn't get Pardons from a President more or less totally opposed to their goals? It's completely unreasonable to expect otherwise.

Like I said, let them keep filing amicus briefs, not useless, stop adding hyperbole I said what I said.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#562

Post by ardy42 »

emn13 wrote: post #433
DevX101 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constitution has some excellent checks and balances but the blanket pardon isn't one of them. The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems in the justice system and has become a channel for doling out political favors.

This myth that the US constitution is in any way "good" is weird. It's one of the earliest; and fortunately others leared from its mistakes. Including the US itself, when it had considerable influence in drafting the WW2 losers constitutions, which uncoincidentally are quite different from the US. Checks and balances essentially don't work in the US. The best bit is simply a decent judiciary, but that was mostly copi…

> Checks and balances essentially don't work in the US. The best bit is simply a decent judiciary, but that was mostly copied from the British. And even that is more poorly executed than elsewhere, due to the political nature of judicial appointees, and esp. due to the tradition of direct elections of some judges. I'd say it's arguably worse than the British model it was copied from, not because the Brits were psychic geniuses, but because of the not entirely unrelated fact that the UK model is much more open to reform; it's aged better because it's less crufty. When lead by a dangerously populist government that might be risk, of course, but so far even populists have turned out not to do too much consitutional harm - might differ in the future.

That risk has been realized. Aren't the parliamentary governments of Hungary and Poland falling into "democratic" authoritarianism?

I'm pretty sure the US system was mainly designed to prevent that kind of thing, and put up democratically-derived barriers against it. The Trump presidency would have been way worse without them. Trump has been very effective at keeping his party in line behind him (even to the anti-democratic extremes). The things you complain about are mainly tradeoffs of that design.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#563

Post by bananabiscuit »

twox2 wrote: post #500
leto_ii wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But what already happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow." To me this is a mind-numbing display of ignorance. Once you understand that you're not the first human being to ever have existed and that the people that came before you (even way before) are not dumber than you, you will immediately realize that there's a…

I don't think it's ignorant, it's just another framework of looking at the world. Consider a chessboard that's in the middle of a game. The moves up to that point don't matter. Only the current state of the board matters and you make the best move given the current position. This is how this person sees technological progress, and I'm inclined to believe he's right... within the context of technology. Beyond that, I…

In an ideal sense that’s true, but to use your analogy to make the opposite argument: consider someone that has no knowledge of what kinds of moves where made previously in this chess game and other historic chess games, even though theoretically they can figure out a good move given enough time to read the board but that is prohibitively infeasible. On the other hand it is people who have studied games of chess played in the past that end up building an intuition for what a good move is and are much more likely to come close to making a good move in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#564

Post by jshevek »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #421
DevX101 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm for legalization of marijuana but think that's a terrible idea. This effectively makes one person the arbiter of law.

If you have laws that are passed with racial control in mind, such as our drug laws, then mass pardoning is an act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of law.

> If [criteria], then mass pardoning is an act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of law.

I dont understand your comment. Are you thinking that acts of justice, by definition, cannot also be the product of a person becoming an arbiter of law? That you perceive a decision as just doesn't change whether a person might or might not be acting as an arbiter of law.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#565

Post by itsoktocry »

mywittyname wrote: post #441
spiderfarmer wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was very clear about this goal even before his campaign in 2016. In 2000 Donald Trump told Fortune magazine, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

Thankfully, he end up being the first presidential candidate bankrupted by the position. The dude's primary asset, his brand, is not completely toxic and can no longer be used to prop up his other failed ventures. And the only bankers wiling to finance him will the the predatory ones, who will all extract every penny left then leave him with nothing.

>And the only bankers wiling to finance him will the the predatory ones, who will all extract every penny left then leave him with nothing.

Oh boy, are you going to be in for a nasty surprise. Trump is going to get more powerful after this mess, but it will likely tear the GOP apart. And don't kid yourself that the Democrats love the idea of having him as an enemy if he ever runs again. Most of what you're watching is political theatre.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#566

Post by noisy_boy »

Whats up with sprinkling of "xyz is an upstanding citizen and father to n beautiful children." ? They are clearly not an upstanding citizen - otherwise they wouldn't require a presidential pardon. Being father to children is not an achievement and any two consenting healthy adult man and woman can produce them irrespective of their standing in society. And beauty of children is a criteria for pardon now? What if the children were ugly - "clearly he doesn't deserve a pardon, look at his children!" ?! What utter bullshit.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#567

Post by cossatot »

mwigdahl wrote: post #408
dkarl wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who created the system and decided on lifetime terms for Supreme Court judges had a lot of enthusiasm for democracy, but they could see it had flaws, and they wanted the judiciary to be much less sensitive to the mood of the public than the rest of the system. As disappointed (and angry) as I am to see the Republicans steal the Merrick Garland appointment and then replace RBG with someone who has flaunted…

While I agree with virtually everything you're saying here, I'm not convinced the Founders had a high opinion of democracy itself. The Federalist Papers are full of warnings about mob rule, and the goal of the Constitutional framework was explicitly to insulate government from populist and direct democratic influence, while setting up structures that were supposed to mold the government into the form of an aristocrac…

It should be noted that the Federalist papers only represent the views of a few of the Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Jay), i.e. from one of the two major parties. The Democratic-Republicans had a greater distrust of centralized government and were more supportive of democracy and rule by the better of the average Joes (Jefferson's 'yeoman farmers' and all that).

This is quite similar to taking the views of Paul Ryan and Rand Paul and calling them representative of the US government. Those views are not extreme in the context of the time and are shared by a sizeable fraction but it's not a random or representative sample.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#568

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

fny wrote: post #546
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people on the right and the left are perhaps skipping over just how much McConnell was manipulating the admin not just over the last four years, but esp since Jan 6th. I am fairly confident that even if Trump had specifically wanted to pardon Assange or Snowden he could not have. Edit: lol, this will have been the most successful lie by the media and GOP... getting people to believe the GOP and Trump were fri…

What you're saying here is contradictory. Sure the GOP hates Trump, and Trump also hates the GOP. And that's exactly why Trump didn't give a damn to GOP criticism of his pardons. McConnell has no influence. That's why Stone, Kushner, and Bannon are on the list among others. Trump decided not to pardon Snowden and Assange. Full stop.

> McConnell has no influence. That's why Stone, Kushner, and Bannon are on the list among others.

Hang on, if you’re certain about it being entirely trumps decision not to pardon Snowden or Assange... can we at least have a citation that McConnell cared at all about Stone Kushner or Bannon?

You declaring that those names put together are in any way equal to the weight of Snowden -or- Assange?

I never suggested Trump did want to. I suggested he could not.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#570

Post by jonp888 »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #531
r00fus wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifetime appointments are the problem not the method of appointment.

Judges deciding cases based on what the law says, free from fear of political reprisal is the intended feature. Lifetime appointments get you that (or very nearly to it). If you know of a strictly better way to get the same feature, what is it?

America surely does not have such a shortage of well-qualified lawyers that each justice needs to serve for decades. It's certainly not an argument anyone would accept regarding the President. Just have them serve a single long term, and then that's it.

You might lose some expertise, but on the other hand, you don't have the tragic spectacle of Justices dieing in office whilst waiting for a 'safe' time to retire.

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