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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#691

Post by freewilly1040 »

ISL wrote: post #506
emn13 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I strongly disagree. A check and balance has been on great display in recent weeks. A President has stated, "the election was a fraud, I should get another term". Congress has stated, "the election was correct. Moreover, we may choose to prevent you from holding office ever again." The judiciary agrees. That Congress is likely to deadlock is arguably a feature, not a bug. (That voters don't demand better from their c…

> Is adding states too easy? There are three million US citizens in Puerto Rico without representation in Congress.

"Statehood is too easy" is probably the wrong critique. The problem is that there is not clear enough guidelines for enforcing some criteria for what constitutes a new state. Thus we have a false positive like Wyoming, which shouldn't be a state with its minuscule population, and we a false negative in Puerto Rico, which is anachronistically governed like a colony .

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I don't think the original senate had states that had 80X the representation by population, as we have today between CA and WY.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#692

Post by triceratops »

briandear wrote: post #434
pokot0 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look at the electoral vote and how 1 vote in Wyoming accounts as much as roughly 4 votes in Texas and California. Pretty serious bug that is enabling the far right to be over represented imo.

The federal government is the government of the individual states. A state is a sovereign entity. Each vote in the United Nations general assembly is identical regardless of the size of the country voting. Ireland’s vote is just as valuable as India’s. That’s the point of the United States — it’s a republic, not a democracy. As far as 1 WY vote being worth 4 Texas votes, that’s also irrelevant because the president i…

> The federal government is the government of the individual states.

In that case, why aren't state legislatures or state governors voting for president and members of congress?

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#693

Post by jonwachob91 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #689

Hmm. This is currently 404'ing. Did the whitehouse remove it? Like... post-transfer-of-power? That seems weird. https://web.archive.org/web/20210120111121/https://www.white...

Happens every time we get a new president. Nothing unusual about it. Everything from Trumps whitehouse.gov site is now located at https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#694

Post by Qwertious »

ggcdn wrote: post #448
travisjungroth wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside to this is people spend decades being ruled by people they didn’t have a chance to vote against.

But the Supreme Court doesn’t make the rules, it just interprets them. The rules are made by elected representatives.

>But the Supreme Court doesn’t make the rules, it just interprets them.

The supreme court literally decides whether X real-world activity is made illegal by Y law. Interpreting the rules is making rules.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#696

Post by dgellow »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #683
mlazos wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN loves Snowden so much it makes no sense to me. He could’ve gone to the Senate/House intelligence committees, and not been in trouble. Worst case nothing would’ve gotten done, but since they were lied to, I don’t think he would’ve been ignored.

They also leave out the fact that he had been reprimanded for his actions numerous times, to include being removed from roles and duties because of his negative actions. The fact that he moved from the CIA back to an NSA supported role without this being disclosed is ridiculous in of itself. Edward had a childish reaction to release documents that had nothing to do with Xkeyscore (of which the media claim as the reas…

> then fled there before moving on to Russia

That’s just a lie. He was in a plane on his way to Ecuador when the US cancelled his passport, resulting in him being blocked in the Russian airport for a while. At some point the situation created such a mess for the airport that Russia accepted to let him enter the country.

All of this has been documented at length, and anyone on this forum is likely old enough to remember the events from when they happened live.

At no point he wanted to be in Russia. The US forced the situation by canceling his passport mid-flight and putting pressure on any country that would offer their help (my home country did and was publicly pressured for this).

In any case, you can forget about the guy, the information he gave demonstrate that the NSA under Obama was committing plenty of illegal surveillance of the US population (and of course other countries, but US citizens don’t seem to care about non-US rights), created a system of hidden courts, and lied about all of it. That should be enough to consider him a whistleblower.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#697

Post by triceratops »

sittingplant wrote: post #383
kjakm wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a foreigner Presidential pardons + the appointment (and life terms) of Supreme Court judges baffle me. How can a country that claims to be a leader in democracy have these two wildly abused bugs? Edit: fixed use of election instead of appointment

If I understand correctly, the lifetime appointment is meant to avoid political pressure. Don't you think the judges might be swayed to vote one way or another if they knew there was a vote coming up in a couple years and they'd be on the chopping block?

Single 15 year term with a guaranteed pension afterward.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#698

Post by dave5104 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #689

Hmm. This is currently 404'ing. Did the whitehouse remove it? Like... post-transfer-of-power? That seems weird. https://web.archive.org/web/20210120111121/https://www.white...

Yep, the site gets wiped in a new administration.

The page linked is now hosted here: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/st...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#699

Post by jplevine »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #689

Hmm. This is currently 404'ing. Did the whitehouse remove it? Like... post-transfer-of-power? That seems weird. https://web.archive.org/web/20210120111121/https://www.white...

Archived URL from the White House: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/st...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#700

Post by mlazos »

dgellow wrote: post #667
mlazos wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN loves Snowden so much it makes no sense to me. He could’ve gone to the Senate/House intelligence committees, and not been in trouble. Worst case nothing would’ve gotten done, but since they were lied to, I don’t think he would’ve been ignored.

You don’t remember the NSA director lying under oath in front of the Congress about the exact crimes Snowden revealed?

Yes that’s what I’m talking about when I said the committees were lied to. I’m sure they would’ve been interested to hear from someone working at the lower levels that the NSA director lied.
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