Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

791–800 of 996 posts

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#791

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

fleshdaddy wrote: post #714
ganoushoreilly wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What branch did you serve in? You seem really offended at the notion that some Americans are willing to take freedom and privacy over complete security. It’s hard for you to believe but know that many, many people are willing to make that trade off. People have even died for it.

It's childish to accuse them of being a military shill for posting something you disagree with.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#792

Post by xienze »

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?

> If you know of a strictly better way to get the same feature, what is it?

Let them serve for a limited period of time, say 16 years max. Can't be removed before then. It's not that complicated and would prevent justices who literally sit on the bench until the day they die.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#793

Post by buzzert »

zarkov99 wrote: post #708

Does anyone have some honest insight on why?

Playing devil's advocate here; if you take many steps back and try to look at what's best for the country, you might want to look at citizens with great potential who are currently under lock and key.

I don't think anyone is saying Levandowski is innocent (I saw somewhere else in the comments that a pardon is by definition an admission of guilt), but if he's as brilliant of an engineer as some people make him out to be, it would be best for the country if he was back at work instead of in prison.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#794

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sn_master wrote: post #775
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly like that. That is a good, specific example that anyone can investigate and see how it compares to Trump's pardons. Still waiting on the examples from Obama that "you can say similar things about".

James Robert Adelman? Teresa Clark?

OK, great:

James Robert Adelman: pardoned after being convicted of embezzling from his company, sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, which he served.

Teresa Clark: convicted of "Knowingly disposing of a firearm to a person convicted of a crime punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year (three counts); falsification of firearms purchase forms (two counts)", sentenced to 3 years probation and 1 year of house arrest which she served.

I'm not sure what your point is in these examples. I couldn't find more details on the reasons for their pardons, but letting people clear their record well after they have served their time is a common use of pardons. None of that is true in the Anthony Levandowski case, or for that matter the slew of other pardons and commutations Trump gave to his close associates and cronies.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#795

Post by hintymad »

rat87 wrote: post #730
hintymad wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is my wild speculation: - Trump can't afford making more enemies in the intelligence community, or simply does not want to. - Assange and Snowden are libertarians' heroes, but libertarians didn't even vote for Trump this time, right? The percent of libertarians voting for an independent candidate was larger than the gap between Trump and Biden, even though Trump was probably the most libertarian president in the…

Trump is the least libertarian/most authoritarian president we've had in a long long time Don't mistake incompetence for libertarianism.

I'd love to update my understanding. Could you share the policies that Trump made that centralizes his or his government's power or reduces the rule of law?

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#796

Post by emn13 »

Metricon wrote: post #770
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…

"It's more like: the US constitution was grand it its aims, but pretty v1.0 in its execution." The US Constitution would have really been 2.0 as the Articles of Confederation preceded it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation

Sure, I meant the qualitative feel by the entitled hindsight of somebody living the good life in 2021 which is possible because of it. It's definitely not all bad (certainly not for its age) nor was it an entirely novel creation in some sudden bolt from the blue. It's just showing its age.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#797

Post by stretchcat »

hobs wrote: post #618
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. Trump knows they're more or less okay with him pardoning Bannon - it pisses them off, but at the end of the day it's water under the bridge. Whereas Assange getting pardoned would absolutely infuriate the "deep state" to an extent that's hard to describe. Trump should have pardoned Assange, it's the only thing that would actually have taken a (small) chunk out of the "deep state" for real. Instead, as many…

If you were waiting until now for trump to prove that he was a righteous man who keeps up on his promises then you willfully avoiding reading the story that repeats ad nauseum for the man's entire existence.

What a senselessly uncharitable comment. Blockcipher said "as many of us saw coming"; clearly Trump's nature is not a recent realization for them.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#798

Post by emn13 »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #767
emn13 wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this helps, at all. If anything it makes things worse, because it lets congress off the hook, and that's exactly what happens in the US - lots of congressional powers are abrogated to the executive, which is essentially a monarchy that hasn't devolved into a dictatorship simply because of tradition and popular unease at that route - but it's really unsafe. The real protection here is that a simple maj…

> the executive ... hasn't devolved into a dictatorship simply because of tradition and popular unease at that route > I'm not really sure to what extent a constitution really can or should protect against popular despotism Article II Section 1 of the Constitution?

I was trying to get across the point that democratic freedoms necessarily imply the freedom to make mistakes; at best you can slow them down and make em less likely by historical happenstance. And as pointed out, no legal document matters if enough popular sentiment opposes it; people just throw it out (it's happened in other countries before). So perhaps this benchmark is too high a bar.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#799

Post by simonh »

anonu wrote: post #731
simonh wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to break it to you, but as with many things in the US constitution, the reason the President can pardon people is because it's a modified copy of the British constitutional system of the time. The House is Parliament, the Senate is the House of Lords, and the president can pardon people because King George III could and the office of the presidency is a limited term elected kingship. Executive orders are Royal…

> it's one of the checks and balances > it's a modified copy of the British constitutional system. [...] Executive orders are Royal decrees Those things are not mutually exclusive. In other words, sure, you can look at the latest batch of pardons and think they are overzealous - but it doesn't mean the action does not have place in the US checks & balances system.

Of course, that's a fair point. I suppose the elected nature of the Presidency certainly give the office a democratic legitimacy Georgie and his successors never enjoyed, and that insulates the office from reform.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#800

Post by deeeeplearning »

vmception wrote: post #561
deeeeplearning wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>We are wasting our time and energy caring about either of those organizations.

Direct quote by the way

Post reply on HN