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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#811

Post by cma »

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.

Being able to pardon for things from your administration during your own term seems to erode checks and balances. Some kind of limitation on that or maybe at least some kind of congressional approval could keep out the truely egregious stuff. Aside from that the self-pardon question should be ruled out entirely or all checks and balances are basically gone.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#812

Post by nemothekid »

marcusverus wrote: post #455
raldi wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, I agree with everything you said. (Well, except that Supreme Court justices are appointed, not elected.) The other gaping flaw is the systemic, undemocratic bias that determines the makeup of our Upper House.

The issue you're referring to with the Senate is, of course, the fact that each state gets two senators, regardless of population. This means that the sparsely populated North Dakota has the same number of senators as California. This a feature, not a bug, and in fact the United States would not exist without it. The senate prevents small states from being dominated by large states, and is the only reason that smalle…

>If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate, the same question would undoubtedly arise--why should small states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma remain in the Union, only to be dictated to by the citizens of Florida, New York and California?

I don't know why this is a valid argument, when you can turn it on it's head. Why should states like Florida, Texas, New York and California, who (1) have the most amount of people and (2) generate nearly all economic activity, be dictated by the citizens of North Dakota? Why is it that this argument never considers the inverse?

It's clear, by looking at Federal budget inflows and outflows, that states like North Dakota need California more than California needs them. If States were countries, and if The United States were more like the European Union, Texas would naturally have outsized power, much like Germany. It would be Texas citizens bailing out North Dakota.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#813

Post by lostdog »

r00fus wrote: post #406
johannes1234321 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding judges: How would you appoint them? Basically there are three options: - Have a public vote, direct legitimation (or via some extra electoral college or something) this means that judges have to be "popular" and run campaigns and question is, if that's really smart ... - Have the "juristical class" elect within, so judges from lower courts would lick somebody, or current judges elect additional ones. That w…

Lifetime appointments are the problem not the method of appointment.

Let them serve a 16 year term on the supreme court, and then return them to a lifetime appointment on a circuit court.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#814

Post by Bakary »

leto_ii wrote: post #526
twox2 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Since when is reality like a game of chess? Setting aside human history for a moment, just think about natural history (Levandowski mentioned dinosaurs and Neanderthals). Evolutionary biology is to a significant extent a his…

A better analogy would be Taleb's "green lumber" story.[0] The narratives we assign to things don't necessarily correspond to what really moved the needle forward. The ability to get things done might sometimes be influenced by historical reading, but it is mostly a factor of reading the present, creating new knowledge, and spending most of your energy on the problems at hand as they actually stand. A person like Zuck might draw parallels from their reading of the classics (to name one notorious example) but in practice their success will be contingent on making decisions in real time with few helpful analogies, or general principles for which historical reading is not strictly necessary. The journalists then comparing Zuck to Augustus are then probably misattributing the causal relationship.

There will be a historical post-facto rationalization of what went down for anything happening in the recent past, but the meat we draw from historical analogies is often poorly applicable since the divergence between the map and the territory is so large. The difference between reality and a game of chess is indeed paramount here, but for different reasons. The past is so complex that the lessons we draw from it are likely to just be distorted narratives that are already just a reflection of the present.

>To be honest I'm not even sure I can think of a way you can completely ignore history and still be able to do useful work of any kind.

In Levandowski's own example, he learned what existed in his time and then built useful things from there without worrying too much about the details of past beyond the directly visible iceberg spire in the present. This is broadly applicable to many fields and there are many people who did the same. It's tautologically true that disciplines that need to draw on the past to move on will do so, such as biology, but that doesn't say all that much about engineering for instance.

[0]https://fs.blog/2016/11/green-lumber-fallacy/

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#815

Post by ardy42 »

emreca wrote: post #685
ardy42 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was under impression that the self-pardon story was part of the information warfare campaign. Is there any proof to the that? Part of the what?

Information Warfare

Just so you know, this isn't reddit, and joke replies are discouraged.

I was looking for clarification about what "the information warfare campaign" was. I'm guessing it's some kind of post-hoc rationalization for a lot of Trump's bizarre statements and other distractions, but I'm not sure.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#816

Post by [deleted] »

rat87 wrote: post #742
fny wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop down voting posts like this. If we want HN to remain a welcome space for civil discourse for everyone, we need to respect other people's candid statements. Remember, Trump won 47% of the popular vote which likely includes a large number of HNers. We should not alienate those people.

But we need to teach them the errors of their ways or we will see more tragedies There was literally no good reason to vote for Trump regardless of views (to be fair op didn't say he voted for Trump)

[deleted]

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#817

Post by indymike »

cma wrote: post #811
anonu wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Being able to pardon for things from your administration during your own term seems to erode checks and balances. Some kind of limitation on that or maybe at least some kind of congressional approval could keep out the truely egregious stuff. Aside from that the self-pardon question should be ruled out entirely or all checks and balances are basically gone.

The presidential pardon has allowed our country to move on from problems that would lead to decades of prosecutions and counter-prosecutions as power changes party. Nixon and the civil war are both examples.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#818

Post by anonu »

cma wrote: post #811
anonu wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Being able to pardon for things from your administration during your own term seems to erode checks and balances. Some kind of limitation on that or maybe at least some kind of congressional approval could keep out the truely egregious stuff. Aside from that the self-pardon question should be ruled out entirely or all checks and balances are basically gone.

I like to think that US democracy is self healing in the long run. Assume for a moment that pardons are, on balance, a good thing. This time around it was a little "too good".

Net result: we rein in that power (hopefully). Dont get rid of it - keep it but instill rules and regulations like enforcing Justice Department oversight and review

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#819

Post by paul7986 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #391
paul7986 wrote: post #373

Google steals intellectual property itself https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 . No surprise one of it's own stole IP from them (where'd he learned to do such) and in the end they get what they give!

Is that how it works? Multiple wrongs make a right?

karma .... which is how it should be no? You do bad ..no matter what you do it will come back at you!

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#820

Post by philwelch »

simonh wrote: post #417
WalterBright wrote: post #111

It's important to note the reason the President has the power to pardon anyone for any reason is it's one of the checks and balances, the Constitution is full of them. It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions. Note that the President does not have the corresponding power to convict anyone. An interesting set of pardons was when Andrew Johnson pardoned all the rebels in the Confederacy, including Jeffer…

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…

Executive orders aren’t in the Constitution and the President doesn’t have the power to adjourn Congress.
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