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

841–850 of 996 posts

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#841

Post by eevilspock »

indymike wrote: post #817
cma wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually the "moving on" that Andrew Johnson enabled after the Civil War effectively terminated Reconstruction, launched nearly 100 years of Jim Crow, and gave permission for the South to regress (see "KKK").

In other words, Black people would beg to differ.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#842

Post by 0_____0 »

wnevets wrote: post #652
sn_master wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not propagate unproven rumors. Most of that 73 person list are people who clearly don't have anywhere near those amounts.

Its not a rumor, its an outright accusation by former CIA operative John Kiriakou

Therefore, all men are Socrates.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#843

Post by InitialLastName »

lostdog wrote: post #813
r00fus wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you make it 18 year terms and stagger the appointments (as grandfathered-in justices die or retire) to every 2 years, you can make it so that each presidential term appoints two justices, which at least removes some of the potential for luck to dramatically shift the balance of the court.

If that were the case, and justices' terms started in January of even years (to avoid the election cycle), we would currently have 2 Trump appointees, 4 Obama appointees, and 3 Bush appointees, roughly matching what the balance of the court would be next month if Ginsburg had died 3 months later.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#844

Post by xkjkls »

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…

> It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions.

The executive branch also controls the justice department, which did the prosecutions.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#845

Post by eevilspock »

philwelch wrote: post #820
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…

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

Your point about executive orders is not quite correct.

https://lawshelf.com/shortvideoscontentview/the-power-of-the...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#846

Post by dabernathy89 »

thinkingemote wrote: post #181
me_me_me wrote: post #174

The fact that even fox news was onboard with pardoning Julian Assange and then he pardons Levandowski is... well ironic is an understatement. I am failing to find a word that encapsulates my feelings.

I'm not entirely sure that it was possible to pardon Assange as he hasn't been convicted with anything yet? As in , I thought the extradition request was to be sent to USA for a trial.

The most famous pardon in history - Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon - involved no convictions or charges/indictments:

> [I]... do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.

https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.as...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#847

Post by hoka-one-one »

travisjungroth wrote: post #394
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…

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

Eventually you have to break out of the mindset where the government is ever for "the people". It's very naive and in practice things have never worked that way.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#848

Post by jrockway »

rijoja wrote: post #221
jrockway wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it kind of "sticks it" to Google, who Trump thinks is "so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous!" I have no idea if there is such a thing as a "revenge pardon", but I guess it's a thing now. (Incidentally, I wanted to use an exact Trump quote in that first paragraph, and I found it here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-... )

or they recognizes the need for the US to have a modern and advanced car industry_

How does stealing trade secrets from your employer advance the car industry? Nobody will pay for R&D if competitors can use it for free.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#849

Post by bananabreakfast »

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…

Quick note, no matter how unfair states may think they have it, "remaining in the Union" is not a choice. This isn't the USSR.

Statehood is eternal. Secession is quite literally treason and the Civil war was in that sense constitutionally mandatory.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#850

Post by lazide »

pokot0 wrote: post #623
briandear wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never went as far as saying the the USA is not a democracy but you did. Goes far behind my point, but that was the direction. Saying that the president is not a president of the people when people literally vote directly for that person (unlike most of the wester republics) is frankly pretty weak. How can you argue he is not the most influencial political figure in a US citizen life?

The people do not elect the president, that is what all the brouhaha around the Electoral College is about. By convention, each state has agreed that the people vote for who their state is going to vote for - but that is not constitutionally required.

This turns out to be really helpful when someone starts claiming something like widespread voter fraud for instance, because there is no one institution to attack, or even identical set of rules that can be exploited. Each state runs it's elections as it sees fit, and then votes the way it deems necessary - and is strongly interested in making sure it's voice is heard.

Post reply on HN