851–860 of 996 posts
It's weird to see the Republican party embrace intellectual property theft. Levandowski stole from his employer and his colleagues at Google to enrich himself at Uber. Why would that possibly be worth a pardon?
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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…
While pardon power originated from British law, the reason we kept it was what the OP referred to (see the federalist papers [1]). When forming the government the founders didn't just blindly copy British government. There was a lot of debate over what to keep and what to omit (For example, we don't have a king. Presidents were seen as servants not as rulers). Pardon power is mostly a direct copy of British pardon po…
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That made sense before nearly everything was declared interstate commerce. The federal government now directly affects people on an individual level in a way it did not when the system was originally formed.
If that's the issue then surely it's easier to reverse the judicial precedent than to amend the constitution.
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On nixon: might well be. But it's never happened so far, and that's because congress is hyper deadlocked by design and a ridiculously high bar of non-proportionally-represented senators need to agree to convict. Just compare that to other democracies that can switch their executive with a simple majority in one house, yet remain stable. As to congresses deadlock being a feature: it may well have been intentional; but…
> The US has a solid set of traditions and an extremely civic culture; and that's why it works IMO this is something that I wish more citizens understood. They put way too much faith in the Constitution and don't realize that it's the tradition, the mythology of America that really holds this country together. If we lose that, we lose everything, and the Constitution won't save us.
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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…
If you think NYC could be supported purely by NY state alone (or frankly even just 'Blue' states), you'd be in for a rude shock.
That much of the value add/economic activity happens in the more densely populated states isn't that surprising - but cutting off the midwest from the rest of the United States would cause catastrophic famine in very short order, to name one example.
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You can pardon people before they're convicted of anything. Trump pardoned Steve Bannon for example and he has not yet been convicted (he has been charged). Assange has been charged with various things by the Feds, which is what Trump would pardon. The floated theory went that Trump could plausibly pardon himself as well, for any likely future charges.
It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for. It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute, greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't require accepting guilt or whatever.
The pardon power applies to offenses against the US “except in cases of impeachment” (Art. II § 2 ¶ 1). This uncontroversially means a pardon cannot affect the process of impeachment in the House and trial on charges of impeachment in the Senate. It is disputed whether it also somehow prevents pardons for criminal charges relating to the same act for which the recipient was impeached. The issue has never come up in a nontheoretical sense, so an authoritative resolution hasn’t been handed down.
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.
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It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for. It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute, greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't require accepting guilt or whatever.
>It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. For a specific example, Jimmy Carter pardoned everyone who dodged the draft for Vietnam[1]. This showed that pardons could both apply to actions which hadn't been charged and categories of people. I think one of the only limits on the pardon power is that it can only apply to past behavior. [1] https://www.justice.gov/pardon/vietn…
It doesn't actually show that because the legal effect of thar pardon has never been challenged. If no one tries to charge someone subject to a pardon, or that pardon recipient never offers the pardon against the charges, nothing is resolved about the validity and effect of the pardon.
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It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for. It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute, greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't require accepting guilt or whatever.
> can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for That's because impeachment is a political process, not a judicial proceeding. Clemency does not affect impeachment.
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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 psychi…
In many countries he could have just insisted (or tell a crony he insists) and that would have been that.