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

Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 176 posts

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#111

Post by slowmovintarget »

_justinfunk wrote: post #49

Presuming this is just incompetence instead of malice, when the missing paragraphs are replaced, will "Constitution of the United States Website has replaced missing sections" hit the front page of HN?

I thought this was just a goof too, then I went to look at the commentary. There are "explainers" for each part of each Article. In the Explainer contents for Article I, where there should be 10 sections, the truncation of the Explanatory articles begins at Article 1 Section 8 Clause 13 and continues through the end of Article I on the site. Clause 13 establishes the maintenance of the Navy.

This suggests that they were trying to do an overhaul of the contents and made a structural screw-up that caused this. Ironically, these pages are indexed in the search engines still. If you search for "USC Article 1 Section 8 Clause 13" you'll get link to the explainer page [1], and a 404 when you try to navigate to it.

Someone royally screwed up here.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/sec... for a working annotated site, though even it is mildly broken.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#112

Post by jordanpg »

https://bsky.app/profile/librarycongress.bsky.social/post/3l...

> It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website. We’ve learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#113

Post by JKCalhoun »

RemainsOfTheDay wrote: post #110
JKCalhoun wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. And most of us would immediately assume that if it were any other administration.

Then you should wonder how objective you can be, and why not.

I do all the time — and I have concluded that the current administration has done themselves no favors whatsoever in this regard. I really can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt and I think it's on them.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#114

Post by slowmovintarget »

szatkus wrote: post #87
dilap wrote: post #16

I would have to imagine this is an accident or rogue vandalism -- I don't think USGOV is trying to stealth-edit the constitution by truncating the last 18 paragraphs of Article I.

Considering that only the last part of one article is missing it really looks like a bug.

I'm guessing there's something strange about the whole site, because not only are the remaining clauses of Article 1 Section 8 missing (and section 9 and 10), so are all the annotations. The structure shows up in search engines, but the website gives 404s.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#115

Post by dragonwriter »

netsharc wrote: post #23
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #6

When do specific actions taken by the current US administration cross the legal line into treason or other legal lines where defense against domestic enemies is warranted?

Didn't the Supreme Court declare anything the administration does, legal..? Or was that just for the president?

> Didn't the Supreme Court declare anything the administration does, legal..?

No.

> Or was that just for the president?

Also no.

It established a three-branch approach to whether the President is immune to criminal prosecution for acts that, ignoring any immunity he might have due to being President at the time of the act, would be within the domain of potential criminal prosecution, in which (loosely):

(1) Acts relating to a narrow set of core Constitutional powers of the Presidency are given absolute immunity,

(2) Other official acts have a case-by-case analysis for immunity weighing whether allowing prosecution for the kind of act involved would impair the functioning of the office,

(3) Acts that, despite being committed while President, have no official character have no immunity stemming from the fact that they were committed while President.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#116

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #68
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #6

When do specific actions taken by the current US administration cross the legal line into treason or other legal lines where defense against domestic enemies is warranted?

november 5 2024

ah yes, Trump was committing an act of treason by winning the popular and EC votes

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#118

Post by philistine »

unethical_ban wrote: post #94
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The point of checks and balances is not obstruction for the sake of obstruction. It is that no branch should be subservient or overly deferential to the other branches. For example, Congress should not do everything the president wants just because he's the president as is happening now. Congresspeople have said out loud that the job of Congress is to ask "how high" when the president says "jump". Congress last year…

What you're describing is the least of your problems with Trump. In a Westminster system, the leader of the party in power is basically the head of government, the head of state, and the leader of the legislature all rolled into one. And it works without destroying democracy. I genuinely believe that good can come out of American political parties becoming single leader parties. The democrats should do the same, honestly. The fact that Trump has completely eliminated any internal distinction within his party, and deemed it vital that his R-mates have to do exactly what he says, is not what concerns me with Trump.

It's everything else.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#119

Post by walls »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #88
frogperson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are waaayyy passed that line. We are, for just about every definition, living in an authoritarian state. Trump has immunity, from the Supreme Court, support in the house and senate, support of the media, and enough support from the military. Freaadom isnt free. I think americans forget that. They are waiting for someone else to come save them, which will NEVER happen.

> and enough support from the military. That has not yet been shown. When it comes down to it, I wonder what the military will do. Will they uphold their oath, which is to the Constitution? Or will they obey the President, as commander in chief?

They had no problem moving on citizens in LA.

Re: Constitution of the United States Website has removed sections

#120

Post by philistine »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #88
frogperson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are waaayyy passed that line. We are, for just about every definition, living in an authoritarian state. Trump has immunity, from the Supreme Court, support in the house and senate, support of the media, and enough support from the military. Freaadom isnt free. I think americans forget that. They are waiting for someone else to come save them, which will NEVER happen.

> and enough support from the military. That has not yet been shown. When it comes down to it, I wonder what the military will do. Will they uphold their oath, which is to the Constitution? Or will they obey the President, as commander in chief?

> That has not yet been shown.

It is being shown daily. You're forgetting how things work in authoritarian states. In those countries, the military is AT ALL TIMES a risk for a dictator. They must be mollified somehow, lest the trucks with the armed men come rolling towards the palace.

In those countries, the military top brass will voice concerns privately, will leak unhappiness with the regime discreetly to other factions in the country. The US military is completely silent and subservient. This means Trump has their support. No one in the military complained when he bombed Iran or sent them to LA, for example. For all we know he did it for them. So Trump does not fear the trucks with men, and so has military support.

Post reply on HN