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US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

bbc.com

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Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#141

Post by outside2344 »

cheema33 wrote: post #90
selectodude wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!

> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then! I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

The thing the founders didn't foresee was that a president could basically threaten to remove any member of Congress by 1) driving their campaign contributions to zero or 2) threatening to sic his mob on them.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#142

Post by [deleted] »

theptip wrote: post #63
LunaSea wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mostly shows that political parties are the problem themselves rather than the political mechanics of the system themselves.

Now we are talking. And the dynamic that makes political parties so toxic IMO is “first past the post” voting. If it’s your team or the “worse” team, you tolerate any flaw in your team. If there was a pressure valve where another party can simply take over (for example see Reform vs Conservative parties in the UK, not that I am thrilled with the underlying direction) then there is an alternative: cut bait and condemn…

[deleted]

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#144

Post by ModernMech »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #117
dirtyoldmick wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The left doesn't acknowledge any of that.

For the left to acknowledge something, a specific claim would have to be made and proved. The opposition party standing up a congressional committee with a scary name and making a bunch of press conferences doesn't prove anything.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#145

Post by roughly »

zippyman55 wrote: post #104
throw0101c wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not. Unless they are granted a blanket pardon beforehand. Then all you can really do is an "audit" for who did what, from which no charges can be laid.

That does not allow escaping from international laws.

The US army does, though.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#146

Post by wonderwonder »

walkabout wrote: post #81
wonderwonder wrote: post #60

Lots of people seem to think Trump is some sort of king or going outside the law. Fact is he was democratically elected and working within the system of checks and balances established by our founders. Congress can stop him from doing things but the democratically elected congress allows him to continue. So they agree with his actions and are doing their job. Checked and balanced. The courts can stop him and indeed h…

It’s not exactly working when the executive seizes two core powers of Congress (taxation and spending) and gets away with it for, so far, most of a year, with no end in sight. There’s a difference between disagreement over reasonable interpretations and some of a handful of key passages in the country’s highest law simply being ignored, for months on end (this aside from entirely unambiguous ordinary laws being ignor…

The executive could be stopped at any time by the courts or congress. But the democratically elected congress chooses not to. So the majority that was elected are doing what they think is right. That's how our US democracy works.

Same with the courts, executive is elected by the people and so is the senate. They select and approve the judges, same as it ever was.

I am in no way defending everything I am simply stating that there are checks and balances but many people just don't like the decisions that they are making. Doesn't mean they are not there though.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#147

Post by mrguyorama »

candiddevmike wrote: post #127
cheema33 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then! I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

> I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming. Surely there weren't any historical examples of that happening, like in the Mediterranean... I kinda dislike how folks hold the founders up with some kind of religious reverence (for some, only when it suits their agenda). These guys may have been bright at the time, but you can tell they didn't think a lot of things through and certainly didn't "plan for scale". T…

The founders wanted exactly what we have: A government beholden to the rich and well connected. That's why they agitated for revolution in the first place. They talked big about liberty and democracy, but when given the chance, they said very concretely: "We the people" means "We the rich, white people"

More directly, they all talked about how problematic political parties could be, and then did nothing at all to prevent them. They weren't exactly good systems thinkers.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#148

Post by roughly »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #114
docdeek wrote: post #64

This seems like a bad decision to me. Not only does it seem not to be in the spirit of the law (you can still report but not as easily now) but it's not clear why they shut it down at all. Cost? Inefficiency? Just wasn't getting used much? They have a better solution? On the other hand, the US seems so partisan now that had the current administration told the world they were taking huma' rights abuse reporting seriou…

[flagged]

That’s not a guess, it’s a whole-ass story you’ve concocted in your head.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#149

Post by wsatb »

candiddevmike wrote: post #127
cheema33 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then! I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

> I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming. Surely there weren't any historical examples of that happening, like in the Mediterranean... I kinda dislike how folks hold the founders up with some kind of religious reverence (for some, only when it suits their agenda). These guys may have been bright at the time, but you can tell they didn't think a lot of things through and certainly didn't "plan for scale". T…

They did not envision it to be used in its original state, and it hasn’t. But it also hasn’t changed much in a long time.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#150

Post by rayiner »

mikeyouse wrote: post #5

> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law". We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive…

Your comment reflects a common, but fundamentally mistaken, understanding of the constitution. You're thinking of the government like an operating system with a microkernel that is trusted to neutrally enforce the "law," with the three branches of government running in userspace.

That's not the system the founders created! They understood that everyone is political, and no one can be trusted. The founders understood the "who watches the watchers" problem and created a system without any such single point of failure. The ultimate backstop in our political system is not the law, but instead frequent elections. Congress writes the law, the President enforces the law, and the Judiciary interprets the law. If the President does a bad job of enforcing the law, the recourse is elections (or, as a last resort, impeachment).

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