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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

#431

Post by theptip »

ModernMech wrote: post #174
theptip wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If there was a pressure valve where another party can simply take over That's exactly what happened though -- the MAGA party took over. Conservatives "cut bait" with traditional Republicans, condemned them (see how they talk about Liz and Dick Cheney or even GWB, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, their own presidential nominees), and started a new party within the rotting corpse of the old GOP. There's still some "Repu…

It’s not a good safety valve though - sure, in a 2-party system, one of the parties can be taken over from within. But it’s uncommon and hard to achieve, and risks alienating voters while the civil war is going on.

On the other hand, with IRV or preference voting, second parties can form without spoiling the vote for their ideologically most aligned alternatives. This allows for a much more seamless shift.

Really in the US there should be at least 4 parties formed from the corpses of the big two, if not more.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

ModernMech wrote: post #402
tastyfreeze wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately taking over a dominant party was the easiest way to have a "different" party that could actually win. Both parties have built a mountain of obstacles to prevent a third party from ever getting close to challenging them.

I wonder, then is there a path to getting what you want by making the parties more democratic rather than making more parties?

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by rayiner »

estearum wrote: post #427
rayiner wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> President Jefferson did not come out and say he's not enforcing ASA because he disagreed with them. Instead, he (secretly) wrote a memo against them as VP, then as President let them expire and pardoned everyone convicted under them. He didn’t enforce the ASA because he disagreed with it, just like Jimmy Carter didn’t prosecute people for selective service violations because he disagreed with it. It wasn’t because…

You actually can’t know what their motivations were — which is the point . For example, if Congress had appropriated funds specifically for doing those things, the executive would be obligated to do them, because it’d be unambiguous as to whether resources existed to do them. This is again an absolutely unambiguous consequence of Congress’s Constitutional control of spending and of the Take Care Clause. What you are…

> You actually can’t know what their motivations were — which is the point.

But we know the motivation because Jefferson wrote it down. It wasn’t resource management, it was opposition to the law on principle.

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

#434

Post by tdeck »

cco wrote: post #430
rayiner wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Turns out that separation of powers was incorrect. Each branch needs its own enforcement arm and our plan of having the Executive carry out the law instead of just enforcing the law was a bad idea.

The limit to separation of powers is that many people will align themselves with the most powerful existing entity as the easiest path to self advancement, and this results in a natural consolidation of power even when that consolidation is outside the formal hierarchy. So once an entity or institution becomes too powerful, it tends to just reinforce itself.

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

#435

Post by tdeck »

positus wrote: post #343
butlike wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SCOTUS lifelong appointments checking in to say "hi"

SCOTUS has life-long appointments because it is designed to move and operate slowly and be the least political of the branches. Parties that try to legislate from the bench when they cannot successfully get something through Congress are the issue.

I seem to remember that the civil rights act and voting rights acts got passed through congress and upheld by the supreme court during the 20th century.

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

#436

Post by cess11 »

_heimdall wrote: post #345
rehevkor5 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be an extension of aspects that he talked about in his speech https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318... Specifically: > allow me a few words to talk about toxic leaders. > The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we're correcting that. That's why today, at my direction we're undertaking a full review of the department's definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bully…

To be fair (ignoring whether Hegseth really deserves that), what he describes is a very common view of military leadership during war time. "War time" is the key there though. The US is not a nation at war. We have allies at war and the executive branch has taken it upon itself to take warlike actions without Congress, but we aren't st war - especially not a war the scale of which is seen as existential and leads to…

You're technically correct, though arguably the situation is much worse than "war time". Due to the US having ushered in a "time" of lawlessness such legal discrepancies as war and peace have very little meaning.

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

#437

Post by dagss »

watwut wrote: post #369
dagss wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you and parent comment are just using the word conservative in two different ways. There is conservative values and there is the conservative party, two different things.

I am saying that these are real conservative values. It is not true that these would be just something conservative party does while claiming to believe something else. Instead, if you read what conservative people write and say, in journals, books, talk shows, anywhere ... this is exactly what they believe in.

It may be my European context / political definitions, but at least around here the word "conservative" would include vigorously defending the rule of law and courts (along with property rights and so on).

E.g., letting people who attacked police officers on Jan 6 out of prison is about as anti-conservative as you get.

I was trying to point out that conservative as a political philosophy != whatever Fox news preaches this month, but perhaps the word is used differently in the US..

Anyway point is, I'm sure the post you responded to used the word conservative more in the way I'm used to (European way?), thus your cross-talk.

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

#438

Post by walkabout »

wonderwonder wrote: post #422
walkabout wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say a prosecutor is elected and literally never prosecutes crimes. Any crime. Ever. Despite laws on the books stating they are, in some cases that have in-fact come up, required to. But this prosecutor keeps getting re-elected, and nobody enforces the laws about their having to bring certain cases. Both of the following may be true: 1) The prosecutor is doing what a plurality of voters want. 2) The office of prosecut…

This is actually a good thought experiment. In your example, democracy is actually fully working. The people though are voting to override the law (essentially something akin to jury nullification on a massive scale) and the prosecutor is breaking the system. So what is the solution? Optimal solution is a check and balance where a higher level prosecutor, perhaps a federal or state level steps in and takes charge. An…

“Democracy” in the sense of “a government with large amounts of citizen participation via voting, strong rule of law, and peaceful transition of power” (this is an entirely fine usage; it’s the main way most political scientists use the term day-to-day, ditto ordinary people, that’s why there are so many openings for incorrecting people online with “ackshually only direct democracy is democracy, the rest is sparkling representative republics”, which, again, isn’t how people who study government generally use the term) is failing, because rule of law is failing. This is a (partial, in this hypothetical, but far more complete in the real thing I’m alluding to) clear failure of government.

“Democracy” as in people are voting and the people they elected are wielding power (nb it is not necessarily the case that voters like that crime isn’t being prosecuted in my hypothetical, even in cases that their system of presumably-also-democratic government legally requires it—it could be that this prosecutor is popular despite that) is working.

Maybe you just mean that votes are resulting in things happening, period, regardless of whether those things are legal according to laws established and upheld by prior elected governments, and even if the system isn’t operating anywhere near its foundational legal basis, and that’s the disconnect?

(Outside the hypothetical, rule of law has always kinda struggled at times but is simply collapsing this term in ways and to a degree that’s not been seen in living memory, certainly; voting has been under attack for decades and especially lately between the ‘00s-today baseless but effective attacks on confidence in elections, the “find me votes” and illegal electors pushes having no consequences and the guy behind them currently holding effectively all federal levers of power and quite a few state ones, increasing gerrymandering activity, and the VRA being on life support and likely soon to be dead; and we’ve not seen peaceful transition of power in as shaky a place as it is post-Jan-6th [and the reactions thereto]… maybe ever, aside from the actual civil war? Certainly not since the 19th century; taken together, yeah, American democracy in the former sense is doing extremely poorly and large parts of it are entirely broken at the moment, and it’s very much not clear how much, if any, of it will recover, and it’s a safe bet a lot of that’s going to get worse at least in the short term)

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

#439

Post by sambuccid »

nla wrote: post #128

The Leahy Law requires the U.S. government to facilitate receipt of information about alleged abuses by U.S. supported forces. The State Department confirms it no longer operates the HRG, but says it is still receiving reports through other direct channels. I couldn't find any requirement in the law that requires a public website. NGOs can still submit information through established contacts or by email. I would thi…

I might be wrong but I guess it might also be easier for leadership to put pressure and influence personal communications than to avoid processing official reportings from their own website. An article reading "they ignored emails from amnesty international" sounds different from "they are not acting on this report made on their official website"

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

#440

Post by estearum »

rayiner wrote: post #433
estearum wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually can’t know what their motivations were — which is the point . For example, if Congress had appropriated funds specifically for doing those things, the executive would be obligated to do them, because it’d be unambiguous as to whether resources existed to do them. This is again an absolutely unambiguous consequence of Congress’s Constitutional control of spending and of the Take Care Clause. What you are…

> You actually can’t know what their motivations were — which is the point. But we know the motivation because Jefferson wrote it down. It wasn’t resource management, it was opposition to the law on principle.

Why can't you find a record of him publicly saying so? If it's just an established check and balance in our system, why can't you produce evidence of him saying "I'm not enforcing this law because I disagree with it" in any forum in which he could be held accountable (or not accountable, per your theory) for that decision?

Here's why: because it's not!

Here's SCOTUS in Kendall v United States:

> To contend that the obligations imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed implies a power to forbid their execution is a novel construction of the Constitution, and is entirely inadmissible.

> "This doctrine cannot receive the sanction of this Court. It would be vesting in the President a dispensing power which has no countenance for its support in any part of the Constitution, and is asserting a principle which, if carried out in its results to all cases falling within it, would be clothing the President with a power to control the legislation of Congress and paralyze the administration of justice."

> The result of the cases of McIntire v. Wood and McCluny v. Silliman clearly is that the [court's authority to command an officer of the United States] to perform a specific act required by a law of the United States is within the scope of the judicial powers of the United States under the Constitution"

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