It's not a rule, it's a law passed by Congress and signed by the President in 1978. You can't just ignore it.
Right but who is going to prosecute? the Department of Justice?
DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
41–50 of 73 posts
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crazy that you can't even read an article anymore without having to cough up money and/or provide your personal data.
yes, with a but, rephrased as "crazy that you can't use a private service without payment or otherwise contributing to its profitability" sounds less so crazy. I agree on the excess.
Publishers really need to get on board with a fair pay as you go scheme.
Something where I pay a fair price for an article or subscription, without the new customer rates, and without the "call us" retention annoyances. Something like the old Netflix, where it covers 80% of what you want at a reasonable monthly fee with easy cancellation.
I wouldn't mind supporting good journalism, but I do mind having a teaser rate that will jump 5x after a year, making it difficult to cancel (call to cancel), and having 1 pay gate per news outlet.
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#43Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure you can, when you're the President. He's got presumptive immunity for all official acts. If election interference is an official act (as they decided in Trump v US), then surely ordering the destruction of all of his records is also an official act.
Don't forget about pardon power.
Can he pardon himself?!
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#45Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can he pardon himself?!
Odds are we'll find out before his term is over.
From an outside perspective this is all looking a great deal like the early days of Viktor Orbán in power, morphing the laws and conventions of Hungary to remain in power.
The differences are that Trump hasn't much left in the tank and never did have a law degree.
Those difference matter little, there are plenty in Trumps orbit who are making the plans and pushing them out, all that's needed is another muppet for POTUS.
Where Trump gets interesting is right now and the near future; he's cornered, losing support, and will be lashing out and bending reality to protect his reputation and ill gotten gains.
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. I think that constitutional scholars have always known that it's not the written laws that hold the executive in check. Our system was designed so that the 3 branches would check each other . The Federalist Paper #51 explicitly calls this out - "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." [0] The problem with any system like you are suggesting where "we need to stop letting lawyers write laws, and inst…
It isn't just congress failing to their job. We The People are also responsible for not ousting the freeloaders in congress who are taking our tax money and not doing the job they were elected to do. We are the final check on making sure that government is serving us and not the other way around. The founders were pretty open about what they expected from us if that could no longer be accomplished within the framewor…
I'm not very familiar with the American system, but aren't congress elections prone to gerrymandering which means they don't reflect too accurately the preferences of the people?
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not a rule, it's a law passed by Congress and signed by the President in 1978. You can't just ignore it. They’re not ignoring. They’re saying they think the law itself is unconstitutional. From the article: >> In a sweeping new memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel, the DOJ claims the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. The department’s edict, which is already facing legal challenges, argues th…
"This is unconstitional because Trump doesn't like it" is not a very strong argument. The position he's holding is called "Public Office" (not private office) for a reason.
> "This is unconstitional because Trump doesn't like it" is not a very strong argument.
So far, it appears to be a very convincing argument to the supreme court most of the time.
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't just congress failing to their job. We The People are also responsible for not ousting the freeloaders in congress who are taking our tax money and not doing the job they were elected to do. We are the final check on making sure that government is serving us and not the other way around. The founders were pretty open about what they expected from us if that could no longer be accomplished within the framewor…
I'm not very familiar with the American system, but aren't congress elections prone to gerrymandering which means they don't reflect too accurately the preferences of the people?
Gerrymandering is one the most powerful ways they suppress votes. They also like to do things like limit the number of polling places and put them out of the way with limited hours, pass laws that require documents many people don't have (while making those documents more difficult to obtain), removing the right to vote from people with criminal histories (while more aggressively policing and convicting the people/communities they don't want voting), spreading disinformation about voting dates/times/locations, creating confusing ballots, having heavy police presence at polling places and putting up speed traps/check points near them, making mail-in voting difficult or unreliable, and actively discourage participation with messaging about how voting doesn't accomplish anything or even that your support of a broken/corrupt system makes you complicit in it.
Even our two party/first past the post system discourages voting by limiting the choice people have in who they can realistically support in the first place.
Re: DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
#50These are dark days, perhaps the darkest for America. Perhaps the only time that somehow we didn't squeak out a win, the only time the insurrectionist rabble propogandized their cause for destruction of America, found the leverage points of lawfare, mediafare, an impotent Congress, and political lapdog Supreme Court with Federalist Society biases against any checks and balances at all, that all these factors aligned to allow complete vandalizing from within. A piracy & rampaging, a campaign of spite from conquerors wishing to salt the earth of that they have claimed.
It so unsurprising that these dark days would have an administration that argued it owes nothing to the American people, nothing to history. That they would want to hide their filthy destruction.
Back in 2018, Trump used to go around violating the law with his bare hands, ripping up documents that displeased him. Pitiful staffers were assigned to go tape the documents back together, in some sign of respect to the law & history. https://boingboing.net/2018/06/11/presidential-records-act.h...
I strongly dislike the "everyone is 12" or everyone is 15 tale being told now, that there are no adults. There are adults. They are all just wicked evil people working against America, are the pardoned insurrectionists and much much worse, with far more focused reign to do what Reagan and the Powell memorandum and Project 2025 (which is but a recent update to a long running document begat from the Powell Memorandum) set out to do: to unmake America, to bypass all checks, to dynamite the nation from the inside out. Heck yes they want to make sure no one sees them TNT'ing the Union.