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

Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#401

Post by fny »

leotravis10 wrote: post #124

Folks, the blueprint for a American dictatorship has been created and you'll be a fool and a idiot to think otherwise.

Folks, the blueprint for prosecuting Trump has been created.

If you read the complete ruling, the justices work to clarify how "official" and "unofficial" acts apply to the case at hand. For example, many of the conversations had with Pence and the AG are considered off limits for prosecution as they are "official." Other charges, however, can stick if the lower court decides:

> Trump can point to no plausible source of authority enabling the President to not only organize alternate slates of electors but also cause those electors—unapproved by any state official—to transmit votes to the President of the Senate for counting at the certification proceeding, thus interfering with the votes of States’ properly appointed electors

The damning part starts on page 27 of the ruling[0].

[0]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#402

Post by janalsncm »

mpalmer wrote: post #323
janalsncm wrote: post #241

Maybe we can stop acting like the Founding Fathers were political geniuses. They created a system where the only real recourse against a president is political, and a political system where political recourse is essentially impossible. A two party system is the logical conclusion of a first past the post voting system, which they have created. It is a bug, and fixing it is also effectively impossible.

This fails to acknowledge that today's decision has a weak/non-existent constitutional basis. I defy anyone to craft any political system or subset thereof that correctly anticipates societal shifts over the course of two and a half centuries.

You don’t need to anticipate societal shifts, you need to empower the political system to handle them.

As for the longevity of the U.S., there’s a strong argument that it has in fact not lasted 250 or so years, and that the reconstruction era amendments created a qualitatively different, more centralized country. But even if we ignore that, the U.S. has a lot going for it that has nothing to do with politics. Two oceans, peaceful neighbors, and more natural resources than we knew what to do with that we bought for practically nothing.

The US emerged from WW2 as basically the only advanced economy that wasn’t flattened, did essentially zero introspection and assumed our politics were superior. And yet we have open bribery of politicians, and the highest court opened the floodgates for the wealthiest to donate to politicians. The only thing left is to allow politicians to keep donations for personal use.

Europe has surpassed us in life expectancy, and soon China will surpass us in GDP. And no matter how much free speech we have, we can’t have a conversation about it because the media is weaponized to distract us.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#403

Post by almostdeadguy »

jimbokun wrote: post #360
janalsncm wrote: post #241

Maybe we can stop acting like the Founding Fathers were political geniuses. They created a system where the only real recourse against a president is political, and a political system where political recourse is essentially impossible. A two party system is the logical conclusion of a first past the post voting system, which they have created. It is a bug, and fixing it is also effectively impossible.

They wrote the document defining the currently longest running continuous government in the world. Is the Constitution perfect? No. But it's still fair to call them geniuses for what they accomplished. Also, you are arguing the Founders interpretation of the Constitution is the same as the current Supreme Court. I'm not sure they would agree, but there's no way we can ever know.

It's not even clear what "longest running continuous government" means or how it would be defined.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#404

Post by paulryanrogers »

How have presidents not been paralyzed by fear of prosecution until now?

Strange that only now, with a super majority of conservatives and a 'conservative' former president facing insurrection charges, that such a ruling should come down.

And all this after McConnell assured us that impeachment wasn't appropriate for a 'criminal' matter like January 6.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#405

Post by riskable »

suid wrote: post #274

Time for "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome priest?"

No, that's the old way. The new way is for the President to issue an executive order to have their target officially arrested, rendered somewhere overseas, and then follow up with an official order to have them assassinated (just declare them a foreign agent).

Any and all communications outside of the executive order would not be admissible as evidence even if the DOJ did want to prosecute!

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#407

Post by darkerside »

vessenes wrote: post #366
alphabetatheta wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible take. The Supreme Court case severely limits even the use of evidence to prosecute a President. The majority ruling says that as long as something is done in "official" capacity the intentions don't matter. EDIT: This ruling probably retroactively clears Nixon from Watergate. It would make it illegal to use the tapes as evidence against him.

Would it? I am skeptical about this take and I am skeptical of Sotomayer’s take. What official capacity would Nixon have been undertaking? What official capacity would a seal team six assassination of trump be designated as? I’m also skeptical of her dissent strategy; dissents are key places to limit a ruling. Why not just say what seems crystal clear and say ‘nothing about this ruling should be taken to mean calling…

Thank you for verbalizing something that was really bothering me here. Sotomayor is playing the victim in a way that is bad for America.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#409

Post by pacifika »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #18
afavour wrote: post #8

I'm dismayed by this ruling but I'm curious: can someone defend it? I'm able to understand the counter-perspectives to my own on many hot-button issues (2nd amendment, abortion bans) but this one seems very nakedly bad. But maybe I'm just not seeing the counterpoint?

If presidents could be prosecuted for their official acts then the next time the other party takes over they will just immediately find various crimes their predecessor “committed” (there are probably 10s of 1000s of them).

I guess you need some new parties
Post reply on HN