You identify with it?
Rand Paul sent up his whistleblower question to Roberts, and he declined to ask it.
Interesting but not terribly surprising:
Trump Supporters Score Higher on Verbal Ability Tests (From a person who donated to the Clinton campaign)
Not too surprising. The language difference seems most likely to be a matter what immigrants would be voting for Clinton, on average (hypothesis). Also the poor vote.
The structure of the article is a bit misleading. The author puts evolution down as a “belief” and disregards it as part of his comparison on scientific knowledge. But, again, I would suspect that this comes down largely to the immigrant vote and poorer standards of education. And, again, the poor vote.
The real takeaway is that most of everyone is horrible, across the political spectrum.
If Trump is the product of stupid people, then the Democrats are not immune. And, if not, then the fallback argument would be tribalism. That is also, almost certainly, non-specific to party.
The Democrats on offer might be better, but if you don’t want “a Trump” then the system needs to be able to withstand a country where very few put legalism over passion, and only ~50% know that the center of the Earth is hot.
You should know better than this, drad dog. Don’t insult other posters.
Warning issued, please don’t do it again.
Has the “unitary executive theory” been the basis of your defenses of dt here?
“not because he is somehow the commander of the federal law enforcement. It is because the Constitution gives the President personally the executive power - which includes all federal law enforcement powers.”
Can you explain the distinction above here?
You are avoiding the issue of his being a civilian, and trying to do rogue LE initiatives on the sly in contravention of his government?
I disagree. It was a straight question in context. The doctrine exists and is at issue. The poster may or may not have agreed with it, by their answer. He said he “didn’t like it” after all.
This country has a precedent of forcing a President to resign for using the tools of government to advance a personal agenda of destroying one’s critics for electoral gain, but current circumstances indicate that this precedent isn’t worth shit.
In addition, we have a whole host of politicians who said one thing during the Clinton impeachment, and another during the Trump impeachment – with the cherry on top being the prosecutor of the Clinton impeachment declaring that impeachment has become too common nowadays. The lesson here is that nobody on either side of the Trump impeachment seems to be bound by precedent (most certainly not McConnell, who doesn’t want witnesses, despite polls showing a consensus of Americans want them).
So, Trump’s lawyers are concern trolling about an imaginary issue.
When you said, “You identify with it?” did you mean, “Do you agree with it?”
Also, I’ve googled “Idiot King Doctrine,” and am not finding any such thing. Did you make up the name, or am I just having trouble finding it?
I suspect you didn’t mean to insult, but the phrasing here is pretty confusing.
I think this is a valid point. There’s an infinitely small chance that Trump will be removed from office, no matter what any witness might say. It won’t make any difference in the outcome of the trial. I might have had a different opinion a few weeks ago, before I became tragically convinced that the entirety of the Republican Senate is corrupt and complicit in enabling this sorry excuse of a president no matter what facts come to light. So, as you say, it might be better to be able to point to a cover-up on the part of the Republican senators, a fear of the truth coming out, and to put a justifiable black cloud over the President’s inevitable crowing of “complete exoneration”. It might actually be the lesser of two evils.
But I’d still like witnesses to be called. It might not make any difference to The Base, but I want these senators on record as knowing exactly, for a fact, what happened, and saying they don’t care. That will matter to some voters.
Looks like a deal was worked out. Paul wouldn’t appeal the decision of the chair but he got to leave and bitch without consequence.
Yes, others, I will respond to earlier remarks. Been a busy week.
I guess I did mean that.
Idiot King Doctrine is my invention. I would have thought it would be in the world somewhere else but, whatever. It’s relevant.
Max S. said he recognized it but didn’t like the name I had given it, so I felt I needed to clarify if it was his belief.
This is why the defense of “it must be a crime to be impeachable” is so asinine.
Day 1, President Warren announces that she will not talk to or meet with any foreign heads of state unless they build a huge mansion especially for her on their priciest real estate.
Day 2, she calls up each of our allies and insists that they each bestow some special title on her if they don’t want her to declare them a national security concern and increase tariffs.
Day 3, she declares all of her cabinet secretaries are on an interim basis and therefore she could care less what the Senate thinks of their appointment.
Day 4, she tells Florida that she will refuse to declare any natural disasters as emergencies (hurricanes, anybody?) until they indict resident Donald Trump on state level charges.
Per the GOP, none of that is impeachable. I mean, it’s not like you can arrest somebody for being gifted a mansion, or being named an Earl, or not getting advice and consent from the senate, or refusing to exercise discretion. Total immunity until the next election.
"We are in an “Age of Impeachment” !! (shudders)
Ken Starr - 2020
Here’s the thing about the unitary executive theory:
It starts with the premise that all actions by the executive are mere extensions of the President; so, for example, any Department of Justice investigation is merely an outgrowth of the President’s actions, and he can’t investigate himself (or, at the least, has the ability to decide not to investigate himself).
If you accept this, however, then you must tacitly agree that the other branches are therefore fully empowered to investigate the executive, in all its facets. And that the Executive has no basis to say no.
You can’t have it both ways. If the Executive is independent, and the President is totally in charge of it, such that the executive can never contradict the president, then you have to agree that the other branches have inherent oversight if you are going to maintain any fealty to our constitutional system. Otherwise, you are saying that the other branches have no say over the executive, and that the executive is not answerable to its own internal oversight, either.
So, to my mind, the ‘unitary executive theory’ actually supports the use of congressional subpoenas, witness testimony, and document gathering. It would only be if the argument was along the lines that “well, the Department of Justice is independelty obligated to investigate the White House” that you can even begin to push back against the notion that what the President does isn’t a matter of congressional concern.
Meaning, if the defense is “What Trump did is within his powers as Commander in Chief, and what any subordinate in the military (or foreign service) thinks is irrelevant”, then the response is, “But what Congress thinks is dispositive, so you need to tell us everything so that we - rather than the people who are a mere extension of you, Mr. President - can decide whether your behavior is furthering the national interest.”
#4 is extortion. #2 approaches but you would need to demonstrate that “being declared a national security threat” has a genuine and harmful meaning beyond, “I don’t like you!” Most likely it is not.
#4 is just worrying about corruption. Miss Warren has a whole bunch of documents which she can share to justify the process.
#2 is totally within the President’s discretion; just ask Canada, and the meaning of the declaration is to empower the president to increase tariffs.
Another issue with the unity executive is that, whether one person or many, the executive branch is still limited to lawful activities. If the law says, “Here’s the steps for investigating a person”, then the person has to be investigated in a manner conformant with the laws.
Powers of crime hunting are contained by sub-group.
The corruption of the Florida government should not be fought by risking the safety of every day US citizens. They are a hostage in the matter.
If you tell the people of Florida that they have to elect people who aren’t corrupt, you might have an argument.
Just to be clear, and in case it’s not obvious, I’m certainly not advocating any of these actions, or that they are proper. I’m simply trying to extrapolate this whole “not impeachable unless a crime” idea to its logical absurdity - I mean, there is a pretty clear prohibition in the constitution against accepting foreign emoluments (it might have been mentioned in the last few years), but the GOP doesn’t seem to think that enforcing the constitution is possible unless and until its language is expressly added to the federal statutes.
Its a damn shame that this process doesn’t allow Roberts to rule on the relevance and/or materiality of questions and witnesses. IANAL but the Republicans seem to be asking a lot of questions of themselves that have nothing to do with anything. Case in point - “Which was worse? Obama’s not supplying military aide or the “temporary withholding” of such aide by Trump?”. Which led to a long answer that had nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Clearly, Bolton’s (and others) testimony would both material and relevant. I suppose one could argue that testimony from the Bidens would be relevant but in no way could it be material. Same for the WB. The are good reasons for rules about this in criminal trials and I can’t conceive of any argument against them in impeachment proceedings.
This whole thing is a sham and I can only pray that Trump is not re-elected (and I expect that he will be). Actually, I don’t pray so I can’t even do that.