From betraying Ukraine and dispatching masked agents who killed Americans to deporting US citizens and pulling out of accords controlling climate change and Iranian nuclear weapons, the list of Donald Trump’s abuses is long and growing still longer, seemingly by the day.
Looking back decades from now, historians will see that at the top of this shameful list is Trump’s utter abuse of his pardon power. It started on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists who, on 6 January 2021, had stormed the US Capitol.
More recently, as documented in astonishing accounts by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes, Trump has overseen a robust pardons market in which friends or relatives of criminals offer to pay millions for presidential clemency.
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The Constitution assumed that the Congress wouldn’t abdicate all of its power. A unitary executive wouldn’t be possible if Congress stood their ground and said “Nope”.
The Senate is supposed to impeach him but GOP Senators are playing team sports instead of common sense.
The Senate is supposed to impeach him
The House Impeaches.
The Senate convicts.
But you need a supermajority in the Senate, which even the Radical Republicans of the 1870s failed to muster, despite having the half the country under Marshall Law at the time.
Back then, politicians were assumed to be honorable Gentlemen. This ended a long time ago, but Trump goes the extra mile to prove he is anything but.
Well yes, but also the concept of honour back then was dictated largely by rich slave owners. So…
I’d trust the honor of a slaveowner over the proud cruelty we have now. It’s not like the fascists are less racist.
I’d trust the honor of a slaveowner
The whole context is 22 words bud, I know you can read that much. I like Community but even as a joke reference it’s a reach.
That may be, but it’s dangerous to guess at a distance. And time is a distance all its own
Fascist is bad enough, but even Hitler would cringe at the idea of a goddamn pedophile being in charge (assuming he wasn’t one himself).
The Nazi Party was flush with pedophiles
I don’t doubt it, it’s just more depressing.
“assuming he wasn’t one himself” look up Geli Raubal and the allegiations of abusive sexual relationship between her (as a minor) and Hitler. Moreover, they were relatives. Just like Ivanka and Donnie Daughterfucker.
I did not know, but it’s not fucking surprising.
Back then, politicians were assumed to be honorable Gentlemen.
https://www.americanheritage.com/verdicts-history-iv-scandalous-malicious-and-seditious-libel
In 1803 the infant American Republic was running a high political fever. The ferocity of the verbal warfare raging between the Federalists, the party created by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republicans, led by President Jefferson, has rarely been matched in American politics, even by the diatribes of today’s New Left and Ultra Right.
The first fusillades had been fired during Washington’s Presidency. The Jeffersonians, with not a little help from the Sage of Monticello himself, had set up journalists such as Philip Freneau and Benjamin Franklin Bache with one mission, to deflate and discredit an administration that was, in Jefferson’s view, “galloping fast into monarchy.” They soon had the Father of His Country in a state of near apoplexy. “That rascal Freneau,” as Washington called him, insisted on sending his scurrilous National Gazette, published in Philadelphia, to the President’s house even after he had cancelled his subscription. Freneau spent most of his abuse on Hamilton. Baclic preferred Washington as a target, calling him “treacherous,” “mischievous,” “inefficient,” and sneering at his “farce of disinterestedness” and his “stately joumeyings through the American continent in search of personal incense.”
These verbal guerrillas soon had imitators. Among the more savage was William Duane, Bache’s successor as editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. Washington, he wrote, had “discharged the loathings of a sick mind.” Even this was topped by an English newcomer, James T. Callender. In the Richmond Examiner he declared that “Mr. Washington has been twice a traitor.”
agreed, President also should have nothing to do with DOJ / appointing the AG. Big mistake.
Perhaps the pardon should be a 2/3 vote of congress instead, just to preserve the check on the judiciary
I think part of the problem with pardon power is that it can be freely done.
I think a president should nominate someone for pardoning, then congress critters have to give a 51% vote in favor of pardoning for it to ultimately take effect. 30 days have to pass during the nomination period for them to review the pardon, the pardon to be public knowledge, and congress critters having their name attached to their vote. Particular crimes should be noted for the pardoning, and a pardon doesn’t void new infractions of the same kind of crime.
A second 30 day direct voting period then takes place to confirm the pardon. The general public sends in a vote, based on all voters who send in a ballot. By default in this stage, the pardon passes unless 51% of the ballots reject the pardon.
To sum up:
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1a: A president nominates a person for pardon for specific crimes at the time of the pardon.
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1b: The nominated for pardoning must be considered a flight risk, and prevented from free international travel during the review stages.
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2: After 30 days of review, 51% of congress must decide whether to approve of the pardon, attaching their name to the vote.
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3a: Following approval by the congressional voting period, direct voters from the public can send in ballots to cancel the pardon. 51% of voters who submit a ballot must agree to cancel the pardon. This window lasts 30 days.
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3b: Direct voters can choose to automatically prevent the leader from nominating pardons. 51% of the voters have to agree to remove the pardoning power. This state lasts for the current term of the leader. If this leader is elected again, a ballot is sent out to ask whether their pardoning privilege is restored for their new term.
IMO, the important part of a pardon is for national security purposes - but right now, it is too easy to pardon bad actors in the name of factional forgiveness or bribes.
Chelsea Manning wouldn’t have gotten a pardon if you all had implemented that. A lot of terrible people would still have gotten pardons. Your congress is an applause machine right now
your “to sum up” section is longer than the rest of your comment
This sounds like the Kamala Harris pardon plan. Does it include means testing and tax rebates?
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The unilateral presidential pardon and veto are both huge mistakes.
That puts far too much power in the hands of one person. Especially in a country that wanted to eliminate a king-like position ruling over them.
That wasn’t a mistake. It was absolutely intentional.
It is vital to understand the early American state as a patronage system and the president as the ultimate patrician through which power flows. If you look at early Plantation society, and the subsequent networks of power that flow from landholders to merchant brokers and from yeomen to their wealthy oligarch neighbors, all of this fits neatly together.
The problem the American Founders saw was with the upstart plebians and landless workers. Pardons and vetos check the power of popular judges and legislators, as intended.
Yep, it all flows together because the thinkers behind the Constitution and the plantation model were post-Enlightenment classicists literally basing their perfect model of society on the Roman Republic.
That is propaganda, they wanted a king, just their kind of king. His name was Washington and he would have been a billionaire adjusted for inflation if he had not died in his sixties. The US was always corrupt from the very start.
I really have no idea why they did they, I agree we should get rid of presidential pardoning power. We should have gotten rid of it after Nixon.
Should have gotten rid of it after the civil war
Should have gotten rid of the traitors after the civil war.
They just kept fighting politically for a century and more and here we are. I think almost all ails we experience today can be tracked to that shit, they never went away.
And you can’t have a democratic society where some people just super want to own slaves and never ever shut the fuck up about it.
These are just fundamentally incompatible “moralities”. Red vs Blue. Slave owners against abolitionists.
I think that’s the nature of the fight we’re fighting here.
I hope they will tighten up and amend any loopholes that got them into this mess in the first place.
Citizens united, first past the post, the two party state are the most important ones I think to fix.
That will need the constitution to be rewritten, or amended.
A two party democracy is like a society with bipolar disorder. It’s just a one party state with an extra flavor. That’s why the oligarchs and AIPAC et al pay off both sides.
When you have that kind of money it doesn’t matter, you’ll get your way because there’s only two parties to bribe anyway.
They’ll have to if they expect the rest of us to trust them going forward.
Considering the US founders owned slaves, I reckon they were short sighted in many other aspects of what they “founded”.
yeah, no shit.
Along with tariffs and other dictator power, but even worse is the fools elected him twice with all the knowledge available to all and they still fail the test again! That’s bad choices and willful ignorance and will keep regressing each time and where they make the bad choices.
But how do we deal with the other side after all of this? They’ve clearly been manipulated by Fox News and social media algorithms. They think they’re up-to-date with current events. The media manipulation in the US is staggering. I don’t see how we move forward without tearing everything down. It’s rotten from the inside out.
So… Many… Things…
At this point it feels like it would be better to burn the fucking thing down and start from scratch, because fascism is like getting termites.
But at this point it would just mean total subjugation by Russia or China, so it needs to be fixed, but it’s like a flaming wreck just rolled into the shop and it has to be salvaged.
The only option is to tear it all down. Personally I say start with deregulation of the radio frequencies to hopefully drown out talk radio (and iHeartRadio) under a ride of not quite pirate stations. This would at least stop folks from listening to low tier talk radio while driving since I doubt any of them besides Coast to Coast will be able to maintain.
From there its a bit harder cause just deregulating something and waiting for it to die isn’t quite an option. But you could do a trust bust followed by simply disbanding cable TV to get rid of Fox.
Internet is both harder and easier in that you really only need to regulate how the algorithms work and maybe cave in Facebook and their subsidiaries. At least in theory, maybe throw in some indepth investigations on where right wing influencers are getting their money since it came out the ruskies were bankrolling a bunch awhile back. But overall attacking their funding structure is probably the best method, maybe see about shit canning TPUSA and similar orgs due to obviously skirting regulatory laws.
The Orange Shitstain has proven there are a shit ton of loopholes in the US government.
“error” yah right
No, no, you see there’s a system of checks and balances.
Presidential Pardons are balanced by the 2nd amendment.
They made error in giving him so much power in general. It should never be concentrated in the hands of one guy
The main issue is buying the supreme Court. The president shouldn’t be choosing justices…
A normal SCOTUS, and Trump is already in jail
That’s why no amount of suffering will ever be enough for McConnell.
