U.S. Politics

[peterms]

1 hour ago, TheAuthority said:

Banana Republic. 

Rather than "GOP", Banana Republicans should be the name of the party.

[Brumerican]

Mueller is smarter than Trump.

His statue will be bigger too.

 

[bickster]

[peterms]

1 hour ago, Brumerican said:

Mueller is smarter than Trump.

His statue will be bigger too.

 

Especially the hands.

[TheAuthority]

I’ll buy that for a dollar!

 

 

[snowychap]

Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional

Quote

What now seems an eternity ago, the conservative law professor Steven Calabresi published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May arguing that Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. His article got a lot of attention, and it wasn’t long before President Trump picked up the argument, tweeting that “the Appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”

Professor Calabresi’s article was based on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. Under that provision, so-called principal officers of the United States must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate under its “Advice and Consent” powers.

He argued that Mr. Mueller was a principal officer because he is exercising significant law enforcement authority and that since he has not been confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was unconstitutional. As one of us argued at the time, he was wrong. What makes an officer a principal officer is that he or she reports only to the president. No one else in government is that person’s boss. But Mr. Mueller reports to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. So, Mr. Mueller is what is known as an inferior officer, not a principal one, and his appointment without Senate approval was valid.

But Professor Calabresi and the president were right about the core principle. A principal officer must be confirmed by the Senate. And that has a very, very significant consequence today.

It means that President Trump’s installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It’s illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid.

Much of the commentary about Mr. Whitaker’s appointment has focused on all sorts of technical points about the Vacancies Reform Act and Justice Department succession statutes. But the flaw in the appointment of Mr. Whitaker, who was Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff at the Justice Department, runs much deeper. It defies one of the explicit checks and balances set out in the Constitution, a provision designed to protect us all against the centralization of government power.

If you don’t believe us, then take it from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom President Trump once called his “favorite” sitting justice. Last year, the Supreme Court examined the question of whether the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board had been lawfully appointed to his job without Senate confirmation. The Supreme Court held the appointment invalid on a statutory ground.

Justice Thomas agreed with the judgment, but wrote separately to emphasize that even if the statute had allowed the appointment, the Constitution’s Appointments Clause would not have. The officer in question was a principal officer, he concluded. And the public interest protected by the Appointments Clause was a critical one: The Constitution’s drafters, Justice Thomas argued, “recognized the serious risk for abuse and corruption posed by permitting one person to fill every office in the government.” Which is why, he pointed out, the framers provided for advice and consent of the Senate.

What goes for a mere lawyer at the N.L.R.B. goes in spades for the attorney general of the United States, the head of the Justice Department and one of the most important people in the federal government. It is one thing to appoint an acting underling, like an acting solicitor general, a post one of us held. But those officials are always supervised by higher-ups; in the case of the solicitor general, by the attorney general and deputy attorney general, both confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Whitaker has not been named to some junior post one or two levels below the Justice Department’s top job. He has now been vested with the law enforcement authority of the entire United States government, including the power to supervise Senate-confirmed officials like the deputy attorney general, the solicitor general and all United States attorneys.

We cannot tolerate such an evasion of the Constitution’s very explicit, textually precise design. Senate confirmation exists for a simple, and good, reason. Constitutionally, Matthew Whitaker is a nobody. His job as Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff did not require Senate confirmation. (Yes, he was confirmed as a federal prosecutor in Iowa, in 2004, but President Trump can’t cut and paste that old, lapsed confirmation to today.) For the president to install Mr. Whitaker as our chief law enforcement officer is to betray the entire structure of our charter document.

In times of crisis, interim appointments need to be made. Cabinet officials die, and wars and other tragic events occur. It is very difficult to see how the current situation comports with those situations. And even if it did, there are officials readily at hand, including the deputy attorney general and the solicitor general, who were nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Either could step in as acting attorney general, both constitutionally and statutorily.

Because Mr. Whitaker has not undergone the process of Senate confirmation, there has been no mechanism for scrutinizing whether he has the character and ability to evenhandedly enforce the law in such a position of grave responsibility. The public is entitled to that assurance, especially since Mr. Whitaker’s only supervisor is President Trump himself, and the president is hopelessly compromised by the Mueller investigation. That is why adherence to the requirements of the Appointments Clause is so important here, and always.

As we wrote last week, the Constitution is a bipartisan document, written for the ages to guard against wrongdoing by officials of any party. Mr. Whitaker’s installation makes a mockery of our Constitution and our founders’ ideals. As Justice Thomas’s opinion in the N.L.R.B. case reminds us, the Constitution’s framers “had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked.” He added “they knew that liberty could be preserved only by ensuring that the powers of government would never be consolidated in one body.”

We must heed those words today.

 

[StefanAVFC]

I find it amusing that a journo is held to a higher standard than POTUS.

This is the exchange that lead to mixgate.

Acosta: Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to challenge you on one of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms that…

Trump interrupting: Here we go.

Acosta: Well, I — if you don’t mind, Mr. President …

Trump interrupting: Let's go. Let's go, C'mon.

Acosta: …that this caravan was an invasion. As you know, Mr. President…

Trump interrupting: I consider it to be an invasion.

 

Trump is hostile and defensive from the start. I'm sorry but I want journalists making politicians uncomfortable and holding them accountable.

Sure Acosta is a bit of a grandstander but at least he tries to challenge the president.

[A'Villan]

3 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

I find it amusing that a journo is held to a higher standard than POTUS.

This is the exchange that lead to mixgate.

Acosta: Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to challenge you on one of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms that…

Trump interrupting: Here we go.

Acosta: Well, I — if you don’t mind, Mr. President …

Trump interrupting: Let's go. Let's go, C'mon.

Acosta: …that this caravan was an invasion. As you know, Mr. President…

Trump interrupting: I consider it to be an invasion.

 

Trump is hostile and defensive from the start. I'm sorry but I want journalists making politicians uncomfortable and holding them accountable.

Sure Acosta is a bit of a grandstander but at least he tries to challenge the president.

I find it intolerable.

People are dying from and living all sorts of tragedies. The world has lost over 50% of its wildlife in the last 40 years. Environmental issues.

Surely the POTUS needs to be capable of starting and holding a dialogue where challenges and people come under scrutiny, including the POTUS themselves.

What good is a few minutes of conversation where the participants can't even finish a sentence, let alone establish an inquiry, before personal insults are being thrown around.

It's the little things that make up the big picture and this interaction makes me wonder how capable we are, as we are, to overcome the challenges we face.

What you're talking about is the character of the 'leader' of the 'greatest' country.

I'm a fairly optimistic person, but we're going to need some really strong willed, ingenious and benevolent men and women to pull their socks up and start taking positions of leadership if we're to turn this s*** show around.

[TheAuthority]

3 hours ago, A'Villan said:

I find it intolerable.

People are dying from and living all sorts of tragedies. The world has lost over 50% of its wildlife in the last 40 years. Environmental issues.

Surely the POTUS needs to be capable of starting and holding a dialogue where challenges and people come under scrutiny, including the POTUS themselves.

What good is a few minutes of conversation where the participants can't even finish a sentence, let alone establish an inquiry, before personal insults are being thrown around.

It's the little things that make up the big picture and this interaction makes me wonder how capable we are, as we are, to overcome the challenges we face.

What you're talking about is the character of the 'leader' of the 'greatest' country.

I'm a fairly optimistic person, but we're going to need some really strong willed, ingenious and benevolent men and women to pull their socks up and start taking positions of leadership if we're to turn this s*** show around.

It's a personality cult.

Spoon feed reality TV to people for 2 decades, stir in some vitriol and propaganda from Fox news and use a base of poor education. This is where we are and it's hideous.

[villakram]

24 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

It's a personality cult.

Spoon feed reality TV to people for 2 decades, stir in some vitriol and propaganda from Fox news and use a base of poor education. This is where we are and it's hideous.

Closer to 4 decades... Reagan/Thatcher and the privatization of the world.

Though, one might point out that if we stopped navel gazing, we'd realize that things have pretty much always been shitty. There's really nothing overly special about how scummy people are acting towards those below them now. I guess, the really disappointing thing is that it appeared that there was some sort of convergence towards a fairer society occurring, but then we grew up and started really paying attention.

Happy weekend all!

 

[Keyblade]

2 hours ago, villakram said:

Closer to 4 decades... Reagan/Thatcher and the privatization of the world.

Though, one might point out that if we stopped navel gazing, we'd realize that things have pretty much always been shitty. There's really nothing overly special about how scummy people are acting towards those below them now. I guess, the really disappointing thing is that it appeared that there was some sort of convergence towards a fairer society occurring, but then we grew up and started really paying attention.

Happy weekend all!

 

It's the air of "we're a beacon of light to the rest of the world" given off by the West, with the U.S. being the biggest offenders, used to browbeat the rest of the world that makes it so galling. 

They topple regimes all over the world to bring in "democracy" while theirs is slipping into fascism. If the results wouldn't be so catastrophic, it would almost be amusingly ironic.

[NurembergVillan]

 

[NurembergVillan]

There is literally no limit to the width at which this arsehole is capable of gaping...

 

[HanoiVillan]

Oh, so *now* he **** resigns?

Real timely there bud. 

[Xann]

Fashion news - Rashida Tlaib intends to pitch up in traditional Palestinian dress at the swearing in ceremony for Congress in January.

 

[sne]

11 minutes ago, Xann said:

Fashion news - Rashida Tlaib intends to pitch up in traditional Palestinian dress at the swearing in ceremony for Congress in January.

 

Mossad is going to have her meet an "accident" before they let that happen

[HanoiVillan]

30 minutes ago, Xann said:

Fashion news - Rashida Tlaib intends to pitch up in traditional Palestinian dress at the swearing in ceremony for Congress in January.

 

The thought of Mike Pence having to swear her in, wearing that, over the Koran, is just too good. 

[peterms]

 

[sne]

Pretty close in Florida apparently.

Quote

More than three days after the polls closed in Florida, the secretary of state announced on Saturday afternoon that the razor-thin races for governor, senator and agriculture commissioner will be reviewed in a series of recounts.

According to unofficial results filed by the counties, Republican Gov. Rick Scott leads incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by more than 12,500 votes, or about .15%. The spread in the governor's race is larger, with Republican former Rep. Ron DeSantis ahead of Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by nearly 34,000 votes, for a lead of .41%. In the narrowest contest, Democratic agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried's advantage stands at 5,326 votes — just .06% — over Republican Matt Caldwell.

With the margins in all three contests at under .5%, the votes will now be recounted by machine. That process must be finished by 3 p.m. on Thursday. Races within .25% will then go to a hand recount of overvotes and undervotes. An overvote means a voter selected more than the allotted options on the ballot; an undervote means a vote selected fewer than the available choices or, in these races, none. The Senate race and the contest for agriculture commissioner both currently both fall within .25%.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/10/politics/florida-recount-rick-scott-bill-nelson-ron-desantis-andrew-gillum/index.html

Edited November 10, 2018 by sne

[HanoiVillan]

It looks like the information I read the other day about the Arizona senate race is probably wrong, and that (touch wood) the Democrat is now favoured to win when all the mail-in ballots are counted.