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Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

In the US, ex post facto laws cannot be made.

> In the US, ex post facto laws cannot be made.

That fact has been so inconvenient for the government that the entire system has been redesigned to thwart it. Can't prove Al Capone is a mobster? Prosecute for tax evasion.

Keep passing broad overlapping laws and they can charge anyone with something. Then they don't have to change the law, only who they decide to prosecute.

Are you saying Capone didn't evade taxes?

I'm saying nobody would have been looking at him for tax evasion if he wasn't a mobster, even if he was doing it.

And after Capone the mobsters started paying their taxes, so now they charge them with money laundering, which is essentially a law against paying your taxes on unexplained income.

But parallel construction is still a thing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/03/10/...

That's nice. But if you decide to run for high office 30 years from now it will become known that drew pony porn in college and never really stopped. That's the meaning of kompromat.

Not if your record is better than their's.

Like Trump, where the worst impropriety they could come up with was that he slapped women's arses? Everyone has something they'd rather not talk about.

Worst?

I hadn't even heard that one.

We just learned about charity self dealing.

For the last few decades we have been hearing about Trump's 'improprieties'.

For now. Doesn't it just take a new law that says ex post facto laws can be made?

It would require an amendment to the US Constitution, which is an incredibly high bar.

That bar seems a lot lower in the last few weeks.

Constitutional amdendments require ratification by 3/4 of states. 20/50 states voted for Clinton. That is still quite a high bar.

I think the era of amendments has passed. Very unlikely we see a new one anytime soon.

Amendment XXVI, 18-year-olds can vote, ratified in 1972. Amendment XXVII, left over from 1789, relates to Congressional pay increases, ratified in 1992.

I didn't even know about the last one (I assume I can trust Wikipedia about it)? Which means the last "real" amendment was 44 years ago. None of the currently unratified amendments seem at all close to reaching the required number of ratification votes.

>In the US, ex post facto laws cannot be made.

Yeah, well, in the UK the government is trying to justify sweeping constitutional and case law changes based on a non-binding referendum barely passing.

Oh I understand that, I'm thinking a little more dystopian. Though in some other countries that might be the reality today.

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