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Comment by stevenwoo | Hacker News Reader

The Supreme Court is responsible for a lot of this, it has institutionalized immunity for law enforcement and prosecution and unlimited corporate money in politics so that it would require overriding that lever of power which doesn’t seem likely since democrats just rolled over when the gop wouldn’t allow Obama to appoint a Supreme Court justice.

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> since democrats just rolled over

Did they have the majority in the senate, does the the senate leader decide the rules?

They could have changed the rules when they got the majority and they could have pushed for alternatives with some random ideas off the top of my head a.) just putting their appointed justice on the court while Obama was still President since the constitution does not specifically say approval just consent so with the anything goes interpretation of original intent that the current supreme court uses why not, b.) packing the court after they got the majority, c.) deciding to make term limits for supreme court justices - the forever a justice is not in the constitution. It like the current situation where one senator Tuberville can block the mass appointment of military leadership, they could change the rules or do it one by one but the leadership is too afraid of changing the way things have always worked around here.

I'm not one to ever defend the institution of policing or the court system that feeds and protects it, but cops do not have general immunity. They have qualified immunity from civil cases in some places. The primary friction from prosecuting police for criminal behavior has been and will continue to be DAs unwilling to prosecute (for various reasons, some reasonable, and some nefarious).

Right, so they’ve culturally made it impossible for the government to go after them and legally impossible for citizens. Pretty sweet deal.

There are many reasons why police serve the role they do in society. Neglecting other reasons other than blatant racketeering—the role they play in preserving the institution of private property, the role they play in filling prisons, the role they play in preserving the illusion of justice—serves nobody.

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