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Comment by throwway120385 | Hacker News Reader

throwway120385

Just because something is common, we shouldn't accept it if we believe it to be wrong. Slavery was once widely tolerated, as was marital rape. But people in those days decided that these things were wrong and should not be tolerated. Had they listened to arguments like yours we would still be living in those conditions.

There's also an argument to be made for holding our political officers to a much higher standard than the general populace.

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Do you think the Justice Department should prosecute people they believe to be innocent? If not, it seems that every prosecution is an expression of the view that the accused is guilty, and by allowing the JD to proceed, the President is expressing approval of the view. Can you please point out the error in this logic?

The potential source of error is the assumption that the president has the authority to stop a prosecution (short of the pardon power). I say "potential" because a "unitary executive" advocate would claim this is true, and it is becoming more true during the second Trump administration, although it was notably false during the first one. [In prior administrations, including Trump I and Obama, the DOJ appointed independent counsel precisely to prosecute cases the president would have disagreed with prosecuting.]

Belief is not binary and can change with new evidence. You may believe it is likely someone is innocent, but should still witness all the evidence to update your beliefs. In the rare case that there is concrete and infallible evidence that the accused IS innocent, they are typically not prosecuted, or it wraps up very quickly.

This is the entire purpose of a jury trial. The intent is that the jury bears witness to all of the facts of the situation and listens to the prosecution's and defense's interpretation of those facts, and then decides whether the defendant committed any or all of the crimes they are accused of.

The error is this logic is that it precludes the possibility that the Justice Department thinks (know for a fact even) that he is innocent but is pursuing the case anyway because political pressure from the President preferring him to be punished rather than admit a mistake.

I don't see the comment's argument as being that this is okay because it's common. It's just pointing out that this is nothing completely new and that it's a shame that it gets pointed out in a selective way when it could have been called out even earlier under other administrations. That's completely fair if one genuinely cares about due process instead of just dogmatic sniping..

That sounds nice, but US is mostly a democracy, and to the extent it is a constitutional republic those principles only hold to the extent people are willing to acknowledge them and assent to be ruled under them.

So you're saying we shouldn't ask people to acknowledge them and to be ruled under them? If you keep arguing on those grounds then we're going to be saying "that's nice but we live in the real world" all the way to a failed state.

People are not acknowledging and ruled under the constitution as written and intended and the amendments thereafter, for a very long time.

For one very obvious example, observe that it is illegal to notice an opium poppy is growing in a forest, then take and smoke it, and somehow that magically being interstate commerce.

At this point the government as we know it would totally collapse were it not the people willfully and deliberately violate the tenants of the constitutional republic we live under. And most of them, seem to agree with that.

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