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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Any criminal could always buy a pardon.

I loathe Orange Man but the power to arbitrarily pardon any federal crimes for any reason is one of the powers of his office and Americans haven't ever seen fit to limit it. Trump is flagrantly corrupt and tries to flout the law at every turn, but he's also exposing the degree to which the American system has always just run on gentlemans' agreements and pinky swears.

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I prefer a world in which a governor can pardon someone on death row than one where they can't. It's on us to not put in politicians that will abuse that power.

I'd prefer a world where we don't have death row.

A world in which we have to grant people arbitrary and unchecked power to overrule a justice system we can't trust, and can only hope they happen to be incorruptible, doesn't seem preferable.

Power of pardon could be limited in many ways, for example commuting a death sentence to a prison sentence could be allowed. Or commuting a long prison sentence to a shorter sentence, with some lower limit. It's not binary.

I mean it should be a pretty resilient system. He has to convince, theoretically, >50% of the United States that either he is not corrupt or that his corruption is preferable to the alternative.

(Yes the 50% is assumes full voter participation and no third party candidate, also it can be slightly less than this if you have an incomptent state and friendly Supreme Court.)

I agree. He's always constantly testing limits, exploring gray areas, bending rules and "breaking" gentlemen's agreements. We should take this opportunity to limit the rights of presidents. Apparently, the president can shut down half of the government departments via executive order. How? Because they were created by executive order. How can he just shut down the department of Education without congress? Because Carter created it by executive order without congress. A variety of presidents have had us invade foreign countries without Congress declaring war. Let's take this opportunity to tighten things up.

> How can he just shut down the department of Education without congress? Because Carter created it by executive order without congress.

You are 100% incorrect.

> The Department of Education Organization Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1979, which created the Department of Education.

> In the Senate, 69 voted in favor and 22 voted against separating education from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.[3] In the House of Representatives, 215 voted in favor and 201 voted against.[4] President Carter signed the bill on October 17, 1979.[1]

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Education_Organi...

> Apparently, the president can shut down half of the government departments via executive order. How? Because they were created by executive order.

Please list the departments and cite the executive orders creating each, because I think you will find that this is far less than half (and, unless you are using a non-standard definition of what constitutes a department in the US federal government, that the proportion is actually 0%.)

(A sibling commenter has demonstrated that the single example you provided is wrong, but its not just a poorly-chosen example.)

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