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Comment by Pet_Ant | Hacker News Reader

> Seriously I don’t know of another country that isn’t on the same authoritarian track,

New Zealand? Canada? Japan? France? I mean you really aren't trying there.

> if not further along.

The only places further along are China, Russia, Georgia, Venezuela, and Hungary. Even Slovakia or Poland or Germany aren't as bad (though still troubling). It's really hard to be more authoritarian than the US is now still. The Feds claiming they'll keep going at Comey yet again really seals the deal there .

Not saying it's worth it for you, but there are lots of places.

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The Comey case is interesting. I can certainly see it as "the US is trying to be authoritarian" (or at least the current administration is).

But the courts ruled in Comey's favor. There is no reason to think that, if the feds try again, the courts won't rule for Comey again. That's still "rule of law", no matter how hard the current administration is trying to make it otherwise.

Now, sure, in an ideal world the case should never have been filed. In a just world, he would not have been put through that. And in an even-somewhat-ideal world, the case would not be re-filed. Absolutely. But for all that, the situation in the US is not (yet) as dire as you are painting it.

The administration can just keep coming at him as long as they're in power, and that is itself effectively a punishment. If each case takes just 90 days to play out, they can bring four or so of those per year, on the taxpayer dime (while themselves getting paid, by us, to do it, in fact!) and waste tons of Comey's money and time, while also stressing him out.

The safeguard against this is supposed to be that Congress would eventually put a stop to it, or that the people wouldn't vote someone in who'd abuse the power of the executive branch to extrajudicially punish opponents. Neither of those safeguards have worked. Courts can tell them to stop but they have to keep telling them with each case, after everyone goes through all the motions (so to speak).

Well, the first case got squished pretty quickly (at the first motion, I believe), and it got squished in a way that damaged the ability of one of Trump's people to do her job.

And there's a statute of limitations here. It has already elapsed, in fact, though the administration is trying to argue that they way they're doing it allows for an exception. If that doesn't fly, then it's just over.

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