DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential records public
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Get out of the way, so-called judges, RINOs and communists in Congress, the failing Media, and also the low IQ former MAGA people who helped get them elected. This was a landslide! Also, true republicans don't believe in mob rule, we don't have a democracy, we have a republic. Except if our guy wins by 1% then we totally believe in mob rule and have a mandate, compared to that 1% marginal win, what are laws passed by a supermajority? A mere trifle!
The differences are that Trump hasn't much left in the tank and never did have a law degree.
Those difference matter little, there are plenty in Trumps orbit who are making the plans and pushing them out, all that's needed is another muppet for POTUS.
Where Trump gets interesting is right now and the near future; he's cornered, losing support, and will be lashing out and bending reality to protect his reputation and ill gotten gains.
It's more than just his opinions, which are easily duplicated. It's more than just audacity; anybody can lie boldly. He's got a supreme talent for failing upward that I do not comprehend, but I don't see anyone else with it.
Not that I see it turning out well. At best we return to two more-or-less equally unlikeable parties, except this time with one having a massive thumb on the scales.
Jokes aside, this presidency showed that it was not our written laws that enabled the expected operation of gov branches within their expected limits.
It was these unwritten laws we were taking for granted, because casually we assume that the gov will not be malicious.
It seems to me that we need to stop letting lawyers write laws, and instead start writing verified programs.
It has nothing to do with the writing. It's the "fuck you we'll ignore" it thing that's a problem. No amount of writing fixes that.
The problem with any system like you are suggesting where "we need to stop letting lawyers write laws, and instead start writing verified programs" is the same as always - who enforces the law?
The cause of the dysfunction we have now is that congress has failed to check the power of the executive. Congress should have impeached and removed Donald Trump for treason and other high crimes after January 6th. He should have been convicted and felt the full force of the law around his neck for trying to interfere with the function of congress and overthrow the election.
Every problem we face with our government right now traces back to the same issue: Congress is not doing its job. Congress has the power to impeach and remove the president for threatening to nuke Iran. Congress has the power to stop the executive branch from starting illegal wars overseas. Congress has the power to punish ICE for executing citizens in the streets of Minneapolis.
Congress has failed to exercise this power for several reasons, a major one being that both the house and senate are no longer representative of the American people. The house has been limited in membership ever since the reapportionment act and the senate was always designed to favor wealthy landowners in slave states.
This results in placing massively disproportionate power in the hands of a tiny fraction of voters just because they live in the middle of nowhere, which in turn makes it very easy for the rich and powerful to game the system. There is no way forward for us as a country without reforming congress.
Congress spent decades ceding power to the executive because it realized it could not do anything itself. And now it's stuck.
We are the final check on making sure that government is serving us and not the other way around. The founders were pretty open about what they expected from us if that could no longer be accomplished within the framework they were putting into place. I'd like to think that we can still vote our way out of this problem, but I fear that between attempts from the government to suppress voters and the surprisingly large number of people content with the idea of a fascist dictator (so long as he's wearing their team's colors) we might have a hard time overcoming the fear, apathy, and learned helplessness in the rest of the population necessary to effectively insist on the changes we need.
Even our two party/first past the post system discourages voting by limiting the choice people have in who they can realistically support in the first place.
They’re not ignoring. They’re saying they think the law itself is unconstitutional.
From the article:
>> In a sweeping new memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel, the DOJ claims the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. The department’s edict, which is already facing legal challenges, argues that a president’s records are private, rather than public, property.
So far, it appears to be a very convincing argument to the supreme court most of the time.
Yeah, well, they can say that to SCOTUS.
Even when their edicts are overturned by the courts they suffer no consequences.
I agree on the excess.
Something where I pay a fair price for an article or subscription, without the new customer rates, and without the "call us" retention annoyances. Something like the old Netflix, where it covers 80% of what you want at a reasonable monthly fee with easy cancellation.
I wouldn't mind supporting good journalism, but I do mind having a teaser rate that will jump 5x after a year, making it difficult to cancel (call to cancel), and having 1 pay gate per news outlet.
> Stone was found guilty of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress, and tampering with a witness
Maybe the solution to all this mess is for Congress to finally flex the Sergeant-at-Arms position. While there is a delegation to the Department of Justice for efficiency sake, there technically isn't anything preventing the Legislature from doing it's own footwork.
It's the same fucking people.
I don't think this is for him and his many many crimes as much as it is being set up for those who will come after him and the many more crimes they have planned for the future.
It so unsurprising that these dark days would have an administration that argued it owes nothing to the American people, nothing to history. That they would want to hide their filthy destruction.
Back in 2018, Trump used to go around violating the law with his bare hands, ripping up documents that displeased him. Pitiful staffers were assigned to go tape the documents back together, in some sign of respect to the law & history. https://boingboing.net/2018/06/11/presidential-records-act.h...
I strongly dislike the "everyone is 12" or everyone is 15 tale being told now, that there are no adults. There are adults. They are all just wicked evil people working against America, are the pardoned insurrectionists and much much worse, with far more focused reign to do what Reagan and the Powell memorandum and Project 2025 (which is but a recent update to a long running document begat from the Powell Memorandum) set out to do: to unmake America, to bypass all checks, to dynamite the nation from the inside out. Heck yes they want to make sure no one sees them TNT'ing the Union.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-promises-mass-pard...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_S...
> In 2023, Governor Tony Evers used a line-item veto to extend what was supposed to be a two year temporary funding increase for schools to last over 400 years.
https://www.businessinsider.com/wisconsin-tony-evers-400-yea...
> Evers was able to make the nearly 400-year-old addition by vetoing part of a phrase that had referred to the 2024-25 school year, by striking a hyphen and the "20." When read together, the legislature's previous proposals for the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 school years became 2023-2425.
The WI Supreme Court upheld it. What a fucked-up system.
In picture form: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/u...