politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
The issue is not the pardon power. The issue is the other branches of government failing to act to restrain the President.
The whole balance of powers works best when all parties act with integrity. If one of the beaches act in bad faith, the other branches must intervene to constrain the party and mitigate the damage.
What has happened is that both Congress and the Judiciary are acquiescing to claims of executive power and we can all see the results.
The founders never would have imagined something like Unitary Executive Theory would ever take off, as they assumed that each branch would be too selfish to willingly diminish their own power by handing it over to another branch.
edit: On second thought, seeing as half of them didn't know if they wanted an elected representative or a king to rule their new nation, maybe the outcome was all too predictable even back then. Apparently some people, even wise and intelligent people, tend to gravitate towards the mindset that the powerful deserve to rule and the meek deserve to be ruled over as a sort of natural order.
Balance of powers has never really worked. Congress will seldom impeach a president from their own party. Two party system has completely effed the US.
I agree. The pardon is a powerful tool with very real and valid uses, but it only works if the rest of the government is working
The founders couldn’t imagine a president making literally everyone in their party’s congress a scared little bitch.
Or they couldn't imagine a populace that would elect Trump.
The founders actually didn't trust the populace with electing the President. That's the original reason why the Electoral College exists. Back then, State Legislatures would choose electors, and they would all meet to choose the President.
So I would argue the opposite, they did imagine a populace that would elect someone like Trump, and deliberately designed a system that would ignore them.
Are you fucking kidding me?
In many ways they were far, far worse than Trump. And proud of it.
How many Mulatto bastards did Jefferson sire, again?
I agree with you generally. Do they have a specific mechanism for controlling the pardon? Or would they just have to fall back on unpacking and removing the president? Because if that’s the only solution, sure it exists, but yeah the pardon power itself could probably use some work.
His pardons are as legitimate as his election fraud claims. The rest of the government should be treating it with similar disdain
There are not really any legal limits on Trump's pardon power, so what Trump is doing there is technically within the law. In that sense it is quite different from Trump's fraudulent election fraud claims.
14A3 disqualifies him. He wasn't legally appointed.
The problem is enforcing it and getting it legally recognized that nothing he did in the second term had legal force, and nothing had immunity.
Which is objectively true. But also kinda besides the point.
If the presidency gets nullified due to always having been disqualified, the pardon power nullifies. So it's to the point.
This is it exactly. Our friendly local Lemmy user is sharper than a Guardian columnist.
Which does not surprise me.
To expect all parties to act with integrity is naive, expect all parties to act maliciously and with incompetence and design the system to cope that way.
To be able to override judges and juries, that's a true horror that compromises the legal system, or if you must, at least have it that pardons are only able to be recommended by the President and 75% of Congress must also agree.