Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. Nothing they say or put forth as law will be obeyed. So why even have laws then?
Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in public hearings with hardly a consequence. There ought to be criminal proceedings and punishments for this. A resignation here and there isn’t enough (one way they’d handle that is by joining the privacy sector and getting back into the game by proxy).
They are not toothless, they put them in those positions of power and do so gladly.
Remember that Snowden always said he was ready to come back to the U.S and be trialled, as long as the trial wouldn't be a secret trial. Those who created the laws for those secret trial where not the CIA or the NSA, it was politician.
The same way they made it so that it is forbidden to talk about the programs of certain agencies, even for law maker, meaning they approve programs without debate, with only a few senator knowing what the program is even about.
They created those laws, not the NSA, not the CIA, they could choose as easily to remove them. But it is too useful for them. The NSA can create a massive surveillance network that serves them without having to ever disclose it to the public.
> They created those laws, not the NSA, not the CIA, they could choose as easily to remove them. But it is too useful for them.
This is true, but it's not the entire truth either. Most congressmen don't have access to the really sensitive intelligence that comes from these surveillance operations, so it can't be that useful to many of them.
A legislator's primary goal is to get reelected, and working to remove powerful operations like this deeply threaten a legislator's political viability during elections. Remember, there's an incredible amount of money changing hands in the military-industrial complex, and money plays a huge role in winning elections.
> This, to me, is the heart of the issue. American politics are fundamentally corrupted by campaign financing
British politics is not; the scale of our financial political scandals would make a DC lobbyist giggle at the quaintness of it. This is also true of the other Five Eyes, and yet all of them are trying to be just as aggressive as each other, there’s just a difference in scale of the parent country.
I’m not arguing for or against anything here, just noting that intelligence agencies in similar countries which aren’t beset by campaign finance woes are doing exactly the same thing.
is the more pressing problem to issue first. Is their "primary goal" not to legislate first? Pandering to the court of public opinion in order to secure re-election seems like it would also cause all sorts of conflicting incentives.
I respectfully disagree; we want them accountable to the public.
The simplest way to have politicians accountable to public opinion (without violence) is by making them have to care about elections.
That's the entire point of democracy.
> I respectfully disagree; we want them accountable to the public. The simplest way to have politicians accountable to public opinion (without violence) is by making them have to care about elections. That's the entire point of democracy.
Having them care about getting reelected is one thing, having them care primarily about funding their campaign (because, while the deepest pockets may not always win, that is usually the way to bet) is quite another.
How do you use the democratic process to hold someone accountable for weakening the democratic process? That’s like running barefoot to catch someone who stole your shoes.
I don’t think elections themselves, or manipulating what people care about, is the “simplest way” to do anything. It will make a giant mess, but there are simpler ways to do that too.
I don’t know the simplest way, but my guess is that it includes breaking down the current few large non-self-sufficient communities with poorly-defined value systems and weak social fabric into many small self-sufficient communities with well-defined value systems and strong social fabric, each of which will have less internal turmoil and therefore be better-equipped to be a healthy member of the ecosystem.
The public are only given a reflection of the candidate and even that is mediated by the media. Why worry about being accountable when you can spin the truth to suit your party agenda while half the media or more go merrily along with it. The public don’t see truth surrounding our leadership but a reflection that’s often far removed from reality. And it’s been this way since the beginning.
>This is true, but it's not the entire truth either. Most congressmen don't have access to the really sensitive intelligence that comes from these surveillance operations, so it can't be that useful to many of them.
Pretty easy fix is to make it illegal for them to not have the info. Then again I would prefer laws entirely removing the idea of sensitive information from the government. It is like a gun. A useful tool, very important for defending yourself, but those who have abused it in the past lose the right to it no matter how useful it is. The government has abused secret information in the past and as such should no longer be alloweed to have it. I rather we didn't have spies than to have the same laws protecting spies also cover up and enable child sexual abuse.
Far as I understand the first director the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had blackmail on a lot of federal politicians. Which is why he left his position feet first. When Hoover died Nixon replaced him with someone with no previous ties to the agency.
The CIA has deep ties to the American upper classes. And probably serves their interests over the states. Or their own interests. Aldrich Ames was living well beyond is means for years. A good supposition is people at his level routinely trade intel to 'friendly' government an corporate interests.
Right. Look at the din over the Epstein stuff, due to covering/blackmailing/etc over the misbehavior by a small group.
Then imagine a single entity that has every domestic text, phone call, and email ever sent, searchable and indexed, on any politician, judge, or candidate. It's far, far, more power than merely spying on foreign powers.
The security services have to do some unpleasant stuff in order to attempt some control over people. Whats the oldest profession in the book, then ask yourself what is the second oldest profession in the book? Would that be blackmail?
You can level a lot of shit at the British upper classes, but being war-shy isn’t one of them. Until about 50 years ago, the entirety of the officer corps was picked from the gentry, and it’s not _that_ different today. Junior officers are just as much cannon fodder as other ranks.
I'm pretty sure junior officers were actually one of the hardest hit sections of the Army in WW1 and WW2.
I read a book recently about a young (19!) year old tank commander in WW2 and he was told by his CO when arriving in Normandy that his life expectancy was 10 days.
Where's the evidence the CIA serves the country and government? There's not a lot of evidence that it is effective at protecting the American people from anything.
There is a lot of evidence that the CIA is doing whatever it can to ensure that the %1 of American society get their way with the world, however. That's not the same as 'serving country and government', by any stretch of the imagination.
Trials are secret because they don't want to reveal further secrets. On the other hand you hear people saying: "If you are doing everything right, you have nothing to hide."
The difference is that in a democracy you should be responsible for the actions of government and you need to be able to audit governmental action, not the other way around.
I am surprised that they really have zero cases where mass surveillance helped. I would have thought they would make some up at least, but that got probably too hot.
Of course there is a massive amount of secret cases where it did help, but they just cannot tell you about...
It is a bad excuse that can be used to justify anything. Instead the case for secrecy needs justification.
They're spooks. This is what they're for. The constraints are at best just theatre, obviously their adversaries aren't going to obey these rules, and they know that so if they are to be effective (and if they aren't why would they exist at all?) they will also disobey these rules.
The purpose of such rules in practice is to help the American public to sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You know the scene in Casablance, even if you've never watched the movie - it has permeated our culture Captain Renault claims to be shocked to discover that the club is being used for gambling, undercut by a croupier giving him his winnings.
If you don't want spooks to do what spooks do, don't pass a law saying it mustn't happen, don't vote for a government that promises they'll exercise oversight over the spooks to prevent it. Just get rid of the spooks. Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely. They'd just cease to exist and while I'm sure some small scale abuses would continue you just can't run programmes to snoop these huge volumes on pocket change, and companies would be less likely to co-operate with informal requests than with the Department of Justice.
But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid, and so the spooks will certainly continue to be authorised and "outrages" will happen when once in a while it is revealed that the spooks are doing what spooks do but nothing actually changes. Eventually it'll get to be so routine the The Onion has a pre-built news article for it like for the mass shootings.
Sorry but I disagree (partially). Where I agree is that covert agents operating abroad are by-definition criminals. Foreign governments don't give permission for spies to be present, and they break all sorts of their nations host laws while there. Morally this is questionable... if you believe that 'all men' have 'certain unalienable rights' then surely those should apply to how you treat all humans on earth and not only your own citizens; but most countries and their citizens accept the cat and mouse game that is spying abroad.
Where I disagree is that these powers are unchecked and tolerated when used on a country's own citizens. The mandate of both of these organizations is crystal fucking clear - do bad shit abroad but not to your own citizens. There has to be oversight of this, that oversight has to be built into the system, and there have to be consequences. Knowingly collect data on US citizens: go to jail. Fail to regularly audit whether or not you are inadvertently collecting data on US citizens: go to jail. Torture, steal, trespass, hack? Jail. Know that someone has done this and look the other way? Jail. But what about domestic terrorism, or important exceptions? No problem! Get a warrant.
This whole business of "we don't want spies to be afraid to their job" is bullshit... As a business owner it would be much easier to not pay my taxes, defraud investors, avoid safety regulations, and have my competition murdered. But I don't do it (and I'm not preoccupied with dread about it). Either our shared values (e.g. the constitution) are important or they are not.
> But what about domestic terrorism, or important exceptions? No problem! Get a warrant.
I've heard about accounts of police investigations being aided with access to the mass surveillance data (through the FBI, I believe). It never goes to a FISA court, and the police use the information to develop a pretext for a warrant.
So even with a warrant, the power may still be unchecked. I believe it reasonable to conclude that conducting mass surveillance can't reliably done without abridging constitutional rights. I guess that leads us back to the unresolved conversation from early in this century about the trade-offs between liberty, privacy, and security.
The practice of obtaining warrants with artificial but believable evidentiary basis to conceal the illicit means by which the basis was actually obtained is called "parallel construction", and the intentional practice or facilitation of it should be a felony with a maximum penalty of imprisonment of up to 50 years (2.5x evidence tampering, and I'd be fine with a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years). It is a heinous perversion of the public trust, knowingly undertaken by unchecked law enforcement personnel to wilfully conceal unconstitutional acts. Parallel construction is a stain upon the very fabric of our nation... Or, you know, business as usual.
Well, yeah, that's the entire point of the Five Eyes: each member can spy on the others and share the results with the rest of them, but if one member were to spy on its own people, perish the thought! That would be unconstitutional!
> Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely.
Unfortunately that's not now power works, not even in a relatively free society such as the US. How often does the public actually get their way when it comes to policy? Once elected, representatives will almost certainly follow the same agenda - work hard to maintain power and privilege for the existing ruling class. Secret services with discretionary power are an invaluable tool in this endeavor.
When I expressed horror and outrage at the notion that the TSA can go through your luggage, an American friend told me "well if it keeps us safe...", so I'd say "afraid".
First of all, it's not at all clear that this implies fear as I understand the emotion.
More tangentially, as I usually fly outside the US, it's fair to say that this is far from just an American reality. For example, the Dublin Airport even explicitly mentions that hold baggage may also be searched by hand on their website:
> "Both your carry-on luggage and check-in baggage will be checked by means of detection equipment and may also be subject to a hand search." [1]
I have a hard time believing that airports with any restrictions on what check-in/hold baggage may contain (virtually all of them, if not all) don't have any provisions for searching bags, although maybe I'm wrong here.
Although, what country doesn’t have the ability to dig through your luggage? In my personal experience, Europe is the only place that I’ve seen armed officers dig through 100% of the bags on a flight while the entire airport watched.
If you have a family member that watches Fox News and then check some of their primetime programming out, you'll see both the fear and where that fear comes from.
I don't really disagree but I will single out Fox News because it's completely valid to do so. They are a much more blatant offender than any other outlet and essentially wrote the playbook on fear-mongering for political gain in this country. It's silly to deny the extent of their influence on the media landscape in your desire to seem equitable.
Fox News did indeed set us on that path initially, but it's also silly to deny the extent of the rest of the networks' buy-in into this playbook.
Fox News' use of the "FOX NEWS ALERT" interruptions and the fear mongering were quickly replicated by all the other major cable networks in an attempt to compete. All of the networks were complicit in selling us into war with lies,
I think it's really more silly and uninformed to single out Fox News, given the current media ecology and political climate. Today's CNN and MSNBC will do things that are simply treacherous, making Fox News look tame by comparison. We're in a new era now.
Fear and sensationalism sells news - yes. And Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are guilty of that - yes. But that does not mean they are in any way equivalent or as-bad-as-each-other. They are not.
Fox News uses fear - and the degree at which their resident pundits use falsehoods and misrepresent the truth - and use fear as a partisan tool to push one single political party - is far beyond CNN and MSNBC.
Huge parts of these agencies' activities have been moved off the books or to private entities. It's not as simple a matter as just cutting off their funding anymore.
Sure, but the money still has to come from somewhere, and that's from appropriations authorized by Congress.
Now, if you believe that these agencies have amassed and hoarded enough of the money they've already been given that they now have an endowment that can perpetually fund their activities, then yes, that would mean you really can't stop them. But I'd find it hard to believe that's the case; what they do is not cheap, and I'd be surprised if there's all that much left over after they spend their yearly budget on regular operations.
If Congress voted to completely defund these agencies, they'd go away. Not immediately, and I'm sure there will still be some in power who create limited shadow agencies that run on much, much smaller budgets, but they can't operate at the scale they do now without continued funding.
I'm not so sure they would go away without a fight. These are people who gave grown accustomed to breaking laws (including US laws), fomenting coups, and even assassinations in order to gain control. If Congress was seriously threatening to abolish them, Congressmen might start having a sharp uptick in "accidents". That's the problem with getting in bed with dubious characters.
Oh, certainly. But I find it hard to believe that these agencies would keep the support of the public if they started assassinating Congresspeople. At some point there's too much opposition to make it feasible to continue on.
Really, though, I'd expect them to maintain Congress' support through non-lethal means. Bribery, blackmail, stuff like that. A Congressperson in your pocket is much more useful than a suspiciously-dead body.
But still, if US citizens as a whole really wanted them gone, they'd just continue voting in people who will take a hard line against funding them.
I don't expect something like this to come to pass, mind you, but it's possible.
> Now, if you believe that these agencies have amassed and hoarded enough of the money they've already been given that they now have an endowment that can perpetually fund their activities, then yes, that would mean you really can't stop them. But I'd find it hard to believe that's the case; what they do is not cheap, and I'd be surprised if there's all that much left over after they spend their yearly budget on regular operations.
What do you think In-Q-Tel[1] is for? It's about ensuring that the TLAs will exist in perpetuity regardless of Congress.
Not sure what your point is. Sure, the 3-letter agencies have an investment arm, but the capital used for those investments is a tiny fraction of their operating budget. And that capital still comes from Congress' appropriations.
The parent previously offered that three letter agencies would require an investment arm to sustain themselves. In that context, I offered that they had one. I can't claim any knowledge about the profitability of that group or what portion of funding is provided by that group which is relevant and you have added perspective on. I have personally experienced InQTel as an alternative funding mechanism which argues against it being a serious funding source.
The off-the-books money that the CIA uses to pay those shady Raytheon subsidiaries doesn't appear out of thin air. It may be several layers removed and cycled through a few South American laundromats, but its genesis is always the U.S. Treasury.
The genesis is often illegal activities of various kinds, especially drug trafficking. Although I agree that is probably not enough money to run a mass surveillance operation on the scale of the NSA in perpetuity.
These agencies are part of the executive and greenlit by the legislature. Mentally divorcing them from that is part of the problem and creates this exact situation where the agencies roam uncontrolled.
The chain of accountability for their actions does not end at the head of the agency. It extends into both the White House as well as Congress. As indeed "resignations here and there" are pointless, the public perception needs to shift to a point where elected officials are actually held to what they do (as opposed to, as is frequently happening, what they say.)
> it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies.
This is by design, a design which was cemented in place on November 22, 1963. If real accountability ever comes to the intelligence agencies, it won't come from the executive or legislative branches over which they exert a lethal veto.
Yes. The CIA had already started circumventing the POTUS's executive authority in Eisenhower's administration with unauthorized U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, but it was when a rogue faction within it assassinated Kennedy (with some "special" help) that the CIA became the final word on any matters of real consequence to the U.S. empire.
Assuming the CIA assassinated a president because at one point someone gave a command without being explicitly authorized from their superior is quite a leap, don't you think?
I have heard many different equally baseless conspiracy conspiracy theories about this by now, and they all have two things in common: They each conflict with the other theories and their adherents all sound utterly convinced they are right. Which tells you something about people and their theories.
> Assuming the CIA assassinated a president because at one point someone gave a command without being explicitly authorized from their superior is quite a leap, don't you think?
Indeed it would be, and that's not what I was doing in my post. I brought up the U-2/Eisenhower history only to establish that the CIA was already taking steps to make itself the final arbiter on policy, above and independent from the POTUS. Especially when it came to any potential rapprochement in the Cold War, toward which JFK was also making serious overtures just before he was killed.
You can go looking through the vast numbers of theories around JFK's killing and find absurd ones I'm sure, but lumping them all together into one big undifferentiated mass hardly makes for a good argument. In favor of the existence of a conspiracy, there are numerous witnesses and extensive documented and circumstantial evidence, and the motive for such a conspiracy is clear. It's one thing if you don't find that evidence persuasive but it's ridiculous to call it "baseless."
Few things can stand up against the ‘national security’ argument in America (maybe even nothing). A court ruling like this will be overturned in a heartbeat with any kind of terrorist attack. Don’t count out the current domestic unrest to lead to legislation that buffs up these agencies going forward if the Republicans win again.
There is a Decemberists refrain about the reaction to 9/11, the war on terror: "Because America can, and America can't say no." Or at least, I thought it stood for that, at the time.
Part of a solution may be to introduce a "principle of proportionality" like [1] (if one does not already exist), and to aggressively remove the bugs in the US judicial system that prevent ordinary courts from examining the spies, the military and the executive. Like the state secrets privilege [2]. Then the system can prevent itself from backsliding during crises.
Laws are no good if courts take 10 years or more to figure out whether they have jurisdiction over, or are able to subpoena evidence relating to, crass, publicly known, obviously illegal, civil rights violations. If courts take too long, standards shift, are forgotten, then abolished. The normative power of the facts.
Jewel vs NSA has taken 10 years and has gotten nowhere.
Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies.
If that were true, I think Trump would already be gone.
Now, when can we begin prosecuting the instigators? Presumably, after we have prosecuted those who ordered and participated in torture. (There is no statute of limitations on torture, is there?)
A reminder that a CIA officer who oversaw, ordered, and participated in systematic detainee torture, then wrote the order to destroy the evidential tapes of said torture, was not only not punished or prosecuted but promoted to the current Director of the agency.
Similarly, the NSA betrayed us. They don't get to say that they were just following orders. We must always understand that the NSA betrayed us and we can't trust them any more. Information dominance is the most powerful way for a nation to dominate and control its people. The NSA turned on the US Citizens and betrayed them in this way.
* yes, there were some democrats who voted in her favour, but there were republicans too who voted against her. Overall though, the overwhelming majority democrats did vote against her. Far from "unanimous support" like you claim.
I have no goal in undermining your point; it has only raised a curiosity for me. Overall your point is strong with your second bullet, it's just the first bullet I want to discuss without detracting from.
109 generals sounds like a large number. It's a compelling metric!
But, I don't really know how many generals (and admirals) there really are in the military. I just know that the US military is kinda huge, so there's got to be a lot of them. I mean, the Pentagon alone is a massive building (the largest office in the world!) that I imagine being full of generals.
And then, I see in the letter that all of the signees are retired, which expands the total number of generals (and admirals) alive significantly.
I guess, I'm trying to ask a question about metrics, because I face this constantly. The absolute metric (>100 generals!) looks very strong, but the relative metric (nn% of all living generals and admirals active and retired) would possibly be underwhelming. It's no small feat to get a person with a real voice to sign a public letter like that so, the absolute number is big, but if the cause were of broad interest the relative number would be significant too....
On a minor bit of research I see there can only be 231 flag officers active at any time. I don't know how many are retired, but that does indicate the absolute number is a significant relative number. I still just struggle with the right way to report and digest metrics like this.
The number of generals (and admirals) in active duty is capped at about 650. Active duty generals are prohibited in most instances from opining in political matters, and they almost absolutely refrain from political matters over which they are not prohibited from opining on. Even after retirement, most still refrain from public opinions on political matters, but a small subset become politically active.
109 retired generals is far more than you can regularly expect on ordinarily political matters. For context, nominations for secretary of defense generally elicit opinions from retired generals. James Mattis, who quite possibly is the most popular military general for several decades, only ever received a couple dozen public expressions of support for confirmation as secretary of defense. The fact that 109 generals publicly opposed any confirmation of a Secretary of Anything, let alone a director level position, and did so in a unanimous letter, is absolutely massive.
> I see in the letter that all of the signees are retired, which expands the total number of generals (and admirals) alive significantly.
Active duty generals generally do not comment on political matters. Once they have left military service it's much easier for them to give a public opinion about politics without creating a conflict of interest.
There was at least some level of accountability for US Army members after the Abu Ghraib scandal [0], while I haven't heard about any CIA employee being held accountable in a similar way.
It's one thing to support an authoritarian regime with torture cells because it gives you cheap oil, it's another thing to do it yourself, with your own personel, because with this you lose your moral superiority and tarnish your own reputation. I'm not saying the former is great, it's bad, but that regime is not beholden to the US constitution, laws and judges, unlike the US federal employees.
A good point I heard a senator make in her confirmation hearings [1]: Even if she wasn't involved in torture at all, (and she was), alone the fact that Trump nominated her because he believed she was involved, turns the decision about her nomination into a decision about torture, no matter how much she regrets it in her letter to Sen. Warner (and the letter's regret was minimal).
Both republicans and democrats will do everything to keep up the American empire. Their foreign policy doesn't differ too much (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, Bay of Pigs/Cuba, Panama, ...) as does their management of the three letter agencies (CIA torture and drug trading, NSA listening in, ...). Kennedy, Obama and Clinton haven't been that different from Nixon, Reagan or Bush in that area. Sometimes their tools differ.
These are war crimes. Someone convicted of torture in the way that CIA officials have authorized could be sentenced to life imprisonment. The only problem is that the US is not a party to the ICC (probably because so many power holders are guilty of war crimes), so we do not pursue war crime trials.
I would like to see a concerted effort to document these crimes, issue warrants for arrest, and have customs officials in all ICC-party states ready to flag and arrest any suspected war criminal, in order to extradite for ICC trial. Some countries do this already but we need all of the ICC-party states to do it.
And yes, I get that they would likely just never travel to countries where they may be arrested. But for the powerful, that in itself is a punishment. They may not serve prison time, but we can take away their European vacations.
That's a nice fantasy you've got there. I'd love to see some EU nation try to kidnap a prominent US citizen, but it'll never happen because the consequences would be severe.
The consequences would not be simply severe. There is an actual law passed by US in 2002 authorizing military action against ANY country (including NATO members!) working to bring US citizens to the Hague for a trial at ICC. And yes, that law explicitly allows invading the Netherlands and attacking ICC if needed in order to prevent war crime trials against US citizens. To make matters worse, there are rumored secret extensions (by executive action) of that law allowing LETHAL action against ANY individual(s) (as opposed to countries) who work towards getting a US citizen to trial at the ICC. See my comment in response to the use who you said was living in a fantasy world.
User @jaywalk said you live in a fantasy but it is actually an understatement! How come you have never heard of the "American Service-Members' Protection Act", which Bush signed into law SPECIFICALLY for de-facto preventing ICC from ever trying a US citizen for war crimes???
"...In 2002, then-President George W. Bush signed the American Service-Members' Protection Act into law, authorizing the use of military force to free its citizens from incarceration and trial by the International Criminal Court. The act, dubbed the "Hague Invasion Act" for the name of the city in the Netherlands where the ICC holds prisoners, allows the President to use the American military to free its service members or those of any allied country who might be captured for trial there. More menacingly for potential U.S. allies, the act allows the United States to end military assistance for signatory countries to the ICC treaty, unless they agree not to extradite American citizens to The Hague."
That law explicitly authorizes the US military to INVADE the Netherlands and attack the ICC in order to free a US citizen on trial there. Netherlands is a NATO member, just like the US!! Not to mention a party to a number of other non-aggression pacts the US has with most Western European countries. That law Bush pushed for and signed makes the entire NATO idea a freaking joke. No country is safe if it ever dares to arrest US military members, no matter how horrible the war crimes committed by them. As they say in the commercials "but wait, there is more!" There are also multiple secret executive actions and DOJ "legal opinions" accompanying that fascist/evil law and the rumor is those secret amendments authorize covert LETHAL action by US special forces against foreign government officials (or any other foreign individual for that matter) working towards bringing a US citizen to trial at the ICC in Hague.
So, I would be thrilled to know what customs officials you have in mind that would be willing to get assassinated (covertly) for doing ANYTHING that can be construed by the US as aiding/abetting the capture and bringing a US citizen to ICC for a war crime trial. Even if you find such kamikazes, no country would dare issue orders authorizing its own officials to perform such acts against US military personnel.
So, no offense, but what world exactly are you living in!?!?
The historical track record isn't good. Nobody bothered much with prosecuting nazis or nazi collaborators after WW2, Stasi spies after the reunion, party members after the soviet collapse, AT&T and others for collaborating with the NSA on warrantless surveillance (that was Bush) or the CIA torturers (that was Obama).
"[N]othing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past … we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future."
I'm confused by your Bush and Obama references—both incidents occurred under Bush, the one that you attribute to Bush was revealed under Obama, whereas the one you attribute to Obama was revealed under Bush.
Are you attributing based on occurrence or based on decision not to prosecute? Did you accidentally switch them?
It appears to be trying to say "no one prosecuted the CIA torturers (and the Obama administration should have)." Implying not that his administration was behind it, but that his administration failed to do anything about it after the fact. Which may or may not be a fair point.
Do you have some deeper point you're trying to get at? This sounds like a total nitpick, and I'm not sure where you're getting your erroneous corrections from.
The illegal wire-tapping was a matter known to the public before Obama's time and there was a case brought by the EFF during the Bush years. The CIA torture comment most likely refers to the fact that a Senate report on CIA abuses was published during Obama's tenure and led to no punishment that I'm aware of.
Just another data point: I read it same as the parent, that the original text was referring to the fact that the Obama administration didn't prosecute the torturers (regardless of when it occurred).
It seemed obvious to me that the point being made was that neither party seems to care to hold wrongdoers in government accountable for their actions.
"During the early stages of the Iraq War, United States Army and _Central Intelligence Agency_ personnel committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq,[1] including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder.[2][3][4][5] The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in _April 2004_."
While not many Nazis and Stasi agents got convicted at the end of the day (mostly due to a lack of clear evidence), many of them at least were tried in a proper court. In case of the US intelligence agencies, however, not even that is happening.
Don't forget about Keith B. Alexander, the director of the NSA at that time.
He testified to congress that this program helped foil 54 terror plots. Weeks later, he conceded that it was helpful in "only one or two".
We later found out there was basically just one, and it wasn't a terror plot; it was a Somali-born taxi driver living in San Diego who attempted to send $8,500 to a Somali terror group.
But the damage was done. The headlines blared from his initial testimony about the NSA using this program to thwart 50+ terror plots, but there was a fraction of that coverage correcting it.
Clapper's perjury may be more blatant, but Gen. Alexander's is pretty galling too. They both should've been charged.
"In July 1987, North was summoned to testify before televised hearings of a joint congressional committee that was formed to investigate the Iran–Contra scandal. During the hearings, North admitted that he had misled Congress..."
One of the sources explains that when congress investigated the Iran-Contra scandal, it granted Oliver North immunity for what he would say. From one of the Wikipedia sources:
"The most serious obstacle to North's prosecution was the immunity grant extended him by the Select Committees that in 1987 investigated the Iran/contra matter. North's nationally televised testimony under that grant of use immunity, which guaranteed that nothing he told Congress could be used against him in a criminal proceeding, greatly complicated Independent Counsel's investigation and raised serious questions as to whether North could ever be tried."
Don't forget North then was forced out of the NRA after being appalled at the widespread corruption around the executive vice president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre. It's pretty sad when Oliver North is the ethical voice of reason in the room.
A number of people have been convicted of perjury for lying to Congress.[1] Outside of Congress, Bill Clinton was known to have lied under oath (at a deposition) while in office, and was not thrown out of office.
The baseball player doesn’t have enough leverage in terms of being culpable and thus knowing enough about their crimes for which at least others could be prosecuted.
Hahah somehow I doubt this will even result in the records themselves being destroyed.
For one thing, the decision would have to be upheld at the Supreme Court -- although Gorsuch has signaled some willingness to put firm limits on this kind of data collection, which might tilt things in favor of upholding the lower court's ruling.
This program was authorized by Congress more than once and overseen by FISC. No one could have possibly believed they were doing anything illegal. In fact, the court today didn't rule the collection to have been criminal as much as they ruled the collected data to be inadmissable.
Probably never, since the metadata collection program was legally governed by Section 215 of the Patriot Act from 2001 to 2015, which modified the FISA Act. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 further enshrined the legal basis of the program. You can't prosecute people retroactively. Even if you could, it's unclear exactly who that should be.
At the time of the offenses, the perps knew they were violating the law. If the law authorizing the action is found unconstitutional, then that retroactive permission has been withdrawn. There is no question of "double jeopardy", because they never faced trial.
Why would you prosecute people who were given permission by the relevant authorities?
>The call-tracking effort began without court authorization under President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.<
So the PotUS gave them the authority.
>A similar program was approved by the secretive FISA Court beginning in 2006 and renewed numerous times, but the 9th Circuit panel said those rulings were legally flawed.<
So in this instance the IC was still operating under the authority of the FISA court. Whether the court came to the right conclusions or not is irrelevant to whether or not the agencies were bound to following those conclusions.
>The metadata program was officially shut down in 2015 after Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which provided a new mechanism where phone providers retained their data instead of turning it over to the government. The revamped system appears to have been abandoned by the NSA in 2018 or 2019.<
So the programs being discussed have already been terminated. What more would you have done? Are we going to prosecute judges for making rulings we disagree with?
>The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the decision as "a victory for our privacy rights," though the left-leaning group said it was "disappointed that, having found the surveillance of Mr. Moalin unlawful, the court declined to order suppression of the illegally obtained evidence in his case."<
As an aside, it's wildly funny to me that the ACLU won't defend free speech anymore but they'll defend terrorists and their supporters.
The ACLU’s moral compass needle has been wobbling for a while now, and it broke off completely after Trump was elected. They realized that they collect significantly more donations by framing themselves as champion of leftist ideals rather than the original purpose of defending actual civil liberties.
1: ACLU gained membership after Trump was elected. So?
2: ACLU is not a strong proponent of individual gun ownership, according to the article this has been true for at least 30 years.
3: Article makes far reaching claim in headline but mostly focuses about a single issue, the changes to title IX. Clearly the author disagrees with the ACLU, but the article doesn't give any context on the issue. It's hard to tell if it really is an uncharacteristic position for them to take. I think the heritage foundation has hated the ACLU for a very long time, so that's consistent.
Not sure why he is getting downvoted, this is accurate. They used to defend free speech rights for abhorrent people whose positions they strongly opposed like KKK members and Neo-Nazis, on principle. They are now entirely focused on left activism.
Are there examples of the ACLU declining to defend free speech for KKK members/neo Nazis that would illustrate this?
Is it possible there haven't been any meritous "censorship of a Nazi" cases for them to help with since the last time?
>> You're putting your signature on this document, and you know that there are major elements of the leadership of the DOJ that says this is illegal?
>No, they never said that it was illegal. And Jack was always very careful in saying: "We're not saying what the government has done is illegal. We're just saying we can't find any legal basis for this." And there's a difference. There is a difference.
>I did it because I wanted to protect the president. That's why I signed that document. And I felt that there was a legal basis to sign that document. I thought it was necessary to provide that signature.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez explaining why he signed his name to an order that had no legal basis.
You’re overlooking that each office has a scope of authority. The relevant authority in this case is the Constitution, unless we are no longer a nation of law.
We've changed the URL from https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/united-states-v-moalin-n... to an article that gives more background. The link to the decision is an excellent thing to post, but usually it's best as a supplement to a general article (if one can be found) that establishes context.
This question is meant in good faith, not to be facetious but out of a genuine lack of understanding: now what?
If this action was ruled illegal, then someone in the chain of command ordered this illegal action - in other words did something illegal. Is the individual who ordered the illegal action going to be disciplined? Is anyone?
Why is there a statute of limitations for government officials? This shouldn't be a thing when you're entrusted with the responsibilities that you are concerning an entire country and its citizens.
Sure, but we've decided that for some crimes (like murder) there is no statute of limitations, and we have a greater interest in prosecuting those crimes than in ensuring it's reasonable for a defendant to defend themself many years later.
I think the same should be true of our civil servants who wield so much power over the populace.
Cynicism aside, I genuinely don't understand how the legal system works where an action may be found illegal - with no actual penalties despite organizations and persons having committed that action.
Finding a wrongdoing and finding a wrongdoer are two very different problems.
I can observe that something has been stolen and still not know who stole it.
This is made much more difficult with the creation of legal entities designed with the explicit purpose of shielding wrongdoers from accountability; like corporations. The idea, as we're told, is that society benefits by shielding risk-takers from accountability; and so we balance this by making it incredibly difficult to hold organizations and the individuals within accountable for their collective wrongs.
In part, it's because an action of the government has a binary state (lawful/unlawful) distinct from the person having facilitated/executed it.
Then there is the issue of having had a crime committed. A charge must be clearly defined, proved by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of the accused's peers, tried in a court with appropriate jurisdiction, and the sentence must not be deemed either cruel or unusual in nature, and they must be brought by a someone with standing. Usually an Attorney General or prosecutor, who themselves wield the power of prosecutorial nullification, or as they prefer to call it so as not to night it's sister phenomena, jury nullification, prosecutorial discretion. The official in that position iseitherelected or a political appointee, so has every reason to be highly selective in the cases that deserve their time, effort, and publicity.
Make no mistake, the halls of justice that are the courts are not by any means apolitical. To give credit where it's due, of all the branches, they are the most noteworthy for illustrating active attempts to be apolitical, but there is still much indirect political taint to be found.
It will happen under a different technicality and under the table that it will be another 30 years before it’s brought to light and again nobody will be prosecuted
Law is what should happen, politics is what does happen.
A superficial look at how crimes are processed should make it obvious that people are in no sense "equal before the law."
Someone poor and black is going to have a much harder time of it than someone rich, white, and politically orthodox. Even more so if they're working for one of the TLAs.
The reality is the latter groups get the benefit of a literal stay-out-of-jail card labelled "national interest", while the former are seen as a threat to it.
You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it.
The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of the constitution.
> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it.
It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement. If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense. The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and procedures that the the country and government have decided to follow voluntarily, not because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
> The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of the constitution.
That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment. Many violations of the Constitution or Bill of Rights aren't clear until some court case interprets some action as not being in compliance. Would you have every county clerk that ever denied a same-sex marriage license or defined procedures to do so go to jail after Obergefell v. Hodges?
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
Actually, it's nonsense to think anything to the contrary. Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't. Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
> The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and procedures that the the country and government have decided to follow voluntarily, not because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
It's not a document of 'norms' and 'procedures'. It's a structure of how our Republic is built. Either we have a structure or we undermine it. That's really it, full stop. Amendments are apart of that structure to build or take away for what that structure is to be. Not 'ought to be' not 'suggested' not 'maybe if you'd like to follow', it's a mutually agreed upon Law.
>Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't.
Nitpick, the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole Articles of Confederation thing.
Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not. The courts are. Congress and the Supreme Court commonly disagree on the constitutionality of laws. What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy lead by the Supreme Court.
>Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
There is no social contract based on the constitution. It's just that enough people agree that it has value, so it does. That's not a social contract. No regular people voted on the Constitution. You don't have the ability to reject it if you don't agree with it.
> the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole Articles of Confederation thing.
This isn't a nitpick, this is simply irrational. The Articles of Confederation were the founding document of an institution called the "league of friendship," and although the Constitution inherits ideas from the Articles, they have no legal bearing on the latter. They're out of scope.
Meanwhile, the Constitution literally constitutes the foundations of an institution called "the U.S. federal government" which, discounting some rather academic Theseus' Ship arguments, is what governs us, today.
The constitution was no the first document written on this continent, but it is the last document in which we've invested our collective institution-reifying intention at the national level.
> What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy lead by the Supreme Court.
Overall agree that we shouldn't be throwing members of Congress in jail over good-faith disagreements of constitutionality, etc.
However, "Supreme Court oligarchy" is a stretch. Even if their rulings could send lawmakers to jail.
Amending the Constitution is always an option, and that's a 100% Legislative (Federal + 38 States) action that neither the courts nor the President can block.
With enough consensus, the Legislature (and by proxy, the electorate) technically have all the power.
1. Constitutional + simple majority + Presidential support = law.
2. Constitutional + 2/3 majority = law.
3. Unconstitutional + 2/3 majority + 38 states = law.
But, broad consensus among the electorate is hard to come by these days, especially on contentious issues.
Instead, both parties rail against "activist judges", stack the courts every opportunity they get, and regularly pass laws/programs with debatable constitutionality to constantly push the boundaries.
This is likely the correct "play to win" strategy too. I just wish people played the game as intended.
So, definitely understand the appeal for some sort of "punishment" against bad faith lawmaking, etc. Even if untenable in reality.
Nitpick. The people who were sent as representatives from each state to help write and ratify the constitution were chosen by the people of that state. So technically, through representative democracy, the regular people did agree to the constitution because their representatives agreed on it.
Not the same thing IMO. Ignoring the issue of who was allowed to vote in the 1780s, there's a reason why the House was voted on by the people and the Senate the state legislatures. They recognized then the two groups have different interests.
> Colan R said: So technically, through representative democracy, the regular people did agree to the constitution because their representatives agreed on it.
>> xxpor said: Not the same thing IMO.
It actually is. This country is not a direct democracy. You are trying to reinterpret the structure of this Republic. The people through their votes uphold the structure every time they vote. It's a collective decision (social contract) to have our vote to have representation and we 'trust' (for lack of a better term) said Rep. to perpetuate the ability of governing.
State Senators were still voted on by the People, and part of the vote of confidence for taking part in the State Senate was a recognition of their capability to choose who represented the State at the National level based on understanding of the State's business.
To be honest, I kind of wonder whether it was better to let the State Legislature decide. Wasn't alive then though and haven't done the research.
> State Senators were still voted on by the People...I kind of wonder whether it was better to let the State Legislature decide.
It seems you don't understand the difference between how the people directly elected US Senators since 1913 versus a State Republic that was voted on.
These are two very different things. I say very because one is more Democratic and the other is more Republic. A Republic is an indirect mechanism whereas Democratic is a direct mechanism.
Who do you think was allowed to vote to choose those people? Only free men who owned land. That was a very, very small fraction of the population of the colonies/US at the time. These were hardly "regular people".
>Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not.
Actually, the legislative branch is the final authority on what is Constitutional or not. Who do you think proposes, passes, organizes Constitutional Conventions, and ratifies Amendments?
It certainly isn't the Courts. Heck, judicial review isn't even enshrined in the Constitution, It just arose spontaneously out of case law; and everyone has been okay with it by and large such that there hasn't been the will to pass a "no judicial review" Amendment.
I mean, it seems silly to talk about, but it is right there. Though yes, for the last 200 year's, the Supreme Court striking down something as unconstitutional has generally been accepted as burying something six feet under politically, because no one in their right mind wants to carry the mark of "The person who changed the Constitution just to invalidate a Supreme Court decision."
>Nitpick, the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole Articles of Confederation thing.
Let's totally 'nitpick' because the structure that our entire government is built upon the Constitution. "The first, The Articles of Confederation, was in effect from March 1, 1781, when Maryland ratified it. The second, The Constitution, replaced the Articles when it was ratified by New Hampshire on June 21, 1788." [1]
If this 7 year gap is something that's causing you issues, just know that today that we aren't judged by 1900 laws. We're judged by the living document called the Constitution, as it 'replaced the Articles when it was ratified', and auxiliary laws via State/Local govts. But the backbone is the Constitution.
>Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not. The courts are.
In theory, sure. But Dred Scott said one thing (no Black person is free, even in the North) and the people in the North said something else with their 2nd amendment rights.
>What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy lead by the Supreme Court.
Actually I'm not. A law can (and in many cases, already does) include what appropriate punishments should be for a law that is broken.
> There is no social contract based on the constitution. It's just that enough people agree that it has value, so it does. That's not a social contract. No regular people voted on the Constitution. You don't have the ability to reject it if you don't agree with it.
These statements are entirely false.
1) Your first sentence and your second sentence are contradicting each other. ~'no social contract' vs ~'what a social contract is'.
2) As for the latter two sentences. We vote everyday with our citizenship. You either agree to that living document or you don't by your allegiance. No one is forcing you to be a US citizen ruled by Constitution, namely after an adult legal age. Constitution is just American's structure, it can be changed but within it's already given framework. The country could become a Communist rule of law, if it got ratified, whether an individual liked it or not.
> We vote everyday with our citizenship. You either agree to that living document or you don't by your allegiance. No one is forcing you to be a US citizen
You say that like anyone can just up and walk away. Where are you going to go? The borders are closed. If they weren't, they're going to want your tax money for a while, and if you don't like that you'll be deported and imprisoned. Disagree with any of that enough at any stage and your citizenship will be enforced with violence and death if need be.
No the US government is just unreasonably burdensome about releasing their snooping privileges on you. As an ex-pat the amount of demands the US puts on me is quite extreme compared to some of my fellow ex-pat coworkers from Mexico, Australia and Brazil.
The US demands ongoing duplication of information which they already have access to due to international income sharing laws and has an expectation for a portion of the income I earn entirely overseas. The only thing I get in return is the ability to "reactivate" my citizenship at will, but that's only because it costs about 7k to actually revoke your citizenship and your taxes are going to get reeeeeally closely audited for any missing back-taxes.
>> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
> Actually, it's nonsense to think anything to the contrary. Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't. Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
Huh? You're right that the Constitution defines the social contract, but it's still nonsense that violations by branches of the government itself should result in jail time. Checks and balances is supposed to ensure compliance, and honestly any attempt to add jail time to the mix would probably have all kinds of disastrous consequences to the balance of those checks. If this governmental system is to by dynamic enough to survive, its parts need the ability to probe the boundaries as needed. That can't happen if the people who make them up are paralyzed in personal fear of being jailed for a misstep. The framers themselves recognized that, since the Constitution isn't full of threats of criminal penalties. Even impeachment is deliberately just a removal from office.
> It's not a document of 'norms' and 'procedures'. It's a structure of how our Republic is built.
It's both of those things. If all the branches of government conspired to violate the Constitution, all that would happen is the country enters into an undefined state. If they were willing to do that, do you think they'd enforce penalties of jail against themselves for their violations? The Constitution itself isn't going to leap out of its case to arrest them.
> If they were willing to do that, do you think they'd enforce penalties of jail against themselves for their violations? The Constitution itself isn't going to leap out of its case to arrest them.
The people will, though. As I mentioned elsewhere, the final authority in the US are the people who chose their representatives in the government. If the highest level of government decides to break the law, then the people themselves enforce it.
> honestly any attempt to add jail time to the mix would probably have all kinds of disastrous consequences to the balance of those checks. If this governmental system is to by dynamic enough to survive, its parts need the ability to probe the boundaries as needed. That can't happen if the people who make them up are paralyzed in personal fear of being jailed for a misstep.
> The framers themselves recognized that, since the Constitution isn't full of threats of criminal penalties. Even impeachment is deliberately just a removal from office.
I separated the quotes to add emphasis.
The founders leaned very much in the direction of aristocratic, not all but it was the prevailing thought hence Republic instead of direct democracy.
As for the 'disastrous consequences', 'Constitution isn't full of threats', and 'impeachment is deliberately just a removal from office'.
I understand your points and they are historically accurate. One can see through the 'norm' that was created by President Ford pardoning President Nixon, that this understanding persists even in more recent history.
My words are a desire to see an amendment/law/ruling to go further in holding these leaders of our government accountable. As it's toxic to maintaining the social contract within our society, IMHO. If we are lenient on political corruption, even the foundations will crumble, IMHO.
The solution here is on fixing the parties/elections not imposing penalties on office holders. Higher quality candidates need to be on the ballot and make their way into office.
>The founders leaned very much in the direction of aristocratic...
Besides Hamilton, they absolutely did not. They were just anti-direct-democratic because they were well aware of the logistical problems, and structural ills of prior democracies. There is no concept of "Nobility" in the United States. We have Civil Servants. People who as a consequence of their office, in many ways have much higher legal exposure than the normal citizen. All Citizens may take any office with only mild qualifications on Age, literacy, and how one is chosen to get there.
That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic. That leaning is a much more recent thing that has emerged out of nearly half a century of political and economic consolidation through wage stagnation and technological advancement paired with a complete dismantling of top-to-bottom wealth redistribution, whether by market forces/government action notwithstanding.
>>My words are a desire to see an amendment/law/ruling to go further in holding these leaders of our government accountable. As it's toxic to maintaining the social contract within our society, IMHO. If we are lenient on political corruption, even the foundations will crumble, IMHO.
The founders actually culturally understood this believe it or not. If you look back in history, you can find numerous examples of incitement to refuse to engage in base behavior in executing the duties of office. It isn't universal, but the examples are relatively generous in frequency of having been recorded. You can also find many of the Founders personal papers and nuggets of wisdom warning that there is no greater danger to the Union than to the undermining of it's legitimacy through unwise or impulsive action or political theater.
Abraham Lincoln came to treat his responsibility to the country as something close to religious. Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all realized that a State would only last as long as the people running it could comport themselves as more-than-a-person in the fulfillment of their duties to the populace, and that the populace remained United in their respect and maintenance of each other's liberties, even in the face of taking on personal risk for the preservation of their fellow man's freedom.
Lincoln himself saw litigation and to a point legislation as a fundamental breakdown. The raising of an exception, if you will, of such a magnitude that it took the body of the Nation coordinated through it's elected Government to resolve the ill so rampant that not even a town could alone fix the issue.
How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men? Land owners of a certain acreage, looks like only 6% of the population fit that bill [1].
These people were a bit contradicting. 'All men' didn't mean all men. It meant all, white land owners. Also, to be clear, the founders and early civil servants were upper-middle-class British that moved to America to...have their stab at trying to become upper-class.
I'm not sure how you quantify (facts/evidence) your statement that "That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic". As this would be considered historic revisionism. Aristocratic might not be the most precise word (elitism goes too extreme) but it gets close enough to the vein of truth to understand my point. Selected few men, rule over the masses, by design.
> The founders actually culturally understood this believe it or not.
I wholeheartedly agree with this entire point you made here. I would go even further that the founders rigorously debated my point of govt officials accountability and they settled with the three branches as sufficient. But they intentionally left the door open for later terms to legislate/adjudicate which is again what I'm advocating for.
>How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men? Land owners of a certain acreage, looks like only 6% of the population fit that bill [1].
Aristocratic comes with way more baggage than what you describe; and you only have to look at jolly old England to see that. To be an Aristocrat. You had to be landed, but you also had to fit somewhere in the Peerage or established Nobility. That whole system of class stratification? That came with an entire Parliamentry House in the form of the House of Lords.
Where you ended up with the privilege 0f being a 0art of it being determined entirely on whether you were born in "aristocratic class".
That was quite literally considered the norm in most European countries at the time. Nobility was mum. Some Men just had a better lot in life. You got born into it, and it came with an entirely different social scene, responsibilities, perks, culture etc from 80 to 90% of the rest of the population. That was normal. If you were in, you had weight in policymaking far beyond the common man, you were Nobility. You could read, you could count, your family had proved their mettle, you were a treasure "revered" by your National edifice by definition, because you were noticed.
Then this crazy colonial bunch of States pops up, and all you have to do to have a say. Or participate in a major way in running the place is to get some land (cheap, and basically free in the sense you won it with sweat equity in those days), not be a slave to the regional authorities, and be able to show up to your communities meetings. That's it. If you were literate, you could end up getting picked to hoof it off to Congress, which at that time didn't pay anywhere near as generously as it does now, and would have to leave your life in the hands of your family, for weeks at a time. This was revolutionary at the time. Was there racism? Yes, absolutely, but there was no Aristocracy. There was no hard division of the classes of citizen like you'd get elsewhere. The landholding requirement was not onerous like it is now, and in fact, our history is filled with dead National Banks in part because people realized that they tended to disrupt the egalitarian baseline since financial institutions like such tend to end up being resource consolidation points away from the individual Citizen. Jeffersonian Democrats were particularly sensitive toward this issue. Even Hamilton at his worst imagined not an official Nobility, but that events would inevitably conspire to generate a class of "Merchant Princes" in America whose wealth allowed the to devote resources to exercising an oversized influence in the operation of Government, a reality we are arguably seeing, but has actively been fought against at other times in our history. We've had 100% tax rates in the United States.
The whole "no blacks" arose not out of a formal Aristocracy, but out of the set of compromises that kept the country operating as a single unit. The South needed it to stay functioning. And even then, for the time, it was revolutionary as wide a swath of the population had as recognizable a chunk of input as they did. Over time, things have only gotten more accessible, but they had to start somewhere. From the standpoint of a fledgling bunch of ex-colonies banding together, that made sense.
Get land? Cool, you aren't going anywhere, enjoy your vote. You didn't have phones for pools, mails and mass printing for distribution of campaign materials, and you had to have your affairs in order enough to have the "leisure time" to meaningfully participate. They basically wrote down as a requirement as broad a se f ignition of voting base as wasn't unworkable controversial at the time.
> Aristocratic comes with way more baggage than what you describe; and you only have to look at jolly old England to see that. To be an Aristocrat. You had to be landed, but you also had to fit somewhere in the Peerage or established Nobility. That whole system of class stratification? That came with an entire Parliamentry House in the form of the House of Lords.
You never answered my question, "How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men?"
My point still stands as historically sound. The founders/govt were upper-middle class by England's standards and they recreated a very similar aristocratic structure here in the 13 colonies but with the founders at the top.
My point can also be supported by how State Legistatures would pick Senators, the electoral college, lifetime appointments to SCOTUS, lack of term limits on Congress and POTUS. These are all putting power in a select few. The select few aren't as wealthy as England's elites but the founders were very rich (the elite of American society).
Apologies for all the typos by the way. Trying to get these written during breaks/downtime, and Autocorrect is making life interesting.
>You never answered my question, "How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men?"
I actually did, but the typos may have minced it. You say they created a System where the vote only went to "certain white men". You're not really appreciating how wide that swath was. I offered the example of the House of Lords (peopled by actual aristocrats) as a contrast point.
The Peerage and Nobility is intrinsically woven into the concept and definition of English social and civic life. There is no 1:1 mapping of that same characteristic in the United States. There is no Aristocracy.
You look at "only landed white men" could vote, and don't realize how drastically that diverged from the European cultural baseline.
These landed white men didn't even have recognized and venerated and chronicled names. That was a revolutionary disbursement of power at the time. Johnny sets up a homestead, he gets to vote. Lack of suffrage for everyone else wasn't even mainly an issue of "Everyone without it is inferior;". It was chosen for it's uncontroversial nature amongst the founders and their contemporaries. They were building a Nation, remember, and the seed of Unity had to start somewhere. It's an example of incremental value delivery.
They needed some edifice capable of doing the things Governments was expected to do, which means they needed to start building that kernel of "get things done" that people could buy into and go with. So that's what they did. Amongst themselves they built the most revolutionary, egalitarian government they could at the time. They also built in the measures whereby all the assumptions and policies they enacted to create unity at that time could be modified by popular consensus as times progressed. Just as a plant starts with a Seed, so too did the Nation in that group of upper class white men, who wasted no remarkably little time on the Nation State scale of time expanding suffrage. voluntarily, I might add.
As to Senators being appointed by State legislatures, that was due to fundamental changes in what the role of the Senate is. The Senate was not intended to be reflective of "the People" at all. It was meant to represent the interest of The State's themselves where "The State" here is defined as the respective government apparat put in place by the People of each State.
Each State determined how voting for State Senators was done, and to my knowledge, at the State level, it is still direct election by the voting population at large. So you had that level of people expressing their confidence in someone to take on the mantle of overseer of the fundamental architecture of government. However, when it came to the Federal level, it was delegated to the State apparatus to choose the ones among their number most well-versed and capable of not only representing their State's interests, but balancing them against the competing interests of other States.
Without mass media, this arrangement made sense. You wouldn't know a Senatorial candidate from the other side of the State from Adam, but other State Senators would.
If you look at the patterns the Founders favored, it was always balances. Everyone gets to weigh in on overall direction, but the nagging details get handled by a smaller more deeply versed group with longer tenures/more experience because the devil is in the details. Start with the widest workable suffrage everyone could agree on, landed men who could show up and weren't deemed impossible to accommodate by the culture of the time, and have faith that men's good nature would see that spread wide in short-order; with a hedge against men's worse vices through deemphasis and deglorification of public service.
It was a different world back then. Just as kids growing up today will seemingly never know a U.S. before 9/11 screwed everything up, so too was the Overton window different back then.
Human beings are as much victims of the constraints imposed by the physical, economic, and social environments of the Times they Live In. The accomplishment, and great Humanitarian Gift of the Founders, was the Founding of a Nation whereby with Unity would come prosperity, safety, good fortune and freedom for all if only men endeavored to keep it so, and drive it in that direction.
History is full of the stories of how things didn't go to plan, but it is also full of examples of a Great Nation giving rise to Great People to do Great things, even from humble origins.
The Electoral College arose out of the Founders dedication to bicamerality. They trusted the population with Candidate selection, but once again, the work of figuring out who amongst the candidates was best was reserved for a small group of directly elected Electors. To them, under assumption of good nature, was entrusted the final responsibility of Conscience and wisdom into which candidate was most trustworthy to hold office. A decision best confined to smaller groups, away from the crowds. If it's a good fit, the extra step of the Electors wouldn't make a lick of difference. If it was a bad fit, but they could work a crowd, the Electors should weed out the unfit candidate. Check the Federalist papers on that one.
That went sideways when national political parties came about, but that's life.
The lifetime SCOTUS appointment was a concession toward attempting to keep the judiciary independent from the political arena and at least constrain the politics to appointment time. Even then, most nominations are encouraged to be of a fundamentally balanced nature, with track records that also encompass going across the aisle, and not taking undue liberty with interpretation of the law. Again, not perfect, but it mostly worked. It got us to the point where you and I are having a reasonable discussion over whether or not there was foul play at the heart of architecting things such that one or another group is kept at a severe disadvantage; which in all my research I haven't found clear evidence of. The emphasis has always been maintaining a governmental edifice that works, and changes with the mores of the time.
There have been undeniable bad calls by the government in history to be sure, but those weren't "all according to plan". They were emergent reflections of society at the time, just as the chaos we're experiencing now almost assuredly is. I never in my life dreamed the American System and way-of-life could end up in the painful straits we're in, but neither did any of my forefathers when they had their civic faith tested.
I shed a tear everyday, because at a minimum, the change we're experiencing is the system working as intended. Assumptions long unquestioned getting their due attention. This is it. This is the Legacy of the Founders, the marvelous machine they built, for the good or ill of their descendants. The winds o
You can credibly say that it sure smells like an aristocracy nowadays, and I won't argue. Back then though? Absolutely not, and never with a clear premeditation to create an underclass, a characteristic of Greek civics they despised as I recall.
>You said: The Peerage and Nobility is intrinsically woven into the concept and definition of English social and civic life. There is no 1:1 mapping of that same characteristic in the United States. There is no Aristocracy.
>> I said this: I'm not sure how you quantify (facts/evidence) your statement that "That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic". As this would be considered historic revisionism. Aristocratic might not be the most precise word (elitism goes too extreme) but it gets close enough to the vein of truth to understand my point. Selected few men, rule over the masses, by design. [1]
I'm not sure why you went on multiple different tangents but my main point is above and hasn't been refuted. It's almost as if you don't understand the definition of aristocratic (addressed later).
>You said: You can credibly say that it sure smells like an aristocracy nowadays, and I won't argue. Back then though? Absolutely not.
No. It was aristocratic then. It wasn't British aristocratic then but it was aristocratic, nonetheless. Yes, it was by design or else there wouldn't be a Republic. I'm not deeply a scholar of the time period therefore I can't say whether it was malevolent or not.
> Wiki says: Aristocracy (Greek ἀριστοκρατία aristokratía, from ἄριστος aristos 'excellent', and κράτος, kratos 'rule') is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning 'rule of the best'. [2]
The founders didn't merit their land ownership nor the ability to read/write nor merit being white nor merit being male nor merit many other factors. It was circumstantial, largely through no agency of their own, which is privileged. They did use that privilege to attempt something new which was more Democratic than most forms of govts. Regardless, they were aristocrats. /end for me.
Noted. Good for you. If you're going to twist the meaning of aristocracy away from what it has historically been, that's all on you. Republics != Aristocracies. Just because some people have authority delegated to them, the essence of representative democracy, it does not make them Aristocrats. It makes the person nominated or elected a civil servant, a social position in the United States that actually renders you vulnerable a position to have to put up with more abuse than would normally be tolerated in everyday life. By the way you're defining it, even a nuclear family is an Aristocracy, an assertion most reasonable people would laugh at, and no number of Wikipedia links will change that.
Furthermore, you missed the nuance of the Greek way of life vs. the reality of the American System. Which is that anyone can run and hold office. You have to campaign well, but there is no privileged class you must be a member of. You need only be the bearer of the right ideas at the right time.
That now, it may be woefully out of reach for those who have to hold down a full time job, and is really only attainable once you've gotten yourself to the point you've got a decent social and support network, still doesn't make the American System an Aristocracy. Just a pain to get ahead in, and much more likely to be participated in by those who aspire to politics.
The other "tangents" were refutations of your assertion that various aspects of the architecture of the early American government were specifically attempts to create an aristocratic class. They most certainly were not and even a cursory reading of the Federalist papers demonstrates that while there were some Founders who were favorable toward the idea there were just as many against it. Following any of the historical literature of the time will demonstrate that while there was an appreciation for the well to do, there was just as much for those of more humble origin that found their own way into the political limelight.
You seem to have your mind made up, so that's cool. You do you. However, if you're looking to get taken seriously by anyone who doesn't already agree with you, you may want to consider getting a better appreciation for the historical context of the time in question, and open yourself to the fact that societies evolve over time. Your protests that the Founders were Aristocrats from your privileged position here and now would be laughed at as grim humor or insanity in their time. They were traitors. Treasonous currs and usurpers to the loyalust. They were heroes, patriots, and paragons to the oppressed, and liberty starved of the time. The Dream and ambitious ideal they chased, of a Country of the Free, of, by, and for the People it served at the consent of; bound explicitly from assuming a place as Supreme Arbiter or Granter of Freedoms through the Constitutional foundation laid out in simple language, and left open ended for revision by those that came after. To them, better men and women than any of them could ever hope to be, and underpinned
by their single greatest gesture against the established powers of the time: namely their Declaration that started it all.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
So if you're set in your ways, if you truly believe what they built is worthy of ridicule, scorn, and abandonment, know that you are walking in the very shoes they did all those years ago, and take care that you not repeat their mistakes, and that you put at least as much effort, forethought, and sacrifice into that which you're set on hewing from the corpulent mass of the society you seem to have come to despise.
On the other hand, if you're just looking to change things for the better, you're in good company; the trick is to beat the establishments it's own game.
Then can the capitol hill police throw congress in jail anytime they decide a law congress made was illegal? No. There is a system of checks and balances to address unconstitutional laws, and to correct laws that are bad but not illegal.
> because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement.
Then we do not live in a democracy with a rule of law. Why have the constitution at all?
Barring weasel lawyering and issues around standing. The very idea that you would claim these violations are not punishable means that they will continue to occur.
I am having a hard time fathoming how you take this stance at all.
> Then we do not live in a democracy with a rule of law. Why have the constitution at all?
The concept of checks and balances is an attempt to mitigate this problem. The "higher authority" is the other branches of government. But even that only goes so far.
Ultimately the entire scheme only works because individual humans agree to abide by the implicit social contract to live within the system of laws. To the extent that large number of people come to not feel bound by the social contract, well at some point you have some sort of haphazard and generally unjust system, insurrection, or even civil war.
I'm tempted to make some comments about recent events in the US, but suffice to say there are definitely some people who seem to think the current social contract isn't worth saving. And I'm not just talking about those taking action in the streets. There are plenty of people in elected positions of power who are behaving in that way also. It would be nice if those who feel like it isn't worth working within the system to improve things had any sort of an alternative. Unfortunately it is orders of magnitude easier to dismantle and destroy than it is to create and build. I hope we don't have to learn that lesson the hard way.
> If not, then those people might actually be correct.
This doesn't seem reasonable to me. The amount of misery and injustice that would accompany any sort of dissolution of civil society would be enormous and with no path towards something better.
To the extent that some people who think the current system is broken beyond repair make an effort to explain what they would do different it basically amounts to "everything will be better if we just give all the power to my preferred group of people", which sounds a lot like fascism to me.
The expanding scope/power of national government (all branches) is a huge part of our problem. Accelerating that trend but with the "right people" in place is not an attractive solution from my point of view. It doesn't matter to me if the "right people" have a (D) or (R) after their name, expansive national government is a bad idea.
It isn't the expansion but the loss of control. Large government is fine as long as it serves the people. Large government doesn't also have to mean millions of rules.
Civil society also doesn't have to be tied directly to government. America's biggest problems is that we are shedding norms faster than we acquiring them.
I had a conversation with a business ethics professor, and every one of her students for the most part want to work at Amazon and they have favorable opinions about Amazon's means and methods. Corn pone and all that. The lust for money has too large of an effect on our society.
There’s a reason the founding fathers regularly stated things like
> the Tree of Liberty Must Be Refreshed with the Blood of Patriots and Tyrants - Thomas Jefferson
It’s because the final authority is the people of the country. The constitution is the social contract the government and people agreed to. If broken, the people have the obligations to correct it. That’s not to say some kind of rebellion necessarily. We have the justice system, Congress, senate, etc. when all that fails... that’s why we have the first, second, fourth, etc amendments. It makes it hard to enforce your will all at once when the people have those protections. Each would have to be slowly taken away to effectively take control .
> because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement
Technically, that higher authority is the people themselves. Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
>Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
No they didn't, look up Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion as examples. The US government has never been successfully "held accountable" at gunpoint.
(The Oklahoma City bombing was the biggest terrorist attack next to 9/11 and yet never discussed in any history class I’ve taken, while the latter is discussed in virtually every class on any subject on its anniversary. Probably an interesting reflection of xenophobia (probably among other things) I think.)
>The Oklahoma City bombing was the biggest terrorist attack next to 9/11 and yet never discussed in any history class I’ve taken
No government sponsored curriculum is going to open the door to the very tough questions that the first two parts of that trilogy naturally raise. It's the same reason people are never taught about the Indian wars or Jim Crow south except that "they existed". If people learned about how many times the government straight up violated treaties it signed and how many times state governments intentionally used the forces at their disposal to disenfranchise blacks then people wouldn't trust the government. The career arcs of the kind of people who think these things should be learned don't tend to put them on the committees that set state curriculum.
In what way was the British Government "held accountable"? British leaders in Britain weren't held accountable, and many of the eventual founders were high level bureaucrats in the British government of the American colonies.
Perhaps, but I don't think that they were punished. The difference I'm getting at here is subtle, but it's the difference between declaring independence and replacing the existing government. Both happen through revolution of some form, but one breaks away from a government you dislike. THat's not punitive. One replaces it and usually punishes the old one.
Declaring independence from a distant seat of government is vastly different and vastly easier than trying to overthrow the local government.
I'm not talking about punishment or punative action. I'm talking about accountability, where being 'held accountable' could be a synonym for 'held responsible'. In this case, the way I used the phrase, Britain was 'held responsible' by simply being told to 'go away'.
But being "held responsible" and being "held accountable" are very different. Holding someone responsible means to blame them. Holding someone accountable means giving them consequences. Many people blame the government for all sorts of things. Only a very small number of those things is the government ever held accountable for.
I agree that many people blamed the British Government for their problems, indeed that was the impetus for the revolution, but accountability of the British government was limited to none.
Absolutely agreed that it is a very last resort. The declaration of independence actually does a good job of outlining just how much of a last resort the american revolution actually was.
>> because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement
> Technically, that higher authority is the people themselves. Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
I should have probably said "there's no higher institutional authority to appeal to for enforcement." When you're talking about jail-time penalties, I think you're talking about something that's institutionally enforced.
At this point, the only check is the people via elections; but I don't think unconstitutional laws are passed for some private purpose, but rather to satisfy some popular political demand (like "never again"). Such esoteric concepts like the unconstitutionality of some particular law aren't often at the top of voters minds, either.
At least in the current climate, with the level of disunity and polarization, any attempt at a revolution would be a civil war where (in the end) half the country loses a good chunk of their civil rights.
Seems like the courts could make a distinction between "ok this was unclear" and "this was obvious, egregious and deserving of penalties."
And while throwing Congress in jail seems unworkable, disqualifying members from reelection in egregious cases might be doable (though of course it would require a constitutional amendment).
The whole point of the bill of rights and many parts of the constitution is to protect ourselves from mob rule... just because 50.1% of the people think it is ok to remove the rights of 10% of the people doesn't mean they are allowed to do that. We have a lot of checks against the 'will of the majority'
This is essentially the qualified immunity debate. SCOTUS has decided that unless the government defendant did something that SCOTUS in the past has specifically ruled is unconstitutional, you don't get to win a ruling against them. Where specifically is defined exceptionally narrowly.
That's not actually whay SCOTUS did when it created qualified immunity (which it has the authority to do, but congress also has the authority to overturn that). What you described is how it has evolved in the circuit courts.
I agree that's not the original "plan" (or whatever you want to call it), but AFAIK SCOTUS has pretty much said the circuit courts are doing the right thing there.
> And while throwing Congress in jail seems unworkable, disqualifying members from reelection in egregious cases might be doable (though of course it would require a constitutional amendment).
I don't think so. Do you really want the executive and the courts be able to disqualify representatives, essentially for political reasons, because they proposed legislation or supported legislation that a president has signed into law?
> what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail?
My understanding is at the time it was written, it was expected that a government would be balanced by the potential military might of an armed rebellion should the government act so against the interests of the populace as to inspire that response (after all, starved and freezing American rebels had just beaten one of the mightiest empires in history, so they had set historical precedent).
I don't think the founders foresaw a future in which the government's military might so far surpassed the public's as to make such a rebellion unthinkable.
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
Well.. you could depose them. Or declare independence from them. That has happened a few times in history.
The Constitution is a social contract. The people say "we'll give you (government) these abc powers, if you promise to use them this xyz way." When that contract is broken, no one gets thrown in jail - its rather more severe. The legitimacy of the government is called into question, or dissolved.
In an ideal world, yes. In our actual world, the Constitution was ratified by a very small number of representatives from the population. And those representatives were drawn from and selected by white male landowners who owned some minimum threshold of land. IIRC that counted for less than 10% of the people living in the proto-US.
Huh? How are you reading that in my comment? I explicitly think that throwing Congress in jail would be silly, and actually unjust. But I didn't at all address that.
I was merely pointing out that the US's "government for the people by the people" was laughably not at all that back when it was founded. "The people" didn't give the government abc powers; a single-digit percentage of them did.
Beyond that, suggesting that an armed insurrection could ever be successful at deposing the US government... that's a silly fantasy.
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
The only nonsense is that we haven't done exactly that. If someone in power betrays the public trust they should be punished. The punishment ought to be severe so there is no doubt about the stakes at play.
> That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment.
We have members of our government who have taken oaths to other nations, and that have then voted to provide those other nations with aid and support. Similarly, we have members of our government who provide legal sanctuary for those who defy the laws of the land. And, regardless of your political beliefs, both parties currently in power have voted overwhelmingly in favor of war over the past several decades.
> Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
If a senator woke up tomorrow and wanted to help a martian terror cell that nobody knew existed, they would still be assisting an enemy of the state. It would still be treason, and I doubt that interpretation would be a topic of debate.
There are also groups who openly consider us their enemy and take action to harm the United States, even if we don't 'officially' recognize them. Some of these groups are nation-states, others are religious groups, and others and driven by [0]other ideologies.
A communist wouldn't accept that installing communism in the US is "waging war against the US", and legal precedence in the US is that its legal to be a communist, so I'm not sure what you meant by that.
In fact, even supporting the Soviet Union would not be treason. Enemies, in this context, is very narrowly defined as an entity the US has declared war against.
À senator helping a Martian terror state, as long as they did not engage in violence against the US, wouldn't be convicted of treason.
It's not about communists, it's about groups that engage in specific behaviors such as economic warfare.
> Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them - or - adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
> Enemies, in this context, is very narrowly defined as an entity the US has declared war against.
There has been so few cases that this interpretation isn't well-tested. Regardless, based on cases that do exist, this doesn't seem to be true.
There are exceptions to what you're saying such as John Brown who was executed for treason for attempting (failing) to incite a slave revolt. Also, cases such as Fries Rebellion exist where war was never declared as far as I am able to ascertain, but the leader was convicted of treason. And then there's the case of Mary Surratt who was connected to the Lincoln assassination and executed for treason.
I said that enemy was defined as someone that is at war with the US. John Brown attacked the US government, so it isn't treason under the section of aiding and abetting an enemy, but under war against the US. Same for the Fries Rebellion, same for Mary Surratt.
Economic warfare, whatever that means, against the US, is not illegal, and making it illegal is unconstitutional due to the strong protections for private property.
> [0] economic warfare may reflect economic policy followed as a part of open or covert operations, cyber operations, information operations during or preceding a war. Economic warfare aims to capture or otherwise to control the supply of critical economic resources so that the military and intelligence agencies can operate at full efficiency or deprive enemy forces of those resources so that they cannot function properly.
If you think people engaged in the above activities aren't engaged in a crime, then there's no point in carrying this discussion further.
> Economic warfare, whatever that means, against the US, is not illegal, and making it illegal is unconstitutional due to the strong protections for private property.
This is 100% incorrect, on every level. Taking intentional action to harm an economy is a direct threat on the security of a nation and would be an objectively justifiable Casus belli.
This point makes no sense. A properly passed amendment to the Constitution (presumably what is meant by update) can never be unconstitutional by definition. Furthermore, prohibiting ex-post-facto laws means you can't pass a law which criminalizes actions in the past. But courts don't pass laws, they interpret them. There's plenty of cases where courts interpret a law in a new way because of new situation. For example, I'm sure Clayton County is going to face applicable penalties under Title VII after Bostock v. Clayton County (recent LGBT discrimination ruling).
This is a common misconception. Courts don't pass statutes, but they certainly create law. Nearly every ruling from any sort of appeals court answers a question of law which is then binding on everyone under the jurisdiction of said court.
This is the essential difference between a common law and civil law system. There are still rulings in the US that cite old English cases from before 1776 as the basis of the law in this country.
> Nearly every ruling from any sort of appeals court answers a question of law which is then binding on everyone under the jurisdiction of said court.
While it's true that courts (in the US and similar systems) make law, this specific claim is an exaggeration, at least as regards the US. Full precedential weight generally only applies to published decisions, which are only about 1/3 of decisions of, for instance, the US Courts of Appeals.
Sure, but it's irrelevant in this case because the Constitution prevents Congress and the states from passing an ex post facto law, not the courts from applying a new precedent to past events. I was just trying to argue that applying court decisions to events in the past doesn't violate the prohibition against ex post facto laws.
Only in a country with jurisprudence. Not all countries hold that court decisions require following court decisions to respect previous decisions (ie, legal precedent).
> This point makes no sense. A properly passed amendment to the Constitution (presumably what is meant by update) can never be unconstitutional by definition.
That's not what I was talking about. Look at the example I used. The Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional to forbid gay marriage, even though that was the common practice up to that time. So, now we've discovered all the people who were engaged in implementing the common practice were violating the constitution? What happens to them now.
The courts don't examine theoretical questions of legality. Every law that was declared unconstitutional was a law that was passed and enforced, usually in good faith.
I don't think it would be unconstitutional ex-post-facto. Obergefell v. Hodges didn't define sex discrimination in marriage certificates unconstitutional after a certain date. It was always unconstitutional, and was recognized as such in their ruling.
And yes, I would like to see, actually, qualified immunity removed and governments held liable for rights violations. Perhaps not prison time for the clerks - who were simply "following orders", as horrendous a saying as that is - but some liability and remedy for the countless people harmed.
How different a world would it be if as a result of Brown v. Board of Education was that black families were financially compensated for sixty years of segregation and for centuries before that denied the right to an education?
How different a world would it be if as a result of Shelley v. Kraemer, every black person who was told they couldn't buy a home because of a bank was compensated?
How different a world would it be if as a result of Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt, women who sought an abortion and were denied or unable due to unconstitutional restrictions on clinics were compensated by the equivalent of child support from the state?
I think that would be a better world. No, I don't think the clerks, the school boards, or health commission members in Texas should go to jail. But I do think that perhaps, just perhaps, we might live in a more just world today if there were long-term consequences for denying someone their rights. And maybe, just maybe, we can then start to ask whether or not "just following orders" is a good way to justify one's individual place in society.
But before we go down the slippery slope of questioning whether evil can be banal - it can - we should ask whether or not its prior victims should be entitled to a remedy too.
> I don't think it would be unconstitutional ex-post-facto. Obergefell v. Hodges didn't define sex discrimination in marriage certificates unconstitutional after a certain date. It was always unconstitutional, and was recognized as such in their ruling.
Maybe not on some technicality, but the effect would be the same. Conduct that was reckoned to be legal (and in fact required by law) becomes retroactively illegal because of the new interpretation.
> How different a world would it be...
You'd have officials second guessing the law left and right, so it wouldn't be much of a law anymore. You can imagine situations where that might be good, but there are just as many (if not more) where that would be very bad.
You chose your examples, but there'd be others that may be less compelling to you: cities being forced to pay compensation because they tried to regulate gun ownership, retroactive holes in the budget because the individual mandate was declared unconstitutional. Those are just some thing I can think of off the top of my head. Is that how you want good faith efforts to solve problems treated?
I think this is a care where idealism and practicality are in a pretty severe conflict, and there have the be pretty strong limits on retroactivity.
I imagine that the rights you're talking about would never have been recognized in such a world.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but it was hard enough to get those rights recognized in the realm of argument, I imagine putting a giant pile of money on the other side would make it functionally impossible to change anything.
Putting financial penalties on admitting your mistakes doesn't usually make people more compassionate. If it did, the world of corporate law would be a utopia.
I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases.
If a police department, a county clerk, or a school repeatedly violates someone's rights, I don't think it's fair to say "Well, we 'fixed' the problem for anyone who comes after those folks." For one thing, due to qualified immunity with police brutality the problem never actually goes away. No one is every held responsible. For another, when cases actually can go all the way up to a court of appeals or the United States Supreme Court, the remedy is usually "don't do that".
There's a pernicious form of cruelty that many of the same people politically aligned with denying people rights also believe that equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, is the best way to organize society. Yet, when it's recognized that opportunities have been systemically denied and stolen from certain classes of people, those people offer no recompense.
We can and should change that. If we really, genuinely do believe in equality of opportunity then reparations for civil rights violations are necessary. We cannot have equality of opportunity when the playing field has been tilted by centuries of generational and institutional harms.
> I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases.
Yes, I get that. I'm not talking about individual liability, I'm talking about institutional budgets.
I'm saying that if acknowledging rights generally costs a large sum of money (in your hypothetical, in payments to people who have had their rights infringed upon) you will see less of it, as pressure gets put on legislators and judges to save money.
To take the recent example of gay marriage, I would expect the phrase "we can't let them marry, there's a budget crunch going on" to be used unironically.
I think that what you're advocating for would end up with less of what you seem to actually want (you seem to want people's rights to be respected).
We already have that system. Congress can pay any reparations it decides.
You want a system where any judge or jury can decide that someone owes someone else a billion dollars based on past law? Until 4 years later when a judge or jury rules the other way and makes them pay it back?
Yes, I believe Congress should pass a law repealing or narrowing the Supreme Court's creation of qualified immunity, and I believe that §1983 lawsuits and rights violations in general, or a variation thereof, should entitle the harmed individuals to reparations.
To keep such reparations from being held up in courts or tossed back and forth, I think that upon finding a violation of constitutional rights has occurred, the Supreme Court can and should appoint a special master or appoint parties to determine the appropriate remedy for historical abuses.
When one state violates another's rights, usually water rights, cases of so-called original jurisdiction for the Supreme Court, they appoint such an individual to study the matter to the extent the court needs, being themselves not experts. The states can argue over the findings and sometimes the reparations are revisited on an annual or recurring basis. The finding may sometimes be that one state owes another "a billion dollars" based on past law.
I see no reason why classes of people shouldn't be afforded the same here. There exist mechanisms to provide long-term, well-informed and adversarially argued remedies. We should not throw our hands up in the air and argue that it's "too hard" when we can adopt such systems already in place.
We're not talking about "someone" though; we're talking about city, county, state, or the federal government compensating victims when agents of the state violate their civil rights. No individual has to pay this directly.
Of course this money comes from somewhere: taxpayers. That seems appropriate, as the citizenry of the US should be held accountable for civil rights violations they allowed through poor choice in elected leaders. Yes, they might be several steps removed from the bad decision-making, but the buck has to stop somewhere.
This is an interesting concept. In Norway, the parliament cannot pass contradictory laws, for instance, for the simple reason this tenet: "All power must be gathered in this hall". So in essence, Stortinget (our parliament) cannot pass laws that give power away, for instance. Doing so would be unconstitutional, also because our constitution explicitly states that power shall not be given away. Yet it has happened, but in those instances the laws is either handily disregarded at opportune times, or it's left to the suppreme court to decide the outcome where there are offended parties. And since they follow the constitution, they always follow the above tenet.
> and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail?
Yes that's exactly what you should do. That's not nonsense. That's how a non-corrupt state should work. At the very least the law itself should be nullified.
Not so much any longer. The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling. We've been reducing the prison population for a decade now.
For example the black male imprisonment rate began declining finally during the second year of George W Bush's Presidency. It has dropped by around 36% since the year 2001.
The US incarceration rate began declining about the same time we began building more private prisons (for the record, I'm ideologically against private prisons), which entirely goes against the common propaganda that private prisons would result in a lot more people in prison. Turns out, of course, that it was evil government actions and policies that did all those very bad things, like the war on drugs and putting millions of people in prison unjustly and holding them there for excessive durations of time (mandatory minimum sentencing laws).
> The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling.
Technically true, but man oh man do we have a ways to go before the war on drugs is mitigated[1]. Based on the trend of the last ~10 years, we're due to reach 1980 levels of prison population in the 23rd century[2].
The overall incarceration rate wouldn't be misleading with this information, although the correlation they draw with privatization of prisons in some states very well could be. Is there a specific pair of states you would refer to here?
With the exception of the president, there is always an authority that can arrest/punish an authority (including the military).
Incorrect interpretation of the law is not what I am talking about, intentional violation is. The clerks that denied marriage licenses before the ruling did not violate the law and after the ruling yes, they did act on behalf of government (not that I am expressing my view on the matter). What happened was one clerk was jailed indefinitetly (human rights violation!) Until she complied instead of measured punishment and removal from office. Regarding the law makers, the law maker that introduced it should be punished if it can be proven he violated the bill of rights on purpose (intent).
You can't say the law is not clear enough to punish people. You're essentially saying the law is a guideline open to free interpretation. If I kill someone with a gun, is it murder? It depends right, even in such a simple scenario the law is not clear cut, that's why you have judges. A cop on duty can get away with a shooting if he feared for his life, in certain states you can proactively stand your ground and kill intruders. No matter what, judges interpret law and lack of clarity is fine.
The crime is violating constitutional law while acting on behalf of government. Intentional ignorance of the bill of rights or malicious violation of the same must be proven in court to find a person guilty.
When I was young and dreamed of being a rock star^W^W entrepreneur I used to pay more attention to contract law.
It seems like everywhere from roommate, landlord, business, or partnership contracts, we seem to write down rules but not consequences or penalties. Oh you were supposed to pay rent or this invoice, but I can't make you do it? What's the point of contracts?
The time I owned property with someone, I at least had the foresight to add two clauses. Right of first refusal (obvious), and another clause that if either party were behind on payments the other party could trigger arbitration, and one of those outcomes could be to force a sale (then looping back to rule #1).
But the 'punishment' in this case is that one party loses their ownership, and the other party either has to cough up a ton of cash or lose it too. In this case I had decidedly more liquid assets so I had an idea how that might play out if things went south. But I'm sure there are a ton of things not covered, and really weren't suggested by the lawyers.
Whatever penalties exist for the lawyer leaving a huge surface area for litigation, those are pretty opaque for the rest of us and I think they like it that way. Capital L Law just seems like a giant conflict of interests straight out of the gate.
The mark of a civil society is laws without punishments.
Low trust societies have to build in enforcement mechanisms for everything because if you don't, someone will cheat you for the slightest advantage and life inside them is punishingly inefficient. High trust societies rely on people to do the right thing out of a sense of civic pride, decency, group cohesion or some other regulating force.
Look at sports for example, the rules are written out in excruciating detail that account for the most unlikely of edge cases. What are the consequences of not following them? Well, outside of professional leagues, really nothing except people won't want to play with you. Why go to so much effort with the rules? Because the rules are what makes playing soccer different from playing rugby. They're what make the game the game.
A rule that can't be enforced is not a rule but a suggestion. If people follow it is because they agree with it. Anyone can follow a rule when it is convenient, punishment exists to make sure people follow the rule when it is inconvenient.
Without punishment, it is not "rule of law" it is "guidline of law"
> Well, outside of professional leagues, really nothing except people won't want to play with you.
That's not true at all. In high school I was a soccer referee, for a recreational league. If you broke the rules of the game, I stopped play and the other team got a free kick. If you did something violent or egregiously dangerous, you got a warning or got ejected from the game. The league had policies around ejections; accumulate too many of them in a short time and you were kicked out of the league, usually permanently.
I guess you can reduce that down to "people won't want to play with you", but that's a pretty significant consequence if it's a sport you enjoy playing.
Yeah, at least in Portugal it's the same thing. People can agree not to partition, but only for 5 years. Typically an apartment (or even a house) cannot be partitioned (it would have to have independent entrances, to follow local zoning rules and so on), so a sale is forced in a sealed bid auction. The other joint owners do not have a right of first refusal in that case, though, only if the joint owner tries to sell his or her quota.
If he was married and it was a conjugal asset, that would be another matter, though.
You're absoutley right, but as the answer in your link points out, those laws are still enforced by some other means in most cases. My point was, obeying the most important laws of the land should not be left to the good will of government employees, if laws are to have penalties, is it not reasonable for the most important law to have the highest penalties?
There's an old maxim in the Common Law that "every right has a remedy". But it's just a maxim, and rights are often recognized long before any remedy. One of the most recent (relative to the long term) and conspicuous attempts by American courts to try to judicially craft a remedy was the creation of the so-called Bivens Action, which permits citizens to sue Federal officials for civil rights violations in the absence of any statute. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/bivens_actions and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens_v._Six_Unknown_Named_Ag... But over the past 40 years conservative justices have not only cabined but nearly extinguished Bivens claims, arguing that it abrogates the principle of sovereign immunity and subverts the legislative process. Ironically (or not so ironically), the same justices over the same timespan have judicially created defenses to S.1983 civil rights suits, protecting state officials in contravention of clear constitutional and statutory text. Both sides promote a background principle of law in contravention of nominal legal texts; "every right has a remedy" and individual justice in the case of the liberal faction, sovereign immunity in the case of the conservatives.
Seems to have a long tradition. I'm still baffled by how little punishment there was for Iran-Contra, key people were simply pardoned by Bush, or how little punishment there was for the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture, just looking at the pictures of the wikipedia article makes me want to throw up.
It seems to me that just the pardon power by itself is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.
It's like saying you're a pacifist... except for Tuesdays when you go on a weekly killing spree.
I imagine that if we can survive and progress long enough to have real democracy and rule of law, our present system will be viewed a transitional period that, for all its very real improvements, was still structurally closer to feudalism than actual democracy.
There's no choice in a democracy but to have something like the pardon power.
The reason is that we need protection also from the power of judicial branch, which is abusable like any branch with power. Not having a pardon power allows bad judges to throw anyone they don't like into jail with no recourse by anyone. In a democracy, all branches are checked by the others, and this is a necessary check on the judicial branch. It could be done differently (approval by Congress or some third party?), but not having a check is dangerous.
Now suppose the kid who shot the people in Kenosha gets a pardon (I don't know about jurisdiction). What would be the check on presidential power in that case?
I think the pardoning thing is absolutely wrong in the US form, where it is used quite often. I think it's just crazy that you can do something illegal but if you can just talk one guy into it, you are off the hook.
The only case I see where it makes sense is that there's some corner case that everyone can agree on. But then it would involve more than just one guy on his last day in office.
The kid could always be charged on some other state-level technicality. These charges would be state-level and therefore not subject to Presidential pardon.
That said, such a limited abuse would not justify ditching the pardon power. History has shown that not having a pardon power would have been impossible - the civil war would have lasted for decades, there would have been mass charges years after Vietnam, without the option of pardon Nixon may never have resigned, etc. A lot of these aren't corner cases, but they were necessary to still have a country.
IMHO, the by far best solution is to have it in a more limited form so it requires more than one guy.
Congress granting pardons is different. It's limited in scope and has a higher bar, since it requires the assent of a majority of the legislative branch.
What's chaotic about punishing a lawbreaking president? Sounds pretty lawful to me. It's how healthy democracies are supposed to operate. Pardoning Nixon set a bad precedent.
It's not so limited in scope, Congress could pardon half the felonies in the law book. It's only limited because Congress does yet have the authority to pardon people already in bars (or does it? I could be wrong here), but that could be changed.
As for Nixon, not pardoning him would have led to some very messy politics (does he even quit?) in the middle of the oil crisis/price controls/etc. I have no idea how it would have played out, but the US needed at the time a functioning presidency (more than usual).
Not having a pardon power allows bad judges to throw anyone they don't like into jail with no recourse by anyone.
Technically, all judges can be impeached, and all judges other than SCOTUS can be appealed (there's actually a specific writ you can file claiming to be jailed unjustly, habeas corpus).
In practice, impeachment hasn't proven to be much of a check on judicial power (recall elections have probably been more effective overall), but I think the appeals process more or less works and I don't think the pardon power has added much, on balance. I think unilateral pardon power by a political official has proven sufficiently ripe for abuse that I would even support adding limits like some kind of Congressional check, but it's definitely nowhere near a top priority.
Obviously the appeals process has had plenty of failings too, the Japanese internment camps being the most famous example, another high-profile one is Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Technically, all judges can be impeached, and all judges other than SCOTUS can be appealed (there's actually a specific writ you can file claiming to be jailed unjustly, habeas corpus).
This doesn't vacate the original judgement, which is nigh-unappealable if made by SCOTUS. There are also cases when impeachment isn't warranted but a pardon still makes sense (I gave examples in another post in the thread). I think adding checks on pardon power would be enough to deal with abuse of pardon. You're right this isn't a top priority.
I don't think SCOTUS in its entire history has ever directly ordered anyone jailed, only upheld lower court rulings jailing someone or overturning opinions that concluded someone shouldn't be jailed. So at most that's recourse within the judicial system failing, not lack of recourse; obviously, pardon power can "fail" as recourse too, if anything, not providing recourse to injustice is the normal operation of pardon power.
If my choices were status quo and status-quo-except-pardon-power-is-abolished, I would probably prefer the status quo, because law enforcement overreach is currently a bigger problem than abuse of pardon power. But you made a much stronger statement: "There's no choice in a democracy but to have something like the pardon power." I disagree with that, I could easily imagine a much more just and fair democratic system where all recourse to judicial overreach still involved a decision by a judge at some point.
Well, I think the judicial/legal branch can overstep like any other, and needs some checks too. Letting everything be decided by a judge with a lifetime position risks the court forcing its position on an unwilling populace (think of SCOTUS's original position during the New Deal). But impeachment/packing is a radical move (itself a power play which can be just as unjustified), and doesn't necessarily help the accused as much.
As I wrote, if I had a say on this I'd go for a more limited pardon power than the current situation. I suspect our positions in the end aren't too different.
Sure, the ability for someone to be pardoned should exist, but it's complete nonsense that the President alone controls it. I agree with you, Congress should also take a vote, so that the power to pardon doesn't rest on a single person.
> There's no choice in a democracy but to have something like the pardon power.
Not necessarily. IIUC the American President's pardon power is based on the British monarch's pardon power. The role of President was conceived (consciously or unconsciously) as an elected, non-hereditary monarch. He had many of the same powers - veto, commander of the military.
> Not having a pardon power allows bad judges to throw anyone they don't like into jail with no recourse by anyone.
That would require every judge in every court up to the highest court to be bad.
Actually, it's merely a prerogative granted via holding the role of the Chief Executive. You get discretion to enforce or grant amnesty etc, because it's your job to set the priorities.
The pardon power, however, was never traditionally treated lightly, as it's use practically guaranteed you'd be right ticking off a potentially very large swathe of the populace by upsetting the smooth operation of the other branches. It was a check, undoubtedly, but one best used only wisely if for no other reason than to reassure the populace there was a commitment to faithfully executing the laws of the land, rather than everyone being at the mercy of a capricious and unstable tyrant/nepotist/other type of person you wouldn't want to see in the highest position of authority in the country.
Most people think of presidential pardons, but there are also pardons from governors that happen regularly as well, though not as public given their smaller stage.
The general amnesty granted to Confederate soldiers at the end of the Civil War, though not without controversy, was an important step in the reunification of the nation.
The standard answer, of course: a war, especially after a national civil war, prosecuting everyone who participated in the enemy's side will be a disaster.
To the extremely limited and minimal extent that whistleblowers have been pardoned, good on that president/governor, but I think it is atrocious that whistleblower protection relies on pardon power—we need much, much stronger protections for whistleblowers, in my opinion.
I think 90% of people are basically good but don't really want to stick their neck out of line—which means rules by themselves will never constrain the 5% of people that are malevolent. We need to empower the other 5% of people who are willing to stick their neck out to do the right thing. That includes institutionally empowering whistleblowers.
Snowden committed a crime, sure, prosecute him—just give him a fair trial, for goodness' sake.
Biden's promising to pardon all non-violent drug crimes, is he not? Though not historical, if it were to happen that could mark a turning point for our country.
Though one could also use that same pardon power to avoid prosecution for domestic terrorists that support your agenda or crimes of election fraud. So I'm definitely on the side of revoking one person's power to override the entire judiciary for arbitrary reasons.
> Biden believes no one should be in jail because of cannabis use. As president, he will decriminalize cannabis use and automatically expunge prior convictions. And, he will support the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes, leave decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the states, and reschedule cannabis as a schedule II drug so researchers can study its positive and negative impacts.
> Biden believes that no one should be imprisoned for the use of illegal drugs alone. Instead, Biden will require federal courts to divert these individuals to drug courts so they receive treatment to address their substance use disorder.
> A very real distinction exists between an expungement and a pardon. When an expungement is granted, the person whose record is expunged may, for most purposes, treat the event as if it never occurred. A pardon (also called "executive clemency") does not "erase" the event; rather, it constitutes forgiveness. In the United States, an expungement can be granted only by a judge, while a pardon can be granted only by the President of the United States for federal offenses
I have no clue how Biden can promise to automatically expunge prior convictions if only judges can expunge a record.
He's talking about changing laws, which of course he can't literally do, but Presidents always claim to do and they do have a lot of influence over Congress.
If Biden wins, there will certainly be a Democratic House and maybe 50:50 odds right now on a Democratic Senate, so he'd likely be able to implement whatever priorities he sees fit.
> I have no clue how Biden can promise to automatically expunge prior convictions if only judges can expunge a record.
Political promises aren't binding. So you can promise whatever. Politicians in general love to promise things that aren't even within the baliwick of the position they're running for. The one that always bugs me is California mayoral candidates promising to fix the schools, when schools aren't a function of city government at all.
I dove into the list of people pardoned by Clinton and I would say most were people who had either served their sentence (or most of it) and had demonstrated true rehabilitation.
The pardon wiped the slates clean for them. That seems like a good thing?
Throwing out a prediction: If the Biden/Harris ticket wins in 2020 and Trump is charged with anything, expect a pardon from the president. People will rage for a bit, get tired, run out of attention span, and move on to the next controversy.
I don't think Biden could do that. It would be as bad as, if not worse, than another 4 years of Trump as president. It would mean that there are no standards by which a president is held accountable, and considering how many lives he has cost and the corrupt things he has done betraying the country, it would make the next Republican presidency that much worse.
Trump is going to get screwed anyway, even if Biden would step that low (he'd risk alienating all the progressives, I doubt he's dumb enough to do this) Trump would still have to answer to the New York DA.
I think its better to err on the side of not punishing people rather than punishing them too much. Pardons provide an escape hatch where we can skip a punishment if it seems manifestly unjust.
>It seems to me that just the pardon power by itself is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.
Says who? And why?
>I imagine that if we can survive and progress long enough to have real democracy and rule of law
Why do you want 'real' democracy? What makes you think that getting rid of other non-democratic institutions, like Congress, like the Presidency, and institute Athenian-style mob rule - will make the world a better place?
I am being facetious, and I get what you mean, but do you honestly think your life would be better if this particular, and relatively minor, aspect of the Presidency would be curtailed?
> but do you honestly think your life would be better if this particular, and relatively minor, aspect of the Presidency would be curtailed?
Why even bother saying this?
Each of us can want / advocate for whatever changes each of us prefers in any given moment.
There's plenty of resources in the world, and within each of us, to want better for, say, our kids; more space exploration; a presidential role with fewer perks; an end to hunger; and our local street to be kept cleaner.
>Each of us can want / advocate for whatever changes each of us prefers in any given moment.
I understand that. I'm saying you need a reason to go through the effort of changing the constitution and a 240 year old tradition. This is why I asked what all that effort in getting rid of the pardon would do for the world. And it seems, the answer is not much if anything at all. So my argument is, maybe find something more worthwhile to concern yourself with?
>It seems to me that just the pardon power by itself is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.
It isn't, it's actually an integral part needed to make the entire thing work. The problem is when it isn't treated with the restraint due to the role it is meant to fulfill. The President is a short-cycle control mechanism. The legislature longer, and the judiciary the longest based on the sheer weight of precedent they need wade through.
Now, interestingly, and somewhat tangentially. There is a moral/traditional controversy over whether the President can legitimately abuse the Pardon power. There is a body of scholarship that hold that the Pardon is meant to be applied only when the President is acting to further the interests of the Nation.
To riff through some examples of how that plays out, (as mentioned elsewhere downthread): Civil War Confederate Amnesty, A-Okay. Carter and the draft-dodgers, a-okay, Clinton pardoning his brother on his last day in office? Absolutely not okay,as it wasn't furthering the interests of the country as a whole. Nor would Trump's pardoning necessarily qualify.
That isn't law though. That's ethos, and tradition.
> I think it’s meant as a “check” on the judicial branch - if the head of the executive isn’t okay with the judicial branch’s dicision.
It's also a check of the legislative branch. If someone's convicted under an unjust law, a pardon can restore justice.
IIRC, appealing to the leader for justice has a long history that predates the US Constitution. IIRC, such appeals have been an important safety valve, and the formalization of the leader's responses have resulted in whole new bodies of law (e.g. Equity came from the King attempting to correct deficiencies in the Common Law in cases that were appealed to him, then delegating the implementation and processing the appeals made to him to members of his court).
It might've been a check when the executive did little aside from protecting from foreign invaders. The terms-of-service for what the executive are has changed. It's not only anti-democratic, it's anti-republic as well.
>I'm still baffled by how little punishment there was for Iran-Contra
I'll tell you why you're baffled. Those kinds of issues tend to be very complicated because the world is complicated and messy. However people don't do well with grey and nuance, so instead they try to map it to something they can get a handle on that match their world-view and ideology and reinforce by reading highly partisan summaries (where the opinion just so happens to match their own) and staying in a bubble with other like-minded partisans.
Ah yes, lots of subtlety and nuance involved in the creation of an illicit program which was end-run around an explicit Congressional prohibition against helping the Nicaraguan contras. There was so much subtlety and messiness they even had to destroy tons of documents about their activities so no one else would be exposed to all that messy complexity!
>How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it?
The program (and it's replacement) has been around for two decades. It was passed into law by Congress, administered by the executive branch and justice department, funded by Congress, and overseen by the Judiciary and Congress. So punish who? And for what crime? Based on what law? That the the ninth-circuit ruled that the collection overstepped some bounds is not a criminal indictment, but rather a normal part of the process. And who knows if it won't be reversed.
The executive branch. Following orders or implementing a law that violates citizens right should come with criminal consequence. I don't care who found it unconstitutional, there should be criminal punishment after a court rules that a crime was committed. Of course either side can appeal all the way to the supreme court using any laws or precedent. But if the final verdict is that a government official violated a citizens right, that official should be punished. If a law maker intentionally proposed a law that violates constitutional rights, there should be consequences. If a judge rules or operates intentionally to violate these rights there should be a punishment.
Just like doctors face malpractice lawsuits and felony charges, so should govetnment officials that intentionally violate citizes' rights.
I saw a video the other day where a cop arrested a person for insulting him. Worst case he would lose his job, but no punishment! This NSA case is a small example of a systemic disease.
>Following orders or implementing a law that violates citizens right should come with criminal consequence.
But we don't live in a world where things work like you think they should work. In this world, there was no crime, and a court opinion of some aspects of one kind of law does not lead to criminal indictment. That is a better world then the imaginary world that lives in your head.
You do realize government is run by humans in a messy world, trying to figure things and and deal with all kinds life-and-death stuff - like terrorism (which is the context for that law in the first place). Let's set aside 9/11 and terrorism and look at government policy around this pandemic. This pandemic has led to unprecedented government abrogation of civil and citizen rights. It is unprecedented that government would forcibly lock-down huge swaths of the economy for dubious reasons, and destroying countless lives - as well as control what HEALTHY people do with their bodies. Do you know why nobody gives a shit? Because nobody gives a shit about what lawyers on a court have to say when people are fearful for their lives. We see this during wartime (and civil war was a great example), and other extraordinary situations. The only power the constitution has, is the power that is imbued into int by the populations willingly submitting to it and willingly raising it up as a model.
When life-or-death situations arise, the constitution takes a back-seat.
The constitution is a contract between the people and govetnment where both parties operating under rule of law agree to abide by those terms. Nobody gives a shit because if government breaks the terms of this contract there is no direct consequence. But if the people break this contract there is all sorts of punishment. I don't agree with you about shutting down the economy and mask wearing (because government has constitutional authority to regulate commerce and they can make you wear seatbelts and prevent you from drinking and driving, that same authority allows them to tell you to wear a mask and avoid killing grandma) but if you are right,a lot of people would be very careful to avoid violating your rights if there was consequence.
Again, you imagined a world that doesn't exist. Your interpretation of how things should work, is just that, YOUR personal interpretation. You're literally arguing that if a decades old law is overturned by a court, it should result in criminal indictments of ... who exactly? Congress that passed and funded this law? What the heck.
Government officials do face charges when they commit crimes such as abuse of public office. A court decision on the interpretation of the Constitution is not a “ruling that a crime was committed.” Drawing on your doctor analogy, it’s more like new evidence showing that a particular treatment is not as safe as previously believed. It doesn’t necessarily follow that the doctor is criminally or civilly liable for providing that treatment in the past – something more, like negligence or recklessness, is needed.
You misunderstand, I meant a court ruling that an official intentionally violated rights of citizens, that is the crime. Constitutionality of something can be established, intentionap disregard of the constitution or a court ruling regarding constitutional matters is the proposed crime I am talking about.
I mean, the UK isn't exactly doing _great_, if you go by the thesis that they're showing favouritism. It's about 0.5 points above the US, mostly due to better electoral process and political participation (which seems... fair?) but 1.5 points behind the highest.
For what it's worth, the UK also does better than the US in the Freedom House index, which is _funded by the US government_.
He knowingly and clearly broke laws by stealing and disclosing classified information. I think he was ethically correct to do so, and his act qualified as civil disobedience, but that's why the US government is after him.
Media is calling Snowden a "leaker" rather than whistleblower, because Trump has been considering pardoning him. The only thing the media cares about is 'orange man bad'.
>Trump says he is considering pardon for leaker Edward Snowden
Your comment makes it so obvious why the current President, who busts norms on a daily basis, is so dangerous: no one is going to hold him accountable. "First they came..."
18 U.S. Code § 242.Deprivation of rights under color of law
Is pretty close, but requires that it be for reason of the person being a certain color, of a race, or an alien, and that the violation be of a nature otherwise unascribed to a citizen. You'd have to be exceedingly loose in interpretation to use it, or well within levels of niceness. However, the desired regulation you're looking for could be achieved with the deletion of the race/alien/color part.
You don't even have to ditch the as prescribed by law for a citizen piece because unconstitutional laws are deemed so from the moment of their enactment.
> The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of the constitution.
We already have federal criminal and civil law establishing penalties, damages, and other remedies for deprivation of rights under color of law, plus the Constitutional power of impeachment which is designed to serve that role for offenses against the Constitutional order of government that are not adequately remediable through traditional legal process.
Your problem seems really to be that laws are always enforced by humans and you don't like the way that the humans responsible for the existing enforcement mechanisms apply them. That's not something that is likely to be fixed particularly well by focussing on changing the law rather than focussing on changing who is entrusted with it's application.
Once the court has ruled, if those officials continue to engage in that activity, they can be held in contempt and imprisoned indefinitely until they stop engaging in that activity. The system achieves the goal of stopping the activity in question. What it doesn't do is create a deterrent for others who will engage in the same or similar activity in the future.
The problem with your idea is that the court is sometimes weighing/balancing competing rights and responsibilities from separate parts of the Constitution.
For example, when is a church’s hiring practice an equal protection violation? Or is it an exercise of freedom of religion?
That gives me an idea for some big time controversy. Pass a law that says your religion can override specific laws such as hiring discrimination. In exchange for those freedoms the government now gets to enforce your religion's rules on your followers if you're not doing it. Or at least the government can fine/sue your organization for failure to enforce the rules.
That's such a bad idea but it would cause so much juicy drama. I would take a year of that over 2020.
Let's say the hiring practice of a church is unlawful, it would not be constitutional law that was violated. Now the Church might sue and say their freedom to excercise their faith is being violated. If a judge rules in good faith against the Church and a higher court reverses that decision the judge should not be found any wrongdoing. I did not mean incorrect rulings should be punished, I meant malicious ignorance and violation of the constitition should be punished.
With your example, if it is found that the law was crafted with intentional ignorance of freedom of religion, then the lawmakers that introduced it should face punishment, if the judge also intentionally ignored this right (and this can be proven) not because of their understanding of the law but because their intentional ignorance of the right, that judge should be punished. And a law enforcer that intentionally violates citizens' rights should also face punishment.
You can’t hold a random analyst, usually a contractor and not a “government official”, for not sharing your opinion on what a 200-year old, intentionally vague, document meant about who-was-contacting-who on a pice of technology that wasn’t invented. Let alone a law that was, albeit controversial at the time, in place for almost 20 years. Would you prefer that your public servants follow the law... or do whatever they feel like? Do what they personally think is the most moral, regardless of what actually elected officials have told them to do?
Metadata is not the content of the calls but the data that the users put out to the world. The public facing data that’s necessary to even process communication in the first place. To use analogy, this would be like imprisoning a postal worker for reading the address on the outside of the envelope.
The idea went that: if the intelligence community chooses to use that information for some thing other than just delivering the letter, that’s no more illegal than if you were to stand on a soapbox and scream all the bad things you did and the cops decided to hold some of that against you in court.
IE. if you put it out there, than you don’t consider it a secret.
But, now, (if the Supreme Court doesn’t step in), the policies will change in the state won’t be used anymore. And, those faithful public servants, who were following the law, will now follow the new law. And, the system works to protect your freedoms.
Whereas, under your ideal, all the public servants that were following the law would be imprisoned and we’d have to find new public servants.. and threaten them with imprisonment if they don’t do what’s morally correct without respect to what they’re actually being told to do by the courts.
We hold low grade solders responsible for following illegal orders, even when those orders come from the very top of the chain of command.
Although its giant double standard, despite knowledge of illegal acts frequently those higher in the chain of command aren't held responsible (aka, look up waterboarding).
You nailed it, but, “illegal orders” actually called “unlawful orders”.
Soldiers and Sailors are only required to follow “lawful orders” not “moral orders”. The Patriot Act is The Law. Any person who is a conscientious objector to The Patriot Act would/should loose their job and clearance.
The Edward Snowden case is simple: he betrayed the trust of all Americans when he broke his oath, and he deserves justice.
There are proper checks and balances, and laws, that govern how constitutional violations should be reported and handled. Edward Snowden ignored all of these chose vigilanteism over the rule of law.
He is no patriot.
That's one of the weakest attempts to justify illegal and unconstitutional actions I've seen.
> Metadata is not the content of the calls but the data that the users put out to the world.
So when I make a call to my private friends, that's "me putting data into the world"? And it is ok for everyone to read it because I did not write it on a paper and instead used the phone? That's how you treat the constitution's "persons, houses, papers, and effects"? Really?
This is not how most people would even think about their information. There is nothing vague about it.
If you use a third party to transmit data, then yes.
If it’s not literally “in the envelope” then it’s public data. Weak argument or not, that’s how the laws work. Think about that very hard next time you type something into the Google search box/make a phone call/send a letter/post something on hacker news.
Oh, and it’s not the Big Bad Government that is collecting the metadata. Companies like Verizon sell this data. God bless privatization, right? And, I’ve literally heard the phrase “If we don’t buy this data, then they’ll just sell it to our adversaries.” Which I believe to be 100% true.
> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution).
Constitution is an interpretable document. Depends how you read it, so it's not as simple as 'violating' the constitution, it ends up in the interpretation of a comma or something.
It is impossible to hold civil servants accountable at all levels of government. As long as you believe you were operating within the law, regardless of if you were or not and what effect that may have had on other people, you seem to be unapproachable.
Eventually this is going to lead to civil servants being lynched.
The intelligence community has been above the law in the United States for a long, long time. The ability to classify (and hence shield from oversight or accountability) any action which is deemed "in the interest of national security" was codified in the National Security Act of 1947 which created the CIA and NSA.
EO12333 includes a fourth amendment bypass for people subject to background investigations. It's easy to redirect that capability for the general population.
Voting gets the violators out of office (rarely works, but let's say it does) but it does not punish them for their explicit malicious violation of the law.
A major reason for the Bill of Rights is to make sure the majority can't take away the rights of the minority. If the only penalty is voting, that doesn't work.
For crimes like this it isn't a matter of "reform" in the same way as when dealing with regular anti-social behavior by individuals. These are people who have been given huge amounts of resources and trust then betrayed us all. I would be very happy for them to be permanently banned from any position in government for the rest of their lives. Instead, nothing happens to them and they fail upwards.
Mandatory sentencing would require a guilty conviction though.
And we can pretty much guarantee any high-level judge who starts handing out guilty verdicts to high level government bureaucrats will swiftly find themselves unemployed, or worse, and replaced by judges who don't do that.
It seems to be the closer we look at high-level government bureaucracy the more similarities we see with organised crime.
...will swiftly find themselves unemployed, or worse...
In USA, federal judges are appointed for life. They may be impeached by Congress, but the general public will notice when Congress impeaches the first judge in living memory who attempts to impose the rule of law on the bureaucracy. It will take a change of heart, however. Anyone who has any inclination in this direction would never be appointed in the first place.
What updates does the US constitution need? I think if we were to rewrite it today it would become largely the same, maybe with a footer that says “and this time we really mean it”
It's an eighteenth century document that can be maddeningly vague at times.
A lot of people (on HN at least) seem to think it's a problem that the First Amendment only applies to Congress, letting companies like Google or Facebook censor speech as much as they like.
The Second Amendment isn't even written in complete sentences, and we need a room full of scholars to figure out just what exactly they meant by "A well regulated Militia,"
The Third Amendment just seems absurd in the modern day.
Maybe we don't need the Electoral College?
Maybe the President's powers to draft executive orders and pardon people undermines the legislative and judicial branches and should be done away with, given how often they've been abused?
It must be possible to have a more efficient census than through the process required by the Constitution.
It should be possible, in a nation of immigrants, for an immigrant to run for President.
There is no Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Amendments related to voting, yes, but nowhere is voting considered to be a right, as opposed to a privilege.
Do we really need to explicitly make the justice system an exception to the Thirteenth Amendment and banning slavery?
That's all I could think of off the top of my head, not being a constitutional scholar. But it stands to reason that a document as old as the Constitution should be updated more often than it has been.
> stands to reason that a document as old as the Constitution should be updated more often than it has been
That constitution was based off of about 2000 years of legal and political theory stretching back at least as far as the Roman Republic, and even the Greek democracies, and written with most of the intervening political history in mind. To say that 200 years makes that much of a difference needs a lot more justification than "it stands to reason".
People say technology is a factor in why we should update the document: I would respond that the human nature which necessitated the clauses assembled in that document haven't changed. Technology has simply accelerated the negative (and positive) effect of the same human tendencies the constitution is already attempting to protect against.
I would suggest that the maxim that's been mentioned on here recently, "don't tear down a fence until you understand why it's been put up" would apply. And the understanding of why the constitution is the way it is requires a breadth of reading that includes Seneca, Plato, and many others. Not to mention the documented discussions between the folks who wrote it.
The founders wrote reams upon reams of text discussing the issues of government. We know damn well what they meant by things like "houses, papers, and effects" and "shall not be infringed"
In a simple majority system, a close result will entail a nationwide recount. With the Electoral College, recounts are only necessary at the state level. Smaller tasks are easier and faster.
The Electoral College is neither unfair nor inaccurate. Also, eliminating it would require a constitutional amendment, which could only be proposed by 2/3 majority votes in either the Senate or in a hypothetical "Article V" convention and then passed by 3/4 of the states. So, this reform that supposedly hurts small states requires two levels of approval from small states. That ain't happening.
Protests against Electoral College are a distraction from possible and substantial reforms, like ranked-choice voting and ending interstate crosscheck and similar disenfranchisement efforts.
I'd say the Second Amendment would need to be tweaked. Our gun control laws are honestly really in breach, and I think they are very sensible pieces of legislation, so we should make everything consistent.
You mean the Mulford Act - Prohibiting Open Carry in California?
What does that have to do with the OP? There are many states that allow Open Carry today.
The original comment stands - Californian views are not universally shared throughout the country. This is the very reason we have States in this country, each with their own government.
Trying to compel people in other states to live the way you think they should, isn't right.
Why can’t a state’s militia have its own military grade weapons and vehicles? Aside from the whole Civil War incident...
I’m not going to argue if it’s a good or bad law, but as written, each state gets to regulate which residents get nothing more than a butter knife, or a nuke, and where the state keeps those things. Arms !== rifles.
A states militia? That's one thing. It's just that it you were to interpret the 2A literally even the State levek gun control laws are out of order.
The reason why a states militia would be an issue is that it's just mostly useless. States aren't allowed to meddle in foreign policy, so what would the militias do?
Are you implying that you think SCOTUS would consequently feel forced to overturn the ruling? If so, I don't follow. Wouldn't these subsequent legal proceedings have their own minutiae that lead courts to make varying decisions?
In operation crossfire hurricane, the FBI doctored an email and used its contents as part of an effort to get a FISA warrant to spy on a member of the incoming administration. This gave them access to listen to conversations of anyone 2 levels of connection away from the target.
They also withheld exculpatory evidence at the time of requesting the warrant, and relied on a fictional document paid for by the opposing political party.
This was used as a basis to conduct a 2 year long investigation into collusion between the campaign and the Russian government, which resulted in the conviction of Michael Cohen for tax evasion and perjury, and Paul Manafort for tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy all of which predated the campaign and had nothing to do with it.
Not only are these agencies spying based on fabricated evidence, they are using the spying to kick off independent investigations, each of which unveil various unrelated crimes, which they then prosecute.
You present a very one-side of view of that story that has been extremely muddied by a constant stream of conspiracy theories and misinformation from everyone including the president. Even though I agree with Trump on some things and dislike Biden the lying, conspiracy theories and general disrespect for our democracy is completely disqualifying in my book.
The conspiracy theory is that the agency conspired to do this for political reasons. Even if you discount that entirely it does not take away from the fact that this is possible and happened, and that in itself ought to be cause for concern.
The US congress gave retroactive immunity to AT&T for this so you can't sue them for actively working with the US government to violate the constitution.
Hard to even pretend he did something wrong after this ruling. The government was proven to be acting illegally and likely also unconstitutionally, he had a moral imperative to alert the public.
For those talking about this subject, I would like to remind you that it is the surveillance network that is the equivalent of an automated Epstein system of blackmail. Not only should we reign in the surveillance state, but we need to remember that to do that we have to stop being so naive and need to understand that the blackmail system is at play in the legislative. This isn't just overfocus on re-election, or k-street normal corruption or any of the normal accusations against congress we have to fight, this is state sponsered blackmail and worse. To try to fix other issues without adressing the blackmail one is not going to be a systemic fix. It's a root causal issue.
So, a question of chicken and egg. What do you try to fix first, congress, or the laws/system? I think congress is the only practical avenue.
Our society hasn't figured out how to punish organizations, whether businesses, NGOs, religious groups, or government agencies. Past a certain level, fines don't cut it—you need existential threats.
We need "prison" more often for misbehaving entities; that is, a prohibition on operating for the duration of the sentence.
"But what about all the people who will be unemployed?" Exactly, that's part of the incentive not to mess up.
"You can't shut down the NSA for a year, what about the commies and the terrorists?" Yes that would be bad, so make sure it won't happen. #Incentives
Shutting down the NSA isn't the answer. We do need those orgs to keep operating for good reasons. Otherwise somebody who dislikes those orgs or has a grudge can shut the whole thing down by breaking the law (imagine a foreign agent playing the "long-con" and doing this).
The answer, as others have already said, is imprisonment of commanding officiers, supervisors, senators in charge of oversight committees, etc. Hold the people that make decisions accountable. Don't hold the entry-level engineers who had a family to feed accountable. Hold the people calling the shots accountable. 10 years in prison is a pretty good incentive for those in charge to make sure what they and their employees are doing is legal.
The org must be accountable for its actions (or inactions). It's the org's responsibility to make sure its agents don't mess up when acting under its authority. Hire employees who are trustworthy and competent, fire those who aren't, and provide training and oversight to ensure compliance. That's a reasonable minimum bar.
Separately, if a person breaks a law, they should be punished for that.
And remember, judgements incorporate circumstances and intentions when determining punishments. So a small non-profit that was trying its best but was still hacked by a nation-state would probably get a lighter punishment, just as accidental manslaughter usually receives a lighter sentence than pre-meditated murder.
An org is made up of people. You can't punish an org without punishing people. So you have to decide who to punish. Do you punish the entire population by removing an org that is there to protect them? Or do you punish the individuals inside and outside of the org that are responsible for making those bad decisions?
You have it backwards: the entire population is punishing the org for failing to protect them.
And yes, that hurts the population a little bit, just as imprisoning individuals hurts civic society and the economy.
To mangle a great line: we are entitled to rise and sleep under the blanket of the very freedom the NSA provides AND question the manner in which they provide it.
You cannot punish an org without punishing people. An org is not something with feelings and isn't sentient. The people within it are. To punish the org, you need to punish the people that make the decisions inside it. Shutting down the entire organisation doesn't hold anybody personally accountable. They'll just go and get jobs elsewhere. It is a silly concept.
Except in rare circumstances, "collective responsibility" is very hard to prove in the courts of law.
When a large section of a society dislikes certain thing, yes, it is possible to prosecute groups. When is this possible? Crimes against humanity is one such example. Or going after mafia or biker gangs. Otherwise, at some time or another, it is very easy to convict influential sections of a society. That's why judges, lawyers are not keen to press charges against an individual just because such an individual is part of some kind of collective responsibility.
I don't disagree with your original points. It is an issue of enforcement. Collusion between individuals or between groups is really hard to prove, except in war crimes/mafia wars/etc.
Lol, they only make rulings like this after the act was already committed and the NSA already stopped using phone metadata so nothing material changes. Even the people imprisoned over the phone data, we are assured that it was so minor and insignificant nothing important about their case should change.
Make no mistake, this is just a way for the intelligence services to pretend as though there's some kind of legality and court oversight to what they are doing.
Prediction: In the next few days, the NSA/FBI use their trove of data to track down all of Antifa, and make arrests. It lets the Democrats off the hook, lets Trump say "law and order", lets the NSA keep it's toys, and the risk of civil war drops a bit, increasing National Security.
They could even frame Iran or North Korea in the process. Bonus points for the Military Industrial Complex.
The real lesson of the Nazis should have been that secret police forces inevitably lead to corruption, even when they’re made with the best intentions. The #1 best method of preventing the Holocaust would have been better government oversight and transparency.
I’m fine with record collection if it works. The secret courts enabling these secret agencies only help hide bad actors and must be abolished.
The National Security Agency program that swept up details on billions of Americans' phone calls was illegal and possibly unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
However, the unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the role the so-called telephone metadata program played in a criminal terror-fundraising case against four Somali immigrants was so minor that it did not undermine their convictions. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/10-Most-Important-SEO-St...
Does bulk/metadata analysis even count though? It's not like somebody is personally going through your data. It's just a system that can infer the few records that are of interest.
I'd rather have that, and allow us to stay protected against terrorists or spies from China/Russia... than play by some arbitrary rules and then get destroyed one day.
> stay protected against terrorists or spies from China/Russia
That's not what it's being used for. It's a flagrant violation of the 4th amendment. Whatever remains of it today, anyway. You don't get to do what amounts to a search without a court order with US citizens.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
... and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This document matters. It’s a fucking miracle it even exists — still.
Question for everyone: in October 2016 the head of the NSA did an audit on unaskings. What percentage do you think were illegal?
> One paragraph in the report states that ??% of the Section 704 and 705(b) FISA searches made during this time were non-compliant with applicable laws and therefore criminal.
Take a guess before you click this [2] link and find out.
I challenge you to even find a mainstream news article about this. It's extremely hard, by design. Let's put aside politics and hold the intelligence agencies accountable.
Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in public hearings with hardly a consequence. There ought to be criminal proceedings and punishments for this. A resignation here and there isn’t enough (one way they’d handle that is by joining the privacy sector and getting back into the game by proxy).