The king not being above the law is the founding principle of the United States. There was a whole revolution about it.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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And so you see children, that was why we prosecuted Bush for War Cri-- oh wait nevermind.
No, there was a revolution because rich men wanted more. You fucking idiots just believed the song and dance.
Lots of your presidents get away with despicable shit so don't give it the star-spangled spit shine.
Very powerful presidential immunity is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've heard.
Yes, let's give the most powerful person on the planet complete immunity for whatever tickles their fancy.
Wanna wipe out a small nation because you don't like someone who is from there? Sure. Consequences? What consequences?
Let's strip all voting rights from anyone who isn't someone who supports me.
Let's bomb LA, for fun and profit.
Stupid.
Wanna wipe out a small nation because you don't like someone who is from there? Sure. Consequences? What consequences?
I mean, while a nation wasn't wiped out, a whole war was started against Iraq over false pretenses, and no consequences were ever seen.
We also spent 20 years in Afghanistan blowing shit up as a result of some Saudis hijacking planes, then just left all the terps and their families to be killed by the Taliban.
The argument about invading Afghanistan was that the Taliban was in cahoots with Al Qaeda and were harbouring Osama bin Laden.
Whom we eventually found in Pakistan, after the boardwalk in Kandahar had been around for years. Instead of putting pressure on the royal family to turn over the black sheep we invaded a country of goat herders and poppy farmers. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 and that fuckin TGI Fridays didn’t close for like 5 years after, UBL was the excuse to fire up the military machine but its inertia makes too much money to stop just cause you got your target.
At least they justified it. I mean, the justification was bullshit; but the justifications existed and, at least at the time, the majority of the public believed it.
If we give blanket immunity to the president, then, IDK, goodbye Madagascar, for no logical reason.
At least right now they have to try to justify taking some kind of action against someone or something. They can't just do whatever.
Executive action, president can serve as long as they want. Executive action, the president is now the God-King dictator of the USA. States are dissolved, and everyone is under the rulership of his supreme Highness.
Of course there were consequences! Or as we rather call them, ROI
To be fair, there is one other but he was pardoned
Yet he had the intelligence to understand he couldnt.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." Richard Nixon, 1977, David Frost interview.
Idk, kinda seems like this is just what would've happened if Nixon had Fox News batting for him.
Almost like their lesson from this was "we need control of everything people hear about news and politics", leading to the creation of Fox News, ClearChannel, etc.
Don’t forget shame. He also had enough shame to resign.
Normalize being actually guilty ~~instead of~~ including being sentenced as such
Not quite. He was told that there were enough votes against him (including from his own party) that he'd lose impeachment proceedings, and that was the impetus for his resignation.
Id call that shame of not wanting to face the impeachment. Trump on the other hand would have kept the course even if he knew every congressman and senator would vote he was guilty and to be impeached and removed. And if the likes of Romney had bothered to discuss their disgust of his actions there was a small but real chance he would have been convicted.
Dictators love reasons to institute emergency powers. Oldest strategy in the playbook.
Lincoln arguably needed it, and got it, as a requirement to win the Civil War. He suspended habeus corpus, arrested Confederate sympathizers on the spot, sized property from union and southern folks for basically any reason...
But won the war and freed the slaves; he broke the rules but was proven right.
Little different than a shit stain facing 91 felonies because he's an idiot and got his poor little feelings hurt.
I'm aware of the habeus corpus suspension - which I would argue was a bit of an extraordinary case as it was drawn into play initially because of the civil war, the capital was difficult to reinforce because of a rail obstruction and Congress could not safely be called into session. Even then, to my knowledge the act only applied to a small area from DC to like Pennsylvania or something. The act was rendered inoperable at the official end of the war and even before that I think all political prisoners taken during that time were released and even offered amnesty so long as they didn't aid the confederacy, which, again given the extraordinary circumstances is a little more understandable (albeit admittedly still very contentious) than the current situation we have now.
What I'm not aware of is Lincoln's criminal/civil immunity outside of this. Do you have any other information on this? It sounds interesting and something I have never heard of. I'd like to learn about it!
And also Andrew Jackson who defied the Supreme Court and committed crimes anyway. The idea that this is new is a farce.
Well, I mean... Richard "It's Not A Crime if the President Does It" Nixon needed it.
Also, Dick Cheney lobbied for Scooter Libby's clemency really hard for some reason.
Remember though, many people will have you believe that both sides are identical.
Vote anyway.
Nixon probably could have used that.
He didn't need it, he was pardoned immediately by his successor. Bush was never even prosecuted for his war crimes. The tweet is correct that no other president has needed immunity, but it's not because they didn't do crime. It's because the system has always been rotten, and these crooks have always covered each other's backs even across party lines.
"Need" is so far removed from anything the fat orange crybaby talks about as to be a non issue
Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon would have needed to make these immunity arguments if he had not received that pardon.
Unpopular opinion: Obama should be prosecuted for the immense amount of drone strikes that resulted in thousands of deaths.
Not for the deaths themselves, but he should be tried for authorizing 'double-tap' strikes. Depending on the exact justification and the level of scrutiny employed, it may not rise to the level of a war crime - but there is a very good chance that it does.
Sadly, it'll never happen. If Bush didn't get tried for much, much worse while being much, much less popular, Obama definitely isn't.
I also think Bush should be tried for war crimes. But that's not that unpopular. :)
I'm not sure why that is an actually unpopular opinion either... They're literally designed to hit first responders.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) includes the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against medical units and transport (arts. 8(2)(b)(xxiv), 8(2)(e)(ii)) for both international and non-international armed conflicts).
If I don't like it when their guy does it, I don't see why it's ok when our guy does it.
I actually wrote up and sent Obama a strongly worded letter a few years ago, after his last term ended expressing my disappointment in him. I read his book and realized that he didn't know, or refused to acknowledge his complicity in the atrocities of his administration. Never did get a reply.
Or->and. Remember he is senile