BadOptics posted:

quote:

The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap. They sat me on a chair and beat my feet from above, with considerable force... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal hemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. They beat my back with the same rubber strap and punched my face, swinging their fists from a great height ... The intolerable physical and emotional pain caused my eyes to weep unending streams of tears, Lying face down on the floor, I discovered that I could wriggle, twist and squeal like a dog when its master whips it ... When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever ... "death, oh most certainly, death is easier than this!" the interrogated person says to himself. I began to incriminate myself in the hope that this, at least, would lead quickly to the scaffold

EBB posted:

All of the legalese will never change a simple fact: Gallagher is a murderer and a monster, and the world has the photos to prove this. Expunge that.

French Canadian posted:

I'm not trying to troll I'm just trying to make sense of whether or not the military is full of fascists as these dumb dumbs seem to hype it as being...

I mean, sure it's not but gently caress me...now I'm gonna be on the look out for any telltale fascist insignias :^/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mJfnYKqZdwPhK1bFbrx9hCi-61n5f0tener8iZ3AkOw/htmlview#gid=0

Per the recent info dump communicated via bellingcat:

https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/11/06/massive-white-supremacist-message-board-leak-how-to-access-and-interpret-the-data/

French Canadian posted:

I'm not trying to troll I'm just trying to make sense of whether or not the military is full of fascists as these dumb dumbs seem to hype it as being...

I mean, sure it's not but gently caress me...now I'm gonna be on the look out for any telltale fascist insignias :^/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mJfnYKqZdwPhK1bFbrx9hCi-61n5f0tener8iZ3AkOw/htmlview#gid=0

Per the recent info dump communicated via bellingcat:

https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/11/06/massive-white-supremacist-message-board-leak-how-to-access-and-interpret-the-data/

colachute posted:

I imagine someone who is a die hard nationalist is probably more likely to join the military. And die hard nationalists tend to be lovely people. I don’t know if there are studies on this, it just logically makes sense to me. Maybe we are seeing the study unfold.

Milo and POTUS posted:

Barr is a grade A piece of poo poo to the point I, in my sparkling ignorance, might actually prefer Sessions

Milo and POTUS posted:

Barr is a grade A piece of poo poo to the point I, in my sparkling ignorance, might actually prefer Sessions

Stultus Maximus posted:

If you read the whole thing, there is a significant portion dedicated to how the Framers intended to create a strong Executive branch and that Congress has usurped the President's power.

facialimpediment posted:

https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1195159642546024449

https://twitter.com/POLITICO_Steve/status/1195919981587976194

Donnie has like zero coattails, it's pretty wild.

https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/1195914192093618177

Stultus Maximus posted:

If you read the whole thing, there is a significant portion dedicated to how the Framers intended to create a strong Executive branch and that Congress has usurped the President's power.

Casimir Radon posted:

Remember how these idiots wouldn't shut up about "King Obama" a few short years ago?

Casimir Radon posted:

Remember how these idiots wouldn't shut up about "King Obama" a few short years ago?

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCOxVaQQrbk

Godholio posted:

Casimir Radon posted:

Remember how these idiots wouldn't shut up about "King Obama" a few short years ago?

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCOxVaQQrbk

ded posted:

King Obama is why they are so worried.





Still.

Milo and POTUS posted:

Barr is a grade A piece of poo poo to the point I, in my sparkling ignorance, might actually prefer Sessions

Godholio posted:

quote:

The grammar school civics class version of our Revolution is that it was a rebellion against monarchial tyranny, and that, in framing our Constitution, one of the main preoccupations of the Founders was to keep the Executive weak. This is misguided.
...
Things changed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. To my mind, the real “miracle” in Philadelphia that summer was the creation of a strong Executive, independent of, and coequal with, the other two branches of government.

The consensus for a strong, independent Executive arose from the Framers’ experience in the Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation. They had seen that the War had almost been lost and was a bumbling enterprise because of the lack of strong Executive leadership. Under the Articles of Confederation, they had been mortified at the inability of the United States to protect itself against foreign impositions or to be taken seriously on the international stage. They had also seen that, after the Revolution, too many States had adopted constitutions with weak Executives overly subordinate to the Legislatures.

quote:

One of the more amusing aspects of modern progressive polemic is their breathless attacks on the “unitary executive theory.” They portray this as some new-fangled “theory” to justify Executive power of sweeping scope. In reality, the idea of the unitary executive does not go so much to the breadth of Presidential power. Rather, the idea is that, whatever the Executive powers may be, they must be exercised under the President’s supervision. This is not “new,” and it is not a “theory.” It is a description of what the Framers unquestionably did in Article II of the Constitution.

After you decide to establish an Executive function independent of the Legislature, naturally the next question is, who will perform that function? The Framers had two potential models. They could insinuate “checks and balances” into the Executive branch itself by conferring Executive power on multiple individuals (a council) thus dividing the power. Alternatively, they could vest Executive power in a solitary individual. The Framers quite explicitly chose the latter model because they believed that vesting Executive authority in one person would imbue the Presidency with precisely the attributes necessary for energetic government. Even Jefferson – usually seen as less of a hawk than Hamilton on Executive power – was insistent that Executive power be placed in “single hands,” and he cited the America’s unitary Executive as a signal feature that distinguished America’s success from France’s failed republican experiment.

The implications of the Framers’ decision are obvious. If Congress attempts to vest the power to execute the law in someone beyond the control of the President, it contravenes the Framers’ clear intent to vest that power in a single person, the President. So much for this supposedly nefarious theory of the unitary executive.

quote:

So let me turn now to how the Executive is presently faring in these interbranch battles. I am concerned that the deck has become stacked against the Executive. Since the mid-60s, there has been a steady grinding down of the Executive branch’s authority, that accelerated after Watergate. More and more, the President’s ability to act in areas in which he has discretion has become smothered by the encroachments of the other branches.

quote:

I think there are two aspects of contemporary thought that tend to operate to the disadvantage of the Executive.

The first is the notion that politics in a free republic is all about the Legislative and Judicial branches protecting liberty by imposing restrictions on the Executive.

This prejudice is wrong-headed and atavistic.

quote:

As I have said, the Framers fully expected intense pulling and hauling between the Congress and the President. Unfortunately, just in the past few years, we have seen these conflicts take on an entirely new character.

Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called “The Resistance,” and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration.

A prime example of this is the Senate’s unprecedented abuse of the advice-and-consent process. The Senate is free to exercise that power to reject unqualified nominees, but that power was never intended to allow the Senate to systematically oppose and draw out the approval process for every appointee so as to prevent the President from building a functional government.

Yet that is precisely what the Senate minority has done from his very first days in office. As of September of this year, the Senate had been forced to invoke cloture on 236 Trump nominees — each of those representing its own massive consumption of legislative time meant only to delay an inevitable confirmation. How many times was cloture invoked on nominees during President Obama’s first term? 17 times. The Second President Bush’s first term? Four times. It is reasonable to wonder whether a future President will actually be able to form a functioning administration if his or her party does not hold the Senate.

quote:

One of the ironies of today is that those who oppose this President constantly accuse this Administration of “shredding” constitutional norms and waging a war on the rule of law. When I ask my friends on the other side, what exactly are you referring to? I get vacuous stares, followed by sputtering about the Travel Ban or some such thing. While the President has certainly thrown out the traditional Beltway playbook, he was upfront about that beforehand, and the people voted for him. What I am talking about today are fundamental constitutional precepts. The fact is that this Administration’s policy initiatives and proposed rules, including the Travel Ban, have transgressed neither constitutional, nor traditional, norms, and have been amply supported by the law and patiently litigated through the Court system to vindication.

Indeed, measures undertaken by this Administration seem a bit tame when compared to some of the unprecedented steps taken by the Obama Administration’s aggressive exercises of Executive power – such as, under its DACA program, refusing to enforce broad swathes of immigration law.

The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “Resistance” against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.

quote:

To my mind, the most blatant and consequential usurpation of Executive power in our history was played out during the Administration of President George W. Bush, when the Supreme Court, in a series of cases, set itself up as the ultimate arbiter and superintendent of military decisions inherent in prosecuting a military conflict – decisions that lie at the very core of the President’s discretion as Commander in Chief.

This usurpation climaxed with the Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene. There, the Supreme Court overturned hundreds of years of American, and earlier British, law and practice, which had always considered decisions as to whether to detain foreign combatants to be purely military judgments which civilian judges had no power to review. For the first time, the Court ruled that foreign persons who had no connection with the United States other than being confronted by our military on the battlefield had “due process” rights and thus have the right to habeas corpus to obtain judicial review of whether the military has a sufficient evidentiary basis to hold them.

Handsome Ralph posted:

I thought for sure LA was going to go Red again but oh man.

Stultus Maximus posted:

Get cancer.


Terminal rectal cancer.


And have your corpse eaten by wild dogs.