Comment on YSK the full scope of the recent US presidential immunity decision
originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee 4 months agoYes but I think the nefarious change here is not that the actual power has changed but that the Supreme Court has given face value validity to illegal acts. The President has always has unmitigated pardon power. They could order the military to commit illegal acts and pardon them preemptively so that they were not illegal. A reason why that hasn’t happened is that the optics of that are horrifying - the President and military must admit to a crime being committed to pardon that crime. With this ruling there is not admission, no face value legal wrongdoing, and plausible deniability.
SCOTUS knew precisely what they were doing. This is a significant expansion of presidential power, yes. But they know that the real issue is political. What they want is the President to be able to argue that illegal things are legal because the President did it, instead of arguing that illegal things are not punishable because the President pardoned the criminals.
The President can literally shoot someone in cold blood, in public, and as long as they can deem it an official act it is de jure legal.
You might be asking why the right isn’t worried that Biden will abuse this - the answer is because they know he doesn’t have the balls. The left still thinks we’re in 1968 fighting for rights with mostly peaceful protests. We’re in 1938 and we’ve already lost.
You might be asking why the right isn’t worried that Biden will abuse this - the answer is because they know he doesn’t have the balls. The left still thinks we’re in 1968 fighting for rights with mostly peaceful protests. We’re in 1938 and we’ve already lost.
Yet again, folks are confusing leftist with liberals.
That’s your takeaway? Seriously?
Obviously it’s not my only takeaway, but there’s no rule that my comment has to contain every single thought I had on the topic!
And this is the comment you chose to…what? Add to the discussion? Enlighten people? Promote some sort of discourse? Or is it just mindless pedantry?
You’re spot on until you conflated Biden with “the left”.
Liberals aren’t left.
k
@originalfrozenbanana really seems to hate getting called out for his scapegoating lie.
Agree with everything except why Biden won’t do it–its a paradox of trying to maintain our status quo democracy with the traditional tools of our status quo democracy.
I recognize that its a horrible asymmetry of power that they will have presidents that abuse power while dems will try to respect traditional lines of power…but the populace and parties themselves are also a correlary assymetry—cult 45 will cheerlead any horrible thing their guy does (or pretend it isn’t real, or isn’t really that bad, whatever the moment requires to avoid cognitive dissonance), but it Joe abused power, both Republicans and Democrats in power and as citizens across the nation would cry out for accountability.
It’s a right clusterfuck, that is for sure.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
“Evil always wins, because good is dumb.”