Discussion
DOJ Wants to Scrap Watergate-Era Rule That Makes Presidential Records Public
josefritzishere: That sounds like someone wants to hide the evidence.
lokar: As weird as it seems (to me anyway) there has always been a group of conservative republicans who maintain that Nixon did nothing wrong and all of the restrictions on the president passed then are inappropriate.
cogman10: One of them, Roger Stone, worked on the trump campaign and has a Nixon tattoo on his back.
LightBug1: Step'ity step towards a fascist state for the klep'ity klep ...
hypeatei: Also: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/roger-stone-found-guilty-...> Stone was found guilty of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress, and tampering with a witness
coldcode: It's not a rule, it's a law passed by Congress and signed by the President in 1978. You can't just ignore it.
ceejayoz: Fine. I wanna scrap the pardon power. Trade?https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-promises-mass-pard...
dboreham: Enforced by the following the rules police. Oh wait..
jfengel: Sure you can, when you're the President. He's got presumptive immunity for all official acts. If election interference is an official act (as they decided in Trump v US), then surely ordering the destruction of all of his records is also an official act.
smallmancontrov: It's only weird if you believe they hold their stated values. If instead you infer their values from their actions and extrapolate forwards, you haven't been surprised in 50 years.
dylan604: And then pardoned by Trump
sassymuffinz: The rules only apply to Democrats now, did you miss the memo? (Maybe you didn't see the memo as it was sealed).
dylan604: Why does it seem weird to you? Of course there's a group of people that want to take the wheel and jerk it hard. Some want to jerk it left. Some want to jerk it right.It's this way pretty much in every country. Some countries are trying to stay down the middle, but others have already been jerked hard right/left. Either way, this is a universal pressure felt in all governments led by humans
whatever1: Why not? Are we gonna send the marshals to arrest the president?Jokes aside, this presidency showed that it was not our written laws that enabled the expected operation of gov branches within their expected limits.It was these unwritten laws we were taking for granted, because casually we assume that the gov will not be malicious.It seems to me that we need to stop letting lawyers write laws, and instead start writing verified programs.
Hikikomori: Stone was also involved in the Brooks riot helping getting bush the win. Amy Coney Barret and other supreme judges appointed by Trump were involved in the lawsuit brought to the supreme court.It's the same fucking people.
aaronbrethorst: ACB, Kavanaugh, and Roberts were all on Bush's legal team for Bush v. Gore. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/bush-v-gore-barrett-...
overfeed: The fourth estate is absolutely failing America. The headline ought to be "DOJ wants to break Watergate law", but instead, we get... this. Is Bari Weiss now running the Intercept too? WTAF is going on across the board?
ceejayoz: This is a very clearly written law, though.It has nothing to do with the writing. It's the "fuck you we'll ignore" it thing that's a problem. No amount of writing fixes that.
tlhunter: https://archive.is/jHfOe
nickvec: Crazy that you can't even read an article anymore without having to cough up money and/or provide your personal data.
koolba: > It's not a rule, it's a law passed by Congress and signed by the President in 1978. You can't just ignore it.They’re not ignoring. They’re saying they think the law itself is unconstitutional.From the article:>> In a sweeping new memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel, the DOJ claims the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. The department’s edict, which is already facing legal challenges, argues that a president’s records are private, rather than public, property.
_doctor_love: The Trump/Nixon connection is deep:- https://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2020/09/unseen-corresponden...- https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/23/donald-trump-richar...- https://abc7chicago.com/post/1987-letter-nixons-predict-trum...
solid_fuel: I disagree. I think that constitutional scholars have always known that it's not the written laws that hold the executive in check. Our system was designed so that the 3 branches would check each other. The Federalist Paper #51 explicitly calls this out - "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." [0]The problem with any system like you are suggesting where "we need to stop letting lawyers write laws, and instead start writing verified programs" is the same as always - who enforces the law?The cause of the dysfunction we have now is that congress has failed to check the power of the executive. Congress should have impeached and removed Donald Trump for treason and other high crimes after January 6th. He should have been convicted and felt the full force of the law around his neck for trying to interfere with the function of congress and overthrow the election.Every problem we face with our government right now traces back to the same issue: Congress is not doing its job. Congress has the power to impeach and remove the president for threatening to nuke Iran. Congress has the power to stop the executive branch from starting illegal wars overseas. Congress has the power to punish ICE for executing citizens in the streets of Minneapolis.Congress has failed to exercise this power for several reasons, a major one being that both the house and senate are no longer representative of the American people. The house has been limited in membership ever since the reapportionment act and the senate was always designed to favor wealthy landowners in slave states.This results in placing massively disproportionate power in the hands of a tiny fraction of voters just because they live in the middle of nowhere, which in turn makes it very easy for the rich and powerful to game the system. There is no way forward for us as a country without reforming congress.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._51
jfengel: I believe that the problem is that they also set up Congress with its own check, between two houses. They made it deliberately hard to pass legislation, which means they cannot effectively balance the other two branches.Congress spent decades ceding power to the executive because it realized it could not do anything itself. And now it's stuck.
afiori: Pardon power competes with governors (at least NY) being able to edit laws before signing them for most anachronistic/dystopian feature of the US state.
afiori: yes, with a but, rephrased as "crazy that you can't use a private service without payment or otherwise contributing to its profitability" sounds less so crazy.I agree on the excess.
qingcharles: The general rule is that even facially unconstitutional laws are usually enforced until a judicial ruling against them. see e.g. all the people who did prison time for municipal handgun prohibitions until District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010).
ceejayoz: > They’re saying they think the law itself is unconstitutional.Yeah, well, they can say that to SCOTUS.
PaulDavisThe1st: and they will, and SCOTUS will listen, and say "remind me what party the president is from again" and then say "hmmmmm"
