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US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

(www.bbc.com)
763 points tartoran | 4 comments | 23 Oct 25 14:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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wonderwonder ◴[23 Oct 25 15:09 UTC] No.45682736[source]▶
Lots of people seem to think Trump is some sort of king or going outside the law. Fact is he was democratically elected and working within the system of checks and balances established by our founders. Congress can stop him from doing things but the democratically elected congress allows him to continue. So they agree with his actions and are doing their job. Checked and balanced.

The courts can stop him and indeed have in several cases. Often times higher courts over rule those lower ones but not always. Majority of the time they eventually end up siding with the executive branch though. So courts are doing their job. Checked and balanced.

Every check and balance is working its just not making decisions the left agrees with. This is indeed what democracy looks like though.

Mid terms are coming up and the people will once again have a chance to voice their opinion.

Note: I have been hit by the HN "posting to fast" limit so I can't respond.

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1. walkabout ◴[23 Oct 25 15:19 UTC] No.45682839[source]▶
It’s not exactly working when the executive seizes two core powers of Congress (taxation and spending) and gets away with it for, so far, most of a year, with no end in sight.

There’s a difference between disagreement over reasonable interpretations and some of a handful of key passages in the country’s highest law simply being ignored, for months on end (this aside from entirely unambiguous ordinary laws being ignored left and right, like e.g. firing all the inspectors general without the required notice period). That’s not “democracy working”, it’s rule of law, and democracy, breaking. Democracies are routinely ended by people who were elected, the fact that people won elections doesn’t mean that the results are functioning democracy.

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2. wonderwonder ◴[23 Oct 25 15:37 UTC] No.45683092[source]▶
The executive could be stopped at any time by the courts or congress. But the democratically elected congress chooses not to. So the majority that was elected are doing what they think is right. That's how our US democracy works.

Same with the courts, executive is elected by the people and so is the senate. They select and approve the judges, same as it ever was.

I am in no way defending everything I am simply stating that there are checks and balances but many people just don't like the decisions that they are making. Doesn't mean they are not there though.

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3. walkabout ◴[23 Oct 25 15:50 UTC] No.45683277[source]▶
Can you point to any parts of the constitution that, if ignored, would represent the US state based on that same constitution no longer functioning correctly, or not as a continuation of the same state as before? If so, why those parts but not, apparently, broad swaths of the rest of it?

If not… I think you’re operating under a uselessly-broad notion of what constitutes US democracy “working”.

[edit] what this really gets at is legitimacy, which is the ultimate arbiter of who’s in charge and how effectively they may wield power. I find the idea that a state founded on a constitutional document as its fundamental claim to legitimacy ignoring major parts of that document isn’t at least overtly flirting with either a loss of legitimacy or a transition to a different state with a different basis for legitimacy (either of which seem to me to clearly count as a failure of that original state)… puzzling.

4. sjsdaiuasgdia ◴[23 Oct 25 16:53 UTC] No.45684094[source]▶
This is an affront to the rule of law and equal protection under the law. It is not okay for congress or the courts to acquiesce. We are supposed to be a nation of laws.

Congress and the courts are derelict in their responsibility to honor the rule of law.