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

(www.bbc.com)
763 points tartoran | 7 comments | 23 Oct 25 14:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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mikeyouse ◴[23 Oct 25 14:35 UTC] No.45682307[source]▶
> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law".

We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive branch departments, and the President can fire them all without consequence or oversight, then it turns out there is no law.

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skizm ◴[23 Oct 25 14:52 UTC] No.45682511[source]▶
> it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch

There are plenty of laws being ignored. Tariffs being the most obvious.

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selectodude ◴[23 Oct 25 15:16 UTC] No.45682818[source]▶
Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
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cheema33 ◴[23 Oct 25 15:21 UTC] No.45682889[source]▶
> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!

I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

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1. outside2344 ◴[23 Oct 25 15:34 UTC] No.45683061{3}[source]▶
The thing the founders didn't foresee was that a president could basically threaten to remove any member of Congress by 1) driving their campaign contributions to zero or 2) threatening to sic his mob on them.
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2. actionfromafar ◴[23 Oct 25 15:43 UTC] No.45683180[source]▶
Dissenting representatives may very well need Secret Service protection to stay alive. Good luck getting that protection approved.

(The Epstein issue is a special case - some of the MAGA base still believes it was not a hoax and that Epstein was not alone in his crimes.)

3. itsoktocry ◴[23 Oct 25 16:43 UTC] No.45683995[source]▶
>1) driving their campaign contributions to zero or 2) threatening to sic his mob on them.

What's so crazy about comments like this is they have an air of, "we are actually the good guys in the right, but the system works against us!"

You got out-voted.

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4. drob518 ◴[23 Oct 25 16:47 UTC] No.45684042[source]▶
The founders foresaw all manner of bad behavior. They understood human nature better than most today, and they experienced a lot of shocking political acts, everything from telling scurrilous lies about your opponent to outright buying votes. The only thing that might be new to them is the scale at which technology makes these things possible. Read up on the history of early campaigns.
5. onethought ◴[23 Oct 25 16:51 UTC] No.45684079[source]▶
If you flicked the switch and made voting mandatory. Then you'd find the extreme views on both sides would vanish as everyone would rush to please the middle (the VAST majority of the population).

You can't make statements like "you got out voted" when you actually mean "a few more people from your side turned out and voted, but actually likely the majority of the population doesn't agree with you".

You could argue that apathy is a vote in and of itself, but then you aren't a representative democracy.

6. shadowgovt ◴[23 Oct 25 17:00 UTC] No.45684184[source]▶
They did. The back-stop is Congress being brave enough to call the bluff and supporting each other as an institution, across party lines.

The founders didn't foresee Congress being this cowardly. Probably because a lot of them had fought in a war together.

7. shadowgovt ◴[23 Oct 25 17:03 UTC] No.45684222[source]▶
The President is currently rocking about a 39% approval rating and 56% disapproval.

The numbers suggest that he is not doing what the electorate elected him to do, in general.

(In addition, the Legislature and Executive are designed and intended to be functionally independent, and regardless of the preference the electorate expressed via simple majority, to the extent that independence is threatened by executive action, it's unconstitutional. The President doesn't have a mandate to interfere with that indepdendence for the same reason his election didn't give him a mandate to institute non-carceral slavery).