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

(www.bbc.com)
763 points tartoran | 2 comments | 23 Oct 25 14:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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candiddevmike ◴[23 Oct 25 15:30 UTC] No.45683006{3}[source]▶
> I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

Surely there weren't any historical examples of that happening, like in the Mediterranean...

I kinda dislike how folks hold the founders up with some kind of religious reverence (for some, only when it suits their agenda). These guys may have been bright at the time, but you can tell they didn't think a lot of things through and certainly didn't "plan for scale". That we now have judges acting as pseudo priests "interpreting the founders" is just laughable, I doubt the founders envisioned their constitution still being in use 300+ years later.

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1. mrguyorama ◴[23 Oct 25 15:38 UTC] No.45683101{4}[source]▶
The founders wanted exactly what we have: A government beholden to the rich and well connected. That's why they agitated for revolution in the first place. They talked big about liberty and democracy, but when given the chance, they said very concretely: "We the people" means "We the rich, white people"

More directly, they all talked about how problematic political parties could be, and then did nothing at all to prevent them. They weren't exactly good systems thinkers.

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2. rrix2 ◴[23 Oct 25 16:23 UTC] No.45683732[source]▶
you're being downvoted, i suggest folks read up on the whiskey rebellion, the economic depression after the revolutionary war, the economic problems and internal strife caused by policies that Washington and the other federalists enacted to "strengthen the republic" in the years between the war and the constitution being ratified.

https://archive.org/details/tamingdemocracyt0000bout/