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

> 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.

The answer is impeachment, but when Congress is stuffed with boot licking toadies, then there is no recourse.

* s/impeachment/“conviction by the Senate”

Impeachment by itself has been shown to accomplish nothing. There is no other mechanism except conviction by the Senate to address constitutional or legal violations made by the president.

Also no president has ever been impeached by a House which is controlled by a majority of the same party of the President. If Congress had a full Republican majority during Nixon’s years, he would not have been impeached. If Congress had a full Democratic majority during Clinton’s years, he would not have been impeached.

Edit: “Approval voting” is the appropriate escape hatch from 2-party politics. It lets you get rid of primaries entirely and run all the top-n candidates who have the greatest number of valid nomination signatures. Its advantage over range-voting/etc is that it is dead-simple to explain to voters: Put a checkmark next to any candidate that you're "okay" with. The candidate with the most checkmarks wins.

https://rangevoting.org/CompChart.html

This mostly shows that political parties are the problem themselves rather than the political mechanics of the system themselves.