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

(www.bbc.com)
763 points tartoran | 1 comments | 23 Oct 25 14:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | 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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1. atypicaluser ◴[23 Oct 25 16:32 UTC] No.45683854[source]▶
> ...it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch.

There are, but the executive for decades (centuries?) has ignored law inconvenient to its goals, and the legislative has generally shrugged it off, hoping their guy will do the same down the road.

One such restraint? Declaring war. Yet how often has this power been abused by the executive since World War 2? Korea anyone? Vietnam? Central America? The Middle East?

There's been a lot of hand-wringing in this thread about what Trump has done and is doing. Truth is, he's just the latest player in the game we've all participated in, and he's good at it.

To stop him, we'd have to change the rules of the game, as Congress did in 2017 with the Russia sanctions bill.[1] I just don't see that happening 'cause... we're all hoping our guy will do the same (as Trump) down the road.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_America%27s_Adversa...>