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.

I don't see how anything has changed in a meaningful way. George Bush "tortured some folks" and Obama assassinated US citizens abroad. The status quo is literal evil and Trump is behaving in accordance with the status quo.

If you don't see any distinctions beyond “there is some evil” vs. “there is no evil”, all of human history must seem to be a flat, undifferentiated blob to you.

That's why the future looks so bleak. Republicans support absolutely any amount of crime and corruption, because "some" crime and corruption has happened under Democrats. Meanwhile half of the rest of Americans wouldn't support Democrats because "some" crime is infinitely worse than "no crime" in their view. Criminals enjoy an absolutely stunning structural advantage in this country.