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763 points tartoran | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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mikeyouse ◴[] 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 ◴[] 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 ◴[] No.45682818[source]
Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
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cheema33 ◴[] 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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outside2344 ◴[] 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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1. drob518 ◴[] No.45684042{4}[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.