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.

It defeats the purpose of a veto if the executive branch can ignore the law.

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At least I get to feel vindicated. Many many people, including me, have long asserted that the so-called "conservatives" in the Supreme Court are anything but. Historically their decisions have appealed to a certain kind of conservative political base, but the pretense is really starting to wear thin. Limiting the power of the executive branch in general was never the goal, it was only to limit the power of presidents who were willing to challenge the capitalist oligarchy master plan. They know that their job now, along with their allies and Congress, is to simply step aside and manage public outrage while the next phase of the plan is set in motion. I'm not just talking about in recent years either, go back through the Obama and W Bush administrations. You might notice that the conservatives in the court curiously turned more conservative when "their guy" isn't in office.

> have long asserted that the so-called "conservatives" in the Supreme Court are anything but

They are conservatives and push for conservative agenda. Conservatives wanted them on the court so that they can make decisions like this.

Yeah, the meaning of words change.

They are conservatives. People that care about things like small governments and fiscal responsibility are not. It's sad when somebody takes control over a group you identify with and changes it's goals but you're one person versus millions. The word doesn't mean what it used to.

The Republican party has not existed since 2016. It is the Trump party wearing the Republican party's tattered clothes.

An enormous proportion of Republican voters were already Trumpers as early as the ‘90s, but didn’t have a candidate yet, so had to settle for “vote Republican to keep the democrats from doing all the bad things Rush says they will”.

Republican partisan-propaganda media after anti-trust de-fanging (mid ‘70s) and media deregulation (‘80s-‘00s) became huge, and cultivated an electorate that wanted Trump but had to settle for tepidly-socially-conservative neoliberal Republicans. Such voters would tell you all day long about how we should just build a border wall (or mine it…), cut trade and foreign military engagements (though those have some cross-aisle appeal), question why we extend civil rights and due process to [pick a group], tell you we should use the military against protesters in cities, wonder why anyone opposes cops beating suspects unless they love crime, and so on, and they’d tell you that stuff many years before Trump’s 2016 run.