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

(www.bbc.com)
763 points tartoran | 2 comments | 23 Oct 25 14:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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rayiner ◴[23 Oct 25 15:39 UTC] No.45683124[source]▶
Your comment reflects a common, but fundamentally mistaken, understanding of the constitution. You're thinking of the government like an operating system with a microkernel that is trusted to neutrally enforce the "law," with the three branches of government running in userspace.

That's not the system the founders created! They understood that everyone is political, and no one can be trusted. The founders understood the "who watches the watchers" problem and created a system without any such single point of failure. The ultimate backstop in our political system is not the law, but instead frequent elections. Congress writes the law, the President enforces the law, and the Judiciary interprets the law. If the President does a bad job of enforcing the law, the recourse is elections (or, as a last resort, impeachment).

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cco ◴[24 Oct 25 02:47 UTC] No.45690195[source]▶
Turns out that separation of powers was incorrect. Each branch needs its own enforcement arm and our plan of having the Executive carry out the law instead of just enforcing the law was a bad idea.
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1. rayiner ◴[24 Oct 25 16:13 UTC] No.45696087[source]▶
No, because then you’re just centralizing power in the hands of a specific group of people—Ivy League law school graduates—that have distinctive cultural and class interests. Maybe you think that’s a good idea today. But in the mid-20th century these institutions were the bastion of WASPs, long after that group lost electoral control of the country due to immigration. (Watch the movie The Good Shepherd.) Your system would’ve given the FBI/CIA/DOJ powerful tools to destroy the presidencies of FDR and JFK. There’s a reason the conspiracy theory exists that the CIA assassinated the first catholic president.

The founders were right that nobody can be trusted to neutrally enforce “the law.” If you could trust Harvard graduates as a class to do that, there would be no reason for checks and balances or separation of powers.

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2. cco ◴[24 Oct 25 18:57 UTC] No.45697942[source]▶
> The founders were right that nobody can be trusted to neutrally enforce “the law.”

Well my point is two-fold. First, what you say here is my point, all branches need an _enforcement_ arm. Today Congress has the Sergeant at Arms and courts have bailiffs and may deputize members of the Executive Branch.

However that's clearly inadequate in the face of the Executive's current balance of power. A rebalancing is necessary imo.

Could that result in a Roman-esque problem of the three branches having "tug of wars" with each other's law enforcement arm, but I don't think so. We have this problem today with the dozens of law enforcement organizations within the Executive...which brings me to my second point!

My second point is that carrying out the law in the Executive was clearly the wrong choice. The Legislative branch should actually carry out the law, i.e. USPS should live under a committee in Congress, and mail fraud would continue to be prosecuted by the Executive.

I'll caveat that I'm had waiving a lot here, but I hope we can all agree at least on the problem statement; too much power has concentrated in the Executive and _drastic_ measures would be required to resolve that situation.