To indict or not to indict the Chief Executive?
An isolated Nixon Justice Department letter, and right-wing Unitary Executive theorists are on one side.
Our entire tradition that no man is above the law, and the most prominent constitutional law experts at our law schools are on other side.
Indict.
Please share widely!
No.
In this instance, the prosecutor is virtuous and the President (and the Congress) venal. Ok. What happens when the President is virtuous and the prosecutor (and the Congress) venal?
That’s a precedent that is ripe for abuse: If Nixon had been indicted in ’73, you can bet that Bill Clinton would have been indicted every other week, from ’92 to ’94… grinding the entire enterprise to a halt.
Republicans are corrupt. The very tenor of corruption is to use good things for bad ends… that’s the very reason why it’s called ‘corruption.’ You’d just be handing them another good thing that they will then misuse to the detriment of us all…
It’s noteworthy that you chose to sidestep the issue of whether any person, including the Chief Executive, is above the law.
More noteworthy, certainly, than you pulling, yet again, some worn out cliche outta your backside, just so you can get your fix of high moral dudgeon….
Some of us prefer to actually think for ourselves.
It’s noteworthy that you still have not addressed the issue of whether the Chief Executive is above the law.
It’s also noteworthy that you jumped awfully quickly to ad hominem commentary.
I’ll stick with the issue at hand. Whatever happened to this morning’s cornflakes or whatever else caused a personal outburst is dull in comparison. More importantly, moral dudgeon, or lack thereof, is just not relevant to this discussion.
.
You are going to double down on the cliches, huh? Well, if you’re going to do that, you should make the effort (ha!) to do that correctly.
“You are ugly and you smell bad, therefore your argument is invalid. ” That is ad hominem.
“Your response to my argument displays a distinct lack of originality and intellectual rigor” Is not ad hominem..
I understood (from previous comments) that you are a lawyer… thus you have no excuse for not knowing the real meaning of “ad hominem.” as they do teach these things in law school .
The problem with cliches is not that they are incorrect… They are frequently correct, if only superficially (hint: that’s called “specious.” ) The problem is that the people who employ them (and, yes, I’m talking about you, knucklehead) do so because they don’t understand fully, the scope of the argument and are just trying to salve an offended sensibility by reaching for somebody else’s words (and, therefore, somebody else’s thinking) to make themselves feel better. It’s not, particularly, a bad instinct… But to seek indictment solely on this basis is… misguided and unwise.
Wow, that discussion degenerated quickly!:(
Hey Christopher…. Things will go just a little bit more smoothly if you take some time to grow a thicker skin…. Jus’ sayin…
The problem of Trump is fundamentally a problem of our broken political system and the distrust ordinary Americans have in it to produce policies that benefit them. Trump is merely a symptom of that disease. To partisans like ourselves; gerrymandering, big dollar donors, and misleading ads are just part of the political process. To the majority of voters: independents and unenrolled voters, these are symptoms of a broken government bought and paid for by special interests to benefit the connected few instead of the many ordinary people struggling to get by. Most Democrats now recognize this and are adopting these frames. Even Democrats once affiliated with Wall Street like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand are adapting their positions to meet this growing anger at the way things are and hunger for something better.
Trump will be defeated. It won’t be through elite institutions like the courts, the media, or the establishment of his political party reigning him in. It will be through ordinary people coming together to vote the Republicans out and vote the Democrats in. In 2018 and 2020. As long as we continue to become a party of the people and Trump continues to govern for the wealthy, I am confident that will happen.
The “above the law” point is fine as far as it goes, but consider:
A diplomat cannot legally commit a murder, but if he does, he cannot be tried for it in a US court (unless his country waives his immunity).
A foreign state cannot legally torture people, but if it does, the victims often can’t sue the foreign state in a US court.
A foreign head of state cannot be sued while he is in office.
The United States cannot be sued in US courts without its consent.
In short, there are a lot of immunities in the law. No man is above the law, but heads of state and certain others may well have immunity while they are in office, and with respect to official acts, even after that. I’m not saying that the President can’t be indicted. I’m just saying that “no man is above the law” is just an (admirable) slogan, not a meaningful statement of the law here.