Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: sluissa on June 16, 2017, 02:42:41 am

Just a reminder, presidents can't be charged with crimes for anything that happens while they're in office

I thought that only applies to things he does presidentially.

so if he, for example, murdered someone in cold blood...

Iiii'llll say it again. We. Don't. Actually. Know. That.

To stop directing a statement directly a neo or slu, a quick overview, to summarize stuff that's very, very easy to find. There are exactly three cases specifically addressing presidential immunity that have come before SCOTUS, as near as I can tell. Mississippi v. Johnson. Where it was ruled only one kind of presidential action is exempt from being sued. It was many things, but what it wasn't was a criminal case. Then there was Nixon v. Fitzgerald. Which explicitly ruled that the president was not immune to criminal charges, only liability for civil damages, and again, only when in pursuit of discretionary presidential actions. The latest was Clinton v. Jones. In which the SCOTUS was very explicit that civil lawsuits filed for acts previous to office and ones not accrued by action made during function of office, that did not defensibly impact the president's ability to perform the duties of office, still have weight.

The summation is that presidential power protects you from civil suits brought about because of exactly one sort of presidential action (discretionary). And that's it. All. Nothing else.

Civil suits from before presidency, good. Ones brought against actions having nothing to do with the execution of presidential duties (and goddamn, has trump been trying to set himself up for that one), in the clear. Anything having to do with criminal charges, for any reason and by anything the president does in the pursuit of anything? We don't know. It hasn't been ruled on. It hasn't been tested.

If the times are sufficiently fun, we get to find out somewhere in the next few years.

E: Okay, wow. I'm just going to spoiler this because I seriously can't be arsed to format this thing, but let me share some of my quick notes from some early morning checking into a previous observation. Also note: Trump? Reported as >25 million in BlackRock. BlackRock CEO? Was (still is?) on presidential business advisory council.See, before? I had noticed a connection, but, y'know, expected that I was just seeing a one-off thing or somethin'. Now? Now, every single fucking thing I've checked about that nam deal has been connected to at least BlackRock -- and by extension trump and the trump presidency. I kinda' want to finish checking as much of this shit as I can find, and look into the other stuff that's been mentioned in the news, but holy shit this is looking increasingly skeevy as all goddamn.
E2: Okay, let me just add another spoiler, update of the last one with, like. Another 10 minutes of checking in: Every. Every. Single. Goddamn. Company. I can find mention of that nam deal going to. Has major investments in it by blackrock. What the living hell.

And unironically preferring incompetence to malevolence will face a rude awakening when a big crisis occurs. Every modern President has faced a few: The Arab Spring, the Financial Meltdown, Katrina & Sandy, the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the Iranian Revolution or any other unpredictable massive crisis (and, of course, 9/11).

Estimated to be somewhere between 2018 and 2020, actually, if you're looking for something basically guaranteed. We're due for a recession.

I mean... as soon as the lawsuits end? Or start. Hard to parse exactly what's happening with the DC/maryland thing from the news, honestly.

That's... odd. Pretty sure surrounding words and whatnot have been something a judge could get you for for quite a while, not starting with trump. Just didn't really see it much cause most of em could at least keep from getting caught quite so easily.

Republicans pushing to allow spammers to pack your phone voicemail with spam: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/democrats-try-to-stop-gop-from-bombarding-you-with-robo-voicemails/

Man, that should be almost approaching interesting. Will pai hold to his word and fight robocalls _{excuse me while i catch my breath, sudden case of the roaring laughter} or do we get to see how well he dances to the tune of his corporate and political overlords? I'm thinking tarantella, myself.

He's already pubically talked about replacing him.

Yeah, but now we get to see if he's actually going to waste congress's time by starting up an exciting game of mueller ping pong, and if congress will make their return serve. I won't lie, I would be totally down for watching a day or two worth of that.

Huh. So in the last handful of hours while going over a congressional memorandum for reasons unimportant, I seem to have finally noticed what Zinke and his lot are doing in Utah. Namely, they appear to be trying to wave the banner of two tribes (well, more like one and a branch, now that I think about it) and one county to piss all goddamn over every single other native entity related to the Bears Ears national monument and just about all of the rest of areas surrounding the borders of it. Here's the fun little bit where it finally clicked (the site's actually from a group aligning themselves with the GOP position, oddly enough), looking around some of the rhetoric and inter-party-ish communication on the subject of the monument review that's been thumping about. They're hammering pretty hard that the majority of San Juan natives support the monument's dissolution, and they seem to be right. They're noting loudly that there's a lot of support to do that in San Juan, and, again, it looks like they're pretty on point, not as much as they're trying to act, but definitely a notable amount.

They're doing it while apparently goddamn ignoring just about everything that isn't San Juan, while trying to wedge conflict into local native groups and play up the importance of a fraction of them, and declaring to all and sundry that they're listening to local voices and concerns as they fucking ignore local voices and concerns. No points if you happened to have guessed one of the larger supporting voices is coming from resource extracting industries. And I'll leave it at that to avoid descending into vulgarity.

... also, congresscritter got shot up, huh. Huh. When was the last time that happened, anyway? Could swear I remember something from out west a few years ago. Female politisomething catching a head wound? Can't remember, don't want to search.

Good point. The principle matters more than the example here, though. The key is that there is no "pope" of Islam. It's all just religious sects with their own religious heads.

*waggles hand* I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is? Like, I know the sunni/shiite split and other such stuff is/can get pretty hardcore, but I could swear I've heard of more than one priest-critter or scholar/theologian or whatever that had pretty broad respect even across sectarian lines.

... though, mind, it's also rather possible it's just my head feeling like screwing me hard enough at the moment I'm remembering shit that didn't happen. Would not surprise in the least, right now.