(September 30, 2019 at 6:02 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: So the only deterrence against another Trumpian character putting the world at risk is reasonable assurance that such fate as would befall trump, his clan, and his hangers was too terrible for the potential gains he and they were after to have been worth the risk, and future trumps and their minions, looking back upon these fates, would be daunted from beginning to walk down his path.
I agree except for the word "only". I think making an example of him is critical but so are things like:
* Modifying the whistleblower law to prevent the novel legal argument that it doesn't apply to the President's actions because he's not as such part of the IC. Just state in the law that for purposes of the law, the President and the executive branch ARE part of the IC. After all the President can unilaterally declassify anything he wants, how is he not subject to IC rules and regs?
* Requiring all Presidential candidates to be able to obtain a properly vetted top secret clearance before they can even run. That would have filtered out Trump and probably half the other asshats that ran in 2016. In fact all candidates for national office should have to obtain a secret clearance appropriate to their position, in advance.
* A thorough review of existing DOJ procedures and policies in light of this Trump debacle. I would want to see the ridiculous DOJ memo that says you must never indict a sitting President for ANYTHING rescinded. Maybe some greatly watered-down version of it could take its place, something that addresses true nuisance lawsuits and proceedings, but there has GOT to be a credible avenue to indict at least for serious crimes and official malfeasance.
* Passage of a range of laws that remove the assumption of good-faith actors from the system and instead ASSUME malfeasance and corruption. This is rather like taking a public computer system and adding at least basic credentialed access (user id, password). Right now too much law assumes everyone is a person of good faith. This can no longer be assumed, and never really SHOULD have been.
I predict that the resistance to such reforms will be great, because there's a hell of a lot of perfidy beyond gross Trumpism that has been hiding in plain sight all along ... and I don't think the Democrats are immune to it either. I KNOW they aren't.
