(October 1, 2019 at 1:17 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:(October 1, 2019 at 12:32 pm)mordant Wrote: 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 I would want to see the ridiculous DOJ memo that says you must never indict a sitting President for ANYTHING rescinded.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.
The fundamental issue is head of justice department is a presidential appointee. Your items 1 3 and 4 only deters those president who would otherwise commit no crime from committing a crime. Any Trumpian character would defeat 1, 3, and 4 without any effort whatsoever.
Item 2 by no means would clearly disqualify trump in 2016, what is more it is a vastly dangerous slope to go down. It allows the internal and external security apparatus, not the judiciary, to set qualification on who can be president. Given the evident effort Trump has put into subverting the internal and external security apparatus, it is easy to see how, if 2 becomes a rule, he could influence the security apparatus to disqualify any competitor.
I am more concerned about the lack of a national conversation about necessary preventative steps and the general feeling of many that once Trump is gone, he was just an aberration and everything will 'return to normal'.
I may certainly be wrong about these matters but we cannot just wait for the next dipshit to try and pull the same stuff.
Trump has surfaced something that, while perhaps exaggerated by his administration, has probably already been there ... the IC is clearly reluctant to deny security clearances the President requests and it appears that if he simply insists he gets what he wants. This should never have been the case. By your logic, one could argue that it is the job of Congress to vet and approve administration staff, not the security folks ... in my view security must be taken into account. Maybe it should just be part of the due diligence of the Senate as part of the confirmation process, but it should be mandated somewhere in the process.
As to the rest, of course a Trumpian president could try and probably succeed in subverting my other suggestions, especially if the AG is not elected but appointed. However, it makes the intent and spirit of the law abundantly clear and removes some of the ambiguity as to whether something is consequential or wrong or not. It makes subverting that intent MORE difficult, rather than drop-dead easy.
You are of course correct that in a world where truth doesn't matter, neither does law. But doing nothing is really not an option here IMO.
