No, they gave a list of policy differences - and justified them with an emotional argument: "cruel". They said nothing about the pragmatic justification of them. Which is exactly my point: the left tends to operate on ideological emotional values.
They could have said things like 'reproductive rights leads to X goods for the populace' or 'prohibition was a net positive in Y ways' or 'minimum wage laws are shown to improve GDP by Z amt on average' - but they didn't. They used an emotional argument. Like I said they would.
They used examples where almost every reasonable American knows what the right and wrong side of history ended up being. He doesn’t need to teach us with detailed policy that slavers ended up on the wrong side of history — we all know.
How does this compare to other developed nations currently? Or developing nations on the cusp of modernization? Is this a contemporary trend or an outlier?
There are quite a number of checks and balances within each branch, executive included. Some backed by law and others backed by tradition. Do you have some expertise in this that you're drawing from?
That’s like saying “general and special relativity” is a “theory.” Technically correct but misleading.
Articles I, II, and III, have nearly identical clauses vesting the legislative, judicial, and executive power, respectively, in Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court.
Does anyone think Congress can create a law that enables the legislative or judicial powers to be exercised by employees independent of the control of the constitutional actors in which those powers are vested? It would be madness to say that Congress can create a law creating an entity in the judicial branch that can adjudicate cases without oversight from an Article III judge. Nobody thinks that’s true.
> Does anyone think Congress can create a law that enables the legislative or judicial powers to be exercised by employees independent of the control of the constitutional actors in which those powers are vested?
Yes.
Apart from the specific enumerated executive powers in Article II, Sections 2 and 3, the "executive power of the United States" is whatever the Congress says it is. If Article II Section 1 had been intended as a preemptive, unitary-executive grant, there'd have been no reason to enumerate specific powers.
As has been remarked, there's a reason Article I (concerning Congress) comes first.
Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President.” Congress can give the executive more or less power through law, but whatever executive power it does create must ultimately be invested in the president, not someone else.
The Force is also available to both Jedi and Sith alike. The use of a 'the' nomenclature is not indicative that the subject is solely available to a singular individual, only that the power is available.
In Commonwealth Nations "the Crown" has ultimate deciding power, however "the Crown" simultaneously refers to functions of the executive, legislative (parliament), and judicial (Supreme Court and others), governance and the civil service. A Crown Prosecutor is equally known as "the Crown", as the monarch. Both are two very different individuals, but possess the same power, and use "the" nomenclature.
> The Force is also available to both Jedi and Sith alike. The use of a 'the' nomenclature is not indicative that the subject is solely available to a singular individual, only that the power is available.
In your construction, all the work is being done by your use of the word “available.” But the constitution doesn’t say “the executive power is available to the President.” It says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The word “vested” means “secured in the possession of or assigned to a person.” So the executive power isn’t merely available to the President. It’s assigned to and given to the possession of the President.
Your Crown example actually proves the opposite of your point. That phraseology reflects the traditional british notion that all executive power is vested in the king, who is the chief prosecutor but may act through delegates: https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/con... (p. 1707).
> In your construction, all the work is being done by your use of the word “available.”
In your construction, all the work is being done by "the." OK, let's play the same game, this time with the word executive: Suppose that Congress, using its authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause, creates separate governmental agencies — not subject to plenary presidential supervision — and gives those agencies the power to carry out specified tasks. You're complaining that this falls within the definition of "executive" power and thus must be presidentially supervised. The obvious response is: OK, we won't call it "executive" power, we'll call it something else. Word games? Sure, but that's what you're doing.
But, someone might respond, the term "executive power" must be interpreted today as it supposedly was understood by the Framers in 1787. That ipse-dixit contention is purely a matter of what Justice White aptly referred to in Roe as "raw judicial power" — and recall that after Dred Scott, a more-extreme version of such a contention was finally resolved at Appomattox as the culmination of four years of bloody civil war.
In my construction, all the work is done by an alternative interpretation of "the".
The Crown example still works as the Parliament is not selected by the monarch. It is not elected by the monarch. The monarch does not possess the power to reject them. Yet, the Parliament are still referred to as "the Crown", and possesses the executive power of the Crown.
Equally so, the Governor General of any Commonwealth Nation is free to reject the orders of the monarch, as they possess the executive power of the Crown. The monarch is also free to fire them for doing so, as the monarch also has the power of the Crown. Both are on equal footing. In the words of Whitlam "Well may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the governor-general."
Multiple people have possession of the executive power in such systems, even though the word "the" is used to refer to it. That alone is not enough to indicate that a singular individual controls it.
The term “checks and balances” refers to the constitution. The constitution says, as the first sentence of Article II: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Article I and Article III have nearly identical language. Nobody thinks Congressional staffers or judicial law clerks impose “checks and balances” on the elected or appointed officials that hold the constitutional office. Why is the President any different?
I think you are right that the US constitution, as originally written, doesn't provide any internal "checks and balances" on the executive branch, other than the President. Congress and the judiciary act as external checks and balances on the President (and also inferior officials, since Congress can impeach inferior officials, and the courts can rule against them). The President acts as an internal check and balance on the executive branch (powers to fire inferior officials, direct them, demand information from them)
Not to say that I think this good policy or constitution design – it grants the President an essentially monarchical position. As The Knoxville Journal once said (9 February 1896), "Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king". I think the more collegial form of executive branch leadership found in the Westminster system – in which a Prime Minister has to continually keep the confidence of their party, since they can be removed at any time for any reason (no allegations of misconduct required); in which Cabinet makes decisions by majority vote (and the PM sometimes loses the vote), unlike the US Cabinet where no votes are taken – leads to better governance.
Maybe, one day, "Prime Minister of the United States" will be a real job title
> There’s no “checks and balances” within the executive branch.
The check and balance within every branch is the law, one which many state AG and court officials believe or have ruled is being violated.
The law is quite literally a limit on arbitrary uses of power. It is a check on concentrated power, and balances competing interests.
> Who did it?
Oligarchs.
H1B visa/undocumented labor are an anti labor power policy. Not only does it increase the supply of the workforce suppressing wages, but it gives companies coercive power over foreign laborers, preventing them from ever going on strike or asking for rights. Worse, when things start going poorly, oligarchs blame these people who just wanted a better life and then use the oligarchy controlled media to deflect people's rage away from the people hoarding wealth and power onto someone weaker than them, which gives them a sense of agency.
> the check and balance within every branch is the law
“The law” is it enforced and interpreted by humans. And the fundamental axiom of the constitution is that nobody can be trusted. Do you think the framers went to all that trouble to create this tripartite system, and then assume that all three branches would be checked by unelected prosecutors? If what you said was true, why does the constitution not mention an attorney general that could enforce “the law?”
Given Ukraine has now been invaded multiple times by Russia it seems entirely right and reasonable for it to ask for guarantees, and not an imposition if the other nation was truly an Ally, in the formal definition of the word, no?
it seems like a huge imposition to ask someone to kick off a great power war that would likely leave millions of her children dead, yes. that's true in any case, but especially when one's entire geopolitical relevance is as a border state. not all alliances are or must be "we will do literally anything possible to protect your territorial integrity". it probably wouldn't make sense for us to make such an alliance since our territorial integrity hasn't been threatened in substance since the war of 1812. and because such an alliance would be a charity program where we give away young American lives to enable one political entity, rather than another, to govern scraps of low-value land an ocean and a continent away.
the whole "sending ukraine materiel is going to cause WWIII" thing is sort of bs russian propaganda. the idea that direct American military intervention isn't risking that is very much not.
again, how many Americans do you think it's appropriate for their own government to sign up to die for this cause? i think the number is zero. if you think it's higher, i'd very much like to understand why and how many you think is a reasonable number. i understand it'd be a ballpark figure, not a bright line, but i'd like at least an order of magnitude grasp of what people think is appropriate and why they think so.
By your own admission a defensive security guarantee will "kick off a great power war..." which is a way of saying Russia can't be trusted to keep the peace, no? Not that I disagree but I'm not sure it's as strong an argument against Ukraine's request as you think it is. It may have even been part of Neville Chamberlain's notes on the subject.
the chamberlain/weimar comparison is inaccurate for this case. germany was an ascendant power; russia is a crippled one. the war was actually a great investment because it's decimated russia's military population and stores of materiel and cut her off from the world enough to severely damage her economy. it will take substantial time for her to rebuild.
you can make a "what about czechoslovakia/poland/nazis" argument about heavy intervention in what would otherwise be any proxy war. you say czechoslovakia, i say vietnam, i say korea, i say the middle east.
the American interest in this war isn't so much "we love the ukraine" as "this is an effective way to cripple russia for the next decade by proxy". by doing so, we avoid that situation in a much smarter way than chamberlain. and because russia wasn't in that great of a spot to start with, a protracted war of attrition is really bad for her.
are you suggesting we should begin a war against russia, historically a massively losing proposition, over a couple oblasts of the ukraine? again, how many americans should we send off to die? how much should we weaken our resources for a much more concerning conflict with china?
Are you asking people to read the mind of Putin? Or speculate? It seems reasonable to believe that at the very least Putin wants the territory he attempted to take when he first invaded, Kyiv et.al.
Because both Ukraine and Russia have changed? Ukraine is war torn, deeply in debt, and no longer provides the strategic benefit to Russia it might’ve in ‘22. Russia’s economy and populace needs to recover from being war-oriented.
They have their land bridge to Crimea now, and if I had to speculate, they’d be happy with a neutered neighbor that can’t join NATO, essentially a populated DMZ. I can’t see what benefit in wanting to take Ukraine on again after the dragged out meat grinder it was this time around.
> Ukraine is war torn, deeply in debt, and no longer provides the strategic benefit to Russia it might’ve in ‘22.
Expanded access to the Black Sea and natural gas/minerals were and still are very important to Russia. Aside from these, a total victory would allow Putin to cement himself as a conqueror in Russian history books.
I'm encouraged that they're actively exploring this and not shying away from experiments. It seems clear to me that there are areas of Mozilla[0],[1] pushing closer and closer to great local AI integrations doing the kinds of things that I, a browser user, find useful. I went to some of the articles on the hn frontpage and had questions (and followups!) that begat reasonable starting points for further learning.
Hopefully they continue to iterate on this with better integration (for instance, moving to a toolbar icon instead of persistent badge on every page) and then make it ~truly privacy respecting by moving locally.
