Only 9 people get to vote on this question, and they aren’t in the Office of Legal Counsel.
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In the US, I believe that Channel Lock is still a trademark and has not yet been declared to be genericised.
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As long as he makes the “libtards” howl, he’s doing god’s work.
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Multi Grips here in Australia.
Like when he criticized Senator McCain for being a POW? Remember that huge political hit? Or when he talked about assaulting women? Or how about the fight he got into with a gold star family? Or how about when he picked out a black guy in the crowd and called him “my African-American”?
A few people will be outraged, lots of people will be meh, and the rest will applaud him. Then a week will pass, he will type random letters into Twitter, and the cycle will start again.
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When Putin decides that he gets more value in destabilizing the country by burning Trump; he’s really going to regret running.
Maybe his endgame is retiring to a Duma on the Black Sea?
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[quote=“simonize, post:40, topic:104759”]
So he doesn’t have a platform, or a program, just a series of grievances, and no real plans or ability to solve them.
[/quote]I think you have it nailed. His cult followers have a feeling of grievance (against the blacks and browns and gubmint and immigrants and smart people and anyone and everything that ever made them feel inadequate) and Trump managed to tap into that sense of grievance. They didn’t vote for political policies or make a rational decision in any way. They voted for the guy who told them that their feelings of powerlessness were legitimate.
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You have awoken the pedant…
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“If any state does not want to share this information, one has to wonder what they’re worried about.” “There’s something, there always is.”
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I saw a good article about this in May (I’d been wondering about self-pardons since October).
The argument that he can pardon himself is simple: it doesn’t say anywhere that he can’t.
The arguments that he can’t are a lot more nuanced. The arguments presented are:
- Pardoning is by it’s nature bilateral - it’s something a sovereign bestows on a subject
- An analogue to the idea that you can’t be judge at your own trial
They analyze the wording of other sections and notes from the constitutional convention to show that the founders almost certainly didn’t intend self-pardons.
But obviously there are only nine people whose opinions count, and unfortunately many of those nine are well known to have extreme partisan bias in their legal reasoning.
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I’m mortified!
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I appreciate the point about the limits on the fifth amendment. I never really thought about the idea that if what you say can’t incriminate you, it wouldn’t apply.
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Boy i fucking hope he pardons someone so that we can end this charade and impeach him.
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That will definitely NOT be enough to impeach him. Impeachment is fundamentally a political, not a legal process. And until enough people in the GOP are more scared about what sticking with Trump will do to their chances in the general election than they are about what going after Trump will do to them in the primaries there will be no impeachment. The fact that impeachment BEGINS in the house, where all the gerrymandering means that most races are DECIDED in the primary makes this doubly so. Trumps approval rating probably need to go down to the teens before sufficient GOP House members will vote to impeach. We may well get there, but not soon. Probably not until another government shutdown and the negative effects of the GOP’s austerity budgets filter down to Trump’s base.
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Trump pardoning someone would definitely cement the idea that he is interfering with the investigation against him and his collusion against Russia. And would most likely end up causing more politicians to get behind impeaching.
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I disagree. I don’t think that it would have much effect. It’s not like very many in congress like or respect the guy in the first place. But they’re scared of his base, who are an important segment of the current fragmented GOP. The majority of the country didn’t vote for Trump. The majority of the GOP didn’t vote for Trump in the primary. But the GOP is fragmented enough that HIS supporters assume an out-sized importance. And his base is unlikely to turn on him until their lives actually become noticeably worse under his “leadership.” His core voters are just not interested in Inside-the-beltway drama.
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I guess we’ll have to see how things shake out. We can agree or disagree all we want it won’t affect the eventual outcome, though i can only hope it ends his presidency.
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I think if he starts handing out pardons like candy he might get impeached. If he just pardon’s Jared I doubt that will be enough.
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Pardoning his own son for trying to pull in illegal information on Hillary seems like quite a lot of grounds for moving forward on removing him from office. But i’m no expert so i’ll leave that with people with more knowledge on legal standings and procedures.
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