The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

DNC districts aren't that much different really, just look at the incumbency rates in Congress. The difference in how the districts are drawn could also be explained by demographics. Most non-white, traditionally Democratic voting population tends to live in pretty homogeneous areas so there is less of a need to blatantly gerrymander.

Same thing for "discouraging" voters, the only reason you see it from Reps and not Dems is because Reps have a very easy way to do it with historically Democratic voters who tend to be lower income and might not have the ability to comply with all of the rules set forth.

Make no mistake there is not a real difference between the two parties, because crucially the parties are run and staffed by politicians and politicians care about one thing and one thing only - power. That is not to say that there aren't some who genuinely want to make things better but that's a very small and largely irrelevant minority.
 
The DNC really didn't put national money into local elections until the GOP made it their focus. The GOP seemed to be the first to polarize and not want to work across the aisle - there are individual exceptions on both sides, but as a general trend and party policy, the GOP really started this when they were losing ground. The GOP was taken over by evangelicals, making it more of a cult than a political party; when this happened they stopped compromising and began to see the Democrats and the left as their enemy, people who were challenging their identity simply by existing. This put a major barrier in any collaboration for the good of the country as a whole, no longer were the parties simply disagreeing on how to solve a problem, they now disagreed on whether their even was a problem. The GOP started to see the existence of the left as an assault on their religion and therefore their identity. This directly contributed to the rise of the Tea Party; the start of the Tea Party was more libertarian, trying to get back to a small government and free market with minimal regulations. This was quickly coopted by the evangelical ultra-right and became a sub-party within the GOP. When this process started, the GOP started putting their religious identity above all else; they started gaming the system for their own gain rather than honoring the democratic process.

It is no less than an assault on democracy.
 
I definitely agree with you on the religion issue within the GOP. Really a two party system was always going to end up like this, it's a simple natural consequence.
 
prizrak;n3550751 said:
[...] Really a two party system was always going to end up like this, it's a simple natural consequence.

Thing is, you don't have a 2 Party system - you* just treat yours like you have one. And of course the 2 big Parties don't want you to realize that you don't have to ... that also doesn't help.

Going back to the 2016 Election - wouldn't it have been interesting if Sanders and Trump ran on Independent tickets? I recon both could have won quite a lot of states, making it hard for Clinton and (I recon) Bush to win the election. But even Trump and Sanders fell back into the routine of sucking up to one of the two big parties.
Look at France! When Macron started running for President there he didn't even have a Party. He founded his own Party out of NOTHING and WON the Presidential election and the Party have a Majority in the house. That took a year. One year! And France also (pretty much) has had 2 Parties dominating the Presidential election since WW2. Macron broke all of that. People said that it couldn't be done before too. Didn't matter, he did it anyway. He found his message, occupied a political stance inbetween the two big parties - and then just beat them.
The same could happen in the Us. But you gotta have someone with the balls to start this thing and go through with it while everyone tells them it can't be done. It's this "we have a 2 Party system" nonsense that is holding you all back from having Politicians in office that really represent you and not some Compromise or lesser of two evils.

*not YOU specifically, in the broader sense.
 
Cohen is ready to flip, and is just waiting for the right deal.

 
Another one bites the dust.
 
It's only so that there is no conflict with another position when Trump puts him in to replace Jeff Sessions.
 
I don't think so. Although, I do know he wanted Sessions fired so he could take over there.
 
JimCorrigan;n3550724 said:
I wish the Supreme Court was above politicization. Judge selection should function similar to jury selection. It shouldn’t come down to the existing process. My rationale is the judges should be as apolitical as possible, and have the ability to put the law above their own personal politics. Ideally the Supreme Court should be there to enforce existing law, not make new law (that should remain the jurisdictions of another branch).

Well yes, that should be the job of congress, as a law maker. However, this is the result of adhering to a common law system that to a very large extent relies on a large amount of case law from previous judgments, rather than relying on codified law, where case law is only needed for the fine details. You could also have updated the constitution to 2018 language, and eliminated the need to interpret it's 18th century wording. As a lawyer I believe that codex law is better than common law, as that makes the law more accessible. It's easier for people who are not trained lawyers to just browse the relevant law and find the right article, rather than having to sift through tonnes of relevant, but difficultly worded case law to get a rough idea of what the law actually is.
 
Codified law doesn't allow for the same flexibility though, the benefit of case law is that it can organically change with the times.
 
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Interrobang;n3550857 said:
Thing is, you don't have a 2 Party system - you* just treat yours like you have one. And of course the 2 big Parties don't want you to realize that you don't have to ... that also doesn't help.

Going back to the 2016 Election - wouldn't it have been interesting if Sanders and Trump ran on Independent tickets? I recon both could have won quite a lot of states, making it hard for Clinton and (I recon) Bush to win the election. But even Trump and Sanders fell back into the routine of sucking up to one of the two big parties.
Look at France! When Macron started running for President there he didn't even have a Party. He founded his own Party out of NOTHING and WON the Presidential election and the Party have a Majority in the house. That took a year. One year! And France also (pretty much) has had 2 Parties dominating the Presidential election since WW2. Macron broke all of that. People said that it couldn't be done before too. Didn't matter, he did it anyway. He found his message, occupied a political stance inbetween the two big parties - and then just beat them.
The same could happen in the Us. But you gotta have someone with the balls to start this thing and go through with it while everyone tells them it can't be done. It's this "we have a 2 Party system" nonsense that is holding you all back from having Politicians in office that really represent you and not some Compromise or lesser of two evils.

*not YOU specifically, in the broader sense.

Missed this.

France is not the US and has a completely different political system. Independent candidates have a very hard time getting coverage from the media, are often not allowed into the big televised debates. Then you have to take into account that US is a lot more like EU than any specific country in the EU, meaning that any successful party has to have support in a large number of semi-independent states. For a third party to succeed it would need to tempt away a number of established politicians AND a number of voters to switch allegiance in at least a couple of big states. When you register to vote you have three options: D, R or I. In many states if you are not registered as the party you are not allowed to vote in the primaries (it varies state to state) so if you decide to go I you have much less voice in the government than anyone who is D or R (especially depending on state).

After all of this remember how POTUS is elected, the EC is a winner take all system in 48 out of 50 states. Further the electors have the final say, even if a third party candidate could carry a few states EC could simply give the votes to #2 in that state. As far as I know we don't have any mechanisms for tie breaker (I could be wrong).
 
GRtak;n3551164 said:
Trump just nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme court.

Here is an article about him from a few days ago.


Edit, here is a fresh article about him. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/09/6261...h-president-trumps-pick-for-the-supreme-court

Doesn't look like a bad pick if you ask me. Following precedent means he is not likely to overturn current rulings and does seem to not blindly follow an agenda. The quote about criminal investigations of the POTUS is a bit worrying but then SCOTUS has no power to stop any so it might not be relevant.

On a personal note if Chucky Schumer doesn't like him, I already do.
 
prizrak;n3551151 said:
Codified law doesn't allow for the same flexibility though, the benefit of case law is that it can organically change with the times.

Well, change/amend the law then, a simple majority in the parliament can do that.

That's a much more democratic process, rather than relying on the Judges power of judgement, and what they are influenced by. It also makes the legal system more predictable. There will always be room for interpretation (like I said, in the fine details) but it will be limited by the extent of the written law's wording.
 
marcos_eirik;n3551181 said:
Well, change/amend the law then, a simple majority in the parliament can do that.

That's a much more democratic process, rather than relying on the Judges power of judgement, and what they are influenced by. It also makes the legal system more predictable. There will always be room for interpretation (like I said, in the fine details) but it will be limited by the extent of the written law's wording.

Change/amend which laws? Constitution, which is really what the SCOTUS is supposed to interpret, requires 2/3rd majority of Congress. I don't really follow your logic here, the Constitution IS codified, case law and SCOTUS are the ones who interpret the finer details as you called them. As an example, what constitutes "arms" in "the right to bear arms".
 
prizrak;n3551182 said:
Change/amend which laws? Constitution, which is really what the SCOTUS is supposed to interpret, requires 2/3rd majority of Congress. I don't really follow your logic here, the Constitution IS codified, case law and SCOTUS are the ones who interpret the finer details as you called them. As an example, what constitutes "arms" in "the right to bear arms".

While the constitution is codified, much of the US legal system isn't, see: Common Law, opposed to Civil Law.

(From wikipedia)
This:
Common law (also known as judicial precedent or judge-made law, or case law) is that body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals. The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision (a principle known as stare decisis). If, however, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases (called a "matter of first impression"), and legislative statutes are either silent or ambiguous on the question, judges have the authority and duty to resolve the issue (one party or the other has to win, and on disagreements of law, judges make that decision). The court states an opinion that gives reasons for the decision, and those reasons agglomerate with past decisions as precedent to bind future judges and litigants. Common law, as the body of law made by judges, stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process, and regulations which are promulgated by the executive branch (the interactions are explained later in this article). Stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems.

Vs. this:
Civil law, civilian law, or Roman law is a legal system originating in Europe, intellectualized within the framework of Roman law, the main feature of which is that its core principles are codified into a referable system which serves as the primary source of law. This can be contrasted with common law systems, the intellectual framework of which comes from judge-made decisional law, and gives precedential authority to prior court decisions, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions (doctrine of judicial precedent, or stare decisis).

Regarding the constitution, why not change it, so that the wording gets updated to contemporary language that makes sense for most people who are not historians or lawyers? How hard can it be? We updated our constitution to contemporary language (and expanded the human rights catalogue) for it's 200th anniversary in 2014.
 
Precedent.

The constitution is one of the most reliable documents on the American law system because it still is the initial document as created by the founding fathers. If you change it, you set the precedent that anyone could come around and edit it to best suit their needs (after referendums and whathaveyou, yes.). I don't know how it works in Europe, but at least in Latin America, changing the constitution is generally how you end with a Venezuela, Brazil, or Nicaragua situation. To put another example, free speech, ever a bastion of American liberties, would be much less protected the second someone insane enough decides that pesky first amendment is getting on their way. To say nothing about what would happen if the second, fourth, fifth, fourteenth, seventeeth, and twenty-fourth amendments begin to sway depending on who is in office and how populist they are. Finally, amendments themselves allow changes to the constitution without just up and removing the entire document.

Couple that to how strongly the american people feel about the constitution (the bits that they like anyway) and you can see why changing the most solidly codified legal document on the US could prove unwise
 
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marcos_eirik;n3551186 said:
While the constitution is codified, much of the US legal system isn't, see: Common Law, opposed to Civil Law.

(From wikipedia)
This:


Vs. this:


Regarding the constitution, why not change it, so that the wording gets updated to contemporary language that makes sense for most people who are not historians or lawyers? How hard can it be? We updated our constitution to contemporary language (and expanded the human rights catalogue) for it's 200th anniversary in 2014.

I understand the differences but you don't seem to understand our legal system. We have two well defined systems of law, criminal and civil (tort). The former deals with things like personal or property crime (robbery, hijacking, murder, etc...) and the latter deals with disputes between either individual or legal entities, that's the stuff that handles class action lawsuits for example or the infamous McDonald's coffee case. The former is not heavily reliant on precedent for punishment, however it does grant certain leeway to judges to apply the punishments based on circumstances. Precedent really gets into it when there are vagueries, is it a legal duty of a police office to protect/defend a citizen? Or when it comes to procedure, for example granting bail or how a criminal is to be handled (the well known Miranda warning). Precedent can also come into play in tort courts when it comes to deciding on punitive damages and culpability.

Constitutional law is different, it only applies to interpretation of the Constitution itself and while precedent does matter in SCOTUS decisions it is not an absolute, which is the reason why people are worried about things like Roe v Wade being overturned.
The only way to rewrite the Constitution is to gather a Constitutional convention, which would require 2/3rd of state's legislation to call for one.*This is why rather than rewrite the whole thing there is a mechanism for amending it as needed. This is what the Bill of Rights is as the most famous example, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

*Interesting reading - https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.a2f23899a37e

Specifically on this:
and expanded the human rights catalogue

This the major difference between the US and rest of the world. Neither the government nor the Constitution grant any rights, the rights are "endowed by our creator" meaning that we are all born with the same rights and the government/Constitution is there to protect those rights. Some of these rights are enumerated, however the list is not exhaustive and the Constitution specifically says that.


EDIT: Also what gaasc said.
 
prizrak;n3551193 said:
I understand the differences but you don't seem to understand our legal system. We have two well defined systems of law, criminal and civil (tort). The former deals with things like personal or property crime (robbery, hijacking, murder, etc...) and the latter deals with disputes between either individual or legal entities, that's the stuff that handles class action lawsuits for example or the infamous McDonald's coffee case. The former is not heavily reliant on precedent for punishment, however it does grant certain leeway to judges to apply the punishments based on circumstances. Precedent really gets into it when there are vagueries, is it a legal duty of a police office to protect/defend a citizen? Or when it comes to procedure, for example granting bail or how a criminal is to be handled (the well known Miranda warning). Precedent can also come into play in tort courts when it comes to deciding on punitive damages and culpability.

Constitutional law is different, it only applies to interpretation of the Constitution itself and while precedent does matter in SCOTUS decisions it is not an absolute, which is the reason why people are worried about things like Roe v Wade being overturned.
The only way to rewrite the Constitution is to gather a Constitutional convention, which would require 2/3rd of state's legislation to call for one.*This is why rather than rewrite the whole thing there is a mechanism for amending it as needed. This is what the Bill of Rights is as the most famous example, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

*Interesting reading - https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.a2f23899a37e

Specifically on this:


This the major difference between the US and rest of the world. Neither the government nor the Constitution grant any rights, the rights are "endowed by our creator" meaning that we are all born with the same rights and the government/Constitution is there to protect those rights. Some of these rights are enumerated, however the list is not exhaustive and the Constitution specifically says that.


EDIT: Also what gaasc said.

I understand that, however, I think we are talking past each other. We have a similar legal system of criminal law and civil law. The difference is that our civil law is mostly codified (adhering to the civil law system), which is less flexible, but making it more accessible to non-lawyers. This also limits the room for interpretation in the courts, which makes the outcome of most cases more predictable. This system severely limits our judges ability to let their political views influence the result of the case. There is room for interpretation, but it is limited by the wording of the (codified) law. Take the Roe v. Wade example, here there's a written law granting women those rights. Being a law means that law can be abolished or amended, but that would be up to the elected representatives in our Parliament (our law maker) to decide. No court can judge against a written law, that judgement would be overturned by an appellant court. Doing that could also get a judge impeached. I think having to rely on the political views of the justices (in the Supreme Court in particular) to protect fundamental rights would be a weakness, as you can't replace that judge, if he/she is in his/her 50s you could be stuck with him/her for potentially around 30 years.

Saying that changing the constitution is so dangerous, and risks throwing the whole country out into uncertainty comes across as rather alarmist to me. Plenty of countries have changed the constitution or updated it's language over the years, and have come out better. We did this in 2014, what we got in the other end was almost the same constitution in terms of content, except it's now in a language that is understandable to most people, rather than the 19th-century gobbledygook it used to be.

Our constitution says something similar about human rights: It's the state's duty to uphold and protect human right x, y, and z. But some are mentioned specifically. An English translation of our constitution can be found here. (Storting = Parliament, our congress)
 
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You still seem to misunderstand something fundamental here, US judges don't have the power to judge against a law but the law itself can be up for review by the SCOTUS. That review is there to make sure that laws do not run afoul of the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. In case of Roe v Wade the question was simply "are restrictions to abortion Constitutional" and the answer was no they are not. It has nothing to do with codifying laws but rather making sure that current laws are in line with the Constitution. Had there not been a SCOTUS that reviews laws then there would be a number of states where women would have an extremely difficult time getting abortions if possible at all.
Saying that changing the constitution is so dangerous, and risks throwing the whole country out into uncertainty comes across as rather alarmist to me. Plenty of countries have changed the constitution or updated it's language over the years, and have come out better. We did this in 2014, what we got in the other end was almost the same constitution in terms of content, except it's now in a language that is understandable to most people, rather than the 19th-century gobbledygook it used to be.
You are not taking into account the differences between all those countries and the US. Again we are a lot more like the EU than say France, in that it is not very homogeneous and has a lot of semi autonomous states. In the most basic sense the coastal more populous states tend to be a lot more liberal while "internal" states tend to lean more conservative. Just look at the gun debate on legislative level, the ones rooting for more control are almost inevitably the coastal states, while the interior states are more against control
 
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