Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On May 11 2019 10:16 KwarK wrote: Andrew Neil was the editor of the Sunday Times, a Murdoch mouthpiece, and is the chairman of a right wing media company. But he's also an intelligent human being who will call you out on bullshit even if he's ideologically sympathetic to you because it's really frustrating when a dumbfuck on "your side" makes all of you look like morons by association. Shapiro's accusations of Neil being part of the left wing conspiracy is pretty fucking funny. As were his claims that the BBC was just courting controversy to make a quick buck (the BBC is a publicly funded service that provides its programming for free and has no advertisers or sponsors).
Arguably more importantly, journalists in the UK can legitimately make their careers from a bit of proper journalism where they skewer political figures; the Michael Howard/Jeremy Paxman interview, and those like them, looms large over any journalist on TV in the UK.
Not so long ago Neil absolutely shredded a Tory mouthpiece over several back benchers and security ministers accusing Jeremy Corbyn of literally betraying the country. Not the slightest hint of mercy.
Being right wing and a journalist in the UK doesn't necessarily mean you're a naked partisan hack. If you say something fucking stupid in UK politics, the TV journalists don't rally to justify it, they get their sharpest knives out, make like Hannibal and start prepping for dinner.
So yeah, it's not a surprise Ben Shapiro got bodied. UK journalists are used to people trying to rile/mock/distract them and they tend to just be calm, stoic and dogged, because they know it gives very little to work off. It's partly why Piers Morgan is a) trash and b) the one who (sort of) got over in the US.
This example is AMAZING.
I honestly didn't know journalism could be like this because I can't remember really any example of a politician (Liberal or conservative) being held to account in an interview for what they've said. In America all someone has to do in front of even congress, is just act like they are slightly stupid for 5 minutes and the time for each members questioning passes.
Note that he was trying to sidestep a direct question with a roundabout answer, and he tried many times. The interviewer just brought him back to the question and asked for an actual/direct answer. When he diverted, the interviewer immediately brought him back, even when interrupted, he stopped the interruption and brought him back to the question.
Nothing like this happens in America, and we suffer so much BS and lies because all you have to do is be able to start talking about something else and you ghost every single legitimate conversation or line of questioning.
American interviews, are nothing more than a politician being asked a hard question, then shifting his response to something loosely related, then being confronted about not answering the question, and then the politician bulldozes the interviewer by either pretending to be the victim or just relentlessly going to another topic.*In America you just have to do one of those things a couple times and the question shifts.
It's fucking BS and nobody is held to account for what they say.
Which it makes total sense Shapiro had trouble, because the tactics that work in the US to dodge questions don't work in the UK apparently.
I love he relentlessly holds him to answering the question. I cannot emphasize enough how that doesn't happen in America.
I loved it when the Labour politician tried to join in and gang up only to be summarily dismissed. If you enjoyed that video here is the iconic (to any Brits here) Paxman interview of the former leader of the Conservative Party.
Every time he answered a different question or tried to change the subject the question was simply asked again. And although no answer was ever given the British public tore into Howard over that refusal to answer.
You're gonna make me cry over here, man. We weren't supposed to know politicians could be held accountable for the things they say.
This is why privatisation of everything is dangerous. Because the BBC is publically owned - as Neil calmly pointed out to Shapiro - its journalists are mostly free to respond the way they want to, with little or no influence from above. There have been some celebrated occasions where that impartiality fractures - the BBC turned pretty hard on Corbyn at one point for example - but for the most part it does a good job.
A guy can dream that maybe, just maybe, we can make something like that come true on this side of the pond one day. Pro wrestling masked as news stations is novel, but it gets old.
Yeah, it makes me grateful we have the CBC here in Canada. The CBC News channel does have some politics and opinion shows, which they clearly label as such, but when it comes to the news they do their best to be as neutral and fact-based as possible. They also have a policy of not reporting on ongoing situations unless they have concrete information to give. For example, if there's a shooting or something, they will acknowledge that it happened, but won't put up a live video feed of the scene and speculate on it like CNN and others do. They will just basically say something along the line of "This event happened. The situation is ongoing and we will provide more information when we have it." and then go back to whatever they were talking about until they have more information. I think this is a much more responsible way of handling events as they are occurring as there is a much smaller chance of reporting something that turns out to be incorrect.
edit: I guess for those who don't know, CBC is somewhat like BBC. It's partially government funded, but it is different in that it does have advertisements on it. However, despite being government funded, it is like the BBC in that it is supposed to be independent.
The closest thing we have is NPR. They don't have a live segment such as TV, but they have radio stations throughout the nation. They're probably the best place to get neutral information in my opinion. CNN used to be slightly independent, but they stopped being that about a decade or so ago.
I find it hilarious that at the beginning of the interview he almost literally embodies the meme. "I've got all these cool new ideas like christian conservatism"
I find it hilarious that Shapiro openly moves the goal posts at 7:45. He’s openly asking for an even worse president or a president equal to Trump. Today my wife noticed that her period pads went up in price, and they did it subtly. They used to charge $14 for a pack of 36, now its $14 for a pack 26. No more packs of 36 available which helped last her bi weekly flow. Let’s force women to spend more on something that should already be given for free.
I feel even worse for those women that can’t afford it, slowly having to watch women be attacked because they bleed monthly. The fact that people still choose to try and govern what others can do with their body is not just.
I don’t know if any of you have seen Handmaids Tale, but when my wife watched that, her eyes were opened much more to the current situation in the US.
I find it hilarious that at the beginning of the interview he almost literally embodies the meme. "I've got all these cool new ideas like christian conservatism"
I find it hilarious that Shapiro openly moves the goal posts at 7:45. He’s openly asking for an even worse president or a president equal to Trump. Today my wife noticed that her period pads went up in price, and they did it subtly. They used to charge $14 for a pack of 36, now its $14 for a pack 26. No more packs of 36 available which helped last her bi weekly flow. Let’s force women to spend more on something that should already be given for free.
I feel even worse for those women that can’t afford it, slowly having to watch women be attacked because they bleed monthly. The fact that people still choose to try and govern what others can do with their body is not just.
I don’t know if any of you have seen Handmaids Tale, but when my wife watched that, her eyes were opened much more to the current situation in the US.
Over the past two weeks Jack Goldsmith at Lawfare has had some interesting articles on this Mueller affair. The first is on Mueller's obstruction theory, and I will give the opening and the conclusion.
Someone on Twitter recently asked: “What is your most [fire emoji] take that absolutely infuriates people and you know deep down in your heart is 100% true”? I was inclined to respond: “The statutory interpretation analysis in the Mueller report is one-sided and weak.” I instead decided to try to explain why I believe this, knowing full well that it will infuriate the vast majority of legal elites who are convinced that the only things preventing President Trump from going to trial today are the Office of Legal Counsel’s ruling that a sitting president cannot be indicted and Attorney General William Barr’s “lack of inner strength.”
Before I explain what I see as the legal flaws in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, I want to stipulate that Trump did some very bad (not to mention stupid) things in response to press reports about his and his team’s involvement in the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and to the unfolding investigation of that interference. This was especially true, to my mind, of his efforts to cover up both the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and his attempt to have White House Counsel Don McGahn fire Mueller; his reaching out to former administration officials under indictment to offer them suggestive guidance, support and assurances; and his efforts to influence Michael Cohen’s 2017 congressional testimony. In combination with Trump’s other abuses of power over the past two and a half years, I have little trouble concluding that Trump committed impeachable offenses, should Congress want to pursue that option.
What I am not sure of is that Trump committed a crime. Indeed, I am pretty sure that many of the 10 events outlined in Volume II of the Mueller report could not even theoretically be crimes under the obstruction statutes as they are currently written. (It is pretty settled in practice that an official can be impeached for behavior that does not rise to the level of criminality under the U.S. Code.)
To commit a crime, Trump had to violate a provision of the U.S. Code that applied to him. There are many obstruction of justice statutes. Generalizing a bit, they make it a crime for “whoever” commits an obstructive act, with a nexus to an official proceeding, and with a corrupt intent. One might think that “whoever” includes Trump. But two high hurdles must be overcome before reaching that conclusion. First is the constitutionally based clear statement rule that determines whether the obstruction statutes, despite their broad general language, actually apply to the president. And second, if the statutes are properly read to apply the president, one must do constitutional “balancing” to determine if Congress has the power to so burden the president.
The Mueller report addressed both issues. I focus here on the first: the clear statement rule. To my amazement, the great lawyers who wrote the report botched the analysis and exposed the president to much more potential criminal liability than a proper analysis would allow. Showing why I think this requires me to dive into some legal weeds.
III. Implications
I want to be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying. My main point is that, under the clear statement rule, the obstruction statutes do not apply to Trump’s conduct to the extent that they would arguably limit or possibly conflict with his Article II prerogatives. This is a claim about the proper construction of the obstruction statutes as they apply to the president. I have not addressed whether Congress has the constitutional power to regulate the president’s Article II powers with a clear statement, and thus have not claimed that the president is constitutionally immune from anything. Nor am I saying anything about whether the president’s acts related to Article II would or wouldn’t implicate the obstruction statutes if Congress made them plainly applicable. I only claim that, as a matter of statutory interpretation, Trump cannot violate the obstruction statutes as currently drafted for any applications of the statutes that arguably limit his constitutional prerogatives.
Perhaps the clearest example of what should not be covered by the obstruction statutes is Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. As the Mueller report notes, Trump’s intent in that firing is unclear. But under the above analysis, it doesn’t matter. Congress has not clearly applied the obstruction of justice statute to limit the president’s removal power (again, cf. Morrison), so the statute does not apply to an exercise of that power. This conclusion might inform whether the special counsel’s obstruction investigation was properly predicated at the outset. The report on page 11 of Volume II lists six factors that in combination with “analysis of applicable statutory and constitutional principles” appeared to have led the special counsel to open the obstruction of justice investigation. Five of these factors seem to relate to an exercise of Article II power, and the sixth, Trump’s statement about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, by itself doesn’t seem to constitute obstruction. If the clear statement rule were properly applied, it is not obvious how the obstruction investigation was properly predicated by relevant facts at the beginning. (This problem may have been hard to see at the outset of the investigation.)
As an example of what might in theory still be covered by the obstruction statutes under the exception to the clear statement rule, consider Trump’s various actions, in public and private, to influence at least two witnesses in the special counsel’s investigation: Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. Most and probably all of these efforts seem not to involve the exercise of an Article II power. If so, application of the obstruction statutes to these facts would not burden a presidential prerogative and the statutes thus apply to these actions if their elements are satisfied. (Given the constitutional stakes, doubts about whether the president’s Article II powers are burdened by an application of the statute should probably be resolved in the president’s favor.)
My conclusion that Trump can do bad things in connection with his exercise of Article II power and not even theoretically commit a crime under the obstruction statutes as currently written might seem weird to the point of bizarre to some. But Congress by statute defines what is criminal and what isn’t, and rules of statutory interpretation determine the scope of Congress’s criminal prohibition, including exclusions for the president absent a clear statement to the contrary. Under the clear statement rule, the responsibility to rectify any weirdness in the current arrangement thus lies with Congress, which would need to sort out the very hard questions of when and how the obstruction statutes can and should burden presidential power, and when not. In the meantime, the remedies for a president who wields Article II power like Trump are impeachment, censure or elections.
A candid analysis of the clear statement rule would have acknowledged and grappled with the many analytical difficulties I have touched on. But the Mueller report did not do that. It suppressed standard legal doctrine and engaged in novel legal moves in order to hold open the possibility that all 10 of the events he analyzed might have been crimes. It is not clear why the authors of the report did this. One can speculate, though it is only speculation, that it may have had something to do with not wanting to give Trump’s actions a pass and thereby, after two hard years of work, “exonerate” Trump.
Given the unprecedented abuse Trump heaped on Mueller and his team, and Trump’s wildly aberrant behavior, this would have been an understandable reaction. But it still would have been a mistake. Avoiding exoneration of Trump was not within the special counsel’s charge under the regulations—and especially not at the cost of screwing up the law governing the presidency for future presidents. “The opinions of judges, no less than executives and publicists, often suffer the infirmity of confusing the issue of a power’s validity with the cause it is invoked to promote, of confounding the permanent executive office with its temporary occupant,” said Justice Robert Jackson (emphasis added). That is what seems to have happened here.
It would have been so much better for the special counsel to conclude that Trump’s Article II acts arguably limited by the obstruction statutes were not covered by those statutes, and thus to lay out relevant facts only for his non-Article II actions. That would have resulted in a shorter and less damning discussion of possible obstruction of justice, but it still would have been pretty damning. It would have also allowed Congress and the American people to decide the issue in a less controversial posture, it would have left executive branch precedents where they were, and it would have been more compliant with the special counsel regulations.
I expect that the statutory interpretation elements of the Mueller report, especially its gutting of the presidential clear statement rule, will lead the Justice Department to issue an opinion invalidating at least that aspect of the legal analysis in the report. One underappreciated consequence of the special counsel’s unusual decision not to make “a traditional prosecution or declination” was that it allowed him to make damning insinuations about the criminality of the president’s behavior without taking an “investigative or prosecutorial step” which, under Section 600.7 of the special counsel regulations, would have permitted the attorney general to review the step, identify its faulty legal basis and determine that “it should not be pursued.” The special counsel had a duty under Section 600.7(a) to “consult with appropriate offices within the Department for guidance with respect to established practices, policies and procedures of the Department.” It will be interesting to learn, if we do, how thoroughly Mueller consulted with OLC, and what the exchanges reveal.
I fear that the end result of all this will be to splinter and damage the Justice Department and further politicize it in the public eye, with who-knows-what bad consequences. The special counsel should have played it straight and allowed Congress and the American people to decide how to hold Trump accountable on the basis of the facts that were relevant to applicable law.
The other was about the hysteria surrounding letter-gate, here.
I’ve been in a cave for several weeks crashing to complete my new book and am only now emerging to read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and the commentary on it. I’ll hopefully have more to say on the report, especially on its legal analysis of criminal obstruction of justice as applied to the president. But for now I want to comment on the reaction to Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the report in his March 24 letter and his May 1 testimony. It seems over the top to me.
* * *
I don’t buy Benjamin Wittes’s suggestion that Barr may be acting “to preserve his position in the mad king’s court.” To the contrary, I think Barr is trying to limit the damage to Article II that has resulted from Trump’s unfathomably stupid, impulsive, self-defeating efforts to wield executive power to control the Russia investigation, and Mueller’s overzealous reading of obstruction law and his odd nontraditional prosecutorial decision in response. Sometimes Justice Department independence means standing up to the president. And sometimes it means taking unpopular positions in defense of the presidency. I am pretty confident that the latter is what Barr is up to.
I find it hilarious that at the beginning of the interview he almost literally embodies the meme. "I've got all these cool new ideas like christian conservatism"
I find it hilarious that Shapiro openly moves the goal posts at 7:45. He’s openly asking for an even worse president or a president equal to Trump. Today my wife noticed that her period pads went up in price, and they did it subtly. They used to charge $14 for a pack of 36, now its $14 for a pack 26. No more packs of 36 available which helped last her bi weekly flow. Let’s force women to spend more on something that should already be given for free.
I feel even worse for those women that can’t afford it, slowly having to watch women be attacked because they bleed monthly. The fact that people still choose to try and govern what others can do with their body is not just.
I don’t know if any of you have seen Handmaids Tale, but when my wife watched that, her eyes were opened much more to the current situation in the US.
I find it hilarious that at the beginning of the interview he almost literally embodies the meme. "I've got all these cool new ideas like christian conservatism"
I find it hilarious that Shapiro openly moves the goal posts at 7:45. He’s openly asking for an even worse president or a president equal to Trump. Today my wife noticed that her period pads went up in price, and they did it subtly. They used to charge $14 for a pack of 36, now its $14 for a pack 26. No more packs of 36 available which helped last her bi weekly flow. Let’s force women to spend more on something that should already be given for free.
I feel even worse for those women that can’t afford it, slowly having to watch women be attacked because they bleed monthly. The fact that people still choose to try and govern what others can do with their body is not just.
I don’t know if any of you have seen Handmaids Tale, but when my wife watched that, her eyes were opened much more to the current situation in the US.
I can only imagine people who don't understand anatomy/basic biology opposing menstrual products being free at the point of consumption.
The same could be said of food. Open up the grocery stores.
I'm okay with this. I can see some adjustments may be necessary but I don't think there's a reason in the modern world literally anyone should go hungry for any reason other than informed choice.
I find it hilarious that at the beginning of the interview he almost literally embodies the meme. "I've got all these cool new ideas like christian conservatism"
I find it hilarious that Shapiro openly moves the goal posts at 7:45. He’s openly asking for an even worse president or a president equal to Trump. Today my wife noticed that her period pads went up in price, and they did it subtly. They used to charge $14 for a pack of 36, now its $14 for a pack 26. No more packs of 36 available which helped last her bi weekly flow. Let’s force women to spend more on something that should already be given for free.
I feel even worse for those women that can’t afford it, slowly having to watch women be attacked because they bleed monthly. The fact that people still choose to try and govern what others can do with their body is not just.
I don’t know if any of you have seen Handmaids Tale, but when my wife watched that, her eyes were opened much more to the current situation in the US.
At the very least some people need more food than others. Why should they be forced to pay for more calories than someone else has to pay for? Men, I believe, have on average a higher caloric requirement than women. They should all get a food subsidy so they only have to buy as much food as women. Not starving is a human right.
I mean, I definitely understand how foreign it sounds that women should have easy access to the things they need that men don't. That doesn't mean I understand why you think we all now support communism, or whatever you're getting at. That's still not clear, btw.
Tampons are $5 at walmart. That’s pretty easy access. A single lunch costs as much.
But really all people should have easy access to the things they need. I’m in agreement on that part.
This is a semi-serious question: what do you think the average cost of food to feed the statistically average man is over his lifetime vs. the statistically average woman?
Yeah, you're still not forming an actual argument. You're just coming across as grumpy that people would suggest change to anything at all.
Do you have a good argument for why women shouldn't be subject to a blanket women tax, or is it just gonna be suggesting that cancer medication should be free?
On May 12 2019 11:34 IgnE wrote: Tampons are $5 at walmart. That’s pretty easy access. A single lunch costs as much.
But really all people should have easy access to the things they need. I’m in agreement on that part.
So it seems really weird that this whole discussion stems from you objecting to the idea that they'd be "free". We could enhance access to all kinds of things that would benefit everyone, with all the money we currently funnel into stupid shit, instead of funneling that money into stupid shit.
On May 12 2019 11:36 Fleetfeet wrote: Yeah, you're still not forming an actual argument. You're just coming across as grumpy that people would suggest change to anything at all.
Do you have a good argument for why women shouldn't be subject to a blanket women tax, or is it just gonna be suggesting that cancer medication should be free?
I don’t have any argument not to make tampons free, I wouldn’t even vote against it. But you guys don’t have any clue what the average (necessary?) maintenance cost for women vs. men is or for any group vs. any other group. You have no clue whether it’s more expensive to live as a woman or man, or how we might even decide that. It’s not clear to me why you’d spend a lot of political capital on making tampons free when people go hungry, people have no eyeglasses, people can’t afford their insulin, etc.
Sure, and if you were to form an argument that people should get free eyeglasses / eye care, I wouldn't respond with "No, there are still women who pay for tampons."
There's plenty of documentation that suggests shit is just generally more expensive for women and women generally make less than men do, but I'm not terribly interested in engaging that, because it is something society is "healing" over time and is connected to a wealth of problems with societal understanding of gender. Basic hygiene is something where we have a point upon which we can say "Hey, women have to deal with this, and there is no male near-equivalent" without even having to worry about what women pay for a haircut vs men (Regardless of length or style of hair, mind you )
Like let’s consider a man and a woman who get all their food from the local Walmart. They live an ascetic, sober life of healthy subsistence. The woman’s bill has to include $5-10 of tampons every month. Are you really going to tell me that the woman’s monthly food/tampon expenditures are $5-10 more every month and that that counts as a “woman tax”? That seems absurd to me. That’s like an extra box of cereal and a chicken breast.
All I know is that, as a man who requires more food for the sake of argument, if the price of all the food at my local Wal-Mart stayed the same, but now every single item had 25% less food in it, I'd be fucking pissed. And that's kinda where this started.
Also, it starts as "just another box of cereal" now, and then this becomes the new normal, and we're back to them paying for "just another cereal box" on top again later. It's a bad place to argue from.
EPT
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