Zamuel wrote:Please show us where it says that anywhere besides Donald Trumps tweets. Polly want a cracker?
Article II, Sentence 1 wrote:The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
Pretty simple. All executive power stems from the President of the United States.
Zamuel wrote:There is an organized chain of command which Trump wishes to ignore. He want's to issue orders to the FBI directly and, in some peoples opinions is attempting to dictate their conclusions by fiat.
The president is at the top of the chain of command. He can issue orders to a private if he wishes.
Zamuel wrote:The DOJ has already started an investigation of FBI conduct (under the Inspector General's division) which Trump wants to bypass.
He wants the DoJ regular officers to take action--basically to uphold their oath of office, which many are not doing.
Zamuel wrote:He wants to make the FBI into his personal goon squad.
This is just an expression of your turbulent emotional state. The president wants to know if the FBI used public resources for private political purposes. That's a very valid question.
Zamuel wrote:In essence Trump wants to appoint himself Attorney General and Director of the FBI … Without Senate confirmation or legislative oversite.
Nobody wants to be a subordinate to themselves. These departments and bureaus are not independent of the executive authority of the president; nor are they exempt from Congressional oversight.
One Degree wrote:To try to pretend it is now not valid under Trump is to attempt to deny our past stupidity as something we can just ignore.
The only valid argument is to admit the Executive has too much power and try to change it. The problem for liberals is that their power is based upon a strong Executive. They find themselves in a position of fighting what they helped create. A strong Executive was great under Obama, right? Short sightedness often bites you in the ass.
Sharyl Attkisson had some interesting comments recently. Recall that the Obama administration embedded their own "LogMeIn" program onto her laptop and spied on her. She reported seeing her laptop turn itself on and start opening files by itself--of course, it was the Obama administration doing this. At any rate, she had a trenchant comment that the effort to remove Trump from office--drain the swamp being his campaign punchline--is driving the deep state to hide from view everything they did, not just during the Obama years but more or less for the last 20-30 years. Basically, Obama's "bitter clinger" remark, Mitt Romney's "47%" remark, and Hillary's "deplorable" remark, along with John McCain's "whacko birds" and "crazies" remark has come back to bite the establishment in the ass, and quite hard too.
jimjam wrote:I am simply one side of the coin and you, who are able to conjure up justification for every one of The Great Man's activities, the other.
Well, I'm the one on this bb who identified Trump early on and indicated he would be a major factor, and why he would be a major factor. Since that time, Brexit occurred and Trump won the White House. The establishment is under seige now. I have said before, the people in Washington DC are the most hated people in the world. It's not like they don't deserve it.
jimjam wrote:President Trump sank to a new low on Sunday, tweeting, “I hereby demand (what a fucking ass hole), and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”
Directionality and prepositional phrases really depend upon your point of view. Trump is using legal language, not cartoonish language. Basically, the FBI had informants in the Trump campaign before they were surveilling Carter Page, before Papadopolous was on the radar, etc. They didn't have probable cause to be investigating his campaign. It was clearly political. However, since Trump was unpredictable, they couldn't terminate his candidacy the way they could with Bernie Sanders--to whom they more or less did the same thing.
jimjam wrote:Putting aside the cartoonish language (“I hereby demand”? Really?), consider the seriousness of the threat posed by a president ordering federal law enforcement officials to investigate the people who are investigating him.
He's the executive officer. His agents don't just get to use the power delegated by the principal to attack the principal. That power is reserved to Congress in the form of impeachment.
jimjam wrote:One doesn’t have to agree with the particulars of every investigation to see the fundamental difference here: The members of our law enforcement and intelligence communities are trying to protect the country.
From electing someone with whom they disagree. Working with an opposing political campaign and using its cooked up intelligence product to profer to courts to sustain the use of state investigative powers is little beyond the pale.
jimjam wrote:Donald Trump and his supporters are simply trying to protect Donald Trump.
I don't give a fuck about Donald Trump. I do want to see the establishment in Washington DC take it up the arse. Trump is helping that process along, and I cheer him on at every opportunity. I don't particularly share his vision for health care or social security, for example. Of all the candidates in 2016, I preferred Lyin Ted Cruz. However, I think we got the right person in charge, because Ted Cruz works with the establishment too. Trump is sticking it up their asses, and I quite like that. The establishment has been playing this game since Nixon, and nobody has ever turned it around on them. Reagan didn't Bush didn't, Clinton didn't, Bush II didn't--Obama never had to, as nobody would touch him in order to create this image of the "magic negro" archetype who never did anything wrong. Yet, Obama proved to be a pretty dirty player in the scheme of things.
Hong Wu wrote:Sounds like they're finally going after things like this. They've been sitting on a lot of things for awhile, Huma's laptop, Awan's laptop and the IT scandal and probably some Clinton Foundation stuff. It seems possible that they're going to start moving on all of these things at once to try and overwhelm the Democrat's leadership structure? Is "the storm" finally here?
One certainly hopes so. Hopefully, they will also be able to jail the establishment Republicans too like John McCain (before he finally croaks) and Thad Cochran. Jeff Sessions is proving to be kind of a spineless weasel too.
jimjam wrote:This is strictly a no brainer. Nothing to debate. Putin hates Hillary. They have attacked each other for years. Over the years she has said that Mr Putin "doesn't have a soul", she called him a "tough guy with a thin skin", and she compared his annexation of Crimea in 2014 to the actions of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
Nobody in the establishment nor the establishment fan club understood the significance of Benghazi. Obama and Hillary's actions were an eminence front that was ripped down. People misunderstood Benghazi as if it were some sort of criminal investigation. What it showed--along with Obama's red line in the sand--was that the emperor had no clothes.
I remember at the time wondering why they--America's enemies--didn't attack us at that point. We had horribly weak leadership. Yet, they did take what I would consider "baby steps." However, Putin's Crimea gambit was a stroke of genius. Catherine the Great lost millions trying to take Crimea. The tory British still wax on about Florence Nightingale and the The Charge of the Light Brigade. Yet, Putin took Crimea without firing a shot. Then, he did what Hitler didn't do. He more or less stayed put. I've always wondered what things would have been like had someone in the image of Metternich had been in charge instead of Hitler. Putin has played his hand masterfully. Give credit where credit is due.
jimjam wrote:On the other hand Putin pretty much has Donald in his pocket.
I wonder what he's doing in there. Maybe looking for the source of Clinton's $500k payouts and the millions poured into the Clinton Foundation.
jimjam wrote:Donald's reps were lobbying for a Moscow Trump Tower while election campaigning was in progress.
Which is not illegal.
jimjam wrote:The Trump family business has been using Russian money for years since US banks cut them off after a few bankruptcies.
Trump is a-okay with the Jews now, because of recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.
jimjam wrote:Here are Junior's own words: "In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Trump Jr. said during a conference in New York in 2008.
Actually, Trump just owns the name on most of those properties. It's a licensing agreement. It makes Trump look like he's wealthier than he is.
jimjam wrote:Then ....... who knows what Putin has on Donald that he keeps in his safe deposit box .
That he likes to pee on beds slept in by Barack Obama? Perhaps he's a bed wetter now. Who knows. Who cares?
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden