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Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#16881 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 15:10

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When Sam awoke, he found that he was lying on some soft bed, but over him gently swayed wide beechen boughs, and through their young leaves sunlight glimmered, green and gold. All the air was full of a sweet mingled scent.

He remembered that smell: the fragrance of Ithilien. 'Bless me!' he mused. 'How long have I been asleep?' For the scent had borne him back to the day when he had lit his little fire under the sunny bank; and for a moment all else between was out of waking memory. He stretched and drew a deep breath. 'Why, what a dream I've had!' he muttered. 'I am glad to wake! Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?'

'A great Shadow has departed,' said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.

'How do I feel?' he cried. 'Well, I don't know how to say it. I feel, I feel'—he waved his arms in the air—'I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!'

—JRR Tolkien "The Return of the King"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#16882 User is offline   Phil 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 19:45

This thread should not be closed.

The histrionics over the next 73 days will be quite entertaining. An AP article this morning said Trump is considering making 'preemptive' pardons for those in the Trump Org..

I would imagine after 1/20 there will be plenty of interest in: 1) the 70 MM 'writeoff', 2) knowledge about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and others.
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#16883 User is offline   thepossum 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 20:33

View PostPhil, on 2020-November-08, 19:45, said:

This thread should not be closed.

The histrionics over the next 73 days will be quite entertaining. An AP article this morning said Trump is considering making 'preemptive' pardons for those in the Trump Org..

I would imagine after 1/20 there will be plenty of interest in: 1) the 70 MM 'writeoff', 2) knowledge about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and others.


The idea of a pre-emptive pardon is rather amusing. How does that go against not incriminating oneself etc
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#16884 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 20:34

Even if Trump can pardon himself, he can only do it for federal crimes. Isn't he still under investigation by the NY AG?

#16885 User is offline   Zelandakh 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 20:56

View Postbarmar, on 2020-November-08, 20:34, said:

Even if Trump can pardon himself, he can only do it for federal crimes. Isn't he still under investigation by the NY AG?

It is also worth pointing out that to accept a pardon you also have to admit guilt. I am not sure if that would be a position that dodgy Donald could stomach.
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#16886 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 21:06

View PostZelandakh, on 2020-November-08, 20:56, said:

It is also worth pointing out that to accept a pardon you also have to admit guilt. I am not sure if that would be a position that dodgy Donald could stomach.

In the court of public opinion, at least for non Manchurian President supporters, accepting a pardon would probably be an indication of guilt. But you don't have to explicitly admit guilt and I don't remember anybody ever doing anything except accept the pardon and maybe thank the president.

If it came down to doing hard prison time, or embarrassing himself for the 10,000th time, the Grifter in Chief would choose embarrassment every single time. There is still some debate whether self-pardons are legal, especially with the current Supreme Court makeup.
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#16887 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 21:09

View Postbarmar, on 2020-November-08, 20:34, said:

Even if Trump can pardon himself, he can only do it for federal crimes. Isn't he still under investigation by the NY AG?

Yes, he and his entire company are being investigated. So, his 2 idiot sons and other executives are also under investigation.

D.A. Is Investigating Trump and His Company Over Fraud, Filing Suggests
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#16888 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 21:15

View Postthepossum, on 2020-November-08, 20:33, said:

The idea of a pre-emptive pardon is rather amusing. How does that go against not incriminating oneself etc


It won't be funny to the majority of the American people if the Manchurian President does self pardon himself and the Supreme Court agrees that it is legal. This may spur a campaign to amend the pardon powers in the constitution.

If the Grifter in Chief self pardons, or if he resigns and Pence pardons him, it doesn't make any difference if he is incriminating himself. He can't be prosecuted for crimes that have been pardoned. As a career criminal, the Manchurian President doesn't care if most people think he is a crook.
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#16889 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 22:40

View PostZelandakh, on 2020-November-08, 20:56, said:

It is also worth pointing out that to accept a pardon you also have to admit guilt.


Sorry, Zel, but this is urban legend and simply untrue. What it does affect is that the one who has been pardoned can no longer claim the 5th amendment right not to self-incriminate.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#16890 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 22:43

View Postbarmar, on 2020-November-08, 20:34, said:

Even if Trump can pardon himself, he can only do it for federal crimes. Isn't he still under investigation by the NY AG?


Not just Trump but the Trump organization, including its officers - meaning his kids - is under investigation. The governor would have to pardon those state crimes.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#16891 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-November-08, 23:53

Astead W. Herndon at NYT said:

The carefully calibrated unity of the Democratic Party lasted about six months. After a summer when moderates and progressives joined together to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. president, his victory has now given permission for the party to expend time and energy on the difficult task of sorting out its ideological core.

House Democrats, reeling from unexpected losses in competitive races, wasted no time. Moderates have blamed progressives for pushing policies such as “Medicare for all” and defunding the police, which are unpopular in swing districts.

But progressives, rallying to influence Mr. Biden on cabinet appointments and initial policy, have pushed back. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has pinned those House losses on poor digital campaigning, saying members made themselves “sitting ducks” for Republicans.

Conor Lamb, the 36-year-old Pennsylvania Democrat who beat back a Republican challenge in a district that President Trump won in 2016, is one of those moderates who believes the left is costing Democrats in key areas. In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Lamb said he expected the incoming administration to govern as it had campaigned: with progressives at arm’s length.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Q. What’s your expectation of Joe Biden’s Democratic Party? How do you expect him to fall on the moderate vs. progressive divisions we see in the House?

A. I think that he means what he says when he says, “I ran a Democrat, but I’m going to serve as an American president.” And what that means, I believe, is that every single day, and on every issue, he’s going to be working to get as many people around the table and singing from the same sheet music as you can. And sometimes that will be everyone in the Democratic caucus. Sometimes it will be some people in the Democratic caucus and some Republicans. I think that’s going to change by the issue, but he’s a person that really believes our actual job in Washington, D.C., is to work with each other, compromise to get the best deal we can and then get the thing done. And I believe that too.

What went wrong for House Democrats when they were supposed to pick up seats?

I’m giving you an honest account of what I’m hearing from my own constituents, which is that they are extremely frustrated by the message of defunding the police and banning fracking. And I, as a Democrat, am just as frustrated. Because those things aren’t just unpopular, they’re completely unrealistic, and they aren’t going to happen. And they amount to false promises by the people that call for them.

If someone in your family makes their living in some way connected to natural gas, whether on the pipeline itself, or you know, even in a restaurant that serves natural gas workers, this isn’t something to joke around about or be casual about in your language.

That’s what we’re trying to say: that the rhetoric and the policies and all that stuff — it has gone way too far. It needs to be dialed back. It needs to be rooted in common sense, in reality, and yes, politics. Because we need districts like mine to stay in the majority and get something done for the people that we care about the most.

Let’s take that issue. Joe Biden did not support defunding the police. Almost all the members of the Democratic Congress, even folks like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, came out against it. What is the party supposed to do that it didn’t?

I think we can do it much more clearly and repetitively and show it with our actions. We need to have a unified Democratic message about good law enforcement and how to keep people safe, while addressing the systemic racism that I do believe exists and the racial inequities that absolutely do exist. And when we passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, that’s exactly what we did.

But the people that I was on the phone with, when we were passing that at the time, were not the freshmen members who are criticizing us today. It was Karen Bass and Cedric Richmond and Colin Allred — and I was listening to them. And, you know, pretty much most of our moderate conservative Democrats all voted for that bill. We listened, we compromised and we got something done. And that’s what this job is really about.

Is it the view of moderate Democrats that the progressives or the so-called Squad has taken up too much space in the national conversation?

I wouldn’t put it that way. Because that really focuses on them as individuals and their personalities. And that is not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to have a discussion about policy, not personality. And I want to be really clear on that, because I respect every one of those members and how hard they worked to get elected and how hard they have worked to stay elected and represent their constituencies. But the fact is that they and others are advocating policies that are unworkable and extremely unpopular.

So I would just say that our view is more that we want to have a clearer, sharper, more unified message on policy itself, regardless of who gets the credit or who is in the limelight for that.

In the Democratic primary, even as progressive candidates lost, polling showed that their issues remained popular among Democrats. Even things like single-payer health insurance or things like the Green New Deal. What’s your response to that?

At the end of the day, it’s individual candidates that have to win races, and then work with their fellow officeholders to pass bills into law and change people’s lives. So you can tell me all the polling you want, but you have to win elections.

And I’ve now been through three very difficult elections in a Republican-leaning district, with the president personally campaigning against me. And I can tell you that people are not clamoring for the two policies that you just asked about. So, that’s just what probably separates a winner from a loser in a district like mine.

On Saturday, I interviewed Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and she mentioned you and how some House moderates ran their campaigns. I wanted to get a fact check quickly: Did you all spend just $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election?

She doesn’t have any idea how we ran our campaign, or what we spent, to be honest with you. So yeah, her statement was wrong. But there’s a deeper truth there, which is this — that our districts and our campaigns are extremely different. You know, I just leave it at that.

She said the way moderates ran their campaigns left them as “sitting ducks.” What was your reaction?

I have to be honest and say that I was surprised about the whole interview on the day when Vice President and now President-Elect Biden was having the election called for him. I just don’t think it was a day for people to be sniping at other members, especially in districts that are so different from their own.

I respect her and how hard she works. And what she did in an extremely low-turnout Democratic primary. But the fact is that in general elections in these districts — particularly in the ones where President Trump himself campaigns over and over and over again, and attacks members within their own Republican-leaning districts, like me and Representative Slotkin and Representative Spanberger — it’s the message that matters. It’s not a question of door knocking, or Facebook. It matters what policies you stand for, and which ones you don’t. And that is all that we are trying to say.

The American people just showed us in massive numbers, generally, which side of these issues that they are on. They sent us a Republican Senate and a Democratic president; we’re going to have to do things that we can compromise over.

You mentioned sniping. Are progressives leading that or are moderates also doing so? I’m thinking of all the anonymous quotes attacking members of the left, something that she mentioned.

That’s just honestly a hard question to answer, because I don’t know who the anonymous people are. I believe we should put your name behind those types of comments and that’s generally what I do.

But I got to say, as you’ve talked a lot about Representative Ocasio-Cortez, she can put her name behind stuff and that’s I guess courageous, but when it’s a damaging idea or bad policy, like her tweeting out that fracking is bad in the middle of a presidential debate when we’re trying to win western Pennsylvania — that’s not being anything like a team player. And it’s honestly giving a false and ineffective promise to people that makes it very difficult to win the areas where President Trump is most popular in campaigns.

You and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez are on different sides of the ideological spectrum, but the same side of a generational divide among Democrats. House party leadership has said they plan to run again. Does there need to be more youth among Democratic leadership?

The most important thing is that the leadership we have has to listen to the newer, younger members and actually give us some input and help us get accomplishments at the policy level.

But what seems to happen sometimes is when push comes to shove, the younger members who have come from these really tough districts and tough races don’t always feel that the leadership takes our input as seriously as we would like. And I think that’s something they need to improve, and I would bet that Representative Ocasio-Cortez would feel similarly — even if it was on different issues.

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#16892 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 07:21

Gone, gone, the damage done
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#16893 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 07:51

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

If Democrats had nominated any candidate other than Joe Biden, President Trump may well have won re-election.

It’s impossible to know for sure, of course. But Biden won the states that decided the election narrowly — by two percentage points or less in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, current vote counts suggest. And there is good reason to believe other Democrats might have lost these states. Consider:

  • Nationwide, Biden is faring about 2.4 percentage points better than the average Democratic nominee for House seats, according to an estimate by Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics.
  • In several swing states — including Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina — Biden also did better than the Democratic nominees for Senate. (Arizona is an exception.)
  • In Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, the Democrats nominated a Bernie Sanders-style candidate — Kara Eastman, who backs “Medicare for all” and was endorsed by progressive groups like the Justice Democrats — for a House seat. She lost her race by almost five percentage points, while Biden won the district by almost seven points.
  • These election results are consistent with polls from over the past year that showed Biden faring better against Trump than other Democrats in hypothetical matchups.

    Posted Image

Why does this matter? For the past four years, Trump has dominated American politics. At times, he has seemed to possess magical political powers, winning the presidency despite rejecting the usual rules of politics and maintaining a roughly steady approval rating even as he was impeached and presided over a terrible pandemic.

In the end, though, Trump didn’t have magical powers. He instead became only the fourth elected president in the past century to lose re-election, after Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. That’s the good news for Democrats.

But there is also a large dose of bad news for Democrats. Despite Trump’s defeat, the Republican Party has retained its popularity in much of the country. A small but crucial segment of Americans chose to vote for both Mr. Biden and Republican congressional candidates.

This combination means that neither party has an obvious path forward. Democrats are almost certainly fooling themselves if they conclude that America has turned into a left-leaning country that’s ready to get rid of private health insurance, defund the police, abolish immigration enforcement and vote out Republicans because they are filling the courts with anti-abortion judges. Many working-class voters — white, Hispanic, Black and Asian-American — disagree with progressive activists on several of those issues.

But the notion that Democrats should simply move to the center on every issue also seems wrong. A big increase in the minimum wage passed in Florida last week with 61 percent of the vote. Several drug-decriminalization measures also passed. Expansions of Medicaid, a health-insurance program mostly for low-income people, have also passed in red states.

Republicans have a different set of problems. They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. They now appear headed toward a messy struggle over who their new national leaders will be — or whether Trump himself will continue to dominate the party.

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#16894 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 08:34

Quote

Winstonm Posted Image
  • Posted 2020-March-04, 12:43

I'm starting to think that maybe the participants as well as the electorate are beginning to see this election cycle as critical for one reason only: the removal of Trump and his administration. These are not normal times and it is not the time to argue ideological differences. Biden is probably the best bet the Democrats have.

This does not mean that Sanders and Warren are not correct in their arguments, but now is not the time
.


Biden still does not reflect all that I want - but probably all that I need. Thanks, Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones.
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#16895 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 09:27

Michael D. Shear at NYT said:

Hours after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. declared the coronavirus a top priority, the magnitude of his task became starkly clear on Sunday as the nation surpassed 10 million cases and sank deeper into the grip of what could become the worst chapter yet of the pandemic.

The nation’s worsening outlook comes at an extremely difficult juncture: President Trump, who remains in office until January, is openly at odds with his own coronavirus advisers, and winter, when infections are only expected to spread faster, is coming.

In a victory speech on Saturday night, Mr. Biden said he was quickly focusing his attention on the pandemic, including plans on Monday to announce a task force of coronavirus advisers.

He named Dr. Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official in the Trump administration who submitted a whistle-blower complaint to Congress, as a member of a Covid-19 panel to advise him during the transition, officials announced Monday morning.

Dr. Bright, who was ousted as the head of a federal medical research agency, told lawmakers that officials in the government had failed to heed his warnings about acquiring masks and other supplies. He said that Americans died from the virus because of the administration’s failure to act, telling a House panel, “Lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost”

Mr. Biden’s decision to put Dr. Bright on his advisory panel is intended to send a signal that the incoming administration intends to confront the virus — which is surging in more than half of the country — in very different than did Mr. Trump, who sought to largely push responsibility onto states.

In a statement, Mr. Biden said that “dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our administration will face, and I will be informed by science and by experts.”

Mr. Biden had already revealed the three co-chairs of the panel. On Monday, officials said the 13-member panel includes Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel, who is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Obama administration, has been a high-profile advocate of a more aggressive approach to the virus.

The other members of the panel are: Dr. Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine; Dr. Julie Morita, the Executive Vice President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Ms. Loyce Pace, the Executive Director and President of Global Health Council; Dr. Robert Rodriguez, a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine; and Dr. Eric Goosby, a professor of medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine.

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#16896 User is offline   Zelandakh 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 15:50

View PostWinstonm, on 2020-November-08, 22:40, said:

Sorry, Zel, but this is urban legend and simply untrue. What it does affect is that the one who has been pardoned can no longer claim the 5th amendment right not to self-incriminate.

I have looked into this a little further and it is certainly not the case that this is an urban legend. There are several cases where important persons, even the SCOTUS, have written opinions that the acceptance of a pardon carried with it an acceptance of guilt. Indeed there is a special provision not to accept a pardon just so as not to be the acknowledged transgressor that comes with accepting a pardon (Burdick vs US (1915)). However, it appears that in more modern times the acceptance of guilt is much less automatic than it once was and this is now a matter of debate amongst historians. So I accept that I mis-spoke in saying that he must accept guilt but I do not accept at all that the idea is an urban myth or even, for many if not most scholars, actually the actual truth.
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#16897 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 17:42

View PostZelandakh, on 2020-November-09, 15:50, said:

I have looked into this a little further and it is certainly not the case that this is an urban legend. There are several cases where important persons, even the SCOTUS, have written opinions that the acceptance of a pardon carried with it an acceptance of guilt. Indeed there is a special provision not to accept a pardon just so as not to be the acknowledged transgressor that comes with accepting a pardon (Burdick vs US (1915)). However, it appears that in more modern times the acceptance of guilt is much less automatic than it once was and this is now a matter of debate amongst historians. So I accept that I mis-spoke in saying that he must accept guilt but I do not accept at all that the idea is an urban myth or even, for many if not most scholars, actually the actual truth.


It is urban myth that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt. Here is an explanation from an article in the WaPo:

Quote


Myth No. 4

Pardons are only for guilty people; accepting one is an admission of guilt.

In 1915, the Supreme Court wrote in Burdick v. United States that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it.” Over the years, many have come to see a necessary relationship between a pardon and guilt. Ford carried the Burdick quote in his wallet, defending the Nixon pardon by noting that it established Nixon’s guilt. More recently, MSNBC host Ari Melber taunted Arpaio by saying he had admitted he was guilty when he accepted Trump’s pardon.

But Burdick was about a different issue: the ability to turn down a pardon. The language about imputing and confessing guilt was just an aside — what lawyers call dicta. The court meant that, as a practical matter, because pardons make people look guilty, a recipient might not want to accept one. But pardons have no formal, legal effect of declaring guilt.

Indeed, in rare cases pardons are used to exonerate people. This was Trump’s rationale for posthumously pardoning boxer Jack Johnson, the victim of a racially based railroading in 1913. Ford pardoned Iva Toguri d’Aquino (World War II’s “Tokyo Rose”) after “60 Minutes” revealed that she was an innocent victim of prosecutors who suborned perjured testimony in her treason case. President George H.W. Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger because he thought the former defense secretary, indicted in the Iran-contra affair, was a victim of “the criminalization of policy differences.” If the president pardons you because he thinks you are innocent, what guilt could accepting that pardon possibly admit?


my emphasis

PS: Not trying to make you look bad, Zel, just trying to help you understand USA law. It is a common misconception.




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#16898 User is offline   thepossum 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 18:49

Just by way of clarification. The above pardon was to right an injustice.

Is the pre-emptive pardon being discussed about to pardon an injustice that has not yet occurred or what?
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#16899 User is offline   pilowsky 

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Posted 2020-November-09, 22:51

Where are the lawyers when you need them?
Pardon - You did it but you have shown so much remorse that the Grand Poo-bah says you are no longer burdened with whatever comes with whatever restrictions normally come with a conviction.
Exonerated - We looked into it again and found that we made a big mistake and we're sorry. You didn't do it after all. We'll compensate you - sometimes.

Completely different things.

That's what a pardon is meant to be. mismanglisation of it for it Turkeys or to give Children notes to escape punishment for missing school is also nothing to do with the American Constitution.
Or, we could wait for Zel to get his Constitutional Law degree. Can't be long now.
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Posted 2020-November-09, 23:36

From Nate Cohn Explains What the Polls Got Wrong by Isaac Chotiner at The New Yorker:

Quote

Chotiner: So should we have polls, but fewer of them?

Cohn: I have long been of the view that media organizations should cooperate on polls rather than everyone having their own polls. We do it for the exit polls. And we don’t need to have six different national surveys a month coming out from each of the major news organizations saying more or less the same thing, with most of the deviation from the average being attributable to noise, not meaningful methodological choices. And I also feel like that would facilitate better analysis, and get larger sub samples, and so on. I don’t think we need to have a nationwide poll every day to understand public opinion. I do think that the demand to know how things have changed in our political moment is so great that I think it’s hard to believe we would go to a world where you only got the polls once a month or something.

Good idea for media organizations to cooperate on polls.
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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