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Where was all this complaining about the forms of the Republic when Obama was using his phone and pen, or everyone from Johnson to Biden was implementing DEI by executive order?
No, the Democrats have knocked every check and balance in the nation flat in their attempt to purge Republicans from power, and now the Republicans have turned tail on them. It's too late to call upon institutional integrity now.
I mean... libertarian and anarchist types were indeed complaining from at least Obama onward.
Are you in agreement that this executive is overstepping its powers, and just think it's justified?
If you think both this administration and the previous one are overstepping its powers... do you think they are doing it to the same degree? Which Biden-admin actions do you think are of a similar level to those mentioned above?
Biden went so far as to proclaim a new Amendment to the Constitution.
Yeah, Biden did a lot of indefensible stuff towards the end of his presidency, and eroded any ounce of moral high ground the Democrats might have had left.
I think Biden and Trump have both abused the pardon power, and I would personally be in favor of a Constitutional Amendment requiring Congressional approval for each use of the power going forward. It's a shame too, because I mostly like the pardon power.
Biden proclaiming a new Amendment was a cynical move, but considering he didn't actually do any official presidential acts to make it so, it's closer to Trump's "gaffs" where he says he's going to do something unconstitutional and norm-breaking, but doesn't follow through.
But I also agree with other posters in this thread that we can criticize both Democrats and Republicans when they do bad things. We don't have to try and parcel out who was the first to defect. That's just partisan-poisoned thinking.
Biden gives 10 year broad pardons for any "non-violent" crimes known and unknown to his immediate family, all of whom are involved in corruption and pay-for-access schemes, including his own son who has been the bag man for Biden family corruption for at least a decade and left a laptop of him recording himself doing it among like 100+ other crimes
Trump pardons a bunch of regular Americans who were targeted for political reasons and given heinous sentences way above any treatment similar situated people who weren't targeted for political reasons have ever received, and this was done after embarrassingly unfair clown-trials, and leaving the 14 most serious convictions to only be commuted. What were the facts of each case? Who knows, the trials were tainted and corrupt with the government lying and hiding evidence.
think whatever you like about the Biden pardons, but the Trump pardons were entirely justified and further reinforce just how important the pardon power is and why it should remain
and even if you don't think they were fully justified, putting them in the same category of "abuse of the pardon power" as Biden giving full pardons for crimes known and unknown covering 10 year periods to his family is ridiculous and stinks of "poisoned partisan thinking"
what is a "presidential act" which "proclaim[s] a new Amendment"?
Biden attempted to direct the Archivist and the Office of the Federal Register to declare they had received sufficient documents to proclaim an Amendment has been added to the Constitution, but they refused. So instead, he had to settle with twitter and a media blitz trying to make it happen.
I'm willing to use the hypocrisy standard here. Biden claimed he wouldn't pardon Hunter, then he did. He didn't have to make a hypocrite of himself, but he did.
J.D. Vance, when clarifying Trump's intention to pardon the January 6th protesters, said they obviously wouldn't pardon people who committed violence on the day of January 6th. He didn't have to make a hypocrite of the Trump administration he was going to be a part of, but he did.
I'm okay with holding both administrations to their own standards in this case, and saying that they both acted wrongly. I don't share your belief that we simply can't know the facts of each case. Trump isn't stupid. If he had wanted to actually investigate all of the people with violent offenses, he could have, and I bet he would quickly arrive at a gut feeling about which were legitimate and which were actual gray areas. I don't believe for a second that the number of unambiguously violent protesters was 0 or 14, given that 140 law enforcement officers were injured and 15 were hospitalized.
The following statements can all be true:
I'll bite the bullet on this one. I don't have to carry water for Biden - he did wrong here, and I'm willing to walk back my weak defense of his actions.
I think I could weakly defend my original words, because even during Trump I, a lot of the cases where he didn't actually end up following through on his stated intentions was because underlings refused to follow his unconstitutional orders. But, "I couldn't get my underlings to violate their oath to defend the constitution, so I didn't violate the constitution" is still really bad, and I think I'm more willing to say even here we should strongly condemn both Trump and Biden.
Vance is not the President. Worst case, he was lying about Trump's intention. That doesn't make the pardons an abuse.
And arguably he didn’t lie. Commutation isn’t pardon.
Not only that, Trump specifically commuted their sentences instead of pardoned, and pardoned the nonviolent ones; he made a positive decision to treat them differently.
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