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PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   3084 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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Now maybe he was too incompetent as a boss to ensure that the workers under him don't leak things,

I don't think competence is the limiting factor in something like this. Without resorting to scifi or fantasy, it's hard to fathom how the POTUS could be sufficiently "competent" as to guarantee that no leaks in the entire federal government happens ever. Of course, the buck stops with the POTUS, but also, e.g. we don't execute the POTUS every time someone in the federal government is convicted of treason, and I think the reason we don't is that we don't assign blame to the POTUS for every individual crime that anyone working under him commits (maybe we should! The world might be a lot better in a lot of ways). And I think it's reasonable to believe that not assigning such blame is the correct thing to do.

POTUS appoints the people who run the agencies or appoints the people who appoints the people and so on and so forth. Like you said, the buck stops with them.

Does that mean they get personal blame for everything a random employee does? No. But it's still nonsense logic to try to sue your administration for what your admin did.

POTUS appoints the people who run the agencies or appoints the people who appoints the people and so on and so forth. Like you said, the buck stops with them.

Do you know what the civil service system is?

To answer Iconochasm's question for you, @magicalkittycat, below a certain level the people in the IRS (and most other government organs) are not considered "political appointees" and can't be fired without cause, due to the Pendleton Act. This is fine when dealing with individual loose cannons, as if they do something crazy they'll be fired for cause. The problem Donald Trump has, however, is that the #Resistance to him is/was systemic, and systemic sabotage is resistant to investigation because the rebellious employees will cover for each other against probes by management (and the Pendleton Act also stops political hiring to those positions, so the workaround of "bring in a bunch of new blood that's been vetted against the offending ideology, and use them to spy on the rest to spot the bad apples" was also blocked), so getting the evidence to fire people for cause is/was actually very difficult.

Does that mean they get personal blame for everything a random employee does? No. But it's still nonsense logic to try to sue your administration for what your admin did.

That'd depend heavily on the precise set of details. As you said, the POTUS doesn't get personal blame for everything a random employee does.

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