‘The Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution — not to ‘support’ the Constitution,’ read a filing from the former president’s attorneys
  • @FooBarrington@lemmy.worldOP
    92•1 year ago

    Maybe, but this goes much further. This is a president of the United States literally declaring himself not to be duty-bound to the constitution, the one document that limits their power.

    • @FiskFisk33@startrek.website
      37•1 year ago

      Lord Varys : Power is a curious thing, my lord. Are you fond of riddles?

      Tyrion Lannister : Why? Am I about to hear one?

      Lord Varys : Three great men sit in a room: a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives, who dies?

      Tyrion Lannister : Depends on the sellsword.

      Lord Varys : Does it? He has neither crown, nor gold, nor favor with the gods.

      Tyrion Lannister : He has a sword, the power of life and death.

      Lord Varys : But if it’s swordsmen who rule, why do we pretend kings hold all the power? When Ned Stark lost his head, who was truly responsible? Joffrey? The executioner? Or something else?

      Tyrion Lannister : I’ve decided I don’t like riddles.

      [pause] 

      Lord Varys : Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

      • @FooBarrington@lemmy.worldOP
        6•1 year ago

        That is a meaningless distinction in this case, unless you think that it somehow means he doesn’t have any power if he goes against the constitution.

      • sj_zero
        0•1 year ago

        Sorta but not really.

        It should be, but pieces of paper are just dead trees with some dark colored stuff on them.

        I mean, if it were actually the case that the constitution is what grants the government its power, then the government would have to follow the constitution, and it doesn’t really – at all.

        I don’t recall the part of the constitution that lets them regulate education, or to provide healthcare or social security, to fund Food and agriculture, science, housing, to fund building the civilian Internet, to regulate many of the things it regulates, to fund building an interstate highway system, and so on. There’s some very specific phrases in the constitution that have been abused to hell and back to justify it, but none of that was ever what the federal government in the united states was supposed to do according to the founders.

        The whole point of the united states was supposed to be more like the EU, and for most of history it was. Starting with Abraham Lincoln’s dictatorial reign (sometimes dictators do good obviously in this case) presidents took a more active role in governing the country. World War 2 and the great depression had a further massive impact on increasing the role of the federal government in governing the country, and when the supreme court was about to step in because the new laws weren’t legal, FDR threatened to pack the supreme court, so they accepted novel and ridiculous interpretations of the constitution.

        If the founders intended to let congress create whatever laws they wanted, they wouldn’t have specifically described the copyright and patent systems and the post office in the constitution. If Federal powers didn’t need to be described in the constitution, then the federal government wouldn’t have needed to pass a constitutional amendment to make alcohol illegal federally, and then later passed another amendment to take away that power.

        The 10th amendment specifically lays out that powers not enumerated to the federal government don’t get to stay with the federal government, but go to the states, and barring that to the people. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” – And the 9th also says that people’s rights are much broader than just the rights enumerated in the constitution: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

        Two of the most major debates of the moment, regulating the Internet, and gun control, are explicitly disallowed by the constitution, but instead of proposing a constitutional amendment, they’re going to just do it anyway, and they do it anyway. That’s the reality of how the federal government works today, they completely disregard the document that supposedly gives them their power.

        So at the end of the day the political establishment has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the constitution is just a piece of paper, and it will be disregarded the moment that it is expedient to do so.

        • @Shanedino@lemmy.world
          -1•1 year ago

          Here is a fun fact States are not required to follow federal education guidelines. States get some funding if they do. So hopefully as Texas continues to destroy their school system, they will lose funding and turn into an even more uneducated population.

          • sj_zero
            2•1 year ago

            You know, I was going to do a “take that!” With some stories out of Chicago and baltimore, but doing the research for it has really made me realize just how partisan reporting on education is. You have lots of examples of really good schools in illinois, maryland, and even Texas, but everything talking about problems seems to be from one side of the political compass trying to get an own on the other side.

            Some problems in public schools have nothing to do with the schools themselves, you have some of the best funded public School systems in the country but they’re fundamental social problems that you can’t fix with a classroom.

            The literature is perfectly clear, that kids who grow up with a father in the home are better across a wide spectrum of measures then kids who grow up without a father, but one of the effects of poverty and the government program set up to alleviate poverty are often designed to break up families, and some black activists claim this has a disproportionate effect on black families.

            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904543/

            https://nationalcenter.org/project21/2014/01/08/lbjs-war-on-poverty-hurt-black-americans/

            So I think that the reality is a lot more complicated than just dollars and cents, and more complicated than test scores and graduation rates. I’m not sure that either side of the political spectrum is doing right by kids. I just don’t see the evidence for it.

        • @danl@lemmy.world
          2•1 year ago

          That’s not what he’s saying, and I’m not a Trumpet but the article’s pretty clear: Trump’s argument is that he swore to “preserve, protect and defend” but that elsewhere the constitution defines officers as people who swear to “support” so he’s not an “officer”.

          It’s stupid and nitpicky but not as clickbaity as the headline.