stolen from *eddit
All things are effectively legal if the laws aren’t enforced. Discussing loopholes is just pageantry when the will of the people aren’t demanding basic laws to be enforced.
the will of the people aren’t demanding basic laws to be enforced.
What is a “basic law”? Kinda relies on some wacky assumptions like “natural law”. In reality it’s just whatever the state says and the state will never prosecute itself.
Functionally the judicial being separate from the executive does enable the state to prosecute itself based on laws passed by the legislative. It happens kind of regularly actually just not at the federal level where it’s really needed right now.
Emphasis on “will of the people.” People need to start demanding change or burning things down like during the Civil Rights movement or in France on the Thursday.
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Term limits are for Presidents but not Vice Presidents. Theoretically, you could abolish the office of the President, rule as the unlimited term VP forever. Also casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate too.
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If all 3 branches of government were in agreement, Congress could declare a king and void the constitution.
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A compromised Supreme Court, with lifetime appointments, could go rogue. Legislating from the bench. Installing themselves, not the President, as the top of the government.
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Slavery is legal, ‘as punishment for a crime.’ Door remains cracked open for abuse.
Number 3 could only happen if both legislative branches were completely useless simps who never accomplished anything at all, so basically, expect that to happen as soon as next week.
I mean the idea that a democracy can vote to end democracy is a pretty well understood problem with democracy. So is the idea that the ability to enforce statute is conditional on the willingness to enforce it. In reality it really boils down to adding structural complexity to the monopoly on violence, but it’s fundamentally the same social contract as a stop sign.
Term limits apply to the VP, but they apply through the 12th amendment.
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There’s lots of things he could have been concerned about. The president can direct people to commit crimes and then pardon them for the crimes committed on his behalf, and that’s ignoring more novel legal theories about pardons, like issuing preemptive pardons or self-pardons. Article 5 places little restrictions on what amendments can be made. One could imagine a dictatorship being established under the pretext of a constitutional convention packed with supporters of the dictator and ratified under state conventions similarly packed.
Was there anyone operating under the illusion that it was bulletproof? Every constitution has loopholes in the same way that all code has bugs: they’re written with implicit assumptions about the universe they’ll operate in, the rules of interpretation and the people using them. I’d like to see one constitution that doesn’t have an “emergency powers” escape hatch.
Expanding the scope of explicit prohibitions and protections only adds more points of failure and contradiction. You can’t “solve” a human society any more than you can predict the future.
We’ve been baggaged with the enlightenment era’s struggle for perfect rationality for hundreds of years now. Every political conversation has an implicit (and absurd) backdrop that ideals need to be indelible for all time and policy needs to constantly drive toward perfection. That’s the least rational perspective when we now know for an empirical fact that we’re ephemeral electrochemical meat sacks floating through a mostly lifeless universe of entropy.
The earth’s magnetic poles will flip, super volcanos will decimate agriculture, the moon will drift away, the sun will explode and humanity doesn’t have the resources or evolved inclination to escape to terraformed utopias for eternity. These are simple facts. No revolutionary or reactionary political action can change them and no constitutional commandments set down today will be useful to our Nth-great grandchildren in those scenarios.
I’m waiting for a politician to acknowledge that and let us grow past paternalistic feudalism and arrogant 19th century doctrine. Let’s treat our future generations as capable equals instead of children; gift them what knowledge we have and preserve the resources they’ll need instead of dictating instructions.
Was there anyone operating under the illusion that it was bulletproof?
Like, a lot of people? They treat their Constitution like a sacred text instead of something that should have been scrapped and rewritten after the Civil War.
Looked into that, and I think with some assumptions you can figure out what it is.
One assumption is thats constitution exists in the vacuum, the other is that it’s the president that wants to turn state into dictatorship similarly as chancellor introduced Nazism in Germany. (This is the context Godel lived in)
IMO The issue seems to be with President being able to control senate and senate picking supreme court members.
Constitution itself gives President ability to replace absent senators - > Therefore president can replace any senator unfavorable to the change, and senate can pick favorable supreme court members. Once president controls supreme court, he can redefine any law into anything.
Constitution itself gives President ability to replace absent senators
What are you referring to? Governors replaced absent senators prior to the 17th amendment, after which it’s either the governor or a special election depending on the laws of that state.
Article 2, section 2 of US constitution:
“The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
I’m not native English speaker, but that very much sounds like president having a lot of power to replace absent senators while it’s not in session
OK, thanks for explaining, now I understand where you got things confused.
That’s not granting the president authority to appoint Senators. It’s granting the authority to (temporarily) appoint executive officers without needing Senate approval.
Things like Secretary of State, Attorney General, etc.
NOT Senators, though. The process to replace them is explicitly defined by the 17th amendment and is entirely up to the respective state.
I’m not a lawyer, and neither was Godel. I don’t know what sort of logic is being used for legal interpretation, but “all Vacancies” is as defined as it gets. For logician, if two procedures are defined without one explicitly excluding the other, both are legal.
The text immediately before that spells out what appointments the president can make:
he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
In context it’s clear that the vacancies being referred to are the vacancies of the positions the president has appointment power over, and that explicitly excludes senators since their method of appointment is already provided for by the Constitution.
You don’t have to be a lawyer to read the previous paragraph. It’s a section about appointing officers to executive agencies.
“[H]e shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for[…]” OK, but what if the Senate isn’t in session and we really need an Ambassador to Giratina? “Oh, ok, well in that case, The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” They’re called recess appointments.
Even if that weren’t the case, the fact that this power is limited to “Officers […] whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for” means that senators aren’t included, because their appointment is provided for in Article 1, Section 3 and in the 17th Amendment.
Humans make the rules and enforce them. If they choose to change them or not follow them then it is up to the people to enforce them, we are the government.
TBH this is dumb. I’m just a dude yo. If I try to do anything at all effective, violent people will either murder me or lock me in a cage. That’s what the state actually is. It’s not just “humans”.
Until we create something stronger
What’s more interesting, it seems we don’t know exactly what the loophole was because it was never published. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel’s_Loophole
It’s that the executive has so much control of judicial. The president can fire the attorney general until he gets the one he wants. Together they can pick and choose which federal laws are enforced.
I always wonder it’s what we see now.
Supreme court justices are lifetime appointments and can freely reinterpret the law to mean what ever they want.
Yup. We need a method of removing justices who ignore the literal text of the document in favor of their own opinions. The birthright citizenship thing is the hole that’s going to sink our country. It’s only a matter of time before some originalist decides that, while the first amendment literally includes the phrase “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the founding fathers would have really wanted us to jail all the catholics.
The executive power being vested in a single person is a much bigger issue on paper. Jackson already proved the Supreme Court is toothless even when it works as intended.
I think what they are saying is that SCOTUS could simply declare someone (like the current president) to be king if they wanted, because there is no legal check on their authority
Of course. But Jackson proved you don’t even need a corrupt Supreme Court. The executive branch led by one person can decide not to enforce their ruling. I think our impeachment mechanism for removing someone from power isn’t enough to prevent a dictatorship (or even fraud in the case of Santos and Fetterman). Outside of federal judges who have very little political capital, there’s been zero full impeachments + removals of federal officials. I’m not counting resignations before removal in that.
all while lying about “considering xyz settled law” or “boofing in college” before being sworn in
The amendment mechanism is specified in the constitution itself, but doesn’t have an exemption for the section on amendments. Hence you can make an amendment that makes the state a dictatorship and forbids future amendments.
The loophole is obviously the amendment mechanism - it always is. You can try to close the loophole, but it’s an impossible ask.
And besides, there’s no perfect constitution. Most countries change them pretty often. The US is an outlier in that regard with its 200+ year old constitution.
Times change and so do circumstances. Any constitution that wants to stay relevant long-term needs a way to change things to match the times and stay current.
What’s important is the entire system and bureaucracy around that sole document: it can turn the most totalitarian core democratic, or the other way around. Laws, rules of conduct, procedures… They all make a stable and coherent system. It’s not all in the constitution.
That’s not true. It was published. Wikipedia in Spanish even has some archived links https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallo_de_G%C3%B6del
Rickrolling doesn’t work if u use the Voyager App, cos it prints a thumbnail of the link below it lol
Stop it with the rick rolling, it was never funny
It was funny, for like a week
I’m myself always glad to be rickrolled
You were glad to be told “Hey, I think I found an answer to your question! Check this page!” when asking for help with a hugely frustrating problem that you had worked for weeks/months/years to solve, only you be digitally laughed at and the thread to die without getting any help?
I mean, you are entitled to your own reaction, but I had that happen several times, and my reaction was never anything even close to feeling glad.
Chief, it’s okay to not like something. It’s not okay to tell other people they shouldn’t like it. What are you, a church?
What?
I clearly specified that he obviously was entitled to his own opinion, how do you get that to mean that I am trying to force him to share mine?
Oh yeah, you did, my bad. I haven’t had my medicine yet, sorry about that
Getting to hear a great song is a nice consolation, though.
I clicked the link on purpose, since you pointed it out. 😜
Sure, if that is what you wanted, but the whole point of rick rolling is to fool someone to click a link that they didn’t want to.
Waiting for Godels loophole.
Much like God’s Loophole which also involves getting fucked in the ass.
Ah, the poop hole loophole
The loophole is that SCOTUS decisions are arbitrary and institutions are meaningless if the rules aren’t enforced.
But that ain’t a loophole.
That’s negligence.Well it’s a misunderstanding of the mechanisms behind political consensus and rule of law. This is very specifically what the anti-federalist stance was early on - fear that a strong federal government would become so intertwined with day to day life, that the disruption of holding it accountable would grow beyond the benefits it actually provides, ultimately - perhaps inevitably - boiling the frog. 50 local militias might be inefficient, but at least no single one possesses a global monopoly on violence. Of course, this come with a whole different set of problems, like if one state decides it wants to enslave people, or like, legalize rape or something.
It’s by design. Nation founded by enslavers for enslavers. Judges are strictly of the enslaver class. No other way to be a judge.
It’s worse than that. If they don’t enforce rules for “their side”, that’s the definition of corruption. Impeach, investigate, and prosecute those we can…
Why censor re**it?
Specially since it says Reddit in the image lmao
Woah, woah, woah! A little warning before you write that word, please! I had to get my smelling salts…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I assume he passed? There’s nothing more American than loophole abuse.
