Trump Signals He Might Ignore the Courts | Yesterday, the president said that no judge “should be allowed” to rule against the changes his administration is making.
This is the very essence of the difference that should exist between a President and a King. From Federalist 69:
The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. In this delicate and important circumstance of personal responsibility, the President of Confederated America would stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware.
The failure of the Republican party to support this kind of check on Presidential power is why we're having this crisis now.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-vance-courts/681632/?gift=UyBw-_dr8GQfP-nB65lZdUXPZcnF2FhcD45O-vwd2vgOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net
"Oh, shit, so you mean Biden could have just cancelled all that student debt anyway?"
"Well of course not, don't be stupid!"
That's the problem with being on the side of the rule of law: you're constrainted by it, but the side of lawlessness is not.
Something about in groups and out groups
If you outlaw dictatorships, only outlaws will be dictators.
Except when you override prohibitions on arming a county in defiance of the ICC because it's Israel.
You know he's not president anymore, right? And that party lost the election?
Now we've got a guy who's excited for ethnic cleansing so he can open a casino in Gaza.
Congratulations.
Maybe, just maybe, it is because something is wrong in-of-itself and not because it is a wedge issue used to demotivate voters?
Damn. You're right. The real virtue with Joe Biden was his lack of enthusiasm.
Unironically, yes. We were forced to choose between:
A) a historic ally of ours is doing something bad... We will speak out against them. We will not yet cut off supplies because we need the world to see that an American alliance can be relied upon. But we will speak out against these actions.
B) KILL EM! PUT BULLETS IN THE BABIES! KILL EM ALL! BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH BABY!!! FULL STEAM AHEAD! WE LOVE YOU MR NETANYAHU!
Clearly these two things are the same.
Was that what the police were doing on Columbia and UCLA?
You're being boxed in. Elon bought the liberals under Obama/Biden. He's buying out the conservatives under Trump.
Nothing would fundamentally change
Oh, sorry, I wasn't aware that the Columbia and UCLA police are Joe Biden, or that local police forces take orders directly from the president.
Without commenting on the US's attitude towards Israel, the US is not party to the ICC so no act is defiance because the ICC doesn't have jurisdiction.
Congrats! You are the toad in the (now) boiling water. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
Even if they are not American, they are fucked as well.
They helped hand over the strongest military in the history of the world to fascists. Fascists do not stop at their borders. They are like locusts, hell bent on murder and conquering. I'm glad I got passports so I can get my wife and kids out when shit hits the fan.
So, um, I have some good news and some bad news…
If I challenged you to write an email to a prominent politician, celebrity or business leader asking them to use their access to the media to advocate for Palestine every time you talked about Joe Biden, would you do it?
This is the step where the cart goes over the top of the hill, you're not coming back if this starts.
Hard to hear, but if goes forward, this does signal that it's breaking windows time. We all have a Luigi line, start really considering where yours is...
Especially if you're young, and they are doing this before you have been able to establish your own career or a family of your own, the rest of the world needs your strength and energy in these moments. Make no mistake, they are threatening you directly, they want to sell your future for a small profit added to the pile they are hoarding. Decide how hard you want to fight against that
Especially if you're older and know that everything you've worked for is at risk. Especially if you're middle aged and your hope of a comfortable old age is being destroyed. Especially if you have family, and know your children's future depends on it.
I know you mean well but fuck ageism, the youth always fight. They don't need a pep talk, older people do.
And then there are the rest of us. Not quite young anymore, but we were robbed of the chance to even have anything to anchor us down. We've been squeezed out of the housing market nearly our entire adult lives. We never could justify having a child, perhaps because of money, perhaps because our consciences wouldn't let us, perhaps because of both. We job-hop every few years already, as it's the only way we've ever received a sizable pay raise.
There is no house, no child, and no job for us to worry about losing. I don't know about y'all, but I've been doing little more than fighting to get by for far too long.
I'm ready to fight for something else.
wanna live forever? do something memorable.
You are not alone, my brother.
You ain't alone.
Then do it. Talk is cheap.
I see what you're saying, but you're preaching to the choir.
Heh. I'm middle aged and the only hope of comfort I've ever had for my elder years is chemical. I'm what you call an optimist.
So, those 2A people being real fuckin quiet now that an actual tyrant is in play.
The objection was always that somebody dark-skinned might be President, or that assets might be expropriated from billionaires, not that tyranny might be an issue.
As a leftist who owns firearms, I'm waiting for everything to kick off (in Minecraft obviously)
Random acts mean nothing but support for the other Minecraft team as the idiot centrists decry the violence.
America's problem is that its resistance is made of a fractured left. Things will have to get bad to get a rebellion going, and quite frankly I think the blue states would seceed first.
That’s because their team is the tyrant.
Haven't seen or heard anything from Trump supporters in my area since day 3 of the presidency. Wonder why.... It couldn't be that they have no faces left cause of the leopards... Could it? 🤔
What's Alex Jones mouthing off about now? This was his thing decades ago.
they want a hierarchy and the freedom to enforce it. nothing else.
They are two buysy fantasizing that a black guy is on their porch.
The time to rise would have been when Alabama banned abortion. Even before the kids in cages shit.
What are they supposed to say? If they say anything they're gonna have the SS knocking on their door.
Might need more Secret Service agents if all gun owners spoke out against tyranny. Like, millions of agents 😅
Isn't SS generally for SchutzStaffel?
Let's hope they don't become one and the same.
It shouldn't stop at just him. This whole situation was a team effort - Musk, Yarvin, Thiel, and many others worked towards destroying America. The whole lot must go, else they will simply try again when the winds are right.
Hate to break it to you but kinda tip of the iceberg. And murdering trump would absolutely serve to make him a co-opted martyr and throw us into the absolute fucking deep end.
lol k bud
Trump's cult can't coalesce around anyone but him. He'll be a martyr, but sanity will be restored long enough to get some adults back in the room and rebuild the guardrails of democracy once more.
Musk is well poised to inherit the mantle. The bootlickers will get in line, it's what makes them the way they are.
best I can do is the democratic party going "tsk tsk" geriatrically.
What about a sternly written letter followed by claims that we can’t rock the boat?
What they're doing as a result of constituent pressure is voting 'no' on everything. It's not having a huge impact yet because confirming cabinet appointments only needs 51 votes, and Republicans have that with a few to spare.
The place it'll be meaningful is on the debt ceiling increase, where it will take Democratic votes to pass it in both houses.
which it will. the impotent party couldn't even push aside an extremely malnourished fuckface to get into a building.
voting no, lol.
The "malnourished fuckface" was working for Triple Canopy, part of what used to be called Blackwater. Talk is easy. Taking a bullet is not.
yeah? they were going to shoot the entire democratic party?
Which of the elected representatives at the front of that line do you nominate to have taken the bullet since you weren't there?
all of them
Time to use those guns you've been hoarding. Wasn't that the reason you're even allowed to have them?
Nah. That was to support the Russian takeover.
That's what they claimes. Now they need a new claim
The Democrats disarmed themselves.
Source?
40 years of villifying gun ownership.
I'm a Democrat with dozens of guns, but most Dems I know have been indoctrinated into thinking gun ownership is support of child murder.
Either that or "it's pointless, like you with your pistol are going to stand up to drone strikes, can't win, might as well lie down and die"
It is, and you're a limp dick loser for owning them. Its a hobby that routinely leads to school shootings and mass murders, and defending it means you're either a selfish moron, or a truly evil person.
...But the democratic party hasn't disarmed anyone. No serious effort to do so ever goes anywhere, and any attempts to regulate guns usually fail or are ineffective. Even when they had a majority, they didn't ban guns. To think this is something they were ever seriously interested in is silly, and probably a sign you've been spending too much time on internet gun communities (which are pretty much all far right conspiracy shit holes)
They disarmed themselves by villifying gun owners. As a result, 90% of guns are owned by the fascist party.
Also - state and city-level restrictions absolutely affected gun owners. New York City was enforcing a law that made it illegal to transport a licensed, unloaded handgun in a secured container across city limits. They withdrew the law right before the Supreme Court heard the case specifically so they could kill the case and renew the law.
Fuck these bastards
Once again, to no-one's surprise. Trump loudly claimed he would do this long ago
Choose a felon as President, expect him to commit crimes... enjoy
That fucking Lizard Peter Thiel fucking rebooted when asked about the popular support for Luigi. The mother fucker had not thought about what happens when we the people get tired of their shit and unite against them. They've spent so much time and money dividing us so they can take it all it never occurred that it might backfire.
That blubbering little weasel. “Y-y-you have to find another way.” I think was the line he used. We tried other ways. Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable. Luigi showed how to fight back with some effect.
Thiel, Yarvin etc., are all so convinced of their own superiority that any actual challenge to their world view/tactics is completely unexpected. They can only comprehend doing violence to people who won't do anything about it. They get their rocks off over child murderers, and state sanctioned violence, but cry when the people they want to step on show and ounce of spine. It's pathetic.
There was a former employee of Elon Musk who said that when he stood up to Elon that one time and actually said that his ideas and style are terrible, he said that he never saw a man's face turn so white so fast, that Musk became super pale (even compared to his normal ultra-pale complexion) and that Musk's only response was to yell fuck you.
He had no concept whatsoever of anyone, much less someone working for him, to dare question him in any way.
Is it time to petition the military to intervene?
When I was little, long before I had a reason to want it to be true, I had this theory that the Secret Service, which is obviously not a secret, was called that because they had a secret mandate: If the President ever gets really out of pocket and goes for dictator powers, it's their job to execute him as a traitor.
Anyway, I doubt it's true, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
The Praetorian Guard killed some emperors, but that isn't an official duty of the Secret Service. Of course, it wasn't an official duty of the Praetorian Guard either.
I feel like the more likely scenario is if someone really wanted to do it, they wouldn't, but they'd let it happen by inaction if someone else did it.
Oh shit, I didn't see that shooter.
You just made me hope for a second, you beautiful bastard
Not yet. Trump saying something horrifying while it not being entirely clear he understands what he's actually saying or how anything in government is supposed to work is what we call Monday around here.
You don't want the military intervening they might decide to run things in a manner efficient for the end user instead of the rich people!
Historically, this is not usually the result of the military taking over a country. Usually the general who did the coup becomes the new rich person, thanks to all the political power.
Unless they are a person of integrity. Say for instance George Washington, Nicola wanted him to rule, he said nah bro!
We just need the general who removes tyrant trump to be a man who believes in his oath to defend our nations constitution written by we the people, passed down for generations and defended by the blood of those who came before his tenure. I don't doubt there is such honor still among those who serve. After all it is their oath to defend our construction from enemy's both foreign and domestic. Our dictator and chief fits both.
Let me tell you the story of the best officers I ever followed into combat. These guys were super sharp, and they were literally rewriting the book while we were fighting. The first guy took money meant for reconstruction and gave it to his Iraqi mistress. The second guy left classified intelligence reports out while dating a journalist.
These guys are human. Expecting super human restraint because of their oath is unrealistic.
I get it, but all it takes is one general with integrity, im sure thats the same odds as finding one in general population. Is it a long shot, maybe. You can still get people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. A national hero they would become after the dust settled. Not just a footnote in some dictators playbook. Ambition can be a powerful motivator. Even if they decided to take the rains, i doubt they would be doing a worse job than our current admin. Could be wrong though. Our democracy died 30 years ago and has been a charade puppet show for the rich for far too long. What do we have to loose. I think we all know that our elections are over already.
Odds that even one of Trump's generals would be worse for the country? Most people who make it to that upper eschelon in the military have some sense of duty, honor, a moral compass, and intelligence. There certainly is SOME 'failing upward' in the military, but a LOT less than business and politics.
Well yeah, I'm just making bad jokes over here.
i want to do than cross my fingers for this. i wonder what the proper channels really are.
There's no proper channels for this. Either the military leadership is motivated or they're not.
how do we motivate them?
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic
It’s the domestic part we have to concern ourselves with, and thankfully the Joint Chiefs seem to still think he’s an idiotic shitbag
As a veteran, I remain 100% convinced that the Pentagon has and has always had a plan for "a dictator becomes president." However, also as a veteran I'm sure there is a very specific checklist of things that must be true for that plan to be activated.
As a low ranking veteran I don't have any better guess than anyone else what things are on that checklist, but I feel sure it exists, and that if we aren't seeing them mobilize it's only because it's an extreme event and the conditions required to execute on that plan are many.
I’m sure they always have since the 25th amendment was written, maybe POTUS is incapacitated because he’s an aspiring dictator, who knows. I’d bet there’s mountains of folders in the Pentagon with various contingencies. Mostly inaction I’d expect, if a boomer Captain is ordered to fire on Kyiv he just ignores the message etc,
With every passing year there seem to be more and more anti-choice Christo fascists appointed to benches and local govt though so all I can do is hope my compatriots remember the oath we all swore and stand up to the wannabe dictator.
They might think he's a shitbag, but I bet they're not unhappy with him. Unless he threatens to cut their spending?
i think there are still people in power that actually believe in the merits this country was founded on and would stand up to pieces of shit like trump. it's the only thing i left i have to believe in.
i certainly have no reason to believe that the limp-wristed leftists of social media would ever stand up to anyone about anything.
My thought: Point out to them that there is no "permanent winner" here in terms of ending violence unless they stop Trump.
The people believing in his agenda are often aimless, and very often extremely violent. See the January 6 rioters, who continued to be aggressive after being pardoned, as well as fringe groups going on the attack now that they think Trump will pardon them. Emboldening them any further may mean years and years of continuing to deal with such violent offenders, AND without the support of experienced FBI staff able to track threats on a national level.
"Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal"
-- Richard Nixon, 1977.
You've had 47 years to do something about this, to be able to hold your leaders accountable, and apparently it wasn't worth the effort.
I guess the upside is you won't have to worry about all that wasteful election spending any more. 👍
You don't understand (or maybe you do but aren't saying it). The Nixon scandal is what started the modern shitshow as we know it. Nixon's supporters would be royally pissed that there was no specific media apparatus to fully support Nixon and his shit. They would go on to fight to repeal the fairness doctrine and to start Fox News and the modern propaganda media as we know it.
BTW, a few years ago (during Trump's first administration or a bit after) they even SAID 'when the president does it , it isn't not illegal' or some slight word difference as a way of signalling their ultimate victory in trying to do what they wanted to have happened during Nixon's scandals.
Oh, they’ll still allow that spending to show how many votes he gets next time. Like the other dictators do.
lol here it comes.
Groundwork for a coup by the sounds of it. When the next election is supposed to happen I wonder if he'll declare martial law due to some invented issue.
GROUNDWORK??!!
Dictator
But he said he'd only be a dictator for one day! Are you saying that's not how dictatorships work?!
"For one day" or "from day one"?
He said the first, but meant the second.
So much for law and order I guess.
These are unamerican people.
And people voted for this!! I feel like I'm in some fucking fever dream.
The gears grind slower each rotation, yet we're still surprised when the machine jams. Constitutional guardrails only work if the drivers pretend they exist—a quaint fiction evaporating under the heat of performative strongman politics. We've seen this before: executive overreach dressed as "emergency," norms crumbling like stale bread.
What's novel is the brazenness. Courts are now just another PR obstacle, their rulings reduced to content for the outrage algorithm. Linz warned of dueling mandates, not this farce where one branch swallows the rest whole. The Founders' checks? Dry rot under the floorboards, termites long since victorious.
Democracy cosplay can't hide the scaffolding. When the executive branch treats the judiciary as a nuisance, the only remaining question is how many will still clap as the curtain falls.
So like, when will other countries start letting us evacuate to them?
We haven't done a whole lot lately to endear ourselves to allies and partner nations unfortunately
Sadly a lot of the people who will get fucked the hardest, like myself, are also the kinda people who agree with the frustrations of allied and partnered nations, yet will get judged based on the behavior of magats instead of the fact that we don't want any of the shit the US is doing but can't change anything.
Unironically why I refer to myself as Californian to known foreigners, rather than American. Have had 3 different people tell me that helped them at least be ready to see me as one of the less idiotic ones to begin with, so it worked as intended
Fucking sad, really
Unfortunately I'm Texan, lmao. That'd only make it worse.
Oregonian first.
As an European I thank you for your service in making pizza delicious
New York, Chicago, and Detroit might disagree with our contribution, but I have an inherent bias. :)
Hi, just about any EU country here, please apply for asylum at the nearest convenient embassy in the US, and we will get to you once we processed all these people from Syria, and Africa at large. This may take several decades as the Nazis your government is funding are lobbying to defund the whole thing.
If you want to try to expedite this process you might want to hop over to Albania and try to make your case at the wonderful township of Röszke where you can be a backdrop to the next election campaign in Hungary.
Helpful phrases include:
Less helpful phrases that will only elicit laughter are:
Don't worry, our best people who we could get to supplement the border guard as "border hunters" for 130 EUR a month full time are there to help you. They are highly qualified, as attending school for at least 8 years is mandatory (any actual grade attainment is not guaranteed and frankly unlikely).
You thought the ICE was bad.
lol nobody is coming to save us.
your police have been militarizing themselves for 20 years to make sure you dont save yourselves, either.
And where the fuck do you plan to go? As a Canadian, I'm looking at where to send my family to be safe from the YOUR country.
Bro, I want to keep my family safe from MY country. It’s all bad.
And unless someone enforces the rules and consequences for breaking them for the first time in his miserable fucking life, he will be correct.
Dear Americans, where are your protests?
Do you have a link for the Superbowl edits?
There's protests in every state. The media is just ignoring them.
There are more people on the streets when a new iphone is released
Nothing happened when we did.
You need more disruptive protests.
Americans have been trained to clutch their pearls but that disrupting commerce with protests is wrong and that's exactly what we're seeing: complaints but no disruptive action so they are easily ignored.
Too cold outside for Americans to organize en masse. Gotta wait for the spring and summer for them to seriously work together.
RIP US constitution.
You were a good constitution and worked as a framework for democracies around the world.
Was it though? It institutionalized slavery for nearly a century, was blatantly sexist for well over a century, and enshrined a majoritarian system that created the political duopoly that has plagued the US since its inception.
if you take your modern glasses off and understand it in context, it was actually pretty forward thinking despite its flaws.
That's great, I'll be sure to keep that in mind next time I time travel to the year 1788 for a political discussion.
i'm just trying to help you understand the bigger picture. you don't have to get smarmy about it.
You're giving me the same line that always gets trotted out to defend historical bullshit. I understand the argument, I've heard it before, and I don't buy it. In the modern day (where we live and are conversing) the constitution has a history of blatant human rights violations. We should recognize and acknowledge that, not excuse it for being "from a different time."
Some of us can do both, you don't need to get aggressive just because you can't.
i'm guessing altheahunter is a grateful dead reference. that's awesome. i'm an old deadhead too. as one to another, you can do better as a human being. the music is supposed to help teach a greater understanding.
As I said, I understand just fine. I'm just not willing to hand-wave away the unforgivable parts of our original constitution just so we can all feel warm and fuzzy about it.
Sure...
Definitely not the Magna Carta.
The Maga Carta?
Project 2025 is the Maga Carta
I went and read the Wikipedia page on democracy after your comment and learned a lot, so thank you!
It was not even the framework for countries the US rebuilt like Germany and Japan.
I don't blame the kid, it wasn't bad for iron sights under pressure.
The panic firing was a bit of a rookie mistake but he tried.
Are you sure. We would be getting project 2025 with Vance instead. What's the difference?
Really think they'd have got in without Trump?
Vance would have got in with Trump as a martyr.
Couches would be cheaper?
He should have aimed for the chest. It would have been just as deadly. He could have gotten two hits in even before getting shot.
No, this could have been even worse, because Vance would have been elected in a wave of sympathy.
I don't think so. He has the charisma of a flat tire and it was early enough that any sympathy wave would have lost its momentum by November.
Elon still would have had his lackey hack voting machines
Charisma is not relevant. Do you think Lyndon Johnson had charisma? Do you think that's why he was elected in 1964? Because people liked him?
Well, he had a pretty big dick, so maybe?
I admit I was not alive at the time, but I'm pretty sure, what with it being the 1960s, that was not the sort of thing the general public was aware of, so I doubt it.
Also, like it or not, Vance was already elected to the Senate and had a bestselling book. Even though you (and I) do not understand it, some people think he has a magnetic personality. Just like they think about Trump, which I also do not understand.
I think they were.
https://short-history.com/lyndon-johnson-penis-nicknamed-jumbo-6eba2f1894fa
Choice quote:
He also called it Jumbo.
Fun fact: 60s probably had better sex ed than the USA does today too.
Journalists were not the general public. 99% of the country had never personally interacted with him and those things were not reported in the news. They're after-the-fact anecdotes in books.
I'm also old enough to remember when the press had the collective attitude of "let America think that the president is a good person" regardless of who was in office.
Crooks happened July 13. Vance was announced running mate July 15. No candidate = no running mate announced.
Also, when the presidential candidate is removed from a race, it does not automatically fall to the their running mate. there is no 25th amendment for election campaigns 🤦
This isn't the failure of the Republican party. This is their victory dance.
Seriously, this has been the Republican wet dream for decades.
So, fascism.
yeah but this isn't about judicial review
Federalist 69? Nice.
We have years of people saying he can't do X or he can't do Y and not enough time spent on what happens when he doesn't comply.
War. The only question is whether the Blue States get ready for what is coming.
"Might"
Yeah there is no might anymore...
UNLESS they rule AGAINST Working Class Bailouts. THEN the Courts SHOULD be Listened to!
Putin's Sock Puppet is following orders from Moscow to bust up the USA and turn it into another fucking Russia.
Riots hopefully incoming
Riots trigger martial law, suspension of habeas corpus. That's part of the first 6 monh plan for Project 2025.
I'm pretty sure The Judge gets to be the judge of that, not the Executive.
Ah but the executive gets to be the judge of who gets to be a judge and it is judged by those judges it judged to be judges that it will be judged positively.
it's all smoke and mirrors for "i have a gun. do what i say". the question inevitably is who has the gun?
I think I see where you are judging this.
Nobody should be surprised
Charles I said something similar. I'm sincerely hoping that it goes as well for Dump as it did for him.
Anyone know the full quote?
It just quotes the three words "should be allowed".
Did you know the founder of proton now supports Trump?
Buy a burner phone with cash while on vacation, buy a two new laptops on another vacation, and use a public hotspot to open the account one one. Never use that laptop again, and use the other one only for use directly connected with what you’re doing that you want to keep secret. You should throw a VPN in here somehow.
Why would you even give out the public email address to send emails too? What’s stopping other people you don’t want in the loop from emailing?
None of your shit makes sense man
Lolz nice try, Lonny
Dude is just underlining scopes. Nothing burger here
He was making no vows. Stating the scope of practice is not illegal in any way
By explaining who has what scope? Wow stretch much?
Yes that's literally the guys point.
Which was never in discussion?
People if you want to freak out about everything be my guest, but if this is what is going to make you flip the fuck out, geez.
The perma stun is real. And it proceeds at pace
Da fuck? Judges have the power to check the executive. Ever read Marbury v madison?
This dumbass right wing analysis is why we are falling down the pit of fascism right now.
If trump defies a court order, that's a constitutional crises and it is every americans duty to take up arms to stop tyranny.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/legal-experts-constitutional-crisis-vance-musk-judicial-rulings-trump-rcna191387
Also note,
I think it's a series of microaggressions; on their own, each comment is seemingly innocent, and every response appears to be an overreaction. But their comments put together paint a larger picture. I think this is part of the strategy - "Look at these emotional people, panicking at nothing!" as they slowly overwhelm and erode their checks and balances.
It's important not to become emotionally overwhelmed, and not to jump to conclusions. I definitely see the tendency to doom-scroll and panic in people right now - I do it myself sometimes as much as I try not to. But I'm thankful for the journalists and scholars that raise alarms, because if people don't know what's happening, how will anyone be held accountable?
Dems and Reps have been planning this for decades. It was only a question of which party got their puppet into control first, while I can't say for certain, with hindsight available, it looks like GW Bush was meant to be the Reps patsy, heck maybe he was with the patriot act getting signed into law, each step they could take to erode away basic freedoms in the name of security, or environmental protection, they did. This is very important to remember; instead of congress simply making heads of government agencies a job that must be filled by someone with a degree in the field, they eroded away checks and balances and gave the choice of those heads to the president, something that was not intended under the Constitution. I will be the first to admit without the EPA corporations would ABSOLUTELY pollute our rivers, air, and soil to the point life could not be maintained, but it makes no sense to put a career polluter in control when they don't care about the science so it should have been law a degree is required.
Jesus, shut up. This is not a bOtH SiDeS.