The Political Discussion Thread

[Gatefan1976]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ry-says-friend

at this point why not just hire a kgb agent?

fake news!!!

[Falcon Horus]

Catching up to do...

Carlie Fiorina - not a good pick, as look at how many companies FIRED her.

Forced to resign from exactly one company -- Hewlett Packard.

Worked for 3: AT&T, Lucent Technologies (a spin-off from AT&T) and HP.
Was on the board of directors of other organizations from which she was never fired but resigned on her own terms.

Trump went bankrupt 6 times:
Bankruptcy No. 1: The Trump Taj Mahal, 1991
Bankruptcy No. 2: Trump Castle, 1992
Bankruptcy No. 3: Trump Plaza and Casino, 1992
Bankruptcy No. 4: Plaza Hotel, 1992
Bankruptcy No. 5: Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, 2004
Bankruptcy No. 6: Trump Entertainment Resorts, 2009

If Fiorina wasn't a good candidate in your eyes because she "got fired a lot", which isn't even true, than Trump is also not a good candidate for you -- your reason therefore void.

A Guide to Donald Trump’s Business Career

Ben Carson - now here was a man i really liked, but dropped out too damn soon imo.

Might have been a brilliant surgeon, but outside of that field he's the dumb in Dumb & Dumber (the latter reserved for Trump).

Mike Huckabee - has ran what now, 4 times, and never gets anywhere close to breaking 10% iirc...

Gluton for punishment anyone.

At least he got his daughter to be Deputy to Spicey.

I did.. Citizens or not, refugees etc. JUST AS long as they are here, fall under the 14th.

Non-citizens have rights too, you know.

After plowing through Harvard Law and Stanford Law, for which I simply don't have the patience... I skipped around and found us an easier explanation:

Rights That Protect Aliens and Citizens Alike

The First Amendment prevents the government from censoring noncitizens’ speech or suppressing the practice of their religion. The Fourth Amendment protects them against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth Amendment ensures that noncitizens’ property can only be taken by the government for a public use, and only if just compensation is paid.

Should a noncitizen be charged with a crime, he has exactly the same Fifth and Sixth Amendment procedural rights as a citizen, including the right to a jury trial, the right to counsel, and protection against self-incrimination. If convicted, the Eighth Amendment prevents the government from subjecting aliens to “cruel and unusual punishment” in exactly the same ways as it does with citizens.

Constitutional Constraints on State Discrimination against Aliens

Not only does the Constitution grant noncitizens most of the same rights as citizens, but longstanding Supreme Court precedent also forbids many state laws discriminating against aliens. In cases such as Bernal v. Fainter (1984), the court has ruled that laws discriminating on the basis of alienage are subject to “strict scrutiny” — that is, they will be struck down unless the government can prove that they are “narrowly tailored” to the promotion of a “compelling state interest.”

[...]

Some conservatives criticize court decisions restricting discrimination against aliens as left-liberal “judicial activism.” But such decisions have a substantial basis in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Representative John Bingham, one of the principal framers of the amendment, emphasized that one of the purposes of the amendment was to ensure “that all persons, whether citizens or strangers, within this land, shall have equal protection in every State in this Union in the rights of life and liberty and property.” While the framers were especially concerned with ending discrimination against African-Americans, they also sought to curb growing state discrimination against immigrants.

State governments are also forbidden to discriminate against immigrants based on national origin. In a recent high-profile decision, a federal court struck down an Indiana policy, enacted by then-governor Mike Pence, that denied state services to Syrian refugees that were made available to refugees from other nations.

The trial court ruled that this practice was “national origin” discrimination, forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment. Its decision was later upheld by an appellate court panel that included prominent conservative judges Frank Easterbrook and Diane Sykes (the latter generally considered to be a likely future Republican nominee to the Supreme Court).

Source: The Constitutional Rights of Noncitizens

Europe replacing America = in whose dreams? The Europeans can't afford their own defense these days.

No, different priorities, I guess.

Yes, oh yes they could. Put Europe on a war footing again and you will see just how much they could afford it if they needed to.

Well, war always is a good moment to put some money down for defense.

I said before the election that Trump was a roll of the dice. But he was and still is the only one making the proper noises on things like trade and treaties.

Yup, he's isolating your country on a global scale. Credibitily has gone out the window, and the US is nothing more than a footnote in anything.

So can anyone explain what MAGA is supposed to be?
I posted that in the hot topics thread. Wasn't America great already?

Not according to Trump, but it's anyone's guess what's going to make America great, especially since globally it's been shrinking like a little violet.

In the end nothing is likely to come of all this testimony, so what's the point?

Session's testimony today.

And I have a feeling it'll reverberate some what.

So what happens if the UK election ends in a hung parliament?

May has to find a partner to form a minority coalition, and apparently the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland is willing to join the Torries (DUP is as conservative as they come: anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-Climate, anti-everything really -- and pro-death penalty).

[Gatefan1976]

Snort!!!
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...amacare-239504

[Gatefan1976]

So, what does the person who helped draft the impeachment articles for Bill Clinton think of trump??
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.43f1e188e251

[Gatefan1976]

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337...ase-from-qatar

This will be interesting...........

[jelgate]

So, what does the person who helped draft the impeachment articles for Bill Clinton think of trump??
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.43f1e188e251

Congress cares too much about politics to ever impeach Trump no matter if he deserves it or not

[Gatefan1976]

Congress cares too much about politics to ever impeach Trump no matter if he deserves it or not

I just like the irony of the republican who drafted the articles against Clinton is saying "this is far worse than what we did Bill for"

[jelgate]

Not everyone blindly follows a party no matter what

[Gatefan1976]

Hey, AFAIC, the only hope anyone has for getting to the bottom of this is for both sides to put country before politics. The constant factor in all these hearings is people being asked if trump himself cares about the Russian interference, and both "sides" saying basically he shows no interest outside of covering his own arse from criminal charges which really he is pretty much immune to while he holds office.

[jelgate]

I think I said as much. Regardless, you are right which is sad. This is the kind of the thing the Founding Father's warned us about

[garhkal]

Non-citizens have rights too, you know.

After plowing through Harvard Law and Stanford Law, for which I simply don't have the patience... I skipped around and found us an easier explanation:

Rights That Protect Aliens and Citizens Alike
.

SO why have a difference between being a citizen of a country and illegal aliens in that country, if the illegals get darn near all the benefits OF BEING a citizen anyway? What is the benefit of working your butt of, followig the law and doing all the needed stuff to BECOME a citizen?

[Gatefan1976]

Legal protection is hardly "darn near all the rights". Why do you think people bother to go from green card holder to citizen?

[Womble]

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337...ase-from-qatar

This will be interesting...........

It reminds me of Egypt's demand for the UN peacekeepers to leave the Sinai peninsula in the run-up before the Six Day War.

[SoulReaver]

I just like the irony of the republican who drafted the articles against Clinton is saying "this is far worse than what we did Bill for"

and they did Bill Clinton for far less than what their president's accused of

if there's a video of tRump under the table giving Putin a "Lewinsky special" in the oval office the GOP will still try to defend him

[Falcon Horus]

Snort!!!
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...amacare-239504

Whichever way the wind blows...

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337...ase-from-qatar

Someone would have to tell him first that they have a base in Qatar. Every indication he was oblivious to that when he tweeted his credit for the blockade.

Congress cares too much about politics to ever impeach Trump no matter if he deserves it or not

They need a puppet in there so they can do whatever they want in their houses.
When the focus is on the buffoon, it's not on them.

SO why have a difference between being a citizen of a country and illegal aliens in that country, if the illegals get darn near all the benefits OF BEING a citizen anyway? What is the benefit of working your butt of, followig the law and doing all the needed stuff to BECOME a citizen?

I don't know if you followed the source-link but citizens do have a few more rights in place than non-citizens.

Rights Reserved to Citizens

The Constitution reserves a few rights for citizens alone. Most notably, the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, Section 2, and the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment both protect the “privileges” and “immunities” of US citizens against various types of interference by state governments.

The Second and Ninth Amendments indicate that the rights they protect are those of “the people.” While the Supreme Court has never addressed this issue, lower courts have disagreed over whether “the people” entitled to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms includes noncitizens, especially undocumented immigrants.

That a few constitutional rights may be specifically reserved to citizens underscores the broader principle that the vast majority are not. There would be no need to specify such a reservation if the Constitution had a default rule limiting rights to citizens.

In reality, the vast majority of rights outlined in the Constitution are phrased as general limitations on government power, not special protections for a specific class of people — be they citizens or some other group.

And if you like to plow through legal speak, I reccommend Harvard Law and Stanford Law edu-websites. Though I may be interested in all of it, reading through legal texts is not exactly something I can keep my focus on for very long.

Will be interesting when my cousin does her master thesis. She's studying law, and we're the go-to proofreaders in the family.

if there's a video of tRump under the table giving Putin a "Lewinsky special" in the oval office the GOP will still try to defend him

OH GODDESS!! SOUL!! Seriously.... *bleaches brain* ...