BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

uziq wrote:

strict constitutionalist dismisses emoluments clause.

what will the intellectual circus shrimp do next? a backflip? ooohhh!!!

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

strict constitutionalist dismisses emoluments clause.

what will the intellectual circus shrimp do next? a backflip? ooohhh!!!

It doesn't apply to Presidents.

it says all holders of office.

are you for the literal interpretation of the constitution or not?

Last edited by uziq (2017-01-12 10:51:25)

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

Anyway, strict constitutional interpretations as used by Scalia and Thomas are more about understanding context than the literal word written on the piece of paper. A lot of what is written in the constitution is ambiguous and uses phrasing whose meaning has changed over time. They use other texts, such as the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers (among others) to interpret the meaning of the constitution as it was written. It's a much deeper understanding than the bumpkin 'it says x on the paper, it is the word of the lord, amen'. But you know that, I'm sure.

scalia was an originalist, which is as close as you can get to literalism (as in, parsing the semantic content as exactly as possible) in any theory of judicial interpretation.

and yes, i have actually studied law. you would have to be a bent lawyer or a fruitcake to read the original clause about emoluments and argue that it doesn't apply to the president. the president signing hotel deals with chinese state-owned companies should fall exactly under that clause. convenient how you appeal to a different interpretation other than the literal meaning of the original document when it suits your political bias.

Several people have asked me why the federal conflicts of interest law, which bars every lowly executive branch official from acting on matters that affect their personal financial interests, won't apply to President Donald Trump.

To find out answers to that and related inquiries, I did some research and also spoke to Richard Painter and Norman Eisen, the former top White House ethics counsels for George W. Bush (2005-2007) and Barack Obama (2009-2011). Here are the answers.

Congress was most likely avoiding direct confrontations between branches of government, which would also raise Constitutional issues.
The Constitution sets out the qualifications for being President (things like being at least 35 years old and a "natural born citizen"). If Congress added supplemental strictures, those could at least be challenged in court as unconstitutional.

The conflicts of interest law—which carries federal criminal penalties—avoids those issues by exempting the President and Vice President from its provisions.

It also leaves out members of Congress (though not their staffs), perhaps, similarly, to avoid confrontations with prosecutors from the executive branch. Each branch of Congress has set up its own ethical rules, which that branch alone enforces.

Last edited by Jay (2017-01-12 11:41:03)

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

Anyway, strict constitutional interpretations as used by Scalia and Thomas are more about understanding context than the literal word written on the piece of paper. A lot of what is written in the constitution is ambiguous and uses phrasing whose meaning has changed over time. They use other texts, such as the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers (among others) to interpret the meaning of the constitution as it was written. It's a much deeper understanding than the bumpkin 'it says x on the paper, it is the word of the lord, amen'. But you know that, I'm sure.

scalia was an originalist, which is as close as you can get to literalism (as in, parsing the semantic content as exactly as possible) in any theory of judicial interpretation.

and yes, i have actually studied law. you would have to be a bent lawyer or a fruitcake to read the original clause about emoluments and argue that it doesn't apply to the president. the president signing hotel deals with chinese state-owned companies should fall exactly under that clause. convenient how you appeal to a different interpretation other than the literal meaning of the original document when it suits your political bias.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/15/donald-tr … st-ethics/

I don't know why I bother interacting with you. If you're going to be cocky, at least be correct. Unfortunately you're pretty much wrong every time you interject in a discussion regarding America. You don't understand this country, and your liar girlfriend is not going to help you any.

Ultimately , the theory of the Emoluments Clause — grounded in English history and the Framers’ experience — is that a federal officeholder who receives something of value from a foreign power can be imperceptibly induced to compromise what the Constitution insists be his exclusive loyalty: the best interest of the United States of America. And rather than guard against such corruption by punishing it after-the-fact, the Framers concluded that the proper solution is to write a strict rule into the Constitution itself, thereby ensuring that shifting political imperatives and incentives never undo this vital safeguard of freedom.

This is an easy question. As the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concluded when asked if the Emoluments Clause applied to President Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, “The President surely ‘hold[s] an Office of Profit or Trust.” That position, most recently reaffirmed by OLC in 2009, is consistent with established OLC precedent specifically addressing the applicability of the Emoluments Clause to the President, constituting the considered view of the Executive Branch.

Moreover, this is the only conclusion consistent with the text of the Constitution, which repeatedly refers to the President as holding an “Office.” For example, Article II, Section 1 provides that the President “shall hold his office during the term of four years.” It further provides that no person except a “natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of President,” and addresses what occurs in the event of “the removal of the President from office.” In addition, the Presidential Oath Clause, and the Twelfth, Twenty-Second, and Twenty-Fifth Amendments, all refer to the President as occupying an “Office.” Reading the Constitution as a whole , it is hard to imagine why its references to “any Office of Profit or Trust” in the Emoluments Clause would not refer to the President, who is repeatedly described elsewhere in the Constitution as holding an “Office,” which, giving the terms their plain meaning, is unquestionably one of Profit or Trust or both. Nor can there be any cavil that the Office of the President is “under the United States.” This phrase is used repeatedly in the Constitution to separate federal from state officeholders, and the President is plainly a federal officeholder. Indeed, bizarre consequences would follow if the President were not viewed as holding an office “under the United States,” since that same phrase appears five other times in the Constitution …

[...]

Finally, the basic objectives of the Emoluments Clause cut decisively in favor of applying it to the President. Given that the Clause was “particularly directed against every kind of influence by foreign governments upon officers of the United States,” it is inconceivable that its references to “any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States]” would not encompass the President. If there is any federal officeholder that a foreign power might seek to influence — and the corruption of whom would imperil the Republic — surely it is the President. It would be surreal to conclude that the Framers forbade a local federal tax collector from receiving any payment from the King of France, but allowed the President to hold a title in the French Court and receive a substantial monthly retainer. Familiar with the corruption of King Charles II of England by lavish pensions and promises from King Louis XIV, the Framers manifestly did not see national leaders as immune from foreign influence.

Mr. Trump’s business holdings present significant problems under the Emoluments Clause. It is possible that many transactions between foreign states and the Trump empire would involve no actual impropriety, but it is a virtual certainty that many would create the risk of divided or blurred loyalties that the Clause was enacted to prohibit. And while in some instances the threat might be readily apparent, the majority of potential conflicts would be cloaked in secrecy, buried in technicalities, or impossible to prove definitively. That is true both because Mr. Trump has declined to make many of his business dealings transparent, and because any President often acts covertly and on the basis of extremely complicated motives. Disentangling any potential improper influence resulting from special treatment of Mr. Trump’s business holdings by foreign states would be extremely difficult, at best. The American people would be condemned to uncertainty and innuendo, and our political discourse would be rife with unresolved and unresolvable accusations of corruption. Indeed, that dynamic has already begun and shows no sign of abating.

This is exactly what the Emoluments Clause is meant to head off at the pass. Rather than deal with potential impropriety in a case-by-case manner, or with ad hoc managerial walls between the President and his private interests, the Constitution forbids the very circumstances that give rise to such concerns in the first place. By imposing clear limitations, the Clause avoids a situation in which the American people must try to read the President’s or a foreign leader’s mind, searching for hints of private favoritism toward foreign powers, or of foreign attempts to seduce the American President into compromising our national interest for his private profit.

Last edited by uziq (2017-01-12 14:08:44)

DesertFox- wrote:

If Scalia and Thomas are interested in following the spirit of Framers within context, I wonder why they love ignoring the "well-regulated" part of the 2nd Amendment...unless, of course, they were interested in pushing some partisan interpretation.

Jay wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

why is jay calling uzi's girlfriend a liar?

She told him she's old money from long island or some bullshit and name dropped the trendy new partying hot spot (Montauk) as her hometown. Five years ago it was a beach town full of crappy motels and maybe three restaurants that completely shut down every winter. A weekend getaway spot at the beach for the middle class, it's now considered a young persons extension of The Hamptons. It's almost like a rich white person claiming they grew up in Harlem. Plausible now that it's gentrified, but unless she's in elementary school, unlikely.

Last edited by uziq (2017-01-13 03:34:19)

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

just to recap jay, as i know reading frightens you:

two pages ago you were loudly proclaiming your new identity as a constitutionalist, your new better wisdom, declaiming against progressives.

now you're bending over backwards, citing the realpolitik of capitol hill, to defend the most perverse interpretation of the constitution possible.

very
well
done

Where is he receiving foreign gifts? We're talking about him keeping his private businesses. If anyone had a conflict of interest with foreign gifts it was Clinton.

you're changing your argument now. i don't care about clinton's business dealings. are you a constitutionalist or not? trump's hotel chains doing property and rent deals with companies that are chinese state-owned enterprises seems like a clear conflict of interests to me. seems that plenty of diplomacy could be lubricated that way.

also if you're a conspiracy nut about the clinton's finances, i'm sure you'll love how opaque and labyrinthine trump's business dealings are going to be for the next four years. scrutinizing clinton's email server will almost seem quaint.

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

Where is he receiving foreign gifts? We're talking about him keeping his private businesses. If anyone had a conflict of interest with foreign gifts it was Clinton.

you're changing your argument now. i don't care about clinton's business dealings. are you a constitutionalist or not? trump's hotel chains doing property and rent deals with companies that are chinese state-owned enterprises seems like a clear conflict of interests to me. seems that plenty of diplomacy could be lubricated that way.

also if you're a conspiracy nut about the clinton's finances, i'm sure you'll love how opaque and labyrinthine trump's business dealings are going to be for the next four years. scrutinizing clinton's email server will almost seem quaint.

There is a potential for corruption, yes, but it's not illegal for him to maintain his businesses. I'm not in the habit of supporting preventative police work, and I won't start now with him. Innocent until proven guilty.

Last edited by uziq (2017-01-13 04:22:42)