DailyJim: “[The president] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Daily Gem. Today is Thursday, April 25th, 2024. Today, I'm going to talk about, I don't know what the name of it's going to be, but I'm just going to talk and we'll go from there. But I'm going to talk about the Supreme Court argument today about absolute immunity for the president. So, I have a copy of the Constitution here right now in Article 2, which talks about the executive branch and the presidency.

Section 3, it says, the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. And then in section four, it says the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

So what I want to talk about is I believe the argument that Trump's team is bringing to the Supreme Court is that the president is absolutely immune. Now, I would ask, what is the point of having a president if the whole point is to make sure that the laws be faithfully executed if the person is allowed to break the laws? How can the person who is the most responsible in the whole country for making sure that the laws are faithfully executed prosecuted be allowed to break the laws it doesn't make any sense to me it doesn't make any sense zero i understand that there is worry about uh prosecutions you know there may be politically biased prosecutions i understand that there's worry if the president thinks that he may be he or she may be prosecuted, that they would have an incentive to stage a coup, to stay in office, that the threat of violence or punishment towards them would keep them. I understand those arguments. Then why would you run for president?

The people who run for president should be the most law law-abiding citizens in the damn country. These should be the Boy Scouts of Boy Scouts, or actually, I don't know if you could say that anymore because all the scandals that happen at Boy Scouts. But there should be, it should be somebody who is so absolutely committed to the law that they're going to be the number one person responsible for executing the law of the country.

I just don't fathom how people are rationalizing that the person who is running to be the top law enforcement officer is allowed to break laws and not face any consequences for it. That makes almost, almost, almost, maybe 0.0000001 sense to me. The only thing that can make sense is that some of these supreme court uh justices may be terrified, terrified of the backlash if they make this decision maybe they don't trust their own judicial process maybe they don't trust judges to actually vet whether a prosecution makes sense or not because just because somebody brings a prosecution doesn't mean the person gets convicted And we do have a saying in the U.S., innocent until proven guilty. So how about we go along those lines and we trust the judicial system? What about trusting the legislative branch to write laws? I mean, it is Article 1 of the Constitution. institution when i went to dc they said look at the u.s capital building it is the largest building in town there was a reason it was the largest building in town because i believe it was supposed to be the most powerful office in town not the executive branch but the legislative branch, but even even even if they decide okay well the president has absolute immunity or very very very strong immunity because they're supposed to be removed by impeachment which doesn't make any sense to me because if he assassinated people in Congress, then he would never get impeached. And if he can't be held for assassinating people in Congress, then why wouldn't he just assassinate people in Congress? It makes sense to me. So even if that's the case, if I look at the Constitution, if I look at Article, what was it? It's Article 2, Section 4. It doesn't say the president is the only one that has to be removed by impeachment. It's the vice president and all All civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment. So are they arguing for absolute immunity for everyone that is a civil officer of the United States government? Now, so it would be the president and the vice president. Does that carry on to Supreme Court justices, perhaps? Does that carry on to other judges in the courts?

Maybe, maybe it does. Maybe this is, I'm not trying to allude to hidden incentives or hidden motivations. I am just trying to say that.

Shouldn't the person who runs to be the head law enforcement officer want to actually enforce the law and follow the law themselves? For me, that is the question. That is the absolute question. Or am I misinterpreting it? Is the president not the number one law enforcement officer in the country? Is the president not the person, the most responsible for enforcing the law? If the president is enforcing the law on other people but not enforcing the law on themselves, what do we have do we have a king what do we have what is the purpose of a democracy i think the purpose of a democracy is to make sure that there's one there's not one person who is in charge of the whole country because if we wanted an authoritarian government which like most of us have in our companies. Most of us work in companies that are very authoritarian, even if they have a board of directors, sometimes, as we see maybe with OpenAI, and the CEO can kind of throw out the board of directors if they want. So do we want a democracy where people are making decisions collectively, or do we want a democracy where one individual is making a decision and has no accountability to the other people, especially if they can just take out the people who are who are supposed to be accountable to him, AKA the Congress who was supposed to impeach him. Then do we have a democracy?

So the question I'm asking is, how much does this actually have to do with the, okay, my gut goes in to say, are these Supreme Court justices stupid? I don't think they're stupid. I think they're some of the most intelligent people in the country. And they're also supposed to be some of the most impartial people in the country. But are they as impartial as we think they are? I don't think so, because they're humans. They are human beings who have access to social media, who have families, who have dreams, who have aspirations, who have fears of not dying. Because what happens if they go against a president who has amassed so much power, not necessarily in himself, a former president rather, not necessarily in himself, but in some people who might do crazy things for him. So the question I'm really asking is, would we rather give absolute immunity to a president because we're afraid that the president may fight forever to try to stay in office if we don't, or would we rather have the president held accountable for enforcing the law on others and themselves and take the risk that other people, uh, that the president may try to stay in office longer than they want to, or than we want them to. I just, it's a risk either way, but I believe the whole point of having a democracy is that we take the risk to trust in collective society, collective decision-making, more than we trust in the decision-making of one individual. And if we don't take that risk, then we are not taking a risk to live in democracy. We are taking a risk to live in authoritarianism, and that's not the risk I want to take.

So, with this I ask people, what risk do you want to take? There is no safe answer, there is no peaceful answer regardless of which way we go, but which way do you want to go? Who do you want to believe in? Do you want to believe that one person will save us all, or do you want to believe that together we can work together to resolve our problems? Because if you, maybe, maybe we as a country collectively decide that we're not good at collectively deciding anything and we should give all the power to one person. And if that's the case, let's rewrite the constitution because the constitution is not written like that. No matter how much people try to bend over backwards to write it that way, or no matter how terrified people are to believe that it's actually a balanced power. So if we want it to be authoritarianism, if we want one person to be in charge, because we like how our, top-down organizations are run, we believe that the best way to live in this world is to have a top-down organization, fine. Rewrite the Constitution. Change the country from the bottom up. But if we actually believe that the U.S. democracy has served us well over the last 200 and something years, and that we want to continue this experiment to bring people together, we want to be more united, we want to be more collective in how we make our decisions, we want to trust each other more, then I think we need to recognize that there are certain rules that we put in place. There are consequences for breaking the rules, and we need to pay attention to that. Now, this is coming from a person who believes very strongly in restorative justice. I don't believe in retributive justice. I don't believe in punishing people. But I do believe in agreeing and committing to certain behaviors and agreeing with other people and trying to work together. And I don't, I strongly disagree with one individual being able to make decisions for all of us. I think it is a fast track to more and more violence. And I really don't think that we need to go on that path. And I'm not saying I would do the violence because I don't believe in violence. I worry that if there is no, if we put all the power in one person, so many of us will feel powerless. And as we feel powerless, we act out in so, so many ways. And as one person gains more and more power, then they fight even harder to keep that power. So I think the idea of giving more power to the office only makes it easier.

Makes them even more afraid to lose the power. So I disagree with one of the arguments, I think it was Alito or somebody who said it, of, well, if the president thinks that they will be prosecuted after they leave office, therefore maybe they will fight harder to coup. If the president thinks that they have absolute immune power, they fight even harder to not leave. Because if they have even more power, it's even harder to lose that power. So I think we should actually make the office less powerful so that people have more incentive to leave because they go, okay, what's the point? If I leave, my life will still be good. But if they have too much power, it becomes really hard for them to leave. And yes, I think we should make it easy for them to leave. But I think one of the best ways to make it easy is to reduce the amount of power that they have. So on that note, I hope you all listen to this. I'd love to hear your perspective on this. And I'm going to go see what what the weekend carries. There's been a lot of rain here. There's a lot of sadness. There's been flooding. And I think there's a lot going on in this world. And so I just wish we come together as humans instead of relying on one single human to make decisions. That's just my perspective on this. All right. Take care, y'all.