President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Economic Left/Right: 1.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.41

 

"Why do the left/liberal numbers get negative?"

Standard graphing. Left of the vertical is negative.

 

What Jonathan Chait Gets Right About Trump and Russia

 

To be clear, I'm not a Trump fan--but I'm not entirely sure why this is all that controversial. ALJs are part of the executive branch. They provide over administrative hearings, and their decisions are (in most, if not all cases) subject to review by executive officers and agencies (which in turn are subject to actual judicial review). If Trump could remove the officers who have review of the ALJ decisions, in any event, why does it matter that the ALJs are also removable?

Take the SEC, for example. The decision of an ALJ in an SEC hearing is subject to so-called de novo review by the SEC Commissioners--in other words, it gets no deference. Those Commissioners are political appointees removable, for good cause, by the president. Why is granting the same authority over ALJs--who, again, have no final say--any more problematic?

 

Sixty-plus year old codgers wearing "muscle shirts" shouldn't be telling anyone what shirt not to wear.
A man harasses a woman for wearing a Puerto Rico shirt, saying it's 'un-American' - CNN

 

I'll take "How do we sleep while our beds are burning?" for a 500 Rubles please, Alex.

EDIT: Not a shot at DQ.

 

Balls?

Cadet Bone Spurs?

 

"Those Commissioners are political appointees removable, for good cause, by the president. Why is granting the same authority over ALJs--who, again, have no final say--any more problematic?" ~ lcjjdnh

I don't know a damn thing about what these people do, and obviously you know more, so this is pure speculation on my part. Do you think that this is similar to Trump coming into office and firing all the ambassadors at once so that he could put his own people in? It reads to me as if many of these guys have been in the job a while, through various administrations. Is that correct?

If so, if he's wiping the slate clean and putting in his own people across the board, perhaps that's what they're exercised about?

I linked it mostly because Joyce Vance was saying it, and then I saw it come up again in Miller's tweet.