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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Yeah but like I said, if you promise some other form of compensation on the level or above what they lose in benefits, you will still find people willing to follow these illegal orders. Hell you could find people willing to follow illegal orders even before this ruling, but now that the presidents right to give illegal orders is explicitly enshrined in constitutional jurisprudence this pre-existing problem is much worse. I doubt those people will care about a dishonourable discharge, on the contrary it will make them martyrs to “the cause” and they will be worshipped for it. And it remains to be seen how all this would play out in court, I guess it’s quite possible for the defence to argue that if the president has immunity for giving orders, their subordinates have immunity for following those orders.




  • All good points if true. However I will say that to my limited understanding a crime under a specific law having been pardoned, that same law can then not be used to prosecute this crime anymore. Meaning states would have to find a different (preferably state) law under which the same offence is punishable.

    And that is all disregarding other issues like packed courts, republican controlled states, the vagueness of double-jeopardy in this regard, and the general chilling effect a presidential pardon would have on prosecutors to even press charges in the first place.

    The loss of benefits is easily circumvented by promising a golden parachute along with the pardon, so I could still see a lot of fanatics doing the crime “for country and freedom” or whatever they tell themselves.

    Overall this seems like a potentially dangerous erosion of checks and balances that is easily abused when put in the wrong hands. As the dissenting opinions in the ruling openly state.


  • Ok yeah fair enough, that sounds reasonable. But to my knowledge the UMCJ is a federal law, not a state law, so how does that line of argument factor in there? You cited that as an example of checks and balances that would prevent people from following illegal orders, but it being a federal law still means the president could circumvent it with the official order plus pardon combo, at least if my understanding of this new supreme court ruling is correct.


  • IANAL, but there is the presidential power to pardon. So the president could in theory give an illegal order (as long as it is an official act they have immunity) and promise a presidential pardon once the order is fulfilled (therefore extending immunity to the perpetrator). Meaning the president can entirely circumvent the UCMJ.




  • So, I think it’s pretty stupid to argue whether “convicted felon” should be in his opening lede line for Wikipedia.

    True though that may be, I don’t think it’s surprising that this would happen, and since making the post I have been falling down a rabbit hole of finding out how Wikipedia is handling situations like this, partly through taking more than a glancing look at the talk pages for the first time ever, and it’s fascinating.

    Currently my deepest point of descent is this sub-thread on the Admin board about the “consensus” boxes on top of talk pages being an undocumented and unapproved feature.


  • In Germany, Mein Kampf is banned except for educational purposes, eg in history class.

    Strictly speaking this is incorrect, although the situation is somewhat complicated. There are laws that can be and were used to limit its redistribution (mainly the rule against anti-constitutional propaganda), but there are dissenting judgements saying original prints from before the end of WW2 cannot fall under this, since they are pre-constitutional. One particular reprint from 2018 has been classified as “liable to corrupt the young”, but to my knowledge this only means it cannot be publicly advertised.

    What is interesting though is how distribution and reprinting was prevented historically, which is copyright. As Hitlers legal heir the state of Bavaria held the copyright until it expired in 2015 and simply didn’t grant license to anything except versions with scholarly commentary. But technically since then anybody can print and distribute new copies of the book. If this violates any law will then be determined on a case-by-case basis after the fact.










  • Muehe@lemmy.mltoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldNot Asking
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    2 months ago

    I think you’re probably saying that’s what an Opinion article is for.

    Correct.

    But a news article that doesn’t state its biases is not unbiased. And I haven’t seen any news articles where bias is stated.

    True, no human produced piece of writing can ever be truly free of bias.

    That said:

    Normal news article: Best effort of not applying your biases and just reporting raw facts.
    Opinion news article: Intentionally applying bias to contextualise the raw facts.

    That’s all there is in this distinction, but that’s nonetheless important I would say.

    I don’t know what ‘an environmentalist’ is - as discussed, the news made it up. But as one, would you please define it and explain your bias, y’know, like a news reporter would?

    As per: http://dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=environmentalist

    1 definition found for environmentalist

    From WordNet ® 3.0 (2006) :

    environmentalist
    n 1: someone who works to protect the environment from destruction or pollution [syn: environmentalist, conservationist]

    My bias is that I have been hearing from reputable sources that we are destroying or at the very least damaging the ecosystems that supports our species for all of my conscious life. Literally all of it. Doing so seems like a bad idea.

    By the way, today I learned there is apparently an older application of this term in the nature-vs-nurture debate amongst anthropologists for people who favour the nurture side of the argument (n2): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/environmentalist

    Anyway, people make up new words when they need them, I still don’t understand the confusion…

    Mmmnnoo, they didn’t say. You’re suggesting they would? Or that that is normally done?

    No, I’m saying they wouldn’t self-identify as such unless it’s an opinion piece, because that would be introducing bias into their articles instead of reporting on the facts.


  • Muehe@lemmy.mltoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldNot Asking
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    2 months ago

    So the “as possible” part of the statement is really a kind of magic

    Not really, it’s just a reminder that every human has inherent biases and writing an entirely neutral article is thus virtually impossible. That doesn’t mean journalists should go around and give into these biases without clearly stating that, and making this effort despite knowing you will fail in it is one of many indicators which can help separate serious news sources from propaganda and advertisement outlets.

    Who’s not an environmentalist?

    Fossil fuel companies?

    It was envisioned as a “neutral” term - as factual as possible - but it said on the face of it, “environmentalists said …” meaning not us.

    I don’t know, I see it as media needing a term to apply to a (back then) relatively new societal movement, and environmentalist seems sufficiently descriptive and neutral to me to fulfil that role.

    Are you an environmentalist? You know - one of them?

    Yes. Are you? I don’t see the problem here.

    Maybe the journalist is one themselves. They didn’t say? That’s the point.