this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
437 points (90.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35781 readers
1009 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] meco03211@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But did Bush knowingly lie to a degree provable in court?

He would have had to have known it was a lie and for that to be proven in court. With trump, his crimes were so egregious there were devout party line adherents backing out and explicitly stating just how illegal what they were doing is. Trump had been told multiple times, in multiple ways that what he was doing was illegal and he went for it anyways.

[–] Bumblefumble@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Another point to add. It is not illegal for anyone to lie, so unless he was testifying under oath, Bush could lie as much as he wanted without legal repercussions.

[–] kbotc@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not quite. The constitution has a cutout for official duties of the office. The president must faithfully carry out the duties of the office. So knowingly lying can fail that test.

If you want someone to blame for the US invasion of Iraq, blame Italy, their Intelligence apparatus, and Nicolò Pollari in particular. He submitted the “Iraq is buying Yellowcake” to the CIA twice, who figured out it was a forgery before setting a private meeting with the vice president who did not know the CIA had already ruled it out.

[–] Archpawn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Constitution lists one crime: treason. He didn't do that. Not faithfully carrying out the duties of the office is absolutely grounds for impeachment, but it's not a crime.

[–] kbotc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s not true. Even the specific rules laid out in the constitution have limits. You have the right to freedom of speech, and yet it is silent about the type of speech protected. We did not write down that the president is allowed to lie about winning the election in the constitution, but we did write down the president must carry out the duties of the office faithfully, and we gave Congress the power to create laws, which all citizens are bound. The president is a citizen, not a king, and I have to say this again as it was very important to the authors of the constitution: The president is not a king. He doesn’t have the divine right. Trump’s just another citizen who was temporarily given the power of the executive. You could charge him with a crime and put his ass in prison while he was a president without impeaching him. Executive privilege is court tested, but it only applies to confidentiality, and going in front of the public and lying is, by definition, not confidential.

[–] Archpawn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s not true.

Source? This says it also mentions piracy and counterfeiting, but it's just listing it as one of the enumerated powers.

and we gave Congress the power to create laws, which all citizens are bound.

Exactly. Congress has to make things a crime. The fact that the Constitution says that the president has to faithfully carry out their duties doesn't make not doing that a crime.

If you're saying that Congress did pass such a law, can you tell me which one?

[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you folks are talking past each other. The constitution requires faithful fulfillment of the duties of office, so because of that requirement, presidents swear oaths of duty. Lying under oath is a crime (not delineated in the constitution) and a violation of the faithful fulfillment of duties, which means that he is violating the terms of presidency set out in the constitution (also not a crime, but impeachable).

[–] Archpawn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But you'd have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he intended not to uphold the oath of office when he made it.

[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Not to impeach him, just to successfully charge him with purgery.

[–] Bumblefumble@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not illegal to not do that. The legal framework to deal with that is impeachment and trial by Congress.

[–] kbotc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not quite. Trump is currently being charged in federal court for his part in lying to overturn the election. They used “knowingly false” 32 times in the indictment for a reason. His defense is not that the president is allowed to lie, but rather that he truthfully believed he was telling the truth, so I’m not sure where you assertion is coming from: It is illegal to lie in furtherance of breaking the law, even for the POTUS.

[–] Bumblefumble@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Trump is not being put on trial for lying per se. The lying however is part of the furtherance of a criminal conspiracy, which is illegal. So with regards to Bush, he can't be charged with lying to the American people. It can however be used as evidence against him if it was part of furthering a criminal conspiracy.

[–] kbotc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

To the best of my knowledge, we have never put a president on trial for the faithfulness clause (and no, impeachment is not an actual criminal/constitutional trial, no matter how much we treat it as such)