curtpenn said:
Jinx 2 said:
Sam Lowry said:
Jinx 2 said:
Sam Lowry said:
It's acceptable behavior for an American president as long as the president isn't Donald Trump.
Bill Clinton couldn't even have a tawdry affair without getting impeached, Sam.
Your ability to ignore Trump's criminal behavior is only topped by your ability to ignore/defend/claim-irrelevant sexual abuse of children and women by priests. There's a pattern; if the authority is the one you choose (for all of us), then they're inerrant.
Sexual abuse by priests is highly relevant to some issues, and not to others. It's not relevant to the soundness of Catholic moral teaching, as much as you might wish it to be.
If those entrusted with preserving Catholic moral teachings and passing them along feel no compunction to follow those teachings themselves--especially by abusing children and women whose faith might be lost along with their innocence and ability to trust--then it's highly relevant.
If the Church wants people to follow a strict moral code, those entrusted with protecting and defending that moral code, up to and including excommunication of people whose sins are deemed so egregious the Church will not allow them to remain among the fellowship, then those priests had better be exemplars of that code. And be held accountable by their fellows and superiors and Church membership when they aren't.
Just as when the president, who is entrusted with protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States, feels no compunction to follow that constitution and, instead, abusing the power of his office for his own personal gain, that's highly relevant.
It means he violated his oath of office. In this case, I don't think Trump is even capable of understanding it. And, like many faithful Catholics, his followers and the GOP as a party hasn't and won't hold him accountable. Republicans either deny his behavior or acknowledge it and say that his agenda justifies it. "The end justifies the means" may work politically, but not constitutionally.
So the rest of us must, since the GOP has now almost completely crossed over to become the party of Trump--rather than defending and protecting the constitution, Republicans are protecting and defending Trump.
The Church is facing lawsuits in several states re: abuse and its coverup.
Trump will face impeachment.
Whether it was politically expedient--and I think the jury is out on that--the Democrats had absolutely no choice but to bring charges when this whistleblower complaint came out.
To what extent would you be willing to "protect and defend" the Constitution when you believe the SCOTUS has ruled incorrectly? Serious question, BTW. I don't have a good answer.
Courts make mistakes all the time. Judges acquit people who are guilty. They convict people who are innocent. Our government executes some of thse people, and even if they're proven innocent, some prosecutors won't back off and still try to enforce the death penalty.
People who shouldn't be are indicted and tried. People who should be get off scott free.
Judges are often baffled by evidence in complex trials and rule the wrong way for the wrong reasons (I work with a copyright law scholar who thinks courts are particularly bad at music copyright cases.) That's why we have appellate courts and a Supreme Court--because we know courts aren't always going to get it right.
I think the judges on the Supreme Court try as hard as they can to get it right, but that's a hard job.
Just because the rule of law is imperfect, because the people who sit in judgment are imperfect, doesn't mean we should reject the system altogether.
Either we have a constitutional democracy or we don't.
Last I checked, we still do.
Are you seriously prepared to chuck the whole constitution and our democratic system of government because you don't like one or two SCOTUS decisions? To the extent of enabling our president to use aid granted to foreign governments by Congress as leverage to gain personal favors from foreign leaders (who are otherwise afraid Trump won't release their aid dollars) like a crime boss threatening to kill your wife and your kids if you don't do an unsavory "favor" for him?
Even when you don't like the decisoin and think it was really wrong--Citizens United is one of those decisions for me--you HAVE to respect the system and the rule of law.
Or we're a dictatorship--which is the way Trump has behaved from the start, when his office issued a bunch of unconstitutional executive orders that courts smacked down, to using tactics like withholding Ukraine's U.S. aid until they investigate his political rival (can you imagine the stink Trump would have raised had Biden urged, say, Israel, to investigate Jared's business dealings with. say, the Saudis, to gain his support for more aid to Israel? And it's amusing to hear Republicans tut-tutting about Hunter when Jared's dealings with the Saudis have compromised our foreign policy there, Don Jr. and Eric have dealings all over the world, Ivanka has copyrights, Elaine Chao is busily selling us out to the Chinese to help her family while her husband busily obstructs democracy, etc etc etc--people in glass houses stupidly throwing rocks.
Although this impeachment hearing may be the death knell if Republicans obstruct justice and oversight--which White House staff and some congressman and senators have been doing since the start of theTrump administration.
I think that, right now, Republicans are looking at short-term gains--we can stack SCOTUS and overturn Roe v. Wade--at the expense of the long-term survival of the GOP. Public policy is a pendelum that establishes an uncomfortable balance. We have swung so far to the right that when the pendelum starts moving the other way, it's going to swing hard and fast.
