The American Politics thread

[silentstriker]

Well in England, AFAIK the courts can't rule an act of parliament illegal. How is it in Australia?

TBF, it should be hard for a court to overturn an act of Congress like what's being talked about here.

[Top_Cat]

Let’s make Obama regret his war on weed - Salon.com

[cpr]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

Well in England, AFAIK the courts can't rule an act of parliament illegal. How is it in Australia?

Hmm, think the government did use a court to change the terms of the Civil Service Pensions, something that should only be changeable by an Act of Parliament.

Basically, Government can do what the **** it wants when the laws in its pocket

[Cevno]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

Well in England, AFAIK the courts can't rule an act of parliament illegal. How is it in Australia?

TBF, it should be hard for a court to overturn an act of Congress like what's being talked about here.

Think the courts need to have some powers to overturn acts or else you'll see all kinds of outlandish legislation depending on who has majority. For example say a party riding a wave and having 80% majority decides to pass legislations banning the opposition parties ? Or say they decide to ban a certain religion ?

Don't know what's the basis of overturning acts and entertaining this petition is exactly in USA, but it surely can't be just that they disagree with it based on their ideologies?

[silentstriker]

Well the big cases in the gray areas get all the attention but the vast majority of the time the justices tend to agree on what the constitution requires.

[silentstriker]

Originally Posted by cpr

Hmm, think the government did use a court to change the terms of the Civil Service Pensions, something that should only be changeable by an Act of Parliament.

Basically, Government can do what the **** it wants when the laws in its pocket

Yea I mean it doesn't happen all the time but its not rare for the Supreme Court to overturn entire acts of congress as illegal. The court can order congress and the executive to do something if it finds their actions unconstitutional (and can void almost anything, with a few exceptions where the individual branches retain full sovereignty).

I'm certainly not going to sit here and claim that the system can't be improved but I like it this way. As much as I disagree with a lot of their rulings, you absolutely need a bulwark against heat of the moment decision making by the elected body.

And more importantly, if you're going to have a constitution which supersedes all other laws, you need a body to act as its "keeper" - it can't be the same body that writes laws because then there's no point in having a constitution (eg if every act passed by that body is by definition constitutional). The point of a constitution was to ossify certain rights and priveleges so that a future tyrant would find it extremely hard simply pass laws to give him whatever rights he wanted. IMO I think it's a bit harder than it should be to pass an amendment but I think the idea is sound in theory.

We whine a lot about the Supreme Court here but IMO most people accept that it has done a lot more good than harm over the last 200+ years.

Clearly other countries have figured out other systems that work - and I'd love to borrow some of that - like for example calling an election and its a few months away. Instead of continuous campaigning for years on end....but I'd keep the Supreme Court and its powers pretty similar to it is now.

[Top_Cat]

Politifact's lie of the year edition - take a guess who won......

I don't like the site that much, think they hedge a bit too often. But, let's face it, we all knew who would win a race to the bottom.

[silentstriker]

The worst part about that is that he played the ad in the one area of the country where people would know it's false.

[nightprowler10]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

The best part about that is that he played the ad in the one area of the country where people would know it's false.

Fixed.

[L Trumper]

Another shooting, now in grade school. It is beyond horrible really

[Top_Cat]

I just watched this video

President Obama Makes a Statement on the Shooting in Newtown, Connecticut - YouTube

Yeah, y'know what? Tough ****, Barack. No tears for the kids who've died in Pakistan and Yemen? We're supposed to think you're more human because you've shed a few tears in a presser on an issue you should have acted on years ago? Tears which will fairly quickly be forgotten as, once again, you'll likely utterly capitulate to the gun lobby in the months to come?

I don't give a **** about Barack the parent, I really want to see more of Barack the president on this issue. This presser is piss-poor.

[Redbacks]

Without a referendum I can't see much impact being made.

[Spikey]

hahahahahahahhaha a referendum.

need a tyrant

[grecian]

I know racism is irrational, I know an anti universal health-care thing is bizzarre, Taylor swift and NCIS are without merit, yet my most incredible weirdness about the states is their gun-law, and the defence of it.

It's really weird, they'll bring up knifings in Britain, only 300 odd last year, I think. Or they'll talk about shooting elsewhere, which never even get remotely in the same percentages as their own country. They'll blather on about self-defence using very odd figures they generally can't find sources for. They seem to forget that all these massacres have anything to do with people having easily accessiblity to guns, cho and the columbines were geeks, how would they get guns anywhere else. Then they'll say we've got so many guns, that if we gave them all away now the criminals will rule the roost. What an argument, we've saturated ourselves with guns, so we can't give them away now.

I have read that all schools need to have someone armed around premises from some wingnuts, yep more ammunition is what is needed.

Actually all that is predictably wanky left-wing from me, but on the other hand I'd quite like to see the worship of the columbine people and all these idiots shut down on t'intnernet. Cho himself talked about Columbine as an inspiration, time to move these ***** on IMHO, from glorifying murderers. Really don't need any others seeing inspiration.

[Cevno]

How much could be Obama be getting paid by these NRA folks ? I mean he is a Democrat president with so many spread out people funding him, why the hell is afraid of tightening these laws ? But on the other hand he liberalized them more from what Top Cat is saying ?