> Obama's love of drones and his ordering extra-judicial execution of US citizens

Yes, so many Americans forget about this or gloss over it. Even the fact you’re getting downvoted show how biased most folks are.

Trump has in many ways done less than previous administrations. He just makes it very public and brash.

> Presidential immunity was the defacto operating principle and most legal experts outside the fringe really agreed that an action like the killing of an American citizen abroad by the executive branch could not be prosecuted, despite it otherwise meeting all elements of the criminal statute for murder.

Which leaves me with mixed feelings. The idea that the President basically gets to do whatever he wants as long as congress won’t impeach him is scary for the rule of law. However on the other hand, it does allow the President the power to do things that may need doing.

It’s been that way since Thomas Jefferson sent the marines to fight Barbary wars without congresses approval. Perhaps earlier.

> the fact you’re getting downvoted show how biased most folks are

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Happy to unflag once edited.)

> Trump has in many ways done less than previous administrations. He just makes it very public and brash.

Maybe. My point wasn't that one was better or worse, and I did try to add some "balance" to that by including both W and O examples of presidential immunity :) Presidential immunity I just used as one (of many) issues where there are basically irreconcilable differences between people who are otherwise quite intelligent, sane, rational.

There are equivalents going the other way too where conservatives think something is bad or wrong or extreme but it really isn't. I chose the example of this particular disconnect because of the context, it would not have worked going the other way. The assertion was that Trump / Trump cases are more extreme. And furthermore that may even be true, I do nothing to disprove that with my example, I just try to show show why as I see it, it is extremely difficult to judge something like that objectively or even for people to discuss it calmly and rationally.

> Which leaves me with mixed feelings. The idea that the President basically gets to do whatever he wants as long as congress won’t impeach him is scary for the rule of law.

All systems are flawed in some ways, but this seemed to make sense to me. Prosecutions are brought to courts by the executive branch, so having the executive prosecute itself has a fundamental problem. Having executive overseen by the legislature at least avoids that particular catch. Executive holds power to physically enforce anything of course so that's always a problem, but at least it's not hiding away behind "national security" or "prosecutorial discretion" or "ongoing investigation" or "lost the evidence", rather it makes the issue public and forces the executive to openly defy the representatives of the people and the states, and the people can then decide their next course of action much better informed. Which is about as best you can hope for I think, it's the people who are really the final arbiters of all this, so if they're kept informed then that's the best thing.

Having the executive prosecute itself in some ways could be worse than nothing because it kind of delegitimizes the congressional impeachment process. Let's say if Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election and took power, then his DOJ prosecuted and carefully and secretly sabotaged the trial and he was found innocent in court, then congress came along and tried to impeach for the same crime and convicted him, where would that leave things? The executive and judicial branches found him not guilty, so it could appear that congress is defying the other two branches.

That's all my own idle musings though, and way above my pay grade!