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The very existence of a presidential pardon is bizarre and an insult to the judicial branch
Pardons aren't the problem. They exist to provide an avenue for reprieve in cases where the law was applied in an unjust or unintended manner, which is not uncommon. The issue is that we let a corrupt, narcissistic piece of shit become President. Obviously he's going to do terrible things with all the power available to him. It doesn't mean the powers of the office are inherently bad, it means he is.
If one man can single-handedly do anything Trump has done without check or balance, the system does not work imo. Think of the worst person you ever knew. If you don't want them wielding the power, there is too much concentrated power.
It’s not single handedly at all. People keep voting in Republicans over, and over, and over.
A minority of Americans and usually a minority of the popular vote 😅 at least for president. Then there's voter suppression and gerrymandering etc. Even regardless of how Americans vote, Trump has drastically expanded and abused executive power and hasn't been hardly even inconvenienced by the supposed checks and/or balances
The rules have checks and balances. They just mean absolutely nothing when those who are supposed to use them don't do their fucking jobs. Create more rules and they seemingly will just ignore them.
Look at the order to release the Epstein files? Look at how enough dems cave just to give Trump everything he wants.
It doesn't end until people start being replaced or getting killed. That's where America is at and there is plenty of examples from other nations guess this goes down. Time to start reading some new books
Ultimately, the rules work fine for what they were intended to do, which is prevent one branch of government from becoming much more powerful than the other two. However, they don't work well against an entity like the Republican Party, which deliberately subverts multiple branches simultaneously. The rules against executive power have also been weakened over time due to congress ceding power to the president, something the founders hadn't anticipated. They were prepared for greedy bastards that wanted to hoard power, but people giving power away to reduce their own responsibilities or achieve partisan goals was something they hadn't even heard of.
There is no check for presidential pardons. Perhaps the pardon itself is supposed to be a check, but there is nothing to stop a president from pardoning criminals who were already serving completely justified sentences.
How's your(that) first amendment holding up these days?
I'm not saying there's nothing we should do to limit Presidential powers, just that the best thing we can so is not put the worst people in that office. Rules can only do so much. All of them have some kind of loophole. At some point you have to blame the voters for putting people who would abuse those powers in the position to do so.
Trying is a piece of shit, but literally every president does a ton of obvious quid pro quo pardons. Most pardons are bullshit.
Not even unjust or corrupt.
It's for cases where judicial guidelines are too hard, requiring a conviction which doesn't make sense.
It's for (uncontroversial) amnesty when the law is slower than the executive and not retroactive. So stuff like non-violent drug convictions.
It's for adding another chance at parole when the parole board's main concern is something that shouldn't be their focus.