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White House Responds To Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor
First time accepted submitter devloop writes Petitioners requesting the White House remove D.A. Carmen Ortiz from office for gross prosecutorial overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz, received today what amounts to a denial from WhiteHouse.gov. "Aaron Swartz's death was a tragic, unthinkable loss for his family and friends. Our sympathy continues to go out to those who were closest to him, and to the many others whose lives he touched. We also reaffirm our belief that a spirit of openness is what makes the Internet such a powerful engine for economic growth, technological innovation, and new ideas. That's why members of the Administration continue to engage with advocates to ensure the Internet remains a free and open platform as technology continues to disrupt industries and connect our communities in ways we can't yet imagine. We will continue this engagement as we tackle new questions on key issues such as citizen participation in democracy, open access to information, privacy, intellectual property, free speech, and security. As to the specific personnel-related requests raised in your petitions, our response must be limited. Consistent with the terms we laid out when we began We the People, we will not address agency personnel matters in a petition response, because we do not believe this is the appropriate forum in which to do so."
How many times has this administration embraced a petition and moved forward with it?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This is probably the best response possible to an "I demand you fire that person who has made me angry" rant. The petition could have asked for some reform to the prosecutorial discretion system which allowed her to hound Aaron in the first place, or maybe to the ridiculous wire fraud law that she used, but demanding the head of someone who annoys you is, one: ineffective scapegoaterry, and two: asinine entitlement.
..we do not believe this is the appropriate forum in which to do so.
Presumably if the White House believed that such a forum existed, it would have mentioned it. So, essentially, the White House is saying that no forum exists to "address agency personnel matters". But one of the main things the president is supposed to do is insure that good people are executing the laws and policies of the USA.
Sometimes I wonder if Obama wakes up in the morning, looks himself in the mirror, and says "How can I undermine the American public's faith in democracy?" People were angry with all the nonsense that was going on in the Bush presidency and they elected Obama with the hope that he would change it. But he hasn't. It's like he's trying his best to prove that democracy doesn't work.
Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan are widely regarded as some of the very worst presidents in the history of the USA. They were all about civility and comprise and the rule of law - pretty much just like Obama. But then Lincoln came along did what he had to do to get rid of slavery - civil war, suspension of habeas corpus, etc. And he's remembered as one of the best presidents in the history of the United States.
Obama hides behind bureaucracy in order to excuse his moral cowardice. Fine, he's gotta be who he is. But he shouldn't be surprised when he goes down in history with the likes of Pierce and Buchanan.
Especially prosecutors. Prosecutors, in fact, absolute civil immunity from the consequences of their courtroom hijinks. They can literally, with malice aforethought suborn perjury, withhold evidence that proves innocence (not just cast doubt) and other things and you cannot sue them. Why? The Supreme Court a long time ago ruled that if prosecutors could be sued into the ground for their courtroom conduct it would "unduly influence" their decisions to bring cases.
So you can sue a cop who beats you up because that's not within his training and there's no good faith defense. A prosecutor, legally trained with a JD, can intentionally commit a felony against you in a court of law and your only resources are as follows:
1. Plead with another prosecutor to prosecute him.
2. Get a friend/relative/street thug to meet him in the court parking lot with a baseball bat.
Because the civilized option 3) of taking matters into your own hands in a civil court is completely impossible and has been for a few decades.
The ACA gathers money from those like myself who never get sick.
Look, there are real problems with the ACA, but this is not one of them. This is how insurance works. The problem is that it's actually a system of graft from stem to stern. The health insurance companies must be eliminated if we are to have working health care in America. That's how you know the ACA is a lie. If it were meant to help us, the insurance companies would be gone, because we would no longer need them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Carmen Ortiz worked hard to get to where she is,...
So did Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.
But what I don't get is the idea that there needs to be a high threshold for replacing people in positions of power. I mean, as a lower level scientist I could end up not getting my contract renewed for any number of reasons ranging from not quite enough available funding, to not churning out quite enough publications, to the boss deciding that my personality isn't quite the right fit for the team. If anything, we should have even higher standards for people in positions of power - if they so much as wear a pair of socks that doesn't match the rest of their ensemble then kick them to the curb and replace them with somebody better. If janitors need to lay awake in the wee hours of the morning with cold fear in the pits of their stomachs that they might not be able to feed their families because of inadequate job performance then high level government officials should fear much worse.