monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I know of no time in our history when the Supremes have caved-in to pressure from the executive or the legislature.

Barack to the Rescue: Republican voters just found their motivation to vote in November

This may be the moment when the rise of the big blue wave began to slow

to issue a strong rebuke of President Donald Trump and the Republican party

Compared to what the US has done in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, (the list goes on, and is very long) , China is treating Taiwan very differently.

But it's like most people here inhabit another planet.

The US blows the doors off the Nazis as far as being the best propagandists.

JFC, like you even noticed what's happening outside your trivial bubble of narcissism.

And Trump is a narcissist?

“I’m sorry, I watched it, but I fell asleep,” the president joked. “I found he’s very good, very good for sleeping.”

"Ours is a government of liberty, by, through and under the law. No man is above it, and no man is below it." - President Theodore Roosevelt

The rule of law is central to American democracy. Unlike dictatorships, our government cannot prosecute or imprison someone for political reasons. Anyone who violates the law is subject to prosecution, regardless of political party, personal affiliations or position of power; none of that protects a crook from the fair and just application of the law.

The rule of law is not always perfectly implemented, but it is fundamental to our freedoms. It protects the weak from political persecution and holds the powerful in check.

In recognition of the importance of this principle, our Founding Fathers wrote into Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution that the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Yet, President Trump's words suggest that, rather than faithfully executing the laws as he swore to do in his oath of office, he intends to politicize the law.

The president this week sternly criticized his attorney general for allowing two Republican congressmen to be charged with federal crimes before the upcoming midterm elections. One was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud and making false statements to law enforcement agents; the other was indicted for using campaign funds for personal purposes, wire fraud and falsifying records. If not for their alleged crimes, these congressmen probably would have been easily reelected.

President Trump's words are an assault on the rule of law. No one - not a congressman, a judge, nor the president - is above the law. If the day should come when those in power are above the law, the United States will be that autocracy that our Founders worked - and fought - to avoid.

Putting these officeholders above the law would be an unequivocal violation of President Trump's express duty, under the Constitution, to ensure that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. Either President Trump does not care about our constitutional democracy or he does not understand it. In either case, he would use the law as a tool to maintain his party's position of power. With it, We the People would lose faith in our justice system, leading in turn to a loss of faith in our country.

Further, by suggesting that the Department of Justice should not prosecute congressmen who are running for reelection because it might hurt the Republican Party's chances in November, the president is attempting to hide material facts from voters. Certainly, the constituents of those congressmen are entitled to know if they abused their positions of power and violated laws. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any information more pertinent to whether a person should be reelected.

Apparently President Trump's notion of democracy is the party in power can, and should, use its power to hide material facts - that is, the apparent criminal activity of candidates - from voters in order to stay in power.

Perhaps this is not a surprise. After a federal jury found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty of eight counts of tax and bank fraud, President Trump said he was "a good man" and praised Manafort for not negotiating a plea agreement. Frankly, I am offended. I pay my taxes. I do not defraud my lenders. Every U.S. citizen who follows and respects our laws, who pays taxes, should be outraged that the president calls a convicted swindler and tax evader "a good man."

Our president expresses disdain for U.S. laws if it suits his political needs. By way of example, he has threatened Amazon with tax investigations because its owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post, which has criticized the president. During the Manafort trial, in an extraordinary invasion of the judicial process, President Trump tweeted contempt for the prosecutors and sympathy for Mr. Manafort. Some regarded this as jury tampering and obstruction of justice. Most recently, he suggested that the licenses of CNN and NBC, also frequent critics of the president, should be revoked.

Our country has sent brave soldiers to war to preserve America's precious freedoms. Those freedoms mean that our government officials are not above the law, but enforce the law. Those freedoms mean that we can criticize government officials without fear of prosecution. Those freedoms mean that our right to vote is inviolate, and that right effectively is taken away when government officials would use their power to hide criminal activity from voters before they vote.

Those who truly love our country, and the freedoms it provides, should honor those brave soldiers by proclaiming, "That is not who we are; that is not what the United States of America is. And we will not tolerate such words and conduct by our president." Most importantly, this voice must come from Republicans and other Donald Trump supporters, from whom he derives his audaciousness. The question is, do they love America's freedoms more than they love their power?

"Ours is a government of liberty, by, through and under the law. No man is above it, and no man is below it." - President Theodore Roosevelt

The rule of law is central to American democracy. Unlike dictatorships, our government cannot prosecute or imprison someone for political reasons. Anyone who violates the law is subject to prosecution, regardless of political party, personal affiliations or position of power; none of that protects a crook from the fair and just application of the law.

Has Obama banned torture? Yes and no

As a presidential candidate in 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama vowed to roll back President George W. Bush’s controversial interrogation and detention practices. Soon after taking office the following year, Obama appeared to make good on those promises, ordering the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility within a year and banning the use of brutal interrogation techniques.

Now, several years on, the picture is less rosy. Guantánamo remains open, and provisions in a new military spending bill just signed into law by Obama, the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016 (NDAA), make it harder to close the facility. Unless Obama invokes his executive authority to bypass Congress’ restrictions, it seems that Guantánamo will survive into the next administration.

More positively for his legacy, the NDAA imposes further restrictions on abusive interrogations and helps fulfil his original campaign promise to stop torture.

But why ban torture now, one might ask? And wasn’t it banned already, at least until Bush threw out the rulebook?

Last year the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the summary of a much larger report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-9/11 interrogation program. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the committee at the time, issued recommendations based on the Senate study, one of which called for tighter laws against torture. Obama had already banned the CIA’s torture techniques via executive order in 2009, but — as Feinstein has pointed out — a future president could easily rescind that order.

While it is true that torture was already forbidden by a range of federal statutes, those are sometimes vague and contain loopholes that allowed Bush’s lawyers to justify waterboarding and other harsh tactics. Previous laws, such as the federal torture statute and the Detainee Treatment Act, prevent the CIA from engaging in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, but nowhere was it specified which methods were allowed or prohibited. This enabled Bush’s team to interpret the law broadly to permit what it called enhanced interrogation techniques, on the grounds that such techniques don’t amount to cruelty or torture if employed with appropriate safeguards.

Taking action on the committee’s recommendations, Feinstein and Republican Sen. John McCain sponsored an amendment — supported by Obama — to the NDAA that does a thorough job of plugging the gaps. It largely codifies Obama’s executive order, insisting that all government personnel, including CIA interrogators and private contractors, abide by rules set down in the Army Field Manual. The manual repeatedly forbids torture and cruelty and prohibits a list of enhanced techniques once used by the CIA, including waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation.

This solidifies similar instructions in Obama’s order, helping spell out clearly which interrogation techniques are off-limits. From now on, government lawyers may not interpret the law to allow sleep deprivation for days in a row, for example, as that practice is specifically barred by the amendment. The new law goes further than the executive order: While that order applied only to armed conflicts, the amendment covers all scenarios. One issue remains unaddressed, however: the U.S. still follows its own, overly broad interpretation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, loosening the treaty’s restrictions.

Obama’s order allows the CIA to detain prisoners on a “transitory basis”; the new law does not prohibit CIA detention. However, it grants the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to all U.S. government detention facilities, preventing the use of top secret black sites like those run by the CIA after 9/11. Faced with greater scrutiny, the agency might be more hesitant to torment prisoners, but the Red Cross cannot disclose its findings to the public, and torture has occurred at Bagram air base and Guantánamo despite ICRC visits. The Pentagon is said to have run a network of clandestine prisons in Afghanistan, where abuse has been alleged despite Red Cross access.

In my opinion, Obama did the best he could and made decisions based on both his own judgement of security and compromising with republicans and democrats in congress.

preventing the use of top secret black sites like those run by the CIA after 9/11.

Grow up.