Mueller impanels grand jury, is granted subpoenas

[Tassman]

Well, heck, you've already assumed there's gonna be a trial, so -- so much for your phony "wait and see" claims.

Nothing "phony" about it. It's reasonable to assume there's going to be a trial, given the current direction of the investigation and the impanelling of a Grand Jury. It's the role of a trial to "see where the facts lead", which is perfectly consistent with my stated position.

I think every irony meter in the world just exploded.

MM's usual constructive argument.

[Starlight]

I'm a centrist according to pretty much everyone who actually knows me.

On the American political spectrum, the 'center' is halfway between sanity and insanity, so not necessarily a great place to be.

Then again, you consistently show that facts aren't your friend.

And by the way, I don't think I've ever had to argue that Jesus existed in Apologetics.

You've got a short memory since you were discussing the topic with me relatively recently.

[demi-conservative]

On the American political spectrum, the 'center' is halfway between sanity and insanity, so not necessarily a great place to be.

Permanent Head Damage ''''logic''''' of Starlight:

Mass immigration, especially into Kiwiland, is bad, also crazy! But it is prog taboo against criticism of immigrant policy that makes it so hard to stop mass immigration.

Therefore progs are sane, also good!!!

[Sparko]

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ference-probe/

----------

Let's hope the Justice Department does its job and protects our President from this unprecedented witchhunt.

What if Mueller is going after the democrats? That would be hilarious.

[Sparko]

~facepalm~

1. Subsequent history proved the US founding fathers wrong: There has never been anything found to be wrong with pure democracy. I live in a country that has no constitution and has had a democracy for the entirety of its 150 year existence just fine.

Yeah.. Um you don't live in a democracy. You live in a constitutional monarchy. With a parliament. Which is representative in nature.

[Mountain Man]

What if Mueller is going after the democrats? That would be hilarious.

It would, but considering how he is stacking his team with Democrat faithful, I kinda doubt it.

[Mountain Man]

Yeah.. Um you don't live in a democracy. You live in a constitutional monarchy. With a parliament. Which is representative in nature.

Source: Wikipedia

The politics of New Zealand function within a framework of a unitary parliamentary representative democracy. New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy in which a hereditary monarch ... is the sovereign and head of state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand

© Copyright Original Source

A representative democracy is extremely similar to the representative republic we have in the US.

[Bill the Cat]

Yeah.. Um you don't live in a democracy. You live in a constitutional monarchy. With a parliament. Which is representative in nature.

With like 6 or 7 things that act like the Constitution...

[Mountain Man]

So this begs the question: is Dimbulb being dishonest when he implies that his country is a straight democracy, or is he as ignorant of his own country's politics as he is of the US?

[Bill the Cat]

So this begs the question: is Dimbulb being dishonest when he implies that his country is a straight democracy, or is he as ignorant of his own country's politics as he is of the US?

From Wiki:

the monarch of New Zealand is represented in the Realm of New Zealand by the Governor-General and is the source of executive, judicial and legislative power. Straight democracies typically don't derive their executive, judicial and legislative powers from one person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consti...of_New_Zealand

[Starlight]

So this begs the question: is Dimbulb being dishonest when he implies that his country is a straight democracy, or is he as ignorant of his own country's politics as he is of the US?

You guys are just ignorant of the near-zero relevance of the British monarchy in the country. It's a representative democracy. It's amusing the extent to which you guys rely on the technical difference between representative democracy and direct democracy when it suits you, as if that were relevant or important.

[Mountain Man]

You guys are just ignorant of the near-zero relevance of the British monarchy in the country. It's a representative democracy. It's amusing the extent to which you guys rely on the technical difference between representative democracy and direct democracy when it suits you, as if that were relevant or important.

Dude, you're the one who implied that your country is a pure democracy:

There has never been anything found to be wrong with pure democracy. I live in a country that has no constitution and has had a democracy for the entirety of its 150 year existence just fine.

You never identified it as a representative democracy, and I didn't care enough to look it up, but too bad for you that Sparko did, and now you've been busted. If you didn't intend to imply that New Zealand is a pure democracy then your train of thought is a non-sequitur since your implied example is not a pure democracy at all but a representative democracy, which is distinctly different.

And unless Wikipedia is deceiving us, your claim that New Zealand doesn't have a constitution also appears to be false: "New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government." Although I suspect you may be playing semantics here since New Zealand doesn't seem to have a single document that is the constitution but rather a collection of sources that have been codified into what is collectively referred to as the Constitution of New Zealand and which serves the exact same purpose as our Constitution here in the US, including the establishment, or perhaps the recognition, of three branches of government:

Source: Office of the Governor General

New Zealand's constitution is not found in one document. Instead, it has a number of sources, including crucial pieces of legislation, several legal documents, common law derived from court decisions as well as established constitutional practices known as conventions. Increasingly, New Zealand's constitution reflects the Treaty of Waitangi as a founding document of government in New Zealand.

The Constitution Act 1986 is a key formal statement of New Zealand's system of government, in particular the executive, legislature and the judiciary. The Act recognises the Queen as the Head of State of New Zealand and the Governor-General as her representative.

https://www.gg.govt.nz/office-govern...n/constitution

© Copyright Original Source

I just find it curious that you tout the superiority of your own country's system of government when it shares so much in common with the US.

[Starlight]

Dude, you're the one who implied that your country is a pure democracy

It is. Not my problem if you creatively interpret terms.

your implied example is not a pure democracy at all but a representative democracy, which is distinctly different.

There's no important difference IMO.

Democracy comes in many flavors. The original 'democracy' in ancient Athens was like jury-service where people were elected at random by lottery to positions of power, rather than being voted on. I quite like that system because it does away with politicians having to conduct PR campaigns / lying to the public / having to seek election funds from donors, and just puts the common people directly in government.

Switzerland is an example of a country that does a lot of direct voting by referendums on issues. That works just fine too.

My general point was that the US Founding Fathers got it fundamentally wrong when they thought essentially "we can't trust the people with too much power, we have to put all sorts of checks in place to stop the people doing silly things with their democratic power". The general lesson from the history of countries across the Western world since that time has been: No, government by the people for the people is perfectly fine and the people can indeed be trusted with that power.

your claim that New Zealand doesn't have a constitution also appears to be false

New Zealand has no formal written constitution in the way the US does. Same with the UK and Israel.

This has upset quite a few legal scholars of the years, who aspire to be constitutional lawyers but can't be because we have no constitution. My political party has looked seriously at creating a constitution (much to my personal objections).

If you define a constitution more broadly as "okay, let's say a constitution doesn't need to be a document that says 'constitution' and instead we define a constitution as whatever collection of documents, rules, practices, customs, traditions etc that the people in power and the public perceive to be The Rules Of The System, even if those boil down to "this country is a democracy" then we can call that an 'uncodified constitution' as it serves the same role in essence as a constitution would if it existed" then of course NZ has a 'uncodified constitution' in that vague sense. Because yes there are rules (duh?). No they have never been written into a single document that is declared as "The Constitution".

I just find it curious that you tout the superiority of your own country's system of government when it shares so much in common with the US.

Eh? A few differences:
- No gerrymandering
- No electoral college
- No written constitution document
- No political and for-life supreme court appointments
- No court rulings that laws are "unconstitutional", the democratic representatives hold the ultimate power to pass laws they want to pass and it is not the courts' place to approve or disapprove of the laws (mostly, there are a couple of laws that give the judiciary some scope for objecting)
- No president (the majority-leader of the House becomes what is called the Prime Minister, and acts like a US President would, but can be replaced at any time by their own party just like a majority-leader of the House can in the US - e.g. Australia had 4 Prime Ministers in a 2-year period due to parties replacing their leaders)
- No senate
- No government shut-downs
- No debt-ceiling crises
- No voter-suppression
- No absurd levels of corruption (NZ consistently ranks as the least-corrupt, or close to it, country in the world)
- The ability to hold a repeat election in the case of serious election problems
- Election campaigns that last a couple of months rather than a couple of years
- Proportional representation (Party X hold a percentage of seats that match the percentage of people who voted for Party X nationally, so you don't get situations like you do in the US where Republicans control both houses of congress despite more total votes being cast for Democratic representatives than Republican ones)
- Multi-party system (4 moderate-major parties, 3 minor parties currently have seats in parliament) and coalition governments (since no single party tends to get >50% of the vote, multiple parties need to work together to govern and pass legislation)
- 88% of people here either "trust" or are "neutral" towards government services with only 12% of people "distrusting" them (whereas in the US it's around 20% trust, albeit for a slightly different question)

Whereas the similarities are that both our countries have some form of democracy, albeit a very crippled and corrupt one in the US.

[rogue06]

It is. Not my problem if you creatively interpret terms.

There's no important different IMO.

Democracy comes in many flavors.

Including what you called "pure Democracy" and then launched into New Zealand as an example.

Yeah it was MM who got it wrong

[One Bad Pig]

Including what you called "pure Democracy" and then launched into New Zealand as an example.

Yeah it was MM who got it wrong

Starlight's never been accused of lacking chutzpah.