I think when the person above you said recommendations should be "valueless", they meant it should be a neutral, objective recommendation. Like you've tasked us with enforcing laws A, B, and C, and if you gave us powers D, E, and F it would make that easier in these ways.

Not like Barr's words: "For too long Section 230 has provided a shield for online platforms to operate with impunity. Ensuring that the internet is a safe, but also vibrant, open and competitive environment is vitally important to America." Because those are Trump/Barr opinions or value judgments about how good or bad the recent state of affairs has been and about what is supposed to be important to America.

Law enforcement isn't supposed to set the policy objectives. They're just supposed to implement them.

> I think when the person above you said recommendations should be "valueless", they meant it should be a neutral, objective recommendation.

No, I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit, and possibly is worth even less than that. The creation, implementation, and adjudication of the laws are separated into distinct branches of government by design. I do not want the group that is responsible for enforcing the laws weighing in on what they think the law should be; one does not ask the group that will wield the power what powers they ought to have if one wants it to end well for everyone else.

I would be much happier if the DOJ stuck to enforcing the laws as written and would prefer if they would kindly shut up and go away on the issue of what laws they think should be written.

Edit: To be clear, I also think that Barr is full of it. He's blown any credibility of being anything but a partisan hack. But even with a different AG and a different administration, the idea of the DOJ recommending to Congress what powers it should have strikes me as very much a bad idea, and I would say that even if I was otherwise happy with the administration suggesting it.

> I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit

Same for the CDC, FDA, EPA, IRS, HHS, etc.?

I suppose the President should also be forbidden from proposing legislation and for asking any of his agencies for proposals also?

This is an untenable position, IMHO.

I never said “forbidden”, that’s obviously untenable. Even people I don’t like have the right to say thinks I don’t want them to say; I’m speaking of norms and social pressure.

I’m saying that we should tell those who will wield the power to pound sand when it comes to what powers they should get. Ideally the president should not be proposing legislation, that is not their role in this democratic republic. One could argue that the centralization of legislative agenda making into the executive is one part of why presidential elections are such a high pressure situation these days; ideally that should be handled by the deliberative body and not the executive.

That being said, there is a huge, massive, unbridgeable chasm between the DOJ, who is not only capable but expected to send men with guns to either detain you or legally shoot you if you resist and every other organization you listed. The risks of abuse of power within that specific organization are massive, which is why traditionally there’s supposed to be a bit of a gap between the president and the DOJ to reduce the risk of politicization of the latter.

It seems completely infeasible to me to think that Congress and its staff is capable of drafting reasonable legislation without considerable input from the executive agencies.

I understand the general conflict of interest you are concerned about but that is why there are separate branches. The executive branch can only propose and/or respond to inquiries, they can't actually introduce legislation.

(I'm just going to ignore the rabbit hole of regulatory contruction here as that is another can of worms)

Congress is free to consult various other branches, but that is substantively different from the DOJ proposing legislation. Congress should be in the drivers seat, imho.

And yeah, the devolution of quasi-legislative ability to regulatory bodies is a serious ball of wax that I haven’t managed to formulate a coherent solution to.

And we should tell them to <bleep> off.

Fairly sure the US DOJ had gone well beyond ‘recommending’ moves and actions outside of norms or status quo in recent months...