But does the answer actually say what the law states, or does the law state what the (ignoring) response is describing. What was intended by a law and what the law actually says can vary wildly; and calling that out, when the law gives far greater power than it was intended to, is both reasonable and important.

The law says you just have to say the magic words, then you get full power. If you slip up and admit you were doing it for another reason, you might get a slap on the wrist.

You are correct. But in historical practice, we see that laws get misused. Powers, however legitimate, get abused. Restrictions gets stretched, and then stretched to the breaking point, and then obliterated.

So, while they deliberately ignored an honest explanation, they also had a legitimate point.

No, they're pointing out the ways that explanation is dishonest. You cannot look at the political landscape and tell anyone in good conscience that officials will use an honest interpretation of the law.

And again, that's not at all a theoretical exercise here.

No one sincerely thinks Craig Murray might be a terrorist. Those who would say such a thing are in fact not sincere. They just say it as a political loyalty statement, or to psych themselves up to abuse him/gloat in his abuse.

[delayed]

That this level of wisdom is buried layers deep in an HN post is a bit of a shame.

Spot on.

An evil government is not going to obey the laws anyway, so might as well make the well meaning government more effective to prevent the other one.

[delayed]

Your perspective of history seems limited to the current first world countries.

Governments in Asia, Africa, and South America routinely ignore laws for petty reasons.

Yeah, that means you didn't have the proper seperation of powers to begin with, which was kinda the point of my argument.

If you're down that road and eroded that seperation, getting that thing back into the bottle is really hard without revolutions or massive public uproar. If you never had that seperation to begin with, even worse.

TL;DR: evil governments can ignore laws if the justice system is not independent. Hence the inportance of keeping it independent.