Re:Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes ...
by kolbe on Monday April 14, 2025 @10:37PM
(#43688499)
We can quibble about the definition of "the administration", but the head of it a man who can pardon whomever he pleases for any federal crime he pleases. The very fact that any of these historical charges weren't instantaneously mooted with a pardon is self-evidence to me that all of these prosecutions were of former members of the administration who had fallen out if favor of the actual administration.
Re:Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes ...
by ajross on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @12:05AM
(#43688879)
Classic No-True-Scotsman here: "Oh, well, sure, they were prosecuted in contravention of my point above. But that means they wanted to prosecute them."
(It's also tautological: I mean, of course they wanted to prosecute them. They were criminals and prosecutors prosecute criminals, definitionally!)
(And also also, it's an Occam's violation: the simpler explanation is that they were just treated like criminals and not that they were double-negative enforcement actions by a corrupt regime.)
Re:Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes ...
by kolbe on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @12:36AM
(#43689020)
Did that sound clever in your head? Again, the head of the executive branch can quash any charge he wants. You're the one contending that a person doing X is evidence that they support not-X.
And that "entire point" is historically incorrect in the United States. There is a long, long, LONG history of the Department of Justice investigating and prosecuting members of the administration that technically runs it.
That your point seems to be correct now, in the most corrupt administration of the modern era, is something that is notable and worth discussing. It's certainly not something to sweep under the rug with a both-sides-ist dismissal.