The elephant in the room is the ability for the President to issue executive orders that can more often than not impinge on liberties that should be protected by the Constitution.
The CIA will always want more power, that is the nature of the secret services but if the people are bothered, why isn't there more talk of curtailing what the President is allowed to do unilaterally?
Legal and criminal responsibility for actions while governing leads to a situation commonly seen in a number of republics, most prominently ancient Rome, which the creators of the American constitution desperately wanted to avoid. While in office, you're safe to some degree with the powers of the office. Once out of office, you're an immediate legal target and all the lawsuits get filed. Solution? Don't leave office. Avoiding that is the basic logic behind immunity in political office; stable transfer of power breaks down when you know your successor is going to imprison you.
My guess would because the president is also technically the chief law enforcement officer? Not saying I like it, but that’s how it is I think.
Impeachment is what exists to hold presidents accountable, and then voting is what holds the senate accountable, when they choose not to hold the president accountable.
I think the president can be prosecuted for criminal offenses though when they’re out of office, since what I said above would no longer apply.
This is all correct. The issue is that we've gotten in the mode of not prosecuting our political enemies once they're out of office. That's actually a very important political precedent that has largely served us well. The peaceful transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans was a huge deal in 1800 and it guaranteed that subsequent transitions (mostly) followed the same model. The problem is, there were no tripwires: what was too far for a president to go? Ford pardoned Nixon, which may have been the right move at the time (I'm mixed), but it became mixed up with the peaceful transfer of power tradition and basically was interpreted as a free pass.
I think we may be about to see the the end of the tradition of get out of jail free cards for former presidents, but I don't know what the long term consequences will be.
Because they /all/ do it. Every single president. To prosecute looks political but more importantly if the current president prosecutes, they'll be the defendant next time the other side is in and they'll be guilty as sin.
Why do they all do it? Might be a better question to ponder.
If every president (or other leader, this isn’t just about the USA) genuinely needs the power to do certain things which are against the constitution of their nation, the correct solution is to change the constitution to reflect reality.
If a government allows its employees to get away with doing things which are against that government’s own rules for their own operation, then a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel.
If you need government spies secretly looking on certain citizens without the targets being aware of it via a warrant, make sure they can’t ever be used like Nixon. If you need government assassins, you definitely don’t want them used the way Nixon used government spies.
the cynical take is: that’s the whole point of the presidency in the first place. Have one guy who is technically in charge of the machine, the machine commits countless crimes, then after 4/8 years you pin all those crimes on the single guy you selected, go “whoops! bummer about the drone strikes!” and then pardon him.
What is "unconstitutional"? It's what the Supreme Court says it is.
The Court has had the opportunity on multiple occasions to rule that this domestic spying is unconstitutional, and has declined to do so. Ergo, for all practical matters, it's legal.
Everyone in office takes an oath to uphold the constitution. The Supreme Court gets the final say, but it is still the responsibility of everyone to do what they know to be correct.
To gain the presidency it is all-but-mandatory to have the enthusiastic backing of a big chunk of voters and the tacit or explicit approval of around half of them. Combine mass popular support with executive power and there isn't a lot practically that can be done.
Furthermore it appears that most of the US politicians have some sort of borderline-corrupt activity going on if not being actively involved in something illegal (Epstein springs to mind, various scandals that turn up around presidential elections). People in glass houses are cautious in their stone throwing.
And a final and decisive stroke - there is plausible uncertainty about whether the action is illegal. These are people who write the law, they are not expected to be stay-inside-the-legal-lines types because they all have different opinions on where the lines should be and are usually in the process of drawing them. They appoint the people who determine what the words mean and that leads to occasional creative reinterpretations. There isn't time to prosecute over every detail that someone objects to given the range of objections there are.
Because it sets a bad precedent. The former used his presidency to push as many buttons as he could to see just what the extent of the President's powers are. Sure there are some legal rumblings now, but I'd wager he will never see a prison. Ever.
Read the EO, it isn't secret, and doesn't seem to directly impinge on liberties, it is just the vague charter of what various agencies should be doing. I don't see any problem with the intent.
The problem is when you have a bureaucracy directed to "go collect intelligence" there is going to be a large grey area where there needs to be oversight, and there will always be people in a large org that need to be reigned in.
Anyway, the EO isn't the problem, it is the more boring challenge of oversight and managing large orgs.
>why isn't there more talk of curtailing what the President is allowed to do unilaterally?
Because the Presidents job is to distract from - and take the heat for - the crimes of the nation.
The nation has crimes it is keeping secret. These are national secrets, the revealing of which would harm the security of the nation.
Whether you think these national secrets being revealed would be a catastrophe, or indeed a badly needed justice for the inhumanities being committed in your name - it is the Presidents job to make sure the nation stays safe during the discussion.
Which is why CIA powers are not discussed until the weight of public opinion itself, threatens the 'security' of the secret-keepers/nation.
why isn't there more talk of curtailing what the President is allowed to do unilaterally?
This is why impeachment exists. We impeached the last idiot-in-chief twice. Unfortunately, we get the Congress we deserve (ie, if we elect authoritarian-minded lackwits, we shouldn't be surprised when they refuse to convict).
No, this is not why impeachment exists. A president is impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors". If the Prez is acting legally, I can't see how he could be impeached for it.
Impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one. Trump was impeached twice, yet no legal charge was ever filed. All that is required is a willing house of representatives.
The impeachment is a political process but the impeachment proceeding is the legal process and Trump was essentially found not guilty in that process, although it was split among political lines so you could say they brought politics into a legal process.
Impeachment IS the process of brining charges against a sitting President. The House acts a very rough equivalent to a grand jury. The Senate trial is the court-room with Senators as jurors. The Senate chose not to convict, but charges were absolutely brought.
DOJ regulations pretty much prohibit bringing criminal charges against a sitting President.
Whether or not people think the impeachment process is a political sham is a different question/problem. Recently, it largely has been - both with Clinton and with Trump, for very different reasons. Even more so now with GOP members threatening to immediately impeach Biden (for what, I can't quite figure out) should they win back Congress.
>why isn't there more talk of curtailing what the President is allowed to do unilaterally?
Executive orders don't give Presidents unilateral power. They are subject to judicial review and cannot legally violate the Constitution, or exceed Presidential authority as defined in Article 2 of the Constitution, unless specific authority is granted by Congress. Also Congress can overturn a legislative order, either through legislation or simply denying funding. Although, when the legislative and judicial branches don't really want to stand up to the President for whatever reason, that's a moot point.
Also, there is always plenty of talk - from the party not currently in control of the White House. Executive orders are always tyranny when the other side writes them, and a necessary bulwark against tyranny when your side writes them.
The problem is that judicial review takes time and only important cases get heard. For example Biden quite literally said that he issued a executive order extending the moratorium on evictions knowing that the courts would over turn it, but he said at least it would buy more time for people so he would do it anyways. Knowingly doing something that will get overturned still isn’t enough to impeach someone is very odd. If we look at the count of executive orders issued by each president, the current president has issued more in 1 year than the last 6 presidents issued in their entire 4 year terms. The problem is having the Supreme Court review those would take a review of a new order every single week of the year.
The CIA will always want more power, that is the nature of the secret services but if the people are bothered, why isn't there more talk of curtailing what the President is allowed to do unilaterally?