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points by NooneAtAll5 3 days ago | 0 comments
I don't think being able to sell secrets on eBay is a bad thing. The point of secret classification isn't to restrict trusted people - but to restrict *unathorized* access. And highest person in chain of command naturally has full authority to do as he sees the situation fit

What I don't understand how it's allowed is that money earned from such ebay sell would go to private pocket instead of the government

I feel like that latter point isn't accentuated enough

[–] tgv 3 days ago
So national interest doesn't exist? It's all at the whim of a demented money grabber, just because a small majority of the voters (if there really was a majority) got riled up?
[–] vkou 3 days ago
The king decides what national interest is, and in this case it is in the national interest for him to auction the government off into his own bank account.
[–] alecst 3 days ago
I know this isn’t an argument but when I read this my first thought was: How can a real person hold this opinion?
[–] gwerbin 3 days ago
Childlike wishful thinking. There is a disturbingly large number of people who think like this. And there are, as you might imagine, strong incentives for certain individuals and organizations to promote this kind of thinking. Look up Curtis Yarvin if you want to see some deeply disturbed promotion of these extremely dark, and fundamentally anti-American, ideas.
[–] gwerbin 3 days ago
> The point of secret classification isn't to restrict trusted people - but to restrict unathorized access. And highest person in chain of command naturally has full authority to do as he sees the situation fit

First of all -- what? The exact legal authority between the President and Congress here is murky, yes (see https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS21900). But it's completely ridiculous to claim that the only criterion for authorization is that someone thinks a person ought to be authorized.

This is unitary executive thinking, grounded in the principle that, because the president is the sole and chief authority and executor of the law, the president may do just about anything in that capacity. It's utter unconstitutional nonsense, no matter what our (openly compromised by lobbyists) Supreme Court justices say.

The latter point is "not accentuated enough" because it's secondary to the primary point, which supersedes it. No the president's whim is not the same as executing the federal laws created by Congress within the framework of the constitution. It a mind-bendingly anti-American, anti-Constitutional line of reasoning on display here.