Thread by @KT_So_It_Goes

the bill barr episode is living proof that nixon-era OLC guidelines on DOJ powers within the executive branch, designed to maintain a semblance of independence from the executive branch, are utterly unsustainable, and as such, wrong

the guidelines cease to function in a 1% scenario wherein the chief executive actively exploits the now-demonstrably impotent nature of their binding abilities, which clearly rely on nothing but good faith that the chief executive will not do such a thing

being “good enough” 99% of the time, and exposed as “not good enough” within half a century of design may seem acceptable but this is in fact a catastrophic design failure which would be immediately rejected in any engineering field

imagine flying on a plane that only crashed 1% of the time, or cooking with a stovetop that only spontaneously burst into flame once every hundred days

“well just don’t actively exploit the whole can’t-be-charged-with-a-crime thing” doesn’t have the same sexiness as “just don’t do the thing that caused the stovetop to burst into flame” but really they’re effectively identical

if it helps, imagine the presidency came with a pop-up window that upon executing a certain sequence of events reads “you’re about to render two of the three branches of government null and void, are you sure you want to do that? YES / NO”

the OLC guidelines effectively assume the president won’t execute that sequence of events, or in the rare event the president does so, will responsibly click “NO” and close the window

we are now living in the president clicked “YES” scenario

sure, there’s an IT department that can rush in, debug the whole system, and remove system permissions from the obviously unfit user who clicked YES, but the IT department will only respond if certain polling incentives indicate it’s worth acknowledging your helpdesk ticket

also, your helpdesk ticket is only transmitted in sanskrit, and at least half of the IT department actually enjoys the catastrophic system failure because they hate their jobs and/or will be enriched in some form by failing to respond to your ticket

absolutely no one (except facebook) would accept this system design in any other application but thanks to the OLC before most of us were born, that’s the design we’ve got

fifty years seems like a long & stable trial period but we’ve had eight presidents since nixon. the eighth system user exploited the loophole. there’s a deep design flaw here and even if the eighth user happens to be a doddering cat food brained tyrant, the system design failed