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VOTING BY PROXY, PASSING THE BUCK ONE STEP AT A TIME
Members of Congress can vote from home for now—but not by using techRepresentatives have to nominate a proxy—no Zoom votes here.
by Kate Cox - May 18, 2020 3:11pm CDT
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The Capitol is big, but not big enough to give every member of Congress a whole lot of breathing room.
Patrick Foto | Getty Images
Congress has a problem. Well, many problems, if you ask almost any American, but specifically—right now in the middle of a pandemic—it has a problem with physical space for social distancing.
The House of Representatives has 435 members, and while the House Chamber is big enough to seat them all, it's definitely not large enough for every one of them to have a 6-foot radius of empty space around them. So Congress is looking to do what tens of millions of us are now currently doing: working remotely. But first, representatives have to agree on a new rule that lets them do so.
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To that end, the House on Friday adopted Resolution 965, which will permit remote voting in the House for the first time since our legislative branch took form in 1789.
Your elected representative still can't use Skype or Zoom to cast a vote from their couch, though. Instead, while a public health emergency "due to a novel coronavirus" is in effect, members of Congress can designate proxies to vote in their place. Basically, members have to issue signed, written letters—which can be emailed—saying who they authorize to vote in their stead, and what, very specifically, their proxy should do in their name. Those proxies can then go into the chamber and do all the voting as instructed.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/members-of-congress-can-vote-from-home-for-now-but-not-by-using-tech/
>He went rogue and didnt vote as I instructed! Soon. No clips of the senator voting. Avoid coronavirus themselves, the cattle proxies can deal with that.
Military Tribunals, not DOJ court cases.
The Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) is an organization created in early 2002 by the United States Department of Defense to conduct investigations of detainees captured in the War on Terrorism. It was envisioned that certain captured individuals would be tried by a military tribunal for war crimes and/or acts of terrorism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Task_Force
United StatesEdit
Main article:Â Uniform Code of Military Justice
See also:Â Judge Advocate General's Corps
The United States Constitution authorized the creation of a system of military justice. Article I, Section 8 permits the U.S. Congress to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces."[26] Congress issued these rules first in 1806 as the Articles of War. Military justice during the American Civil War was governed by the 1863 Lieber Code. The Articles of War were superseded in 1951 by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
The UCMJ is federal law, found in Title 10 United States Code Chapter 47, and implemented by the Manual for Courts-Martial, an executive order issued by the President of the United States in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Court-martial convictions in the United States may be appealed through military courts of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), a federal appellate court consisting of five civilian judges appointed by the President of the United States. CAAF decisions are subject to direct review by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The offenses covered by the UCMJ include those encompassed by "high crimes and misdemeanors" which covers officials generally, and includes perjury of oath, abuse of authority, bribery, intimidation, misuse of assets, failure to supervise, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming, and refusal to obey a lawful order. It also includes ordinary crimes, but perhaps with different standards of proof and punishment than for civilians, on the grounds that more is expected of military personnel by their oaths of office. Many of the terms used date back to the era during which the code was written.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_justice
Mil assets will conduct investigation for Tribunals.