The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
Beyond the (Presidential) Pleasure Principle

We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino

You are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the president.

Former U.S. Attorney Joe D. Whitley

Each of us was fully aware that we served at the pleasure of the president.

fired U.S. prosecutors

This is the right of any president to appoint people to these offices. They serve at the pleasure of the president.

Karl Rove

We know that the pleasure principle . . . is from the very outset inefficient and even highly dangerous.

Freud "Himself"

This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its programme is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm.

There is no possibility at all of its being carried through; all the regulations of the universe run counter to it.

Himself

Under the influence of the ego's instincts of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is replaced by the reality principle.

Himself

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Until the statute of 13 Wm. [William] III, the judges held their offices at the pleasure of the king, and the influence which he exercised over timid, timeserving and partisan judges, often induced them, upon some pretext or other, to refuse to discharge the party, although entitled by law to his discharge, or delayed their decision, from time to time, so as to prolong the imprisonment of persons who were obnoxious to the king for their political opinions, or had incurred his resentment in any other way.

Ex parte Merryman, 1861

posted by TiR at 8:11 PM