ЭКЗАМЕНАЦИОННЫЕ ВОПРОСЫ

Great Britain

1. The Queen. Her functions and powers.
2. The executive power. What is the British government represented by?
3. The legislature. The British Parliament. The House of Lords: its structure, functions and powers.
4. The legislature. The British Parliament. The House of Commons: its structure, functions and powers.
5. The legislature. The British Constitution.
6. The Prime Minister, his functions and powers.
7. What are the main Government Departments of Great Britain?
8. What are the main political parties of Great Britain? What are their ideologies?
9. The legislature. How are the laws passed?
10. Elections in Great Britain. How is the PM elected?
11. Elections in Great Britain. What is a hung parliament?
12. Elections in Great Britain. What is the first-past-the post system?

The USA

1. The US Constitution. What do you know about it?
2. The system of “checks and balances”. What does it serve for? Where is it described?
3. The system of “checks and balances”. Give examples of how branches exercise check on one another.
4. The executive power of the USA. What is it represented by?
5. The executive power of the USA. What are the powers of the US president? Who helps him?
6.  The executive power of the USA. What executive departments do you know? What are the heads of the departments called?
7. The legislative power of the USA. What is it represented by?
8. The legislative power of the USA. How are the laws passed?
9. The judicial power of the USA. What is it represented by?
10. The judicial power. Differentiate between the civil and the criminal cases.
11. What are the main political parties in the US? What are their ideologies?
12. Elections in the USA. What are the primaries? When and how are they held?
13. Elections in the USA. When and how are the presidential elections held?
14. Elections in the USA. What is the Electoral College? How are the electors chosen?

Russian Federation

1. The executive power. What is it represented by? How is the government formed?
2. The executive power. What are the powers of the RF Government?
3. The executive power. What are the functions and powers of the president?
4. The executive power. What are the functions and powers of the prime minister?
5. The legislature. What is it represented by?
6. The legislature. What are the powers of the Federation Council?
7. The legislature. What are the powers of the State Duma?
8. The judicial power. What is it represented by?
9. Elections in Russia. When and how is the president elected?

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Посмотреть видео по ссылкам

Написать эссе (250 слов минимум) по процедуре импичмента президента США, используя приведенные примеры.

A beginner's guide to impeachment and Trump

Admit It: You Don’t Know How Impeachment Works. We Can Help.

ИЯ - 75(1)

1. Watch videos on Elisabeth's II opening speech at a new Parliamentary session (October, 14) :

•  ceremony

 https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/50049285/what-we-learned-from-the-queen-s-speech

https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/50049221/pomp-in-parliament-the-queen-s-speech

• speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_szCGpW4DA0 (34min)

2. Write down its key issues (you may use the script if you need)

• script https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/queens-speech-2019

Jun 16th 2022

The criminal case against Donald Trump

The January 6th committee is doing the Department of Justice’s work for it

The house’s January 6th committee has a few aims for its public hearings this month. Some of its nine members speak of leaving a historical record of Donald Trump’s attempted election heist. Its Democratic ones must hope to give their party a much-needed bump for the mid-terms. But Liz Cheney appears wholly intent on the objective she outlined last year: ensuring that “the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office”.

Abandoned by her party, the congresswoman from Wyoming cannot achieve that politically. Therefore—her opening remarks at the first hearing on June 9th suggested—she has shifted her attention to the Department of Justice.

A former lawyer, Ms Cheney laid out the case against Mr Trump in prosecutorial style. The violent insurrection after which the House committee is named, she said, was a predictable and predicted result of his big lie. He “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack”. The arsonist, she said, then stood back to see how the violence might help him.

Mr Trump made no effort to defend the Capitol. When his advisers pleaded with him to call off the rioters, he angrily refused. The insurrection, Ms Cheney suggested, was not an unfortunate culmination of his lies; rather it represented his last throw of the dice in a “sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power”.

She promised that the six ensuing hearings this month would examine each of those seven parts. They are, first, Mr Trump’s effort to spread misinformation about an election he had lost; second, his scheme to replace the acting attorney-general and suborn the Justice Department; third, his leaning on the vice-president, Mike Pence, to illegally refuse to certify the electoral vote; fourth, his effort to make state election officials and legislators change their vote-counts; fifth, a scheme executed by his lawyers to persuade Republican state legislators to create false electoral slates and report them to Congress; and sixth and seventh, his summoning of the maga mob and refusal to act as it tore up the Capitol.

Though each part is familiar (and, arguably, proven), Ms Cheney’s confidence in asserting that they add up to a meticulously planned and perhaps criminal conspiracy was striking. Her remarks, and the second public hearing on June 13th, suggest this is fuelled by two factors: the evolving legal context and the quality of the evidence the committee has unearthed.

The context owes much to a ruling by a federal district-court judge in California in March. Asked whether one of Mr Trump’s lawyers, John Eastman, could withhold a trove of emails from the committee by citing attorney-client privilege, Judge David Carter said he could not, because that privilege was obviated by a likelihood that Mr Trump used his advice to commit crimes. He considered that by leaning on Mr Pence, Mr Trump had “more likely than not” broken federal laws against “[conspiring] to defraud the United States” and corruptly obstructing government business. Though not a criminal verdict, which would require a heavier burden of proof, this was a dramatic moment in presidential history. If convicted of the crimes Judge Carter says he probably committed, Mr Trump could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Probably the biggest legal impediment to that would be the difficulty of establishing criminal intent. It would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Trump secretly knew that he had lost the election, so acted not merely inappropriately but corruptly. This is where the high quality of the testimonies and other evidence the committee has gathered could be telling.

The second hearing, which examined the launching of Mr Trump’s big lie, delved into the former president’s state of mind in order to portray his misinformation as a tactic, not a genuine belief. Mr Trump said, months before the election took place, that he could lose it only if it were stolen. (Pre-emptively discrediting institutions is a staple of his method.) The stunning announcement by Fox News, on election night, that he had lost Arizona made it likely that indeed he had lost. In response Mr Trump, egged on by his “inebriated” adviser Rudy Giuliani, called the election a “fraud on the American people” and declared victory.

Merrick’s dilemma

As Ms Cheney knows, the prospects of blocking Mr Trump electorally are receding. Most Republicans say he won the election and hardly any Republican politician dares say otherwise. On June 14th a Trump-backed primary challenger defeated Tom Rice of South Carolina, making him the fifth of the ten Republican House members who voted to impeach Mr Trump to be pushed out. Mr Trump is the clear favourite to be the Republican nominee in 2024. It is why Mr Garland’s decision looks so important. Yet that will perhaps make him even more reluctant to act. 

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