Why is Boehner even trying this lawsuit thing?

[bronzeage]

Why don't you be the "Master Of The Obvious" you've always been and tell us.

You and me, the tax payers. This would exclude Jenn, of course, but the rest of us will have to pony up.

I hope you remember to smile when they come to collect your share.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

Well we can't add it to the debt, that would be right wing high treason!!

Too bad they had to waste 25 billion shutting the government down, there were a few bucks to play around with.

Fucking terminal ignorance at work.

Wow.

First time I've seen Vette call out his own party's bullshit for what it really is.

Huh. Never thought I'd see the day.

Lemme call Hell real quick and see if there's a snowstorm going on!

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxpj6grFIe1qcaomb.gif

 

[KingOrfeo]

From Salon:

Tuesday, Jul 8, 2014 11:20 AM EDT

GOP’s dopey lawsuit problem: Why a political gambit is doomed to failure

John Boehner says his suit against Obama is not political -- but politics are determining its scope

Simon Maloy

Just as everyone finished pretending that some actual news had been made about John Boehner’s plan to sue president Obama, some actual news happened. Roll Call’s Daniel Newhauser reported late yesterday afternoon that Boehner is “moving cautiously toward a late-July vote” on legislation that would authorize the suit, and that “sources on and off Capitol Hill have doubts that Boehner would target any immigration action.”

I obviously don’t know who Newhaus’ sources are, but if the general feeling coming from people in the know is that Boehner isn’t inclined to tackle immigration with his special little lawsuit, then that’s a pretty good indicator that this is the stunt everyone assumes it to be.

Over the last couple of weeks, ever since Boehner announced his lawsuit plans, he’s been wrapping himself in the mantles of principle and history. “At various points in our history when the executive branch has attempted to claim for itself the ability to make law,” Boehner’s June 25 memo to colleagues said, “the Legislative Branch has responded, and it is only through such responses that the balance of power envisioned by the Framers has been maintained.” With Boehner’s lawsuit announcement coinciding so closely with the final death of immigration reform and renewed Republican antagonism toward the president’s deportation policies, it felt like Obama’s executive actions on immigration were in Boehner’s cross hairs.

But the politics of immigration apparently have Boehner spooked. Going after Obama’s executive action to defer deportations for younger undocumented immigrants “could alienate Hispanic voters and give political fodder to those who already seek to paint the Republican Party as nativist,” Newhaus writes. It’s amusing that this could be what’s holding Boehner back; he did everything he could to slow-foot immigration reform and poison the GOP’s attempts at “rebranding” and their standing with Latino voters couldn’t be much worse, so suing the president over immigration would be like setting fire to the ashes. Regardless, Boehner’s preferred target is apparently the post-passage changes made to the Affordable Care Act, which is a crowd-pleaser for the GOP’s conservative base.

When you start tailoring the parameters of the lawsuit to minimize political harm or maximize political benefit, it’s hard to argue that the suit isn’t rooted in politics. Newhaus quotes law professor Jonathan Turley saying, “the more issues that are piled into these lawsuits the more it looks like a political question.” In this case I’d say the opposite is also true. By focusing it as narrowly as he can on an issue that he feels is politically beneficial, Boehner would be sending the message that his commitment to the separation of powers and the wills of the Framers extends only so far as it will help his colleagues on the other side of the Capitol take control of the Senate.

An extremely narrow suit would also run counter to basically everything Boehner has been saying thus far about his intentions. The way he’s been describing it, Boehner intends the suit to be a historic check on executive authority. He’s been talking it up as a pushback to a problem of grand scope:

On one matter after another during his presidency, President Obama has circumvented the Congress through executive action, creating his own laws and excusing himself from executing statutes he is sworn to enforce – at times even boasting about his willingness to do it, as if daring the America people to stop him. On matters ranging from health care and energy to foreign policy and education, President Obama has repeatedly run an end-around on the American people and their elected legislators, straining the boundaries of the solemn oath he took on Inauguration Day.

He’s also been portraying the problem as being so severe it requires sweeping action to save the country’s future, which is facing immediate peril. Here’s the conclusion to Boehner’s CNN.com Op-Ed: “The legislative branch has an obligation to defend the rights and responsibilities of the American people, and America’s constitutional balance of powers — before it is too late.”

After setting up this epic clash between the legislative and executive branches over rampant lawlessness spanning many years and embodied by several varieties of executive action, he’s going to come back and say, “Actually we’d rather limit this fight to the Treasury Department’s tweaking of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate”? That doesn’t wash.

Whatever he settles on, Boehner has mountains of skepticism to overcome, on both the left and the right. And in the end, the scope of Boehner’s lawsuit is secondary to whether he can convince a judge to agree that Congress has standing to sue the White House in the first place. There’s a high likelihood that the courts will come back and tell him that the best thing he can do to curb executive authority is to use the tools made available to him by the Constitution for that explicit purpose: namely, legislating. That’s not something Boehner’s particularly good at, but that doesn’t mean it’s lost its effectiveness.

 

[cleaver]

Personally I'm doubtful about the success of such a suit, but I am not a lawyer, and people who are have suggested it could be, if as the Colonel posted, certain conditions are met.

My feeling is, Obama and Holder have demonstrated a complete disregard for the Constitution, the Congress, The American people, and the law. With that in mind, I have no reason to believe he will obey a federal court order without taking all of the time he has left in office presenting it to the SCOTUS for review.

As I pointed out the other day. A more immediate solution "might" be the two cases on July 10 in separate federal court rooms involving the IRS refusal to produce emails, and alleged crashed hard drives. Either one of these two judges "could" order independent investigations of the IRS, and in the case of Judge Sullivan, who's ordered a special prosecutor to investigate the Justice Department in the past, "could" do the same here with the IRS, thus laying the groundwork for the legal prosecution of Obama administration officials in violations of the law.

the highlighted above is the only 'issue' pertinent to the immediate discussion.

the last paragraph is abstract entirely to the balance of power dance going on... it's deflection.

at best, the irs investigations are circumstantial to how the executive has acted;
but they are not horse trade fodder re: the boehner actions.

as to what's bolded:

again, your opinion of what you aver is welcome.
it is what you think;
which is far better in my mind than something you read - reposted - and genuinely don't fully understand.

still, it's myopic, i feel, your evaluation.

i am, like you i hope, quite sure that our constitution can constrain the balance of power struggle going on...

for that alone, is what the boehner suit is about.

a strengthening executive exercising power in the void left by an anemic weakening congress to be arbitrated by (in part ) the judiciary. the electorate does the rest.

the players may not like each other,
but,
you become an easy, clumsy mark to pick your well-hewn sides and run with the bit there.

remember the immediate dynamic...
within a couple of days:

boehner announces (in a press op) his lawsuit
obama announces (in a press op ) his intention to effect immigration action by executive order, specifically in lieu of congressional action.

neither of these "actions" have real teeth.

there is paltry little the executive branch can effect re immigration without congressional action... i could pull a reference which would bore you, or...
(never mind)

the boehner "suit" effectively invites the judiciary into the struggle... to arbitrate where the lines between the powers currently lie...
a laborious process.

BUT

we are talking about it...
either to be informed of and to lament the broken government,
or to do something about it via the ballot box
(and the various collection plates)

 

[Beco]

In his op-ed, Boenher says:



If it's legislation, it can't pass without the Senate's approval, and the President can veto it, and no way is there a 2/3 majority in both houses for such a thing, nor will there be after the midterms. The suit will never be filed if it takes legislation to authorize it. Boehner must know all this.

Cause Boehber is a dick....

 

[KingOrfeo]

From Salon:

Tuesday, Jul 8, 2014 02:17 PM EDT

Republicans’ impeachment-mania: How it achieves a subtler, dangerous end

Despite Sarah Palin's calls, the president won't be impeached. But here's how her demand normalizes other lunacy

Emmett Rensin

“By the Grace of God,” the English used to say, when asked by what authority their monarch ruled. “Divine right” was the answer, and that was that – you didn’t have to like the Queen, but God did, and that’s why she was in charge.

Simpler times, those were.

Today, former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced her belief that President Obama should be impeached. Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced his intention to launch the first Congressional lawsuit against the executive branch since United States v. Nixon. Days later, the Republican Party of South Dakota became the first state-level party organization to formally call for Obama’s impeachment.

If some Republicans are to be believed, the only rationale behind Congress’ tamer lawsuit route is feasibility: “If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it. But it would go to the Senate and he wouldn’t be convicted,” Congressman Blake Fahrenthold told Buzzfeed last year.

The occasional call is nothing new. Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt have faced the fringe demand for Congressional removal, and despite two successful efforts in the House (against Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton), none has ever seen the bad side of a subsequent Senate trial. President Obama will not be impeached; despite their bluster, the GOP-controlled House will never even propose a trial in earnest. The Clinton years taught them well enough what happens when such an effort backfires and you become the guys who just wasted a year of the country’s time.

What ought to concern us is not the serious possibility of the President being removed from office, but the sense of what – in a world where such a conversation occurs at all – suddenly seems reasonable by comparison. Consider an interview earlier this year, in which FOX News Host and Santa Clause ethnicity specialist Megyn Kelly asked Mitch McConnell why he and the rest of the Congressional GOP hadn’t seriously explored the “meaningful option” of impeaching President Obama for vaguely defined “abuse of power.”

It doesn’t matter that McConnell said they wouldn’t: That the question was even asked on a major television network by a prominent (if not necessarily respected) member of the press to one of the most powerful figures in the federal government reflects something more than just fringe lunacy. It is indicative of a broader trend in our civic culture, one more subtly (but perhaps tellingly) betrayed in Senator McConnell’s then-contention that simply defunding every executive initiative and refusing to let the country function while President Obama remains in office would be a comparatively reasonable, “less dramatic” option.

**

We’ve gotten into the habit of delegitimizing our Presidents — not just contesting their election or pushing back against their policies, but denying their very claim to the White House. From the farcical (birthers) to the faux-serious (“anti-American socialist!”), we’ve moved beyond mere opposition and into a deeper civic sickness, where casting aspersions on the policies of an opposition President has given way to challenging his very right to implement those policies.

It didn’t start with Barack Obama. This new kind of cynicism has been gaining ground for years. The conspiratorial style is catching. Growing up during the Bush Administration, I joined plenty of my fellow leftists in righteous conversations about hanging chads and Diebold-stolen votes. Before that? It was eight years of Bill Clinton: Whitewater murder suspect and blowjob perjurer.

That isn’t to say it doesn’t make a certain kind of sense. The impulse to delegitimize the President serves as a useful solution to an old dilemma in American politics: How do you respond to a leader who is at once enemy and ally — someone who was bitterly opposed in his ascension, but having nonetheless prevailed, is now not just their candidate, but your President, as well?

As cynical as we’ve become, Americans still retain a certain reverence for the Presidency. Watergate eroded it some, sure; and the ensuing soap operas — from Iran-Contra to Monica to Tallahassee 2000 have certainly tarnished the brand. But within our civic consciousness, the Presidency retains a transcendent air, an office occupied by a politician, but still not entirely political. The President is the Commander-in-Chief. He is the head of government, yes, but he is the head of state as well. The office still retains that luster, and across table from Prime Ministers and Kings, he speaks for all of us. There is a reason we still don’t tolerate his challengers attacking him when overseas.

But pressed by a modern world into an unprecedented form of zero-sum politics the tension between “our guy abroad” and “their guy at home” proved more difficult to sustain. So the delegitimizers found a work-around: If you can’t strip the Presidency of its protective insulation, you can strip it from a chief executive by insinuating that he isn’t really the President in the first place. And that’s when the loyal opposition becomes a crusade against occupation, poisonous to a functioning government.

It’s a dangerous game. When the “grace of God” gave way to “the grace of an electorate”, it was vital – if people were to be governed by consent – that that consent, once given, be respected. When we allow ourselves to start believing that consent is counterfeit whenever we disagree with our leaders, the national experiment breaks down. The well is poisoned. Wars against usurpers involve no compromise, and so we see endless gridlock. We see politics as trench warfare. We see a polity where reaching across the aisle is a betrayal and defunding every initiative is the “reasonable” response. We see a system in which every year is little more than a battle to reclaim the throne from a fraud — the very thing we broke with Britain to avoid.

God Save the Queen.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[cowslinger64]

It won't happen under any circumstances as long as Harry Reid is Majority Leader of the Senate. He will refuse a bill of impeachment, as he's refused dozens of other lawfully legislated bills in the House.

Which is good... Until serious discussions are brought up about impeaching George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft for their treasonous lies taking us into and invading Iraq costing the lives of 5000 American troops or so and trillions upon trillions of dollars... then there should be no further discussion.

 

[nowisthetime]

Which is good... Until serious discussions are brought up about impeaching George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft for their treasonous lies taking us into and invading Iraq costing the lives of 5000 American troops or so and trillions upon trillions of dollars... then there should be no further discussion.

Funny how they remain silent when this is brought up!

 

[cowslinger64]

Funny how they remain silent when this is brought up!

That's one of many common conveniences of them.. funny how that is.

 

[Beco]

That's one of many common conveniences of them.. funny how that is.

yeah, its funny Cowshiter

Kiss ass

 

[cowslinger64]

yeah, its funny Cowshiter

Kiss ass

Put me down and can't even fucking spell....got to love the irony.


Perhaps you should do like you did the last time, and post a story that shows what a dumbshit you are. That had to sting..it sure was funny.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Someone needs to explain exactly how the House can draft legislation (or a resolution) authorizing itself to do something that they can't already do without the input of the Senate and the President.

This is nothing but meaningless political showmanship.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

You don't even know the definition of treason.

Apparently neither do you.

 

[cowslinger64]

You don't even know the definition of treason.

trea·son
ˈtrēzən/Submit
noun
the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.
"they were convicted of treason"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
antonyms: allegiance, loyalty
the action of betraying someone or something.
plural noun: treasons
"doubt is the ultimate treason against faith"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
antonyms: allegiance, loyalty
historical
the crime of murdering someone to whom the murderer owed allegiance, such as a master or husband.
noun: petty treason; plural noun: petty treasons
---------------

you know fuckall.

 

[eyer]

Until serious discussions are brought up about impeaching George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft...

Too friggin' funny...

 

[RobDownSouth]

You don't even know the definition of treason.

Remember a while back when you and your USMC buddies traded military foodstuffs in return for underage viet cong pussy?

Classic "aid and comfort to the enemy".

Textbook case of treason.

 

[cowslinger64]

Too friggin' funny...

Oh look...another dumbass slithers out from under his rock. Just wake up from your nap?

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[bronzeage]

Which is good... Until serious discussions are brought up about impeaching George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft for their treasonous lies taking us into and invading Iraq costing the lives of 5000 American troops or so and trillions upon trillions of dollars... then there should be no further discussion.

A day late and a dollar short on that one.

Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bush may chip into the legal fund, so they can afford some really good lawyers and not have to just pick someone out of the phone book.

 

[cowslinger64]

Hey stupid. In the United States the only legal definition applicable is that definition contained in the Constitution. Look it up and compare it to yours.

Lol....first of all, I said TREASONOUS

which is based on TREASON

— n
1. violation or betrayal of the allegiance that a person owes his sovereign or his country, esp by attempting to overthrow the government; high treason
2. any treachery or betrayal

Secondly, I said it was their treasonous lies that should lead to their IMPEACHMENT.


They betrayed the trust of the American people and should be imprisoned for it. They also betrayed 5000 American soldiers or so and cost them their lives. Plus, the trillions of dollars wasted...


and you wanna play fuckin semantics?

 

[cowslinger64]

A day late and a dollar short on that one.

Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bush may chip into the legal fund, so they can afford some really good lawyers and not have to just pick someone out of the phone book.

Of course.. I never thought it would happen, even back then. My point was, talking about impeaching Obama shouldn't even come into anyones thinking with that huge matzoh ball hanging over our heads.