It's LONG Past Time To Get Rid Of Ted Cruz

[dan_c00000]

I believe in a strong executive in time of war when he is acting as the CinC with the authorization of Congress. I do not believe in any theory that supports a President acting outside his oath of office, or the limits of the Constitution.

So how did you feel when Bush II created the NSA so it could illegal spy on Americans?

 

[islandman]

So how did you feel when Bush II created the NSA so it could illegal spy on Americans?

FYI - bit of a typo there.

 

[unregistered]

 

[dan_c00000]

FYI - bit of a typo there.

Bah yeah just noticed it.

Anyway, vette won't answer the question because he's going to use the current right wing narrative of "George Bush never happened".

The criticism of Connie Rice is a good example. It's not that she has no short term memory; it's just that the Bush II administration literally never happened.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Neither have our founding principles or our Bill of Rights.

They are free countries nevertheless. America holds no patent or copyright on freedom.

 

[cjh]

Why is it a dodge? The Constitution states "The executive Power [of the United States] shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." That makes him a co equal branch of government within the framework of the Constitution. It also states, "[t]he President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." That means there is only one Commander in Chief. So what's the dodge?

Well, John Yoo's theories are viewed by most as a bit extreme.

SCOTUS rejected some.

Seems like Bush exceeded his constitutional authority.

http://www.abajournal.com/mobile/mag_article/the_architects

 

[KingOrfeo]

So in your mind interdicting people conversing with the enemy threatening the American people in time of war is not supporting a free society, eh?

Are you talking about NSA surveillance, or what?

 

[unregistered]

 

[Dazzle1]

Says President Barack Obama "is the first president we've ever had who thinks he can choose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore."

Ted Cruz on Thursday, March 6th, 2014 in a speech at the CPAC conference

Ted Cruz says Barack Obama is first president 'who thinks he can choose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore'

Rating: False

Critics of President Barack Obama have charged that he has regularly exceeded the powers of his office in selectively enforcing the law. Their examples include making recess appointments, issuing executive orders, delaying provisions of his health care law, refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court and declining to deport certain categories of young illegal immigrants.

At the 2014 CPAC conference, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reiterated this point to the audience of conservative activists.

Referring to Obama, Cruz said, "This president of the United States is the first president we've ever had who thinks he can choose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore."

We were suspicious of this claim, because we recalled several instances in recent years of other presidents being accused of exceeding their executive authority.

We checked with eight historians and legal scholars across the ideological spectrum to see whether they could point to prior examples of presidents choosing to ignore laws. They came up with a number of examples. (Cruz’s office did not return an inquiry for this story.)

While Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said he believes Obama is "setting records for the number, scope, and creativity of unconstitutional and illegal behavior," he acknowledged that "Obama wasn't the first president to violate the law and won't be the last."

Here’s a trip down memory lane to review just some of the instances in which presidents are believed to have acted in ways that ignored existing legal or constitutional limits:

• Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War era, Lincoln "broke an assortment of laws and ignored one constitutional provision after another," according to an analysis by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. Lincoln waged war without a congressional declaration of war (or even a Congress in session to declare one), spent $2 million to raise an army without congressional appropriation, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, among other actions.

"Following a strategy of ‘unilateral action,’ Lincoln justified his powers as an emergency authority granted to him by the people," the Miller Center analysis concludes. "He had been elected, he told his critics, to decide when an emergency existed and to take all measures required to deal with it. In doing so, Lincoln maintained that the President was one of three ‘coordinate’ departments of government, not in any way subordinate to Congress or the courts."

• Andrew Johnson. After the Civil War ended and Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became president and almost immediately clashed with Congress over how to treat the former Confederacy. Edwin M. Stanton, who had been Secretary of War under Lincoln, retained his position under Johnson and became one of the new president’s biggest critics, asserting that the federal government should intervene more forcefully to protect freed slaves’ rights in the South.

In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which required Senate approval before a president fired federal officials who had originally been confirmed by the Senate. When Johnson tried to oust Stanton, the Senate blocked him; when Johnson made a second ouster attempt, the House impeached him. (Johnson ultimately survived impeachment, Stanton resigned, and the Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887.)

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On March 11, 1941, as World War II was already under way in Europe -- and while the United States was still officially on the sidelines -- Roosevelt signed a landmark law known as the Lend-Lease Act. At the time, Britain was under siege and almost out of money, so the law authorized the president to sell, lease, or lend military hardware to any country he designated as vital to American national security.

However, a provision in the law would have allowed Congress to terminate the president’s powers after a certain amount of time through a "concurrent resolution." This amounted to a "legislative veto" by a simple majority and without the president’s signature. Roosevelt believed this to be unconstitutional, but he signed the bill anyway, secretly writing a memorandum to Attorney General Robert H. Jackson explaining that "the emergency was so great that I signed the bill in spite of a clearly unconstitutional provision contained in it." Jackson only made the episode public in 1953.

• Harry Truman. In the midst of the Korean War, Truman had to grapple with labor disputes within the steel industry -- a sector he considered vital to the war effort. In a bid to head off a looming work stoppage, Truman in 1952 ordered his Commerce Secretary to seize the steel mills. The industry objected, and Truman’s seizure was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer.

• Richard Nixon. Citing government spending as a reason for surging inflation, Nixon refused to spend nearly $12 billion of congressionally appropriated funds for 1973 and 1974. He did so under an executive action known as "impoundment" -- an action that had been used by many presidents previously, but with questionable constitutionality. Faced with Nixon’s unusually large impoundment -- and with the president bogged down in Watergate -- Congress rebelled, passing legislation to make impoundment illegal. Nixon vetoed the bill, Congress overrode his veto, and Nixon stood his ground. The administration challenged the new law barring impoundment, but a federal court sided with Congress, saying impoundment was unconstitutional.

• Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s quest to fight communism suffered a setback in the middle of his first term when the Democratic Congress in 1983 passed the Boland Amendment, which restricted the CIA and the Defense Department from operating in Nicaragua. An even stronger version passed the following year. The Reagan administration diverted some of the proceeds of a secret arms sale to Iran to the anti-communist militia in Nicaragua known as the Contras, an action that directly violated the Boland Amendment.

Several top advisers to Reagan were implicated in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. While the Reagan-appointed Tower Commission said Reagan's disengagement from White House management had made the diversion possible, Reagan himself was never formally linked to the violation of the Boland amendment.

• George W. Bush. While president, Bush issued 161 signing statements -- that is, official pronouncements that accompany the signing of a bill into law. In addition to commenting on the law generally, signing statements have been used to document the president’s constitutional objections to provisions contained in the law, and sometimes to announce how (or whether) parts of the law will be enforced. Bush was hardly the first to issue signing statements, but he was the most prolific.

According to the Congressional Research Service, Bush issued 161 signing statements, which is a smaller number than each of his three immediate predecessors. But 79 percent of Bush’s statements -- a much higher rate -- noted a challenge or objection to the law being signed, rather than offering relatively innocuous comments. Meanwhile, many statements contained multiple reservations, making the total number more than 1,000.

The American Bar Association published a report asserting that Bush’s statements were "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers" when they "claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law ... or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress."

Like Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt before him, Bush "asserted the power to violate certain laws if necessary to defend the country," said Kermit Roosevelt, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. "Bush’s signing statements typically said that he would interpret laws restricting executive authority, such as a law forbidding cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees, in a manner consistent with his understanding of his power as commander-in-chief. What that meant, it turned out when the memos were declassified, was that the law did not bind him if he believed certain actions were necessary to national security — the ‘commander-in-chief override.’ "

Our ruling

We found that at least seven presidents -- including some of the nation’s most admired occupants of the White House -- acted, at least on occasion, in ways that ignored specific laws or constitutional protections. It is not accurate to say, as Cruz does, that Obama would be "the first president we've ever had who thinks he can choose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore." Presidents have done so frequently, and historians expect that they will continue to do so. We rate the claim False.

***

EDITOR’S NOTE, March 11, 2014: After we published our story, Cruz’s office provided the following response:

"Since the dawn of the republic, the president and Congress have resisted attempts from each other to encroach upon their constitutional powers. Many presidents have asserted, and have abused, executive authority. No one is arguing that President Obama is the first to make this mistake. As Sen. Cruz has detailed in three reports, a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court, no president until President Obama has ever claimed the authority to ignore the explicit text of statutes passed by Congress and unilaterally replace that text with whatever the president wishes. From Obamacare to immigration, to same sex marriage, to marijuana laws, President Obama’s willingness to ignore or alter law is unquestionably outside the scope of executive power. It amounts to legislating, pure and simple."

However, we don’t agree that there’s a significant distinction between "abus(ing) executive authority" and a "willingness to ignore or alter law," so we feel comfortable with the historical examples we used to analyze Cruz’s statement. We’re standing by our original ruling of False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...uz-says-barack-obama-first-president-who-thi/

There is a rep from Texas who is far more deserving of the U.S congress being rid off.

She does not even know how old the U.S is: A typical liberal idiot named Sheilia Jackson Lee

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/03/...e-400-years-operating-under-the-constitution/

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Why is it a dodge?

Because you failed to answer as to whether you accept or reject John Yoo's extremely strong version (formulated for the W Admin's benefit) of the unitary executive theory, which was the question.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

I would argue they are not free countries if they have massive welfare programs the funds for which have to be coericed by force from their productive citizens. You can say they are free if you want, but that doesn't make it so. There were degrees of freedom in the Soviet Union as well.

We've had such things here for a long time, it's only a matter of scale, and taxation is not theft. We remain a free country nevertheless. The New Deal, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, food stamps, AFDC, public unemployment insurance, did not make us any less a free country.

 

[unregistered]

 

[miles]

No doubt Politifact will claim she's a true genius.

Let's see if they have the balls to fact check her.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I answered it. I believe the Constitution vest "all" executive power in the President, just as it says.

So, you do accept it, not as you formulate it but as Yoo formulated it?

The George W. Bush administration made the Unitary Executive Theory a common feature of signing statements.[20] For example, Bush once wrote in a signing statement that he would, "construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power."[21] Critics acknowledge that part of the President's duty is to "interpret what is, and is not constitutional, at least when overseeing the actions of executive agencies," but critics accused Bush of overstepping that duty by his perceived willingness to overrule U.S. courts.[22]

Yoo:

Unitary executive theory

Yoo suggested that since the primary task of the President during a time of war is protecting U.S. citizens, the President has inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies, and plenary power to use force abroad.[51] Yoo contends that the Congressional check on Presidential war-making power comes from its power of the purse. He says that the President, and not the Congress or courts, has sole authority to interpret international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions "because treaty interpretation is a key feature of the conduct of foreign affairs".[52] His positions on executive power are controversial because the theory can be interpreted as holding that the President's war powers place him above any law.[52][53][54][55]

In the Clinton administration

In 1998 Yoo criticized what he characterized as an imperial use of executive power by the Clinton administration.[56] Yoo has defended executive privilege, but only to protect national security, diplomatic, and military secrets. In an opinion piece in the WSJ, he criticized the Clinton administration for misusing the privilege to protect the personal, rather than official, activities of the President, such as in the Monica Lewinsky affair.[57]At the time, Yoo also criticized President Clinton for contemplating defiance of a judicial order. He suggested that Presidents could act in conflict with the Supreme Court, but that such measures were justified only during emergencies.[58]

In 2000 Yoo strongly criticized what he viewed as the Clinton administration's use of powers of what he termed the "Imperial Presidency". He said it undermined "democratic accountability and respect for the law".[59] Yet, Yoo has defended President Clinton, for his decision to use force abroad without congressional authorization. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal on March 15, 1999, that Clinton's decision to attack Serbia was constitutional. He then criticized Democrats in Congress for not suing Clinton as they had sued presidents Bush and Reagan to stop the use of force abroad. [60]

In the George W. Bush administration

Following his tenure as an appointee of the George W. Bush Administration, Yoo criticized certain views on the separation of powers doctrine as allegedly being historically inaccurate and problematic for the global war on terrorism. For instance, he wrote,

We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.[61]

and

To his critics, Mr. Bush is a 'King George' bent on an "imperial presidency". But the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging: the executive.[62

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

To the extent that taxes are forced and not surrendered willingly, it is a form of theft.

Not a one of the FFs would have agreed with that. They all had experience in state/colonial and local governments which levied compulsory taxes, as governments always have, and as all those governments continue to do to this day. None of them doubted the propriety of taxation as such. Protesting "Taxation Without Representation!" implies that taxation with representation is acceptable; and nothing in the relevant issues of the time implies that any particular use of the revenue is unacceptable, except, perhaps, for keeping a large standing army.

 

[cjh]

To the extent that taxes are forced and not surrendered willingly, it is a form of theft.

The degree of our freedom diminishes daily under this President. You cannot say differently with any credibility.

That's insane.

A significant portion of the population would pay no taxes if left to a "surrender willingly" standard.

Theft is outside the law. Change the tax laws, if you don't like them. Or leave the country.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

The degree of our freedom diminishes daily under this President. You cannot say differently with any credibility.

Really, how in particular are you any less free now than you were in 2008? And please don't mention the ACA.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

I think for instance that his stand on the Geneva Convention were right on in regard to the classification of combatants.

IIRC, that's the doctrine that allows the government to treat persons captured by the armed forces as "unlawful enemy combatants" entitled to neither the protections of POWs under international law nor the protections of criminal suspects under American law.

Not surprising you'd approve, but it reflects no credit on you.

And, yes, I know the concept was invented by FDR's Admin; I don't approve of every single thing he did, and certainly not that. And I respect Obama that much less for not having repudiated it by now.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

None of the FFs contemplated income tax to any serious extent, and none of the original 13 colonies would ratify the Constitution as it is presently construed by the courts.

Well, of course not; they were colonial gentlemen of the pre-industrial 18th Century, they could scarcely have comprehended the relevant questions. That does not mean the courts are wrong; it means the world and the country have changed a lot in the past 225 years and the law, including constitutional law, has had to evolve and adapt. And it does not mean the FFs would have regarded income tax as wrong on principle, or even bad policy, if the economic situation of industrialized America could have been explained to their adequate comprehension.