Nancy, unhinged, threatens to sue the President.
They do want victory. In the domestic, political game.
By Mark Kilmer Posted in War — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Democrats have not learned the most important lesson of Vietnam: It is immoral to use the United States Armed Forces as pawns in a political game (ages 6-9). Nancy has been pandering to the internet lefties of late:
Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, “We can take the president to court” if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, a blogger who covered Pelosi’s remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com.
“The president has made excessive use of signing statements and Congress is considering ways to respond to this executive-branch overreaching,” a spokesman for Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, said. “Whether through the oversight or appropriations process or by enacting new legislation, the Democratic Congress will challenge the president’s non-enforcement of the laws.”
"Oversight." The word has become code from Congressional imperialism. But new legislation can be vetoed, and there are ethical problems involved with using the power of the purse to usurp and curtail Constitutional executive powers and duties.
Read More…
The President complained of this in his veto message for the last version of the Pelosi-Murtha supplemental:
“This legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the presidency.”
But Nancy has come undone.
Nancy and her buddies see this as a threat of adding signing statements to future supplemental spending bills. To Nancy and the Dems, this is not a war with real American lives and real American security at stake; rather, it is a cynical game of political one-upmanship. Nancy thus wants to play the judicial branch against the executive branch to benefit her party's political prospects:
A lawsuit could be seen as part of the Democrats’ larger political strategy to pressure — through a series of votes on funding the war — congressional Republicans to break with Bush over Iraq.
Those in the Congressional Democratic leadership are not good legislators. They do not support our troops or our Constitution beyond their own political convenience. But troops and Constitution be damned, they could be at the cusp of a huge victory with voters who believe the major newspapers and TV networks. Pass or fail, this version of Pelosi-Murtha could set the Democrats up nicely, provided they don't turn probably success into another miserable failure by threatening lawsuits and further denigrating our troops.
If the mission in Iraq ends in failure, they can blame the President. If it ends in success, they can claim credit by asserting that they were the ones who pressured the Maliki government to play its part. If they can rip away chunks of the GOP to their cause, overriding a veto, the political rewards will even greater.
What can the Republicans do? The right thing. The skittish Republican members of Congress about whom we read in the press must be reminded that good and great people do not take council from cowards.
And just in case Nancy's prattle about suing the President is stop any signing statement is serious, there is this:
Bruce Fein, who was a Justice Department official under President Reagan, said Democrats seeking to challenge a signing statement would have to try to give themselves standing before filing a lawsuit.
“You’d need an authorizing resolution in the House and Senate … to seek a declaratory judgment from the federal district court that the president, by issuing a signing statement, is denying Congress’s obligation to [hold a veto override vote],” Fein said.
It's unclear who, apart from the Dem leadership and the most rabid anti-Bush critters, would support such a move.
The Democrats should fully fund the troops. If they are too cynical to do that, they should cut the funding. Their political games are inappropriate.
------
For more on the lawsuit and the Democrats' caterwauling on the signing statements, see Mark I's piece, Nancy Pelosi for the Plaintiff, Your Honor, below.
« We need more COIN in the Afghan realm — Comments (0) | Nancy Pelosi for the Plaintiff, Your Honor — Comments (7) »
Nancy, unhinged, threatens to sue the President. 3 Comments (0 topical, 3 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
It will greatly strengthen the Legislative Branch if Pelosi can get the courts to give the Congress permission to legislate.
Or, for those of you in Rio Linda, asking the Supreme Court to decide a separation-of-powers issue implicitly grants the Supreme Court the power at issue. It amounts to asking the Court which of its underlings — the Legislature or the Executive — it would like to delegate this power to.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
in the TV commercial flipping a light switch off, on, off, on ... "Honey, what's this doing?" She tells him it's not doing anything. Meanwhile, the garage door opener is whacking away at the neighbor's car.
She has more power than all but about 3 people on the planet, and trapped in the cramped quarters of her own mental prison, she has no idea what to do with it.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.
It isn't clear to me the degree to which the Speaker-in-Law™ is herself unhinged and to what degree she is merely pandering to the moanbots*. What is clear, though, is that she is rightful leader of the party of Gore v. Bush.
One wonders if in Nancy's dimension the President is allowed to make an oral statement with respect to his interpretation of a new law, or if he must keep silent? If not, does this lack of freedom of speech apply to every law, or is it only ones he himself signs?
---
* If Mr. Lane reads this, he should note that I have embraced the healing power of 'and'.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.