Tag Archives: Senate

national news, political news

Get ready for more impeachment talk

Impeaching a president of the United States isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires a stout gut among those who bring it, not to mention the target of such a drastic action.

The bar must be high. It must have a solid basis on which to make such a move.

Where am I going with this? I have this sinking feeling that the current president well might find himself in the crosshairs of those who want to bring such an action against him.

We’re hearing a growing — but still muted — rumbling in D.C. about the prospect of Donald J. Trump facing impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m attaching an item from The Hill in which former Labor Secretary Robert Reich — an acknowledged political liberal — has lined out at least four impeachable offense already committed by the president.

Here it is.

Reich says that Trump’s accusation that Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower offices constitutes an impeachable offense, saying the president has recklessly accused his predecessor of committing a felony. He notes that the Constitution prohibits president from taking money from foreign governments; Trump, Reich alleges, has done so by “steering foreign delegations” to hotels he owns. Reich contends that Trump violates the First Amendment’s provision against establishing a state religion by banning travelers from Muslim countries into the United States. Reich also says the First Amendment bans any abridgment of a free press, but Trump has labeled the media the “enemy of the people.”

There’s a fifth potential cause, which Reich has asserted. It involves the possibility that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian government officials to swing the election in the president’s favor. Reich said such activity, if proven, constitutes “treason.”

Will any of this come to pass? I have no clue.

Think of the politics of it. Trump is a Republican; both congressional chambers are controlled by the GOP. Will the Republican House majority bring articles of impeachment to a vote, no matter how seriousness of whatever charges are considered?

The collusion matter strikes me as the most serious and the most likely to align Republicans along with Democrats in considering whether to impeach the president. I am not suggesting there is, indeed, proof of such collusion.

Remember as well that the GOP-led House managed to impeach a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, in 1998 on three counts relating to his seedy relationship with that White House intern. Conviction in the Senate, though, required a super majority of senators; the GOP fell far short on all three counts. Thus, the president was acquitted.

They based that impeachment on the president’s failure to tell the truth under oath to a federal grand jury that questioned him about the affair. He broke the law, Republicans said. There was your “impeachable offense,” they argued.

My major concern about the Clinton impeachment was whether the president’s offense had a direct impact on his office. It did not. Any of the issues that Secretary Reich lists, however, certainly do have a direct impact on the president’s ability to perform his duties.

The bar for whatever might occur with the current president is set even higher than it was for President Clinton, given that the president and the congressional majorities are of the same party.

You might not believe this, but I do not prefer an impeachment to occur. I do, though, want the unvarnished truth to be revealed about what the president thinks he can do with — and to — the exalted office he occupies.

If the truth is as ugly as some of us fear, then Congress should know how to repair the damage.

International news

Bipartisanship returns to Senate

corker and cardin

Take a look at this picture.

You see two U.S. senators — Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland — yukking it up after the Senate approved a measure to require senatorial review of the Iranian nuclear deal worked out by the Obama administration with the mullahs in Iran.

Why is this picture so noteworthy? It’s because the measure passed 98-1 in an overwhelmingly bipartisan manner.

It’s not often these days you see Democratic and Republican congressional leaders standing side by side in front of cameras to bask in something they’ve done together.

They did so this week.

Good for them.

What’s brought the smiles to both men? It’s a measure that says the Senate gets to sign off on a treaty that administration officials hope to finalize later this spring or perhaps in early summer. It calls for Iran to scale back dramatically its nuclear development program and its aim is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — which Israel says it intends to do and which no one this side of Tehran wants to occur.

It’s good that the Senate and the House will weigh in when the time comes.

According to RealClearPolitics.com, “The legislation gives Congress 30 days to review a deal once the full details are submitted to them. They then have the right to approve or disapprove of the deal, or do nothing, which would allow it to go forward. If they disapprove, President Obama can veto that measure, which would require 67 votes to override and actually halt an agreement, an unlikely outcome.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/07/senate_nearly_unanimous_in_backing_review_of_iran_deal_126524.html

The lone “no” vote came from upstart freshman Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the author of that letter that GOP senators sent to the Iranian mullahs threatening to void any treaty that President Obama signs.

Well, that’s Cotton’s view.

I prefer to hope that the Senate will deliberate this treaty carefully when it arrives on Capitol Hill.

I also prefer that it do so in the same bipartisan spirit it showed in approving the measure granting its authority to do so.

Now the House of Representatives will consider it. Follow the Senate lead, House members.

national news, political news

Lynch gets key GOP ally

Politics occasionally produces peculiar alliances that develop at key moments.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked Attorney General-designate Loretta Lynch’s confirmation vote over an unrelated bill dealing with human trafficking. Then the Senate approved the trafficking bill. What did McConnell do then? He rounded up enough votes to get Lynch confirmed.

McConnell whipped for Lynch, avoiding nuclear fallout

His work to end a filibuster that had stopped Lynch’s confirmation apparently has angered the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz and other members of the Senate’s TEA party caucus.

My reaction? Live with it.

This seeming reversal gets to a key element of McConnell’s leadership. He can be a fierce partisan when the opportunity presents itself, but he knows how the Senate is supposed to work and he knows how to deal with the “other side,” namely Democrats, when that opportunity presents itself.

Compromise, therefore, isn’t a bad thing when a failure to compromise gums up the legislative works — as it did while Loretta Lynch waited an interminable length of time to be confirmed as the nation’s next attorney general.

So, now let’s move on to the next congressional crisis.

 

legal news, national news, political news

Race enters Lynch debate over AG vote

I didn’t predict it would happen, but the debate over when to vote on the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general has taken an unsurprising turn.

The issue of race has entered this debate, as Lynch is the first African-American woman ever nominated to head the Justice Department.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/dick-durbin-loretta-lynch-back-of-bus-116180.html?hp=t1_r

The introduction was made by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who said the delays in voting on Lynch’s confirmation has forced the nominee to “sit at the back of the bus.” Durbin’s reference, of course, was to the great Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in the 1950s.

To my mind, the issue more about partisan politics than it is about race and Durbin should not have gone there during his Senate floor speech.

Durbin drew the expected criticism from Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Senate’s lone black Republican, who accused Durbin of being a race-baiter.

“It is helpful to have a long memory and to remember that Durbin voted against Condoleezza Rice during the 40th anniversary of the March [on Selma]. So I think, in context, it’s just offensive that we have folks who are willing to race bait on such an important issue as human trafficking,” Scott said. “Sometimes people use race as an issue that is hopefully going to motivate folks for their fight. But what it does, is it infuriates people.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is wrong to hold up the Lynch vote. She needs to be confirmed and the Justice Department needs to get refocused exclusively on its job, which is to enforce federal law.

I just wish we could have kept the race argument out of this so we can stick instead to the raw political gamesmanship that the GOP leadership is playing while delaying Lynch’s confirmation vote.

 

national news, political news

Cruz doesn't play well with GOP 'team'

You just have to love the way Sen. Ted Cruz is antagonizing his fellow Senate Republicans.

They want to finish a budget deal so they can go home for Christmas, finish their shopping, kick off their shoes and relax with their families.

What does the freshman lawmaker from Texas do? He launches a procedural move that keeps the Senate in session through the weekend because, by golly, he wants to undercut President Obama’s executive action on immigration.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/ted-cruz-does-it-again-113560.html?ml=po

His Republican pals, even some of his TEA party allies, are having none of it.

What gives with this showboating grandstander?

Oh, I forgot. He wants to run for president of the United States eventually and he might jump into the 2016 race. It’s all about Cruz. Forget that the government needs money to function, you know, do things like entertain visitors who visit our parks and do perform certain essential services that citizens demand.

As Politico reports, the GOP leadership is unhappy with this new guy: “Senior Republicans say there’s a problem with Cruz’s strategy: The GOP lacks the votes to stop Obama on immigration now, the $1.1 trillion spending package was speeding to passage, and they won’t resort to shutting down the government to mount their objections. Plus, the weekend session could allow Obama to get even more of his nominees confirmed.”

According to Politico, some Republican senators are openly angry with the Cruz Missile. Even fellow TEA party advocate, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., is ticked off. So is Susan Collins, R-Maine. Oh, and how about the incoming Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.?

Suffice to say that McConnell is likely to have a few four-letter words with the young Lone Star blowhard.

Keep yammering, Ted. Some of your fellow Texans — such as me — are enjoying this sideshow.

 

national news, political news

Congress makes sausage-making look appealing

Watching the U.S. Congress stumble and bumble its way through legislating a budget makes the act of sausage-making look downright attractive.

The old saying about how legislating resembles sausage-making seems somehow kind of quaint. Turning a poor little piggy into something edible now doesn’t seem so grotesque.

Congress avoided yet another government shutdown on Friday. The House of Representatives approved a $1.1 trillion spending package over the objections of the TEA party wing of the Republicans and the leftist/progressive wing of the Democrats.

As President Obama noted, the legislation represents a classic “compromise.” You remember that, right? That’s when both sides give up something for the greater good. In this case the greater good amounted to keeping the government functioning.

Now the Senate is going to convene a weekend session and will begin to resolve its own differences. Meanwhile, senators are supposed to start processing some of the dozens of presidential appointments that have been languishing since the Beginning of Time.

That won’t come easily, though. The TEA party senators want to punish the president for that immigration executive action and want to defund it legislatively. Democrats, who for now still own the majority, won’t have any of that.

I totally understand that a representative democracy by definition is supposed to be messy and inefficient.

But this is taking messiness and inefficiency to new levels.

Isn’t there a better, less-heartburn-producing method of doing something so essential as approving a budget that keeps the government working for those who are paying for it?

 

 

national news, political news

Pick an AG successor quickly, Mr. President

Here’s a tidbit that will surprise no one.

Senate Republicans are insisting that President Obama delay nominating a successor to Attorney General Eric Holder until after the new Congress takes office in January.

Imagine that.

You see, Republicans smell victory in the mid-term elections. They believe they’ll comprise a Senate majority when the new Congress convenes. That makes it theoretically more problematic for the president to get a nominee confirmed. That’s how it goes these days: Democrats and Republicans look to stick it to each other, no matter what.

It also forces the president to select someone who is, um, less controversial. With Republicans holding the Senate majority, Obama will have to find a safer choice for AG than he otherwise might select.

We’ll see probably in fairly short order what the president is thinking about when to make a nomination announcement. Does he follow the advice of Republicans or does he move quickly while Democrats still run the Senate, which has to confirm whoever is nominated to be attorney general?

If this mid-term election is going to be decided in a Battle of the Political Bases — Progressives vs. Conservatives — then my guess is that the president will move sooner rather than later.

So … why not go for someone who will be as courageous and out-front on issues — such as voting rights — as Eric Holder has been?

national news, political news, State news

Sen. Cruz denies the obvious

Someone will have to pass the smelling salts to me. I must have been in a stupor the past year or so.

Either that or U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is utterly delusional.

I’ll go with the latter for now.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/09/cruz-denies-playing-role-in-congressional-gridlock/

Cruz is a Texas Republican who has denied playing a role in shutting the government down over a fight about the Affordable Care Act. He said at Texas Tribune Fest that the “blame” belongs to President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Cruz’s role in that debacle? He says he didn’t have any role to play.

Huh? Cruz’s Republican colleague in the Senate, fellow Texan John Cornyn, said otherwise.

So has every observer of Capitol Hill — Democrat, Republican, independent, media observers — said that Cruz was a key player in the shutdown.

He filibustered against the ACA trying to repeal it. Didn’t he do that?

Of course, Cruz blamed the media — which he said sides with Democrats — for the characterizations attached to the junior senator. According to a blog posted by the San Antonio Express-News: “Remarking that Republicans are usually criticized as either crazy or evil, Cruz said he took it as ‘somewhat of a back-handed compliment that the press has invented a third caricature of me, which is crazy.’”

Well, he’s not crazy. Almost everything he’s done publicly since joining the Senate in January 2013, though, reveals a burning ambition. He’s been out front on high-profile issues almost from Day One of his still-young Senate tenure. He ignores Senate decorum. He’s drawn the ire of fellow Republicans as well as Democrats.

Now he says he had nothing to do with the government shutdown.

The young man possesses some serious hubris.

Uncategorized

Go for it, Mr. President

Congress had a chance to act on the border crisis in Texas and other states bordering Mexico.

It didn’t.

Now it appears President Obama is going — get ready for it — to take executive action to at least put an immediate, if temporary, fix on the crisis.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/08/texas-businessmen-obama-executive-action-on-immigration-appears-imminent/

Holy cow! Will the Congress sue him over that one, too?

I rather doubt it. Indeed, the speaker of the House of Representatives — which did pass a version of a bill to deal with the problem — has invited the president to use his power to act.

He surely should, given that Congress choked on the issue.

I’m no longer going to refer to this as an “immigration” crisis. It clearly is a “refugee” matter, given that the young people who have flooded to the country are fleeing repression, corruption, enslavement, even death. Those individuals are refugees by anyone’s definition.

They should be treated as refugees, not criminals, which is how many in Congress and around the country continue to view them.

What’s the president going to do — reportedly — to solve this issue by himself?

Obama met with some Texas business executives to discuss the problem, according to the San Antonio Express-News. They indicate that the president is looking at all legal options available to him. “The businessmen said they voiced their support for expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which pushes back deportations of young immigrants who aren’t legally in the country,” the Express-News reported on its blog.

So, does the president take action where the legislative branch has failed so far? Absolutely. Will the House of Reps take issue on this action, should it come, by adding it to its list of gripes against the president?

Pardon me while I laugh.

Uncategorized

Congress quits on border crisis

1 Comment

This is just about perfect.

Congress yaps at President Obama to do something about the refugee crisis on our southern border. The president responds with a hefty emergency spending request. Congress then says it’s too much. Then both chambers fight among themselves. The House of Representatives approves a much smaller plan, while the Senate croaks.

Then the Congress goes home for the rest of the summer.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/house-gop-pass-border-bill-109662.html?hp=t1

OK, so what’s Barack Obama going to do now? Will he — heaven forbid! — invoke some executive authority to get something done?

This is an utterly ridiculous state of affairs.

The border is choked with refugees, mostly youngsters, fleeing repression in Central America. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called out the National Guard. For what purpose remains a mystery, given that the guardsmen cannot arrest anyone. Members of Congress, chiefly Republicans, accuse the president of allowing the crisis to build. They demand action. Then the president acts and Congress fails to follow through.

Now they’re heading home, or perhaps on some “factfinding” junkets to exotic locations. They’ll schmooze with supporters at faux “town hall meetings,” hearing from the home folks about what a rotten job the president is doing. Or if they represent voters who support the president, they’ll get a snootful about what a rotten bunch the Republicans have become.

Meanwhile, that so-called crisis our border goes unattended.

This isn’t how representative democracy is supposed to work.