Tag Archives: impeachment

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Columnist gets it right on immigration battle

Ruben Navarrette is far from being a flaming leftist Barack Obama sympathizer.

He’s a mainstream conservative journalist and commentator who in an essay posted on CNN.com has posited the notion that any talk of impeaching the president over an expected executive order would be a foolish overreach.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/16/opinion/navarrette-immigration-not-impeachable-offense/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

He is so correct. I wish I could shake his hand right now.

At issue is an expected order the president will issue that could do a number of things to improve the immigration system. He’s sought to do it legislatively, but his congressional foes won’t let it happen. They’ve bottled immigration reform up. Obama has warned them repeatedly that he’d take action and now he appears ready to do it.

I’ve noted already that I don’t want him to act just yet.

When he does, though, it’s likely to ignite a fiery response from the tea party wing of the Republicans who control the House and are about to take control in January of the Senate.

An executive order reportedly is going to do a number of things. It would boost border security. It would delay deportation of about 5 million illegal immigrants. It’s the deportation delay that has Republicans’ underwear all knotted up.

Navarrette’s main point is that none of this constitutes an “impeachable offense.”

The president would be acting solely within his authority granted by the U.S. Constitution, according to Navarrette.

The essayist notes: “Republicans have no trouble deflecting criticism by reminding Latino voters that Obama is in charge of deportations. So, instead of threatening the suicidal tantrums of a government shutdown or impeachment, conservatives should pipe down and let him be in charge of deportations. That doesn’t just mean deciding who goes but also who stays.”

Let’s can the impeachment rhetoric and get down to the business of governing, shall we?

 

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Reagan and Bush did it; why not Obama?

Republicans in Congress are getting loaded for bear if that Democratic rascal in the White House follows through with a threat to execute an order that delays deportation of some 5 million illegal immigrants.

What they’ll do precisely in response to a now-expected executive order remains unclear.

Maybe they should follow the congressional led set when two earlier presidents did precisely the same thing, using exactly the same constitutional device.

That would be: nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/15/reagan-bush-immigration-deportation_n_6164068.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

At issue is whether President Obama will use his executive authority to delay those deportations and, by the way, strengthen security along our southern border. Congress wants him to wait. So do I, for that matter. Congressional Republicans are threatening to hamstring confirmation hearings on the president’s pick to be attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Heck, they might even sue the president.

The most troublesome — and ridiculous — notion being field tested in the court of public opinion is impeachment.

Let’s look briefly at history.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did the same thing. One heard nary a peep out of Congress, let alone the Democrats who controlled the place at the time.

Congress enacted an immigration law in 1986, but in the following year, President Reagan gave immigration officials the power to cover the children of illegal immigrants who were granted amnesty under the law. As the Huffington Post reported: “Spouses and children of couples in which one parent qualified for amnesty but the other did not remained subject to deportation, leading to efforts to amend the 1986 law.”

Along came President Bush in 1989. The Huffington Post reports: “In a parallel to today, the Senate acted in 1989 to broaden legal status to families but the House never took up the bill. Through the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Bush advanced a new ‘family fairness’ policy that put in place the Senate measure. Congress passed the policy into law by the end of the year as part of broader immigration legislation. ‘It’s a striking parallel,’ said Mark Noferi of the pro-immigration American Immigration Council. ‘Bush Sr. went big at the time. He protected about 40 percent of the unauthorized population. Back then that was up to 1.5 million. Today that would be about 5 million.'”

What gives with the current crop of yahoos calling the shots on Capitol Hill?

Oh, I forgot. The tea party/nimrod wing of the GOP vows to shake things up and no longer do things the way they’ve been done in the past.

That must include allowing the president of the United States to actually lead.

 

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Impeachment for show only?

A thought occurs to me now that impeachment of the president has returned to the arena.

Just suppose the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is actually is so blindly stupid that it actually impeaches President Obama for exercising his constitutional right of executive authority and tinkers with immigration reform.

Now, let us now suppose that the Republican-run U.S. Senate gets articles of impeachment and puts the president on bleeping trial for it.

The next Senate is going to have a maximum of 54 GOP members, depending on the outcome of the runoff race in Louisiana set for December. It takes 67 votes to convict a president of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and remove him from office.

Does anyone in their right mind think Republicans are going to persuade 13 Democratic senators to engage in this ridiculous charade?

The thought then boils down to this: The impeachment talk, should it ever come to pass, is meant to put an asterisk next to Barack Obama’s name. The members of Congress who detest him and the policies that got him elected twice to the presidency simply want the word “impeached” next to his name. They want his obituary, when it is finally written, to contain the “I-word.” They want his presidency scarred for life with the notion that the House of Representatives trumped up a phony “crime” upon which to impeach the 44th president of the United States.

Well, the last time the GOP tried that — in 1998 against Bill Clinton — it fell flat on its face. President Clinton walked out of the White House in January 2001 with his standing intact and he has emerged as arguably the nation’s premier political leader.

That won’t matter to the current crop of congressional “leaders” who are insisting that Barack Obama keep his mitts off any executive orders regarding immigration.

House Speaker John Boehner declared not long ago that impeachment won’t happen while he’s the Man of the House. Yet his GOP caucus has been strengthened and made even more strident in the wake of the 2014 mid-term election.

We’ll get to see how much clout he can wield if the nimrod wing of his party starts getting a bit too feisty.

 

 

national news, political news

'I' word returns to Capitol Hill

So many pejorative terms to lay on this, so little time or space to count them all.

Let’s start with disgusting, revolting, sickening, reprehensible and colossally stupid.

That’s where I come down on this notion of impeaching President Obama for exercising his constitutional executive authority.

http://news.yahoo.com/could-obama-impeached-over-immigration-order-173840884.html

The impeachment babble has begun boiling again on Capitol Hill. Some Democratic lawmakers say it’s possible, which is no surprise. What is a surprise is that now a Republican or three is talking openly about impeaching the president if he goes ahead with plans to issue an executive order that delays deportation of some 5 million undocumented immigrants.

On what basis would they impeach Barack Obama? They think he’s overreaching.

I’ve looked up the impeachment provision in the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 says the president or vice president can be removed from office if they are convicted of “Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

I’ve yet to know what “high crime or misdemeanor” the president would commit if he is acting in accordance with his legal and constitutional authority.

And, gosh, do you think the president’s legal team is going to turn him loose without first understanding what he can or cannot do? I doubt it.

Yet the “I” word has returned to the debate if the president acts.

For the record, I hope he doesn’t execute those orders during the duck session of Congress. I want him to wait for the new Congress to take its seat. I want him to push forward the legislation he favors, demand quick action on it after thorough debate and then let Congress vote it up or down.

If it goes down, or if he gets a bill he cannot sign, then the president can take the action he deems necessary.

This impeachment talk — in the simplest term possible — is pure crap.

 

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As for impeachment …

Now that so many pundits and politicians are talking about impeachment these days in Washington, D.C., I believe I’ll share an important date that’s about to pass.

On Aug. 9, many Americans will commemorate — some will cheer it, others will mourn it — the resignation of the 37th president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.

You see, Nixon resigned because he was certain to be impeached for some serious “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment; the full House was certain to ratify them; the Senate then seemed certain to convict the president.

It then fell to at least one key friend of the president, Sen. Barry Goldwater, to give him the straight scoop: You don’t have enough support in the Senate to save you from conviction, Mr. President.

He quit on Aug. 9, 1974 and saved the nation the trauma of a certain conviction.

What did he do — allegedly? Well, he ordered the FBI to stonewall efforts to find the truth about who was responsible for the burglary of the Democratic National HQ office at the Watergate office complex.

That’s the real deal, folks. That’s the kind of behavior that gets presidents impeached.

The talk today? Well, it’s not even clear what in the world critics of the 44th president, Barack Obama, have in mind. They keep yammering about overuse of executive authority, even though this president has used it far less than his predecessors over the past century.

If this ridiculous discussion continues in the months to come, let’s keep in mind what happened four decades ago. A president abused his power in a serious way and had the good sense to quit his office before the U.S. Senate ran him out of town.

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Surprise! House votes to sue Obama

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Well, that vote took not a single political observer by surprise.

The U.S. House of Representatives, in a party-line vote, has decided to sue President Obama because he has assumed too much executive authority to suit their tastes.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/213859-house-votes-to-sue-obama

Who knew?

The vote was 225-201. Five Republican House members voted against the lawsuit idea; zero Democrats voted for it.

Now what?

Well, the House is going to file a lawsuit on the grounds that the president abused his executive authority by postponing the employer mandate requirement in the Affordable Care Act. House Speaker John Boehner says Obama “changed the law” when he did that, and that he overstepped his authority in going over Congress’s head.

This might be the most bizarre political stunt since independent counsel Ken Starr uncovered Bill Clinton’s foolishness with the White House intern — giving Republicans enough ammo to impeach the 42nd president of the United States.

Boehner hopes to prove that Congress has standing to sue the president. He’ll probably get it. Then he’ll have to prove that Obama somehow broke the law in exerting his authority as president, or that he’s liable for damages created by his action — which, incidentally, is what Republicans who hate the ACA actually favor.

This is goofy beyond belief.

Interestingly, the five GOP “no” votes came mostly from the nut-case wing of the Republican House caucus. These are the folks who would rather impeach the president rather than merely sue him.

You know, I’m kind of glad Congress is getting the hell out of Washington for the next five weeks. It’s obvious the gasbags who run the House of Reps aren’t interested in actual governing.

Go home, y’all.

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Impeachment tops Democrats' agenda

Politics has this curious way of creating story lines one wouldn’t normally expect.

It now appears that Democrats, not Republicans, want to discuss openly this notion of impeaching President Barack Obama, according to The Hill newspaper.

Dems can’t stop talking about impeaching President Obama

Why is that? Because Democrats are hoping to gin up interest among their base of supporters prior to the 2014 mid-term elections for Congress. Democrats want to retain control of the U.S. Senate and want to prevent further tightening of Republican control of the House.

They figure that by talking about the lunacy of impeaching the president that Republicans will be seen as the party more intent on destroying a presidency than in actual governing.

Good luck with that, Democrats.

Serious Republicans know the country has no appetite for an impeachment. They also know they have no actual grounds to do any such thing. Yes, we hear from nut cases within the Republican Party — with former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leading the chorus — who want to impeach the president. Speaker John Boehner says it won’t happen; I’ll stick with the speaker of the House on that one.

Will this impeachment talk stir the Democratic voter masses enough to stem the GOP tide this November? Time will tell. If it doesn’t and the GOP captures control of the Senate, well, then we’ll see if Republicans actually can govern.

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Impeachment talk is driving me insane

For the ever-loving life of me I cannot fathom how on God’s Earth Republicans around the country think Congress should impeach the president of the United States.

A new poll from CNN-ORC says two-thirds of Americans oppose the notion of impeaching President Obama. Yet the nutcases on the far right keep fueling this idiocy by suggesting the president has committed some specified impeachable offense.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/213323-majority-opposes-impeachment-calls-and-lawsuit-poll-finds

House Speaker John Boehner says impeachment is a non-starter. Other key Republicans say they oppose it, too. One of them, most interestingly, is former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who got himself entangled in an earlier impeachment effort against President Clinton. It didn’t work out too well for Gingrich and his House GOP brethren. The House impeached the president, but the Senate acquitted him on all the charges. Gingrich, meanwhile, resigned hi speakership and then left the House because of his own shabby personal behavior and because he lost the confidence of his House colleagues.

The pro-impeachment cabal has even less on Obama than the goons on the right had on Clinton. With Clinton, at least they could say the president lied under oath to a federal grand jury about his fling with that young woman who worked in the White House. Perjury is a felony.

President Obama’s alleged misdeed? He’s using the power granted him by the Constitution to invoke executive authority? What else is there?

Republicans are playing with some serious fire if they keep up this nonsense.

Can’t we get back to the business of governing, for crying out loud?

The mid-term elections might give Republicans control of the Senate — but it’s not nearly a sure thing. They’ll likely retain control of the House. If Capitol Hill goes fully Republican, then the GOP will have to settle into the role of co-equal partners in the process of running the richest, most powerful country on Earth.

Impeachment rhetoric from the GOP peanut gallery is an utterly ridiculous exercise.

It is irresponsible and reprehensible in the extreme.

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Gosh, I now am asking my own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry: What say you, Mac, about this idea of impeaching the president? Please tell me you haven’t swilled the GOP goofball Kool-Aid.

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You go, ex-VP Cheney

Say what you will about Dick Cheney — and I’ve said more than my share in recent months — he’s a serious politician with serious ideas.

OK, so I cannot stand the former vice president’s constant carping about the administration that succeeded the one in which he was a key player. I cannot stomach that he cannot keep his trap shut about foreign policy issues, as he is undermining President Obama and Vice President Biden.

But this serious man said a serious thing about impeaching the president.

He calls such talk a “distraction.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/dick-cheney-sarah-palin-impeachment-distraction-108944.html?hp=r4

Cheney was referring specifically to an unserious politician’s talk about impeachment. That would be the former half-term Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who’s weighed in with some notion that the president needs to be impeached. She hasn’t specified the high crimes and misdemeanors of which he is supposedly guilty.

It doesn’t matter, frankly. There aren’t any misdeeds that rise to anything close to an impeachable offense.

Still, Cheney is right to call down his GOP colleague — if only gently. He said he likes the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. Cheney says she has a right to her opinion, which of course is quite correct. It’s just that she’s wrong on almost everything that flies out of her mouth.

For that matter, so is Cheney.

On this issue, though, he is right … to the extent he has spoken out at all about impeaching Barack Obama.

Cheney told CNN: “I’m not prepared, at this point, to call for the impeachment of the president. I think he is the worst president of my lifetime. I fundamentally disagree with him. I think he’s doing a lot of things wrong. I’m glad to see House Republicans are challenging him, at least legally, at this point, but I think that gets to be a bit of a distraction just like the impeachment of Bill Clinton did.”

He’s not going to give President Obama any kind of a break, to be sure. That’s expected.

Still, he’s trying to quell the nut-case talk among those on the right wing of his once-great political party. I’ll give him a modicum of credit for that.

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Surprise! Most GOPers favor impeachment

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A part of me is glad the talk of impeaching President Obama keeps percolating.

It serves to remind much of the country that today’s Republican Party is being dominated by nutty zealots who would impeach the president for passing gas in a public elevator if they thought they could get away with it.

Poll: 35 percent say impeachment justified

A new poll shows that 68 percent of Americans who call themselves Republicans believe Obama has done something merit impeachment by the House of Representatives. The poll, sponsored by YouGov and the Huffington Post, reports that 8 percent of Democrats think it’s a bad idea.

Wow. I’m shocked, shocked!

Reasonable Republicans — and there remain some of them in high public office — think otherwise about impeachment. House Speaker John Boehner says it won’t happen. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia says the president hasn’t committed the type of crime that merits impeachment.

That hasn’t stopped the likes of former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah “Barracuda” Palin from weighing in with impeachment talk.

I rather like Attorney General Eric Holder’s response to Palin’s recent demand for an impeachment. He quipped that the former Alaska governor “wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate.” Holder said Palin was “an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.”

I figure that as long as the media keep reporting this impeachment nonsense, the better it is for those who oppose the idea of proceeding with such idiocy. It exposes the modern GOP as a party dominated by fruitcakes who, absent any constructive agenda for governing, are left to talk openly about an issue intended solely to stoke its fire-breathing base.