Sunday, July 05, 2009
Obama Set To Usurp The United States Senate's Constitutional Powers
From ABC:
With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive level and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.
Yeah, well, what happens when the Senate doesn't want to ratfiy your treaty, Opey?
The Anchoress explains Obama's latest attack on the Constitution.
Whoa…isn’t this the president who gave George W. Bush SUCH a hard time about Presidential Signing Statements, before he fell in love with them? Now, suddenly, it’s – hey, I’m Barack Obama, and I won; I don’t have to follow the constitution! I don’t even need that Senate!
President Clinton once said, “flick of the wrist, law of the land; pretty cool.” But even he understood that, umm…as Glenn says, if you bypass the Senate, it’s not a treaty.
Wishing not to oversnark, Glenn writes:
A President can, of course, abide by a treaty even if it’s not ratified, so long as he’s not asserting any binding effect on parties not under his supervision, which is likely the case here. Still, it’s of a piece with the “it’s a rush, we don’t have time for the formalities” approach that this Administration has favored.
Emphasis mine, because it is so true: everything Obama does is hasty, rushed and performed under a big, flashing red sign that screams, “emergency; no time to discuss, no time to read, no time for bothersome procedure…just do what I want, and trust me, we’ll be fine…three minutes to critical mass…”
I can only imagine the guttural sounds of outrage that would be coming from the press and the left if Dubya had tried this.
