Posted on 05/08/2007 7:07:38 PM PDT by Jean S
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.
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.”
It is a scenario for which few lawmakers have planned. Indicating that he may consider attaching a signing statement to a future supplemental spending measure, Bush last week wrote in his veto message, “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.”
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.
Democrats floated other ideas during yesterday’s weekly caucus meeting. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) suggested that the House consider a measure to rescind the 2002 authorization for the war in Iraq. Several senators and Democratic presidential candidates recently have proposed that idea.
“There was a ripple around the room” in support of the idea, said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
In the 1970s, congressional Democrats tried to get the courts to force President Nixon to stop bombing in Cambodia. The courts ruled that dissident lawmakers could not sue solely to obtain outcomes they could not secure in Congress.
In order to hear an argument, a federal court would have to grant what is known as “standing,” meaning that lawmakers would have to show that Bush is willfully ignoring a bill Congress passed and that he signed into law.
The House would have to demonstrate what is called “injury in fact.” A court might accept the case if “it is clear that the legislature has exhausted its ability to do anything more,” a former general counsel to the House of Representatives, Stanley Brand, said.
Lawmakers have tried to sue presidents in the past for taking what they consider to be illegal military action, but courts have rejected such suits.
A law professor at Georgetown Law Center, Nicholas Rosenkranz, said Bush is likely to express his view on the constitutionality of the next supplemental in writing. Whether Bush has leeway to treat any provision of the supplemental as advisory, however, depends on the wording Congress chooses, Rosenkranz added.
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.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced legislation to that end last year, but the idea of a lawsuit has yet to gain traction in Congress.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said that “the odds would be good” for a signing statement on the next supplemental, considering that Bush has in the past shown a predilection for excusing his administration from contentious bills. But Levin did not offer any clues as to how Democratic leaders would counter Bush.
The Dems do not have the majority necessary for an overide of a veto, and need to stop acting as if they do.Perhaps the think they can turn enough Republicans in the House and Senate to overide on one of their despicable bills.
I think they are finding that not enouugh Pubbies will turn, because those who did would be pilloried as traitors to the cause, and traitors to our troops in foreign lands.
President Bush is moarlly right in his resolve, and he is strategically correct. The Dems simly wish to prevent a sucess in Iraq, which they know to be NOW developing, which has hastened their game, and added a sense of desperation to it, of threatening a court action and impeachment proceeedings.
Them Dems face an unblinking President, and will continue hopefully to face an unblinking Republican party.
Where will the President get funding for Iraq? I believe he will start emergency closing down of those programs which Dems value the most, such as NPR and others.
The Jones suit pertained to an action that occurred BEFORE Slick became President. A standing President cannot be sued for actions taken while President.
I agree 100%. That’s why the Clintons went out of their way to load the courts. They couldn’t get what they wanted from the voters (who have become smarter and smarter), so they went to the courts to get the laws established which could never be passed in legislation, or worse yet, agreed to by the voters.
In fact, Clinton so loaded the D.C. courts that the Bush admin could not get a case before any of the Circuit courts. By the time they got to a court (one of Bush’s appointments), 4-5 years had gone by and nobody wanted to mess with it .. because nobody wanted to have Clinton’s face all over the front pages day after day after day.
This is why the dems are so over-the-top about the Supreme Court.
Really .. are you saying San Fran is going to have a problem ..??
Check your mail..
Ex Post Facto anyone?
“...you can’t sue a standing President.”
Can you sue him if he is sitting?
Well you can’t sue a standing President for acts he did as President but you can for acts he may have done before he became President, as Clinton found out with Paula Jones. At least I believe that is the case.
Pure idiocy. How about suing UBL? They’d rather do that than spend another cent on the WOT.
—George Soros—
How about suing this anti-American b@#t@rd? He’s got much deeper pockets.
interesting. Is Nancy Pelosi now the president?
Don’t worry. Our Republican congressmen and senators will resolutely defend against such a Dem Party tactic.
We can count on the Repubs to be united and steadfast in standing up to the bullying tactics of the Dems.
Right? Right? Do I hear an “amen”?
Crickets chirping.
She is a person that Cant Understand Normal Thinking.....
LOL! That is one of the nicest pictures of Cindy Sheehan I think I have ever seen! ;-)
SUE? Apparently she did not pay attention in her civics class and know that the President can veto any law he sees fit. It is called checks and balances.
I agree but they dont care they see GW as the man who stole the election from Gore. They do not give a damn about this country.
I like GW about as well as the next guy on FR, but I’ve also been a crew chief on supersonic fighter jets. All I have to say is “Don’t bet on it.” Get a bachelor’s degree in tree science, and you once qualified to be a fighter pilot, as long as you had 20/20 vision, good reflexes, and a pulse.
Why didn’t Bush declare war, instead of creating the situation we face now with Pelosi pulling such stunt?
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