Posted on 01/11/2013 1:17:50 PM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- I have one question about the way Majority Leader Harry Reid has been conducting the Senate. Has he committed a felony or a mere misdemeanor?
The wags will say that a politician from Nevada does not commit misdemeanors, but I am in earnest. The difference between whether Dingy Harry -- as he is known by the eminent political scientist Dr. Rush Limbaugh -- shuffles off to a federal prison or merely pays a hefty fine is significant. I suppose we can leave it to the federal prosecutors to decide, but if he gets off on a misdemeanor I urge it also entail mandatory budget counseling. No one would be surprised to hear of Harry being sentenced to a stint at anger management counseling. Why not mandatory budget counseling too?
Majority Leader Harry's transgression is that for over 1300 days, he has failed to pass a budget. In fact, there is no evidence he has even tried. This is against the law. Federal law clearly requires the Congress to pass a budget every year. I presume the reasoning behind this is that the American people deserve to know where their taxes are going. Putting it another way, why are the American people being mulcted every year by the Internal Revenue Service to pay for Harry and his gang's criminal activities? What are their activities? Are they buying votes with public moneys? Are they favoring friends with subsidies and other extensions of the people's treasure? What about lucre they have extended for "renewable energy," for automobiles no one wants, for every idiot enthusiasm of the so-called welfare state.
For over 1300 days, Harry has been operating his scam without a budget. The House of Representatives has passed budgets in accordance with the law. They have been designed by the law-abiding chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan. He has braved obloquy from Democrats and other ideologues for putting down on paper what he would spend federal money on and where the citizenry's taxes are going. Harry has not, and according to the law he ought to go to jail or be otherwise punished. Surely we do not make laws without punishments, do we?
Not all senators are complicit in Harry's intrigues. For instance, the affable Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is blameless and actually indignant with his colleagues, Harry in particular. Recently he told my colleague at the Washington Examiner Byron York, "I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent. If the government wants to borrow money so it can spend more, then the government ought to tell the Congress and the American people how they will spend it." York concludes, "One problem, of course, is that the law already requires Congress to pass a budget, and Reid has violated that." I say prosecute him. This is malfeasance on a vast scale.
Whether Harry goes to the can or accepts a lesser sentence -- such as my suggested mandatory course in budget management -- we are going to have to face up to these trillion dollar deficits that the government has been piling up since our smug president took over, Barack Obama. He envisages them for years to come, though obviously if those trillion-dollar deficits do come, life in the great Republic will be very different from what it has been. We have already raised taxes on his hellish two percent, now Republicans have got to insist that President Obama make good on the other half of his deal and cut spending. The way to cut the trillion-dollar deficit is now through budget cuts. The federal government spends too much. It spends money it does not have. In the coming debt-ceiling fight, Republicans, and the handful of sober Democrats out there, should offer suggestions on where the cuts should be.
I have just read a study by the increasingly mainstream Heritage Foundation, outlining $150 billion dollars of cuts in the budget. Patrick Louis Knudsen, the author of the study, points out that many of the cuts are perfectly doable, for they envision the federal government's desisting from undertaking what it should never have undertaken in the first place. Other cuts involve privatization, policy consolidation, eliminating ineffective programs and ending waste, fraud and abuse. For instance, Knudsen's plan calls for cutting $13.5 billion from the Department of Agriculture, $3.5 billion from Community Development, $15.1 billion from Health Care and $15.8 billion from the Department of Transportation. So it goes through every nook and cranny of the federal government, save the Department of Defense. Knudsen does not cut from the Pentagon because he feels that the military is an essential area of government involvement. Presumably he leaves it to the generals and admirals to decide what is essential for the security of the country.
The coming battle over the debt ceiling is the right time to demand our government get its fiscal house in order. If not now, when? As for Dingy Harry, possibly under the threat of prosecution he will smarten up. No one wants to see him go off to the calaboose.
You are obviously confused. You think that the word “law” is to supposed to apply to people who have been elected.
To answer the question, one would have to find the statute that states a penalty for not following a constitutional mandate.
It is difficult to lose an election when your son controls the voting machines.
New Illinois Legislature Includes 3 Members Facing Criminal Charges
And these 3 doesn't include JJJR.
Makes perfect sense to me. It's is just like me telling my oldest son I would not pay for him to go to the University of Alabama until he knew what his major would be. In the mean time, he could attend the local community college. My Senator Sessions is one of the few good guys left.
A crime? Doesn't really matter.
Section 6
... and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
The Constitution says the courts have no say...
The stoop-shouldered, Igor-like Hairy’s entire ‘career’ of sucking up at the goobermint trough has been much more than a misdemeanor: it’s been treasonous!
A pox on Nevada! and this piece of human debris they’ve elected and re-elected from the phony town of Searchlight, Nevada.
How do we know for sure that any of these Communist Aholes were ‘elected’ and didn’t elect themselves?
The Constitution says the courts have no say...
Not so; that prohibition against questioning applies to "speech or debate" in one of the Houses -- this certainly does not mean that they cannot (a) be called as witnesses for some act, or (b) cannot be tried for crimes committed.
“Has he committed a felony or a mere misdemeanor?”
.
What is a felony or misdemeanor among senatorial friends?
Will pass as my constitutional law understanding is suspect at best.
I will say if the courts can demand that Harry be held accountable for a political act (or non-act in this case) then Section 6 is meaningless.
(Note: stuffing $100,000 of bribe money into your freezer isn’t a political act.)
No, that is untrue -- the non-act regarding the budget is not political, it is legal: Congress is required by law to pass a budget.
A certain amount of the GDP could be earmarked for the monarchy and privy council portion of our nation. The rest of us would then have some idea of how much of our labors would go to pay-off the looters and monarchy lovers and how much we could keep for ourselves to grow the economy.
The dopes and redistributionists could then fight amongst themselves and their elected representatives on the privy council to divide up the spoils extracted from the productive part of the economy.
And those electing to vote for monarch and privy council would automatically be excluded from voting for president and congress. The media could then fawn on them and follow them around to their heart's content and the only two tools they would have to increase their share of GNP would be (a)% of vote to increase share and (b)allow the economy to grow to increase GNP.
Both the wagon riders and wagon pullers would be better off under such a scenario because (a)more people voting for monarch and privy council, while it would increase their share of GDP, it would also dilute their influence on constitutional government and (b)the wagon riders could at anytime opt to vote for constitutional leadership but by doing so, they would risk decreasing their share of GDP since it would be on a fixed scale greater share related to a greater % of the vote for monarch and privy council.
Somewhat not surprising.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.