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George F. Will: Stopping a lawless president
Washington Post ^ | June 20, 2014 | George Will

Posted on 06/21/2014 6:13:59 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in the United States than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity and qualitatively different.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: boehner; davidrivkin; elizpricefoley; executivebranch; georgewill; gowdy; judiciary; legislature; obama; obamalawless; separationofpower
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To: butterdezillion
We have a lawless Senate. What can the House do about that?

Reduce or eliminate the Federal appropriations for their offices and staff.

61 posted on 06/21/2014 7:40:44 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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To: Bratch

Can Supreme Court justices be impeached, or is the only check on them the appointment process? Can a SCOTUS justice be arrested for criminal acts?


62 posted on 06/21/2014 7:47:25 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: GreenHornet

I’m afraid that any serious Congressional move to impeach Obama or remove a key underling like Holder will result in Obama arresting or closing down Congress. Obama, after all, has all the departments and agencies with guns and men trained to use them: all Congress has is microphones (that can be turned off), and a bunch of impotent staffers

And I think Congress knows - if they know history - that this is how it would come down if they tried decisive action, and that is one reason they are afraid to try. They know the outcome with men who are tyrants at heart, and the know the outcome of the opposition in Chicago politics.


63 posted on 06/21/2014 7:52:09 AM PDT by dagogo redux (A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)
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To: Alberta's Child

The trouble is that the board of directors has 2 separate parts, and the part that would raise the question of firing the CEO has to let the other part actually do the firing - and that part is controlled by schmucks whose campaign coffers were filled by the CEO’s schmoozing.

And there are other problems too. Some shareholders try to oust their Board of Directors as well as the CEO but fake shareholders are brought in by the boxfuls to negate what the real shareholders are trying to do...


64 posted on 06/21/2014 7:58:44 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: Graybeard58
Impeach the lawless bastard. We can put up with a president Biden for a few years.

The pee will hit the fan if Obama is impeached. He's so weak and failed that he'll do more election damage to the left if he stays in office anyway.

65 posted on 06/21/2014 8:00:53 AM PDT by alrea
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To: Alberta's Child

But the lawless Senate has to approve all appropriations bills in order for them to go into effect.


66 posted on 06/21/2014 8:03:20 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: Alberta's Child; St_Thomas_Aquinas; Eddie01

Return to a senate of the states. No future election or judicial decision can remedy a hundred year old contradiction; we have a federal constitution without a federal government. The government acts on the states, yet the states are not represented. It contradicts a concept fundamental to republics, consent of the governed.

Until it is in the aggregate interest of congress to stand up to tyranny, tyranny will prosper.


67 posted on 06/21/2014 8:04:19 AM PDT by Jacquerie (To restore the 10th Amendment, repeal the 17th. Article V.)
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To: butterdezillion

All good point, but they’re also all good reasons why a lawsuit ain’t going to solve a damn thing for this corporation and this CEO.


68 posted on 06/21/2014 8:07:20 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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To: butterdezillion

Then the appropriations bills don’t get approved and Washington shuts down completely. What’s the downside of that?


69 posted on 06/21/2014 8:07:52 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; All

“...makes the argument in favor of the House authorizing a law suit against the executive branch instead of impeachment.”

#############

Whew, man are we lucky or what...If this ever passes into law, never will there be another Chief Executive, nor appointee (judicial) EVER fear being impeached, ever again...

Damn, lets fast track this through!!! Call D.C.!!! Let them know about this!!!

/sarc (big time)


70 posted on 06/21/2014 8:08:18 AM PDT by stevie_d_64 (Will work for a new Kidney...)
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To: dagogo redux

But would Obama dare to do that before the American populace has been disarmed?

When push comes to shove, the ability to take over a country depends on whether the country (meaning its people) are willing and able to fight back. Is Obama ready to go there?

I don’t think he’d arrest Congress. I think he’d blow up an EMP. If he could get the US military to go along with it... He might have to do it through Iran or North Korea...

The only way out of that is to have Obama arrested as a foreign enemy combatant before he can actually blow up the country he’s taken hostage.

Any patriotic Secret Service folks? Who could actually do that?


71 posted on 06/21/2014 8:09:17 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: Alberta's Child

Then the 60 million dollar question remains: What WILL solve this lawless mess?


72 posted on 06/21/2014 8:12:05 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: Mercat

Cut off the funding for the salaries of his Czars for starters and then cut the funding drastically for IRS and EPA.


73 posted on 06/21/2014 8:12:35 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose o f a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

If the roles were reversed and a republican president circumvented the Constitution and ‘failed’ to notify congress as often as Great Leader, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the democrats would know what to do and that they would do it.


74 posted on 06/21/2014 8:13:09 AM PDT by AD from SpringBay (http://jonah2eight.blogspot.com/)
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To: Alberta's Child

The downside is that the executive will make sure that my parents don’t get a social security check, veterans get no healthcare, and deployed soldiers get no pay and no way to get back home to their families.

This has happened before. As long as Obama can do whatever lawless crap he wants, he can punish the vulnerable. He’s literally got the nation taken hostage.


75 posted on 06/21/2014 8:15:08 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: butterdezillion

A study of the history of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany might offer some insight into that question. Going back further in time, the fall of the Roman Empire is a good case study as well.


76 posted on 06/21/2014 8:15:10 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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To: AD from SpringBay

What would they do, with the House controlled by R’s?


77 posted on 06/21/2014 8:16:32 AM PDT by butterdezillion (Note to self : put this between arrow keys: img src=""/)
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To: butterdezillion
The downside is that the executive will make sure that my parents don’t get a social security check, veterans get no healthcare, and deployed soldiers get no pay and no way to get back home to their families.

That's the price to be paid for anyone who puts their delusional faith in a Federal government that has no legal or moral right to exist as it does right now.

You'll note that this country was much more true to its founding principles when there were no Social Security checks, no "healthcare for veterans," and no major military campaigns in Third World sh!t-holes for decades at a time.

78 posted on 06/21/2014 8:17:17 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The only way we will stop this lawless president is to get him out of office. Sadly, I could see that it might take treason charges or a military coup to do this. I fear we might not be rid of Obama in 2016.


79 posted on 06/21/2014 8:19:00 AM PDT by The Great RJ
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; EDINVA; ExTexasRedhead; Nachum; Jim Robinson; Syncro; kristinn; icwhatudo; ...
This proposal by George Will -- how to enact a Congressional solution to the out-of-control executive order-writing other than impeachment -- is written in a turgid style, difficult for the average citizen reader to understand. But he explains the legal reasons why any other course of action has been so difficult to mount thus far; and offers a ray of hope about what could be done to stop the bleeding.

As we saw with Clinton, who hadn't the shame to step down, the impeachment process turned out to be an impotent waste of money that left the Liar-in-Chief in office, yet freed the media to confuse voters with lascivious reports of the side issues. Could we reasonably expect today's POTUS to step down after impeachment? We would first have had to replace the entire DOJ and Federal judiciary with Republican JAG veterans over the age of 50. In other words, no way.

80 posted on 06/21/2014 8:20:05 AM PDT by Albion Wilde ("The commenters are plenty but the thinkers are few." -- Walid Shoebat)
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