branch of government

The AP has put out a fact check of President Obama’s claim last night that everything in his jobs program is paid for:

resident Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.

It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future - the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals - don't roll it back.

Apparently the Constitution has changed since President Obama took office. I thought that every program laid out by every President since the start of our country was dependent upon a Congress that the President doesn’t control? As matter of fact the Constitution says that and has since day one. Congress is a separate and independent branch of Government. Of course there are times when the President’s party controls both chambers, but that still doesn’t mean the President controls the Congress. That was obvious in 2009-2010, when Republicans launched a record number of filibusters against the democratically controlled Senate.

But even if it isn’t paid for, so what? The trillions of dollars the Bush tax cuts have cost us wasn’t paid for either, yet Republicans still passed them and keep them alive. Where was all the complaining that these had to be paid for? Hell – they are one of the biggest contributors to the national debt.

Writing in an op-ed in today’s Mooney Times, Jeffery Kuhner floats the idea of impeaching President Obama if health care reform passes. His argument is the same old strawman we have been hearing all week – the “deem and pass” of the House of Representative:

Many Democrats could claim they opposed the Senate bill while allowing it to pass. This would be an unprecedented violation of our democratic norms and procedures, established since the inception of the republic. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution stipulates that for any bill to become a law, it must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate. That is, not be "deemed" to have passed, but actually be voted on with the support of the required majority. The bill must contain the exact same language in both chambers - and in the version signed by the president - to be a legitimate law. This is why the House and Senate have a conference committee to iron out differences of competing versions. This is Civics 101.

Between 2005 and 2006 the Republican controlled House used this same parliamentary procedure 35 times. Did we call for the impeachment of President Bush because of it? Of course not. Of course Republicans are arguing that “it has never been used for legislation of this magnitude”. I have read the Constitution countless times and for the life of me I can’t find the language that says procedures are different depending upon the size or scope of the legislation.

I’m sure the right is outraged over Supreme Court Justice David Souter announcing his retirement only a few months into a Democratic administration. They probably view it as the final deception by the George H.W. Bush choice who turned out to be more to the left than right. Now we get the media frenzy over “who will Obama pick”.

This pick should be really interesting to watch, as I am sure President Obama will be much more hands on than previous Presidents. First off we have a President who is educated in Constitutional law, so his pick will be based largely upon a legal belief in the Constitution instead of an ideological one. Think back to George Bush and when the person he thought was the best legal mind in the country happened to be Harriet Miers. Not only did the left laugh her nomination out, but the right did also. It was an ideological pick, trying to turn the Supreme Court into an arm of the GOP.

So we got a President now who accepts the court as a third and equal branch of government and will respect that. President Obama’s pick will be an interesting one to watch and not a joke like George Bush.

This is from a press release that went out this afternoon from The Heritage Forests Campaign:

The Bush administration today released documents announcing its intention to remove protections for more than six million acres of roadless areas in the national forests of Idaho. Idaho’s roadless backcountry areas are some of the nation’s last intact national forests and this proposal would open the door to their development by corporate special interests.

[SNIP]

“Last year, a federal judge struck down the Bush administration's attempt to remove protections for our nation’s wild forests. Today, 50 million acres of roadless national forests, in all states except Alaska, are protected from road construction and logging. Now, under the cover of the hectic holiday season, the administration is trying to open the door to new development in the roadless backcountry of Idaho’s national forests.

It looks like Pat Roberts has made somewhat a change in how he feels the
wiretapping program should operate:

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that he
wanted the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program brought
under the authority of a special intelligence court, a move President Bush
has argued is not necessary.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some
concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up
with the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to
see those details worked out.

Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from
the purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act "would be met with much support" on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly
the approach the Bush administration is pursuing.

Article continues

here.

I guess Bush was praising a deal with Senate a little too early. Roberts is
right though, a court must oversee the decisions to wiretap. I thought we had a
court that did this though - the FISA court. I guess in the mind of "small
government" conservatives, another court won't hurt anything.