In fact, I could see where Obama's EOs and vetos could be over-ridden by a Congress that sees the need to bring back the checks and balances established in our Constitution...which our faux-Constitutional scholar Emperor has done his best to diminish and make irrelevant.
A little long, but worth reading:
The First Rule of Amnesty Fight Club
Don’t make this a battle between Congress and the president. Make it a battle within Congress. Robert Tracinski By Robert Tracinski November 19, 2014 Email Print Follow Us on Twitter Like Us on Facebook Hangout with us
The latest reports say that President Obama is planning to spring his executive amnesty plan on the nation as early as this week, halting deportations and giving a kind of pretended legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.
President Obama says he’s doing this because Republicans in Congress have refused to act on immigration reform. But of course he’s doing it before the new Republican Congress has even been sworn in. What he really means is that he has refused to negotiate with Republicans on an immigration bill. He wanted to dictate terms and tell Congress what kind of legislation it had to pass. Now that this has failed, he wants to turn immigration into an advantageous political issue, rallying Hispanic voters to support the president against the new congressional majority.
This is intended to put Republicans in a bind about how to respond, and the general view is that there are no good options. A retaliatory government shutdown, defunding the White House, toothless lawsuits, or impeachment—all of them have serious drawbacks. But if the Republicans simply lie back and do nothing, they risk alienating many of the voters who just gave them a big majority.
I propose a better option. It starts with recognizing the first rule of Amnesty Fight Club.
Those who saw the deeply odd 1999 movie remember that the first rule of Fight Club is: “You do not talk about Fight Club.” (The second rule: “You do not talk about Fight Club.”) The first rule of Amnesty Fight Club is: Do not talk about amnesty. The second rule: Do not talk about immigration.
Why? Because this isn’t about amnesty or immigration. It’s about executive power. And Republicans need it to not be about immigration.
That’s what Obama wants. That’s what he’s counting on. On the left, the conventional wisdom—if you can call it that—seems to be that Democrats lost the midterm elections because they didn’t get enough turnout from Hispanic voters. An electoral strategy that depends on huge advantages and big turnout from a couple of racial minorities is precarious and disturbingly dependent on racial appeals. We can see that in the fact that Obama now finds it necessary to tear up the Constitution just to scare up a few more Hispanic voters in the next election.
Obama lost ground with Hispanic voters in large part because he ignored one of their biggest concerns. For many Hispanic voters, immigration reform is about the fate of their friends, neighbors, and family members, and more: it’s about whether they feel that people like them are welcome in this country. Yet for six years, while Obama spent down every last dime of his political capital, he never bothered spending any of it to get a deal on immigration. Now he thinks he can buy back the Hispanic vote with an executive order that will let them stay in the country merely on his say-so, without any backing in actual, binding law.
Maybe they’ll fall for it, maybe they won’t. But why take the bait? Why risk alienating Hispanic voters by accepting the role President Obama has set up for Republicans as “The Party That Hates Mexicans”? Moreover, a fight “against amnesty” poisons the future debate among Republicans on immigration reform, which may well involve something the anti-immigration activists can call “amnesty.” So a fight on this issue exacerbates the fault lines within the Republican party, which I am sure is part of what President Obama is hoping for.
In this fight, Republicans need the help of people like me who are big liberal squishes on immigration. (My view: developed nations need more immigrants.) We will stand against executive amnesty because we’re against unilateral executive action, and we can all stick together if the fight is on those grounds.
And there’s something more. Republicans also need to make clear that this is not about attacking Obama. That’s also what he wants, because the left wants to claim that all of this is motivated by mere personal animus against the first black president. That’s the other designated role for Republicans: “The Party That Hates Black People.” So why play along with that smear?
Behind this is a deeper problem. A fight between the legislature and the executive is one that Congress isn’t likely to win. Yes, it can defund some White House activities, which means they’ll shut down White House tours for school kids and blame Republicans. Brit Hume is right about the iron rule of shutdowns: Republicans always take the fall. Or Congress can try to defund amnesty or some other activity they don’t like. But federal funds are notoriously fungible, and Democrats know all about the kind of “shutdown theater” that is used to make spending cuts hit things the public likes, while somehow the president still finds money for his own priorities. Hence that iron rule about Republicans getting the blame.
Besides, Congress passing more laws that are supposed to be binding on the president kind of misses the point, doesn’t it? Existing law is supposed to be binding, and he’s already ignoring it. If he can defy existing laws, why won’t he just defy the new ones?
The fact is that our Constitution provides plenty of mechanisms if Congress wants to stop the president from doing something, but it gives them no real means to make him do something he doesn’t want to do. Short of impeachment, which would not be likely to succeed and which would play into Obama’s goal of personalizing the conflict, Congress can’t control the president by attempting to force his hand directly.
Moreover, I think Obama is personally eager for the conflict. He really thinks the history books will record that he went down in a blaze of glory fighting a defiant battle against evil Republicans. That fits his world view and his grandiose pretensions, and to be honest, it’s just about the only legacy he’s got left.
So what can we do? Just give up and wait him out?
No. But we can fight a battle that’s a lot easier for congressional Republicans, using powers that are fully within their sphere of authority and targeting an enemy that is more likely to feel the pain.
Don’t make this a battle between Congress and the president. Make it a battle within Congress. Specifically, cut off Democrats in Congress. From everything.
Traditionally, our legislative system is not characterized by absolute majority rule. There is a longstanding system of power-sharing, in which the minority still has some role in the system, even if it can’t get its own way. Members of the minority can still sit on committees, draft legislation, propose amendments, participate in official hearings—and in the Senate, they have even had the ability to filibuster legislation and the approval of appointees in the other branches. So long as your party can summon 40% of the vote, it can exercise a minority veto on much of the business in the Senate.
But none of these rules are in the Constitution. They all exist because the majority chooses to allow them to exist, and they have remained in effect through a form of mutually assured destruction: each party knows that it might someday find itself in the minority, so it has an interest in making sure that it won’t be totally disenfranchised when it gets there.
In the Senate, Harry Reid has already breached this mutually assured destruction by eliminating the filibuster for judicial appointments and by preventing Republicans from moving any of their own legislation. The Democrats are not-so-secretly hoping that now that they are about to be in the minority, Mitch McConnell will restore the old rules and everything will be fine.
He should let them know that he would like to do that—if Obama renounces unilateral executive action, on amnesty or on any other issue. If not, then the minority gets cut off from everything. Same in the House: they don’t even get to sit on committees. They will spend the next two years as ornaments, able to do nothing. Maybe Republicans can even cut their staffs and give them the really tiny, out-of-the-way offices.
Of course, Mitch McConnell might be willing to make exceptions for those who choose to caucus with Republicans, like Angus King, the Independent from Maine who now caucuses with Democrats. Or maybe West Virginia’s Joe Manchin might consider a switch in party affiliation to match the political change that’s already happening in the state he represents. You get the idea.
The beauty of this strategy is that it targets people who are likely to fear the damage to their interests and on matters where the congressional majority has pretty much total power if it chooses to use it. Yet as far as the wider public is concerned, this is not a high-profile fight over immigration. It’s an inside-the-Beltway squabble over congressional rules—the kind of boring procedural issue the public usually tunes out.
If Democrats squawk, Republicans have an unanswerable rejoinder. Why should they care about having power in Congress, if the laws passed by Congress are just going to be ignored by the president? If Democrats aren’t fighting for the prerogatives of the legislature against the executive, then they’re just fighting over who gets the personal perquisites. Which is what we’ve always suspected they were really fighting for.
Would this plan work? Perhaps if Republicans inflict enough pain on congressional Democrats, they will eventually put enough pressure on Obama that he gives in. At any rate, this makes it into a fight between an obstinate president and the poor saps from his own party that he’s trying to sacrifice for his own vanity.
And even if it doesn’t work on Obama, this would set up a nice conundrum for the Democratic nominee in 2016. In debates, she can be pressed to answer whether she would pledge to renounce unilateral executive power. If not, then she would be condemning every Democrat down the ticket to more years of irrelevance.
The biggest objection to this idea is the fear of setting a bad precedent, compounding one assault on the American system, the lawlessness of the president, with another, the disenfranchising of a congressional minority. That’s why it should always be clear that the goal is to restore the old system, because the republic is better off for it, and because someday Republicans might be back in the minority again. But it’s worth maintaining a little strategic ambiguity about when the old rules will return, so that Democrats in Congress don’t think they can just wait the Republicans out.
I think this is the best option we have left, if Republicans can be convinced to remember the first rule of Amnesty Fight Club. Don’t talk about amnesty. Make this fight about the one issue it’s really about.
Take back the Constitution!
From another thread, Mike posted the following:
From: Mike in CT Date: 21-Nov-14
If the new Republican Congress is smart they can win big on this latest abomination.
For openers they can shove his BS rhetoric about getting tired of waiting for Congress to act by pointing out that Immigration Reform could have been tackled between 2009-2011 when he had all 3 branches of the government in (D) hands. Much like the ramming though of the ACA this could have been done without any Republican help whatsover.
Next they should posit a question to the American voter; "Why do you think this wasn't done for immigration but was done for the ACA?"
Then offer the answer; easy, the ACA benefitted those already on the dole while not costing them a farthing. Immigration reform on the other hand would impact those at the bottom of the trough as it would create an influx of competition at said trough.
You see the problem with creating too diverse a collection of dependents means at some point you would be able to please them all (at best) and may alienate some (at worst) with new policies.
Then it becomes like a chain of dominoes; the first one falls and starts the chain reaction. Inevitably the Democrat party is unable to keep warring factions aligned and they become irrelevant.
By delaying action on immigration you maneuver for room to blame the Republican party and keep the coaltion of dependents united against the convenient bogeyman. At worst you set yourself (D's) up for maintenance of the status quo and at best you get the win-win scenario.
This isn't about fixing a broken immigration system-it never was. This is about inflicting as much political damage on your enemy as possible and deriving as much political benefit for yourself as possible.
Get this reality across to the population not under the boot of dependency and the Democratic party will become an irrelevent party for a very long time.
Don't fight the fight on their terms; make them fight it on our terms.
There seems to be many solutions and ways to approach Obama's extra-Constitutional dictates...Congress should listen to the people--especially many here on the CF! (Can you imagine an America with CF leadership!) LOL
Theodore Roosevelt 1,081 William Howard Taft 724
Woodrow Wilson 1,803 Warren G. Harding 522
Calvin Coolidge 1,203 Herbert Hoover 968
Franklin D. Roosevelt 3,522 Harry S. Truman 907 Dwight D. Eisenhower 484 John F. Kennedy 214 Lyndon B. Johnson 325 Richard Nixon 346 Gerald R. Ford 169 Jimmy Carter 320 Ronald Reagan 381 George H.W. Bush 166 Bill Clinton 364 George W. Bush 291
Barack Obama (as of 2014-11-21)[11] 194
As you can see, our current President is not at all out of line with his predecessors in issuing executive orders. Why the controversy?
Liberal Law Prof: Obama’s Executive Amnesty ‘Tearing at the Very Fabric of the Constitution’
Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley, a political liberal but a longstanding critic of President Obama’s executive overreach, continued to sound the alarm against the president’s planned executive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, saying it will “tear at the very fabric of the Constitution.”
Turley spoke Friday with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly about the White House’s proposed unilateral action, which will almost certainly come by the end of the year. “It’s a very sad moment, but it’s becoming a particularly dangerous moment — particularly after this election – to defy the will of Congress yet again,” he said.
“What the president is suggesting is tearing at the very fabric of the Constitution,” Turley continued. “We have a separation of powers that gives us balance. And that doesn’t protect the branches — it’s not there to protect the executive branch or legislative branch — it’s to protect liberty. It’s to prevent any branch from assuming so much control that they become a threat to liberty.”
The professor took issue with some congressional Democrats — as well as some lawyers — who contend that President Obama’s promised executive action differs little from measures taken by his predecessors. “This would be unprecedented,” he said, “and I think it would be an unprecedented threat to the balance of powers within our system.”
Look at those orders!
For once it’s not just Republicans questioning the legality of President Obama’s executive actions.
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell discussed Obama’s upcoming executive action on immigration reform with Rep. Peter Welch (D – Vt.) and tried to find some sort of way to justify Obama’s promise of amnesty and work visas. Unfortunately for him, no such legal reasoning exists yet.
“No one at the White House has been able to give me the legal justification for the following component of the president’s plan,” O’Donnell said, going on to explain the specifics of it. “…What is the legal justification for the president to create a new category of beneficiaries for work documents? How can that be done without legislation?”
Welch not only said that he didn’t know, but that he didn’t care to know. But this is hardly surprising given the recent urging of Democrats for Obama to bypass Congress on this issue.
“Lawrence, I can’t tell you, and I’m not the lawyer who’s going to be litigating this case,” Welch said. “So the answer to that would be decided by the courts, as you and I know.”
O’Donnell didn’t let him get away with that answer and pushed again.
“I don’t mean to badger you about this, but I’ve been on this for days now,” O’Donnell said. “I haven’t found a single elected Democrat, not one Democrat in Washington who can answer the question that I just put to you. Have you heard it answered by any Democrats?”
“I haven’t. I haven’t,” Welch responded.
Watch the clip below:
(H/T: Ace of Spades blog)
Responding To Obama's Executive Amnesty: Let Obama Give The State Of The Union Somewhere Else
With the die officially cast on Obama's executive amnesty, attention now turns to the response from congressional leaders. Not only is this a fight about Obama's policies but something far more important, a unilateral power grab from the legislative branch of government. Boehner and McConnell may not want to want to take Obama on over immigration but they should be heavily invested in protecting the power of the legislature to make laws.
Yesterday we saw a number of ideas floated about how to respond....rescission, lawsuits, de-funding and withholding votes on nominees to name a few on the table. There's one idea I'd like to add that is in many ways symbolic but that would focus the nation on the seriousness of this problem, do not invite Obama to address a joint session of Congress to deliver the State of the Union address.
The Constitution simply requires that "He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Nothing requires that he do so in person. The modern in person State of The Union dates back to Woodrow Wilson but Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon all gave written reports as was the custom from Thomas Jefferson to Wilson.
And Presidents don't simply show up whenever they please to address the Congress, they must be formally invited. That's where Boehner and McConnell can strike a blow for the legislature...simply don't invite him.
Yesterday, Boehner said, "The president had said before that he's not king and he's not an emperor," Boehner says. "But he's sure acting like one."
Why would the Speaker invite such a man to address "the people's house"? All Obama would do would use the time to lecture members of a co-equal branch on what they must do and what he deems acceptable work product for them. Members of the United States Congress are under no obligation to sit mutely while the President brow beats them.
Obama has said he doesn't feel compelled to listen to the voters who showed up to the polls a little over two weeks ago. The Representatives elected by those people should make it clear they are simply acting in kind, they will not listen to him.
Yes the media will be apoplectic about this. Good, that's the point. This is a serious moment in our nation's history. I've not seen a single Republican, even ones who strongly support legislative amnesty, support the President on this. The outrage caused by what is an extreme step will help to focus the nation on the threat to our constitutional order.
The President and his supporters have repeatedly said the "prosecutorial discretion" he claims is well within in the law and his power. Well, not inviting the President to speak to the assembled members of Congress is well within the discretion and power of the Speaker of the House.
[Note: This is meant as an addition to the de-funding and nomination blocking ideas, not instead of them]
Get a grip fra. You have lost it
LMAO... DUH! Go read them. Not in the mood to educate the uneducated!
HA/KS's Link
... there are some fundamental differences between Obama’s actions and those taken by past presidents.
The actions taken by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — examples often cited by White House officials — were attempts to address ambiguities in an immigration law that was passed by Congress. Obama’s executive actions are different. They are a response to congressional failure to pass a law, and they affect a far greater number of immigrants currently living in the country illegally.
I'd also vote to defund some other things precious to Obama, unless he backs down.
Congress can stymie him and should.
Absolutely cut the purse strings. Send him bills with his pet spending left out. If he vetoes he is the one shutting down the government.
Absolutely nothing King Obamalama decreed this week can stop the republicans from permanently closing the border as soon as they take over. If Obamalama vetoes it, let all of his business stop. Only send him bills that further your agenda, and let him be known as the veto president in his lame duck years. When election time rolls around, give the people the list of bills republicans sent for signature, doing the people's business that he would not allow.
Obamalama has gone scorched earth in regards to any of the rest of his agenda, including judicial nominees. I say republicans should acknowledge that and respond in kind, for the sake of the American people.
Of course, long ago I read a Robert Heinline novel (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) where he presented the idea of rational anarchism. In many ways, I have adopted that philosophy.
From Director Blue, States and Localities Should Nullify Obama's Unconstitutional and Unlawful Executive Action
From the link:
"... That said, another tactic could be employed
The president has nullified federal statutes -- the very laws he took an oath to uphold -- in ways never before seen in American history.
These unprecedented actions should be met with equally strenuous measures.
I suggest that state and local governments should nullify all federal immigration activities. They should jail, try, profile, imprison, and deport those who have unlawfully entered the United States.
What's good for the goose should indeed be good for the gander.
Obama's ne'er-ending Constitutional Convention should be met with legitimate and lawful resistance.
Democrats must learn a stern lesson: nullification begets nullification.
The American people should not stand for a president who believes himself to be a dictator."
Should cities or states practice nullification of Emperor Obama's EOs, one might imagine the DO(in)J filing suits against those who would not submit to the Obama dictates.
It appears that the NDCP will (as usual)bend over and present themselves for another Obama reaming.
The Revolution is coming.
And they WILL/ARE getting Obamacare on our dime. The website is also in SPANISH.
Head fake? Obama never signed amnesty order National Archives official confirms shocker – no such filing exists
NEW YORK – It’s common knowledge President Obama signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to forgive millions of illegal aliens for their past violations of immigration law, right?
Wrong.
Today the National Archives and Records Administration, responsible for such maintaining such filings, said no such executive order was ever signed or filed, confirming WND’s report Wednesday.
A National Archives librarian, Jeffrey Hartley, made the confirmation in an email Thursday to WND.
“As I indicated, it would appear that there is not an Executive Order stemming from the President’s remarks on November 20 on immigration,” Hartley wrote.
Hartley said that neither of the executive orders Obama signed in Las Vegas the day after his announcement fulfill his plan to defer deportations and grant work permits to up to 5 million illegal aliens.
“The only two documents that I have located are two Presidential Memoranda, which are available from the White House site,” Hartley’s email continued. “They can also be found in the November 26, 2014 issue of the Federal Register.”
The two documents Hartley referenced were the two executive orders Obama signed in Las Vegas Nov. 21.
One was a presidential proclamation creating a White House Task Force on New Americans and the other a presidential memorandum instructing the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to consult with various governmental and non-governmental entities to reduce costs and improve service in issuing immigrant and non-immigrant visas.
