The TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, has been a catastrophe for America.
Boehner is the weakest Speaker of the House in modern American history, and the consensus “Worst. Speaker. Ever.” The 113th Congress will be the least productive in history. This is the less-than-less-than-do-nothing 113th Congress — managing to exceed the previous less-than-do-nothing 112th Congress in lack of productivity.
John Boehner’s epic failure as Speaker may properly be viewed as criminal negligence. So how does the TanMan respond to his epic failure?
He sends a memo to his Tea-Publican Caucus threatening to sue the President of the United States for failure to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. See Memo (.pdf). The man’s utter lack of self awareness or chutzpah is stunning.
Boehner’s new strategy is to rally the GOP’s racist base who suffer from “Obama Derangement Syndrome” around the idea of “impeaching that black man” in the White House.
John Boehner has descended into madness. He cannot control the monster that he is about to give life, fed by the reckless and irresponsible conservative media entertainment complex. See George Will’s Sunday column.
Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post has two posts, the first is Speaker Boehner’s Obama impeachment dress rehearsal:
According to Roll Call, Boehner “could have an announcement within days on whether the House will file a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, challenging the executive actions that have become the keystone of the administration.” The paper reports that the speaker has been consulting legal experts as part of his deliberations. The theory on which Boehner is basing his potential litigation is the same one from David Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley that Will highlighted in his Sunday column.
It all boils down to standing, and the courts “have been wary” of granting legislative standing,” as Will noted. But he believes Rivkin and Price plot a viable course for Congress to follow to successfully sue the president. All it requires is 1.) one branch of Congress to authorize the suit, 2.) proof that Congress has been injured by Obama’s executive actions, 3.) no private entity has standing to bring suit, and 4.) Congress has no chance of reversing the president’s action by repealing the law.
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Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement. “The House has passed legislation to address this, but it has gone nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, so we are examining other options.”
That legislation includes the Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law Act of 2014 or the ENFORCE the Law Act of 2014. This gem would give the House or the Senate the power to sue the president “or any officer or employee of the United States” when he is deemed to be “in violation of the constitutional requirement that the President faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” The bill also grants jurisdiction to a three-judge federal panel to hear a case. It even provides an expedited process to the Supreme Court. The sponsor of this legislation is Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the guy leading the new Benghazi show trial in the House. The other bill is the Faithful Execution of the Law Act of 2014 sponsored by Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). If passed, federal law would be amended to require the attorney general to notify Congress every time the executive branch decides to not enforce a federal law or regulation or not enforce or abide by a court decision.
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The plan all along has been to crash the Obama agenda and then climb on top of the wreckage and seize power. Not only are Republicans complicit in the “failures” they rail against, but they are also the reason the president has had to resort to executive action to get some things done. Even Will agrees Obama is within his authority to do this. He just doesn’t like the degree to which he has done it. Poor dear.
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At the end of his column, Will advocates for the courts to allow Congress to sue the president if only to keep it from utilizing “the cumbersome and divisive blunderbuss process of impeachment.” He says such a move “should be a rare recourse.” Then there was this key line: “Furthermore, it would punish a president for anti-constitutional behavior but would not correct the injury done to the rule of law.” For many Republicans, the punishment of impeachment is exactly what they want. This lawsuit threat is just the first step.
Capehart continues in a later post, Boehner’s frivolous lawsuit against Obama:
Speaker John Boehner made it official. “I am,” he said when asked this morning if he were going to sue President Obama over the raft of executive actions he has taken in part because of Republican congressional recalcitrance. “The constitution makes it clear that the president’s job is to faithfully execute the law,” Boehner said. “In my view, the president has not faithfully executed the law.” Whatever you say, Mr. Speaker.
Plenty of folks disagree with that assessment, including the folks at Brookings. “Like many criticisms of many presidents, policy disagreements stemming from presidential actions do not automatically make those actions illegal. Executive orders are no different,” wrote John Hudak, managing editor of the FixGov blog, in a post earlier this year. “They are not an abuse of power, but a necessary presidential power critical to the function of government.” An accompanying chart [below] shows just how (insert air quotes here) lawless, as his critics proclaim, the president has been. And it reveals how Boehner’s lawsuit against the president would be a huge waste of time.
This apparently doesn’t matter to Boehner. Of course, he says he’s doing this because “when there’s conflicts like this between the legislative and administrative [sic] branch it’s our responsibility to stand up.” For folks like George Will, who advocated such a lawsuit in his Sunday column, this litigation “would establish [him] as the legislature’s vindicator.”
“This is not about impeachment,” Boehner promised this morning. “This is about faithfully executing the laws of our country.” But what the speaker is doing is nothing less than a dress rehearsal for Obama’s impeachment. Given how much the word has been bandied about, Boehner’s caucus won’t be able to resist, especially if (dear Lord let it be “when”) the courts reject his frivolous lawsuit.
This graphic shows the frequency with which presidents have issued executive orders. President Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president since Grover Cleveland, who served from 1885-1889 & 1893-1897.
These very same Tea-Publicans, including John Boehner, never uttered a word of complaint when Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney was executing his Unitary Executive Theory as de facto president for the man-child who lawfully held the title, who now paints his feet while eating applesauce like some mental patient.
What makes this so offensive is that the Neoconservatives of the Bush-Cheney regime are guilty of war crimes for their unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq, and their illegal torture and rendition of prisoners program. War Crimes Conviction – Malaysian Tribunal Finds Bush et al Guilty. These Tea-Publicans never considered impeachment, and refuse to even consider convening a Nuremberg-style tribunal to hold these war criminals accountable.
Instead they fantasize reasons to impeach Barack Obama so that these Neoconservative war criminals may once again return to positions of power in the White House. These are dangerous people who need to be rooted out of government.