The Rush Limbaugh of The Republic, Doug MacEachern, was pushing the GOP narrative last week that all this impeachment talk is just Democrats trying to rally their base and raise buckets of money. Dems chant: Impeach him, please!
MacEachern has never been one to let the facts get in the way of mindlessly parroting GOP talking points. Apparently he has not run across the ‘Impeachment Store’ that sells all things Impeachment (graphic).
For the love of God, will someone please buy a gold pocket watch and a cake and throw Doug a surprise retirement party — then have security escort him out of the building! This guy has degraded the value of The Republic as a credible news source for far too long.
Iowa Congressman Steve King admitted today on, where else, FAUX News Sunday, that the Tea Party Caucus non-compromise border emergency funding bill that he drafted was just a set-up for what Tea-Publicans really want: to impeach the president. It is their way of saying, “Go ahead, make my day. Take action on immigration on your own and we will file articles of impeachment.”
Crooksandliars.com reports, Steve King Warns Obama: ‘Please Don’t’ Make Congress Impeach You:
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Rep. Steve King (R-IA) what Republicans would do if the president decided to take executive action to stop the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants.
“None of us want to do the thing that’s left for us as an alternative,” King explained. “But if the president has decided that he’s simple not going to enforce any immigration law or at least not against anybody except the felons — which essentially he has done already, this is a broader group of people — I think Congress has to sit down and have a serious look at the rest of this Constitution, and that includes that i-word that we don’t want to say.”
The Iowa Republican added: “And I only say that now because I want to encourage the president, ‘Please don’t put America into a constitutional crisis. Please don’t do that. There’s too much at stake in this country to be decided that you can take over the Constitution and write it at will.'”
“You’re saying that if he were to do that, impeachment would be on the table?” Wallace pressed.
“I think then we have to sit down and take a look at that,” King insisted. “If that’s not enough to bring that about then I don’t know what would be. We’ve never seen anything in this country like a president who says I’m going make up all the immigration law that I choose.”
New York Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries pointed out that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had not unequivocally ruled out impeachment the way that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did regarding President George W. Bush in 2008.
“And to the extent that John Boehner has made unequivocal statements before, such as ‘We’re not going to shut down the government,’ he moved forward and shut down the government,” Jeffries noted. “So, there’s no real credibility there. We’re not clear who actually is running the House of Representatives.
You gotta admire the chutzpah of the GOPropagandists for this framing (I’m sure Doug MaCEachern will be using it soon enough): “Oh, please Mr. President, please don’t make us impeach you. Please don’t be a lawless tyrant.” This is pure unadulterated bullshit!
The executive branch has broad prosecutorial discretion in immigration matters, discretion Congress provided the executive branch under our immigration laws. Obama has legal power to help immigrants stay, experts say:
What can President Obama actually do without Congress to change U.S. immigration policies? A lot, it turns out.
There are some limits under federal law . . . But legal experts say the White House almost certainly could delay indefinitely efforts to deport millions of immigrants already in the U.S. illegally, and it could give them official work permits that would allow them to find jobs, obtain driver’s licenses and pay income taxes.
Without approval from Congress, Obama couldn’t generally give large groups of immigrants permission to remain permanently in the United States, and he couldn’t grant them American citizenship. And he couldn’t make them eligible for federal or state social benefit programs, such as welfare payments, food stamps or the administration’s health care plans.
“There is prosecutorial discretion which can be exercised in these sorts of situations,” said Leon Rodriguez, a former Justice Department lawyer and the newly confirmed director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “In most enforcement realms, generally there is pretty broad discretion.”
With Congress declining to approve significant changes to immigration laws, the White House is hinting that Obama is considering broadening a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to temporarily shield from deportation many young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and allow them to get a work permit. Immigration reform advocates have been pushing to include parents of U.S. citizens and the parents of young immigrants already protected under the earlier program, which covers more than 700,000 immigrants so far.
All told, expanding the program could affect as many as 5 million immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally.
* * *
Obama announced in March that he had directed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to review the administration’s immigration enforcement polices and recommend any possible changes. In May, Obama delayed the review to allow Congress time to act on immigration reform before it adjourned this week for the summer.
Before leaving for the August recess, Congress [failed to] pass legislation to provide the funding Obama requested to help deal with the more than 57,000 unaccompanied child immigrants, mostly from Central America, who have crossed the border since Oct. 1.
So the border “crisis” really wasn’t a crisis after all, or Congress would have acted to do something about it, now wouldn’t they?
Steve King’s Tea Party Caucus border emergency funding bill is purely for consumption by the conservative media entertainment complex and is not a legitimate or serious attempt to deal with the influx of refugee children from Central America.
This is all about the GOPropagandists riling up the nativist and racist base of the GOP with xenophobic fear, and tantalizing them with the possibility of impeaching that “illegitimate” Black man in the White House. It really is just this cynical.