Friday, July 11, 2014

Impeachment Folly

Again there are calls to impeach the president and I can only shake my head.  Short of Obama gunning down a citizen on camera (who is not a Republican), the Democratically-controlled Senate will not convict.  Therefore, impeachment can only end in failure.  Might the process moderate President Obama's lawlessness?  Doubtful.  No, it will most likely just irritate the voters and boost Democrat turnout.  It is a terrible idea with no path to success.

Does Obama merit impeachment?  Certainly.  It may be recalled that I considered bailing out the car companies as impeachable and no one even considers that today.  He has rewritten immigration law, enforcing the Dreamer Law that Congress declined to pass.  He has rewritten the Affordable Care Act, also without Congressional involvement.  He went to war in Lybia without Congressional authorization; Bush got authorization for both Afghanistan and Iraq.  But, as with criminal courts, the District Attorney should not take a case to trial that it is certain he will lose.  It is a waste of time and money.

What of this lawsuit that the Speaker of the House is pushing?  It is only necessary because the Republicans have proven again and again to be spineless.  The House has the power of the purse.  Nothing can be funded unless a majority of the House votes for it.  Once the Republicans took the House, Obamacare was dead.  Well, it was dead if they had spines.  No, they folded again and again.  The Republicans voted to fund Obamacare because they couldn't make the case that the Democratic Senate was shutting down the government.  Having surrendered the power of the purse, the House Republicans are now going to beg the courts to force the president to enforce the laws that the Congress did pass, not the ones he wished had passed.  Weakness.

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