Impeachment on the Mind July 17, 2014 • 9:56AM Full-page spread from July 16, 2014 edition of Politico newspaper The print edition of yesterdays Politico newspaper, circulated all over Capitol Hill, carried the headline: Washington Abuzz with Politics of Impeachment Talk, accompanied by a front-page headline, Obama Takes Impeachment Talk Seriously. On the Politico website, the lead story carries the headline, Youre not going to get me impeached, are you? That article quotes from Obama in a private meeting with immigration activists late last month, in which Obama reportedly responded to demands for him to take executive action by pleading: Youre not going to get me impeached, are you? Because theres lots of other things I want to do besides immigration. In the White House, says Politico, they are, with a level of disbelief, finding themselves talking about the topic more and more. LaRouchePAC banner in front of House of Representatives office buildings on Capitol Hill, July 16, 1014 House Hearing on Obamas Abuse of Power Begs Impeachment The specter of impeachment has been haunting Congress since yesterday morning, as the House Rules Committee heard witnesses debate the merits of House Speaker John Boehners proposed lawsuit against President Obama for violating the separation of powers. By narrowing the lawsuit to one issue — Obamas unilateral delaying of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — Boehner has trivialized the actual urgency and necessity of Obamas impeachment. But the question of impeachment question was in the air. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley presented the most principled and non-partisan view of Obamas abuse of power, in a way that implicitly demanded impeachment, not a lawsuit, but even he was compelled to state that Obamas delay of the Obamacare mandate did not rise to the level of impeachment. Todays hearing is a historic step to address the growing crisis in our constitutional system — a shifting of the balance of power within our tripartite system in favor of a now dominant Executive Branch, Turleys written statement said. While both Congress and the courts have lost authority over the decades, the Legislative Branch has lost the most with the rise of a type of über-presidency.... Our system is changing in a dangerous and destabilizing way. We are seeing the emergence of a different model of government in our country — a model long ago rejected by the Framers. The rise of a dominant presidency has occurred with relatively little congressional opposition. Indeed, when President Obama pledged to circumvent Congress, he received rapturous applause from the very body that he was promising to make practically irrelevant. Turley continued: The Presidents pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, but what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge...When a President can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in the establishment of our tripartite system of government. In perhaps the saddest reflection of our divisive times, many of our citizens and Members are now embracing the very model of a dominant executive that the Framers fought to excise from our country almost 250 years ago. What we are witnessing today is one of the greatest challenges to our constitutional system in the history of this country...It did not start with President Obama. Turley noted that one of the Democratic witnesses on the panel, former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, had warned during the Bush Administration that the encroachment of executive power had become a threat to the separation of powers, and had called upon the next President, Obama, to respect the Constitutions safeguards. However, Turley noted, Obama did not follow Dellingers advice, and the aggrandizement that we saw in prior administrations has continued unabated and, as I have previously stated, it has reached a constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental change in how our country is governed. Despite Turleys making a clear case for impeachment on the broader issues of abuse of power, he had to acknowledge that the small-bore issue chosen by the House GOP for the lawsuit, does not merit what he termed the extraordinary remedy of impeachment. Still, the issue of impeachment hovered over the room. Ranking member Louise Slaughter (D-NY), in her opening statement, was the first to mention the I word. After saying this is a political exercise, and listing other ways the House majority has wasted taxpayer money and time, she said, these people will not stop until President Obama is served with articles of impeachment. Both witnesses and committee members noted the many times that the courts have refused to intervene in disputes between the other two branches of government, on the grounds that the Constitution provides various remedies for Congress to deal with an Executive that oversteps its bounds — the two most prominent being the power of the purse, and the power of impeachment.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 06:47:46 +0000
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