Posted on 11/27/2014 6:26:20 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Now that President Barack Obama has granted legal relief to as many as 5 million unauthorized immigrants, Republicans are thrashing about for an effective response. Only a few hard-liners are talking about impeachment now, but more could join them out of frustration with their other options.
Many people in both parties have tried to quell such talk by saying the president is within his powers to issue the order. The problem is the pro-impeachment Republicans are right: There is a plausible case for taking that step.
By constitutional design, impeachment for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” is a political accusation and initiates a political remedy, not a legal one. It is pretty much up to Congress to define and apply “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and no court would second-guess it. The next Congress could find that the president had violated his oath to “faithfully execute” the laws by refusing to enforce important provisions of the Affordable Care Act, No Child Left Behind and, now, the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The president surely has some power to withhold prosecution, but granting legal status and work permits to millions of people most likely exceeds his discretion. No judge can decide the precise scope of his discretion because no one, including Congress, has legal standing to challenge his order in court.
Of course, many lawyers at the Justice Department and elsewhere disagree, noting that prosecutorial discretion is pervasive, that there isn’t enough money to prosecute all violators, that the president will continue to prosecute criminals and illegal border crossers, and that earlier presidents have done the same thing. These are serious arguments. But as an immigration and administrative law teacher who strongly favors more legal immigration and even broader legislative relief than Obama’s order grants....
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Yes, but can the Senate convict?
When did the president get the right to decide which laws to enforce? Who was the first? Or have they done it since George Washington?
He needsa to be removed from office.
Impeachment is about as meaningful as being held in contemp of congress, which by the way is utterly contempable.
Who cares if the Senate reneges on convicting the _resident.
The charges should at least be enumerated and brought before congress so that they can be read into the record. Then let the record show which senators failed to act and let them explain their miscarriage of justice to their constituents.
We need both.
Impeach only and the sucker is still in office.
Good thought!
When did the president get the right to decide which laws to enforce?
I don't know if you were around during the Nixon administration, but the Congress didn't like it when the then-President didn't spend the money appropriated by said Congress. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds for a description of impounding funds. In passing The Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Congress said that the President didn't have the choice to decide what laws he wanted to enforce, in the form of controlling spending.
Let's see what happens when the current Congress is reminded of this little piece of history.
Never with Obama’s best friend John Boehner there
Welcome to the dictatorship of the proletariat comrades!
53% of the electorate chose this president and %53 of the electorate have themselves a president who acts on his own
with a telephone and a pen, with no regard for the existence of a congress.
Right on comrades!!!
IMHO
While removal would be nice, and appropriate, it isn't required for impeachment to have an effect.
/johnny
Clinton carries the stigma of impeachment with him today
Impeachment probably gets Clinton more Chicks ,LOL
Now that President Barack Obama has granted illegal relief to as many as 5 million illegal aliens
Fixed it.
And history is important to Clinton.
/johnny
It doesn’t really matter all of this is merely conjecture anyway. Congress will probably continue to sit on their hands and do nothing and we have no viable means to convince them to do anything. The founders depended on a moral and just society to back them up and today we have neither. Things have changed quite drastically since the founders crafted the most ingenious form of government ever devised and all we have left now are the ideas that once made America great. Granted they ARE some pretty great ideas so at least we got that going for us.
The innocent are punished when the guilty escape justice.
Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
Oh and then there is Biden...
Good grief, it reminds me of the barn scene in O’Brother where art thou “We’re in a tight spot”
The GOP House will not bring charges as they know the media and the Democrats will use the charges to attack the GOP.
And the next thing you will see is Michelle Obama being elected to a US Senate seat, being appointed the head the State Department and the running for president.
Not to put too fine a point on it... Zero was elected by 53% of the votes cast/counted. We are not sure, to this day, how many of those votes were illegal. And, the voting participation rate was very clearly NOT 100% of the eligible electorate.
This entire “administration” has been a series of Reischstag Fires.
Am I the only guy who believes this current turmoil has been orchestrated to serve as YET ANOTHER diversion to the DOZENS of ongoing Obama scandals, the recent immigration mess and the building crisis in the Middle East. Obama is well on the way to marginalizing the white population here with millions of new minority citizens who will soon become the new majority (and predominately welfare “beneficiaries” and DEMOCRAT VOTERS).
Jefferson – and other founders – greatly feared what that would do to America!
Estimate is that the “benefits” Obama will provide for them will cost YOU and your fellow tax slaves over 2 BILLION bucks per year. Helpful tip from Lois Lerner: Better plan to file and pay early!
(Isn’t it time for the FAIRTAX??)
“Whom God would destroy, He first makes mad!”
Can, but won’t.
Congress is gutless, Senate is beyond corrupt, and will never convict someone who was in their Fraternity, even one who was there for so short a time as 0bama was..
I agree. The list of charges against this Kenyan A-hole would be pretty impressive. Make the ‘rats defend all this cretin’s crimes on the record.
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