Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Run the Country

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 at 4:03 pm and is filed under We don't need no stinkin' Constitution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Run the Country”

1. John N says:
   

   You are incorrect here. If I understand this the Constitution trumps any other law like the debt ceiling.

   The debt ceiling raise is needed not for new spending but that that has been already authorized by Congress, ie by law and thus the President has 2 duties:
   1) Uphold all laws that have been passed
   2) The debt has already been committed to over many years so it is valid and “shall not be questioned.

   That makes using the 14th a no brainer.

   The Presidential oath also requires the President to protect and defend the Constitution. If he does not follow it as laid out above one could argue you could impeach him as well.

   In fact all members of Congress took a similar oath so their inaction to provide the debt ceiling action needed to fund the laws passed by them could be deemed a violation of their oath of office subjecting Boehner in particular to impeachment. Right?

   The other issue here is that failure to protect the nation’s financial system from a meltdown is akin to “war” and the President again is bound to protect the nation as well. Keeping the nation from falling into a deeper recession, higher borrowing costs, higher deficits due to a double dip and the world losing faith in the US as a reserve currency makes his inaction on the 14th impeachable to me.

   Failure to act has been estimated to cost the US $50B minimum directly for even a few day default due to increased debt rollover costs and as much as a trillion over a decade not to mention higher borrowing costs for consumers and business as well.

   The President has put forth $2T in cuts and asked for $400B in tax loopholes being closed. Every deficit reduction plan that Reagan, Bush I and Clinton did required a combination. Why can’t the Repubs simply negotiate in good faith and get this done?

   If they do not they will get hung out to dry by the President being forced to act under his Constitutional duty. That surely isn’t going to help them defeat Obama. It might just sew up his re-election before they even have a primary.

   If they think he isn’t tough enough to do this. Just remember the Sunday nite we found about Osama or the Somali pirates that were taken out right after he took office.

   If he needs to he will act and get the job done as he should, no doubt about it.

   SCOTUS ruled on the validity of this already:

   PERRY V. UNITED STATES, 294 U. S. 330 (1935)

   The government’s contention thus raises a question of far greater importance than the particular claim of the plaintiff. On that reasoning, if the terms of the government’s bond as to the standard of payment can be repudiated, it inevitably follows that the obligation as to the amount to be paid may also be repudiated. The contention necessarily imports that the Congress can disregard the obligations of the government at its discretion, and that, when the government borrows money, the credit of the United States is an illusory pledge…

   The Constitution gives to the Congress the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, an unqualified power, a power vital to the government, upon which in an extremity its very life may depend. The binding quality of the promise of the United States is of the essence of the credit which is so pledged. Having this power to authorize the issue of definite obligations for the payment of money borrowed, the Congress has not been vested with authority to alter or destroy those obligations.

   July 3rd, 2011 at 9:30 pm
2. Apollo says:
   

   OMG! Well if it needs to be done, I guess the president has the power to do it! /sarcasm

   Dude, Article I gives Congress the power to borrow. According to your argument (Congress has authorized x spending but only .5x money, therefore president has power to borrow the other needed .5x money), we quickly arrive at an absolute tyranny. If the president may borrow money (i.e. perform a power given to Congress), why might he not also simply raise taxes by executive order? Borrowing, after all, is just a tax on the future. Which of Congress’s powers do you think the president may not exercise? Surely he’d be able to spend money on his own (”Why, Congress has declared we need to improve school quality/build quality highways/employ janitors at federal buildings, but I don’t think Congress has allocated enough money to do this properly, so to see that these laws are faithfully enforced I’m going to authorize more spending than Congress did.”) He’s already declared a war on his own.

   But whatever. If you and the any-clause-at-hand Constitutionalists on the left are already making this argument, you’re not going to be persuaded out of it by subtle observations like, “OUR CONSTITUTION CREATES A SYSTEM OF DIVIDED POWERS!” and “THE 14TH AMENDMENT MAY ONLY BE ENFORCED THROUGH STATUTE!” No, the fact that you’re asserting that the president can do Congress’s job when Congress does it in a way he doesn’t like – there’s no arguing with you at this point. You’re enthralled with Obama, and you don’t like Republicans. So damn the Constitution, full speed ahead.

   July 4th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
3. Little Adolf says:
   

   My friend, I also firmly believe that my country would be better off if people I disagree with were disenfranchised.

   July 6th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
4. Apollo says:
   

   I don’t think your point is as cute as you think it is. There are many Ivy League law grads with whom I agree.

   July 6th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
5. Little Adolf says:
   

   Yes, I’m sure. That’s why it’s “people you/I disagree with” who should be disenfranchised, not “Ivy League grads” (these categories were logically distinct in your post and, therefore, in my approval of it). I have my Schmitt, you have your Yoo.

   July 6th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
6. Apollo says:
   

   I think if you read my post carefully, it’s ambiguous what “people like you” means. Does it mean people with the same beliefs, or Ivy League law grads? I meant it to mean Ivy League law grads; I think those schools graduate an inordinate number of people who have a fundamental disrespect for self-government.

   I’d happily expand my disenfranchisement to all lawyers if that’s what it took to get Ivy League lawyers out of politics. The other law schools don’t produce the same proportion of anti-republicans as the Ivies, but the study of law in every law school today includes an enormous amount of disrespect for self-government.

   July 7th, 2011 at 10:12 am
7. Little Adolf says:
   

   Your ambiguity is very ambiguous.

   Your clarification is even weirder. You meant to disenfranchise “Ivy League law grads” as opposed to people with a certain set of beliefs, you say. Then you go on to explain that the problem with Ivy League law grads is that they hold a certain set of beliefs. So the categories aren’t even distinct.

   Regardless, all of this fine-tooth-comb parsing isn’t worth much. Maybe you’re making perfect sense to someone else. I’m just glad that your fulminations against people with “a fundamental/enormous amount of disrespect for self-government” lead you so blithely into a lot of fine-tooth-comb parsing about who ought to be disenfranchised. That’s one kind of originialism, I guess.

   July 7th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
8. Apollo says:
   

   1. It’s not disenfranchising them based on beliefs, it’s disenfranchising them based on their pursuit of an activity that is harmful to republican government. Much the way we disenfranchise felons.

   2. I’d hardly call this “originalism,” though I’m not sure I know what “originalism” means in the context of modern suffrage laws.

   3. Personally, I normally attempt to resolve ambiguities on the side of presuming people aren’t Nazis. Also, you could have referred to the title of the post and the opening sentence, which might have provided some clue about the subject of my ire.

   July 7th, 2011 at 2:51 pm

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