Why is it that so many Democrats are so afraid to stand their ground against the President when it is obvious that the American people themselves have the will to stand? Members of the House and Senate are supposed to serve the Constitution, the people and that which is best for the United States pretty much in that order. The Congress have to be aware that this is an actual treaty no matter what the semantic games being played by the White House and that the simple rejection by the Senate not ratifying the nuclear treaty with Iran should have put an end to this entire fiasco but instead the members of Congress have lost their spines. Why is it that in what has been termed the most serious and powerful deliberative body in history, the United States Senate, a deliberative body held in esteem for over two centuries, has completely gone astray and are voting “Present” instead of standing up like men and declaring their independent thoughts on this horrific treaty and White House power play. Is this the final legacy the United States Congress wishes to present to all of human history? Is this the manner in which you desire to represent yourselves to the people in your districts? Even the members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had the presence not to ratify this in an official ballot, even if they allowed for the pressures from one group to permit a signing of a letter almost as an apology to the White House for refusing to voice their support for a deal they all know in their hearts is bad for the United States and potentially the entire world. Where is the collective pride and intestinal fortitude of Congress?
You allowed a Health Care Act be rammed through without even so much as a floor debate unread and permitted the crashing and burning of the greatest health care system the world had ever seen which had been largely responsible for eradicating diseases from the face of the Earth and replaced it with a hope and a prayer that it does not become a second Veteran’s Hospital System, this time for an entire nation. There have been time and time again that the White House had turned to illegal methods which no lesser President would have been permitted usurpations of power and privileges taken which would have resulted in impeachment at any other juncture. Understandably nobody wishes to have their name on a White House political assassination list, but as sure as you refuse to stand now in the face of such a raw abuse of power, you are setting precedence which will at some point in the future be used by a President to all but ignore the Congress and further weaken the Congress that even their last gasp motion of impeachment of that President for abuses of powers and the trampling of the Constitutional limitations on the White House will simply be torn up and tossed aside as if to drop the gauntlet at the feet of the Congress challenging their authority and even their having any power at all and on that day the Congress will fall just as assuredly as did the Roman Senate before the Caesars. This is the legacy you are bequeathing to the American People and to the annals of history.
Future historians will point to these times as when the Imperial Presidency was first proclaimed and the Congress refused to answer the challenges and instead did abrogate their Constitutional rights and powers turning them over to a President who would dare to rewrite portions of that document such that he could do whatever he pleased simply by claiming his actions to be named something the White House claimed gave the President the powers sought and challenged the Congress to act to prevent this absurdity. Now, when facing the greatest of absurdities imaginable where what is a treaty in every aspect and definition has instead become a gentlemen’s agreement between heads of state and as such no business of the Congress to perform their Constitutional responsibilities. This is a disgrace to the Constitution which this President has ignored in more ways than all the President before him combined as he ignored written laws passed by the Congress and signed by previous Presidents, has torn up agreements between the government and other nations despite previous approval of these deals such as the anti-missile systems which were intended as a defensive position against Iranian missile strikes aimed at Europe destroying any trust between the United States and any other nation, especially ally, in the world. This President has made any agreement or treaty between the United States and other nations of the world meaningless as they have run roughshod over agreement after agreement and ignored fulfilling treaty obligations rewriting the entirety of foreign affairs and alliances upon which the order and support structures of two-thirds of the world depended.
Should President Barack Hussein Obama be permitted to change the ratification of treaties by inventing a new form of treaty, a Presidential Imperial Overreach Administrative Agreement replacing such simple a concept as a treaty as the new definition for any “treaty” in which the United States had more than one other nation as a signatory, then it no longer requires the ratification procedure and instead of requiring a two-thirds approval by the Senate, it will require a two-thirds vote against it in both Houses of Congress to block its implementation. This is a crucial point in time where the Congress must force the confrontation for the health and future of the United States as a nation under a Constitutional Republic with the rule of law and not the rule of man. Allowing this procedure to circumvent the Congress at this presumably the final check on the abuse of power by a President will have future ramifications potentially more directly and immediate than any might fear in their wildest conspiracies. Perhaps having to face this President on the field of political power is what the Congress fears and they would rather just go along to get along hoping the nation survives the abuses of power and that things may return to a state of normalcy come January of 2017 and the next President takes office. Maybe any damages done by the refusal by Congress and particularly the Senate can be repaired at that time and the Constitution be restored and the Republic salvaged. And should the Congress lie down and allow their powers to be trampled upon by a single President then what will stop some future President from doing the same, perhaps even the President sworn in on that coming morning in January of 2017. What if the next President decides they kind of favor having imperial powers and refuses to play ball and challenges the desires and powers of Congress and instead chooses to continue to erode away one entire branch of the three legged stool the United States was carefully balanced upon. What is to prevent such a President once they have finished neutering the Congress from polluting and then neutering the Judicial Branch and simply making the three legged stool into his or her own pedestal of absolute power? Nothing, that is what will be able to prevent such, nothing.
Perhaps this is what has frightened the members of Congress, the challenge of taking a strong stand and enforcing their prerogatives and responsibilities under the Constitution. Be it known to you, the members of Congress, that should you collectively collapse before this challenge where words mean exactly what the President decides they mean when he uses them and that the definition of any world at any time can have the desired meaning assigned by the President then there is no longer law, just individual Presidential unchecked and absolute power. Sure it would take extreme effort at this point after surrendering so much ground to this President to finally say, “No more. Your abuses end here and now; we can take no more of your insult and abuse.” Instead the Congress is deciding, even deliberating acting as if they were a battered spouse and claiming that the abusive spouse, the President, really does respect them and the contract of this particular marriage, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the spousal President is really a good person deep down and if the Congress will just go along they can eventually change him and save him from himself. Anyways, standing up to the President now might entail acting like the adult in the room and applying consequences for such abuses of power would take nerves of steel, or at least nerves backed by parchment, that piece of parchment sitting right down the street on display in a bullet-proof glass viewing port which would take that precious document downstairs and placed into an impenetrable vault which would resist even a direct strike by a nuclear device and still hold that precious document sage even after all the rest of the physical vestiges of power were wiped clean. That document is the United States of America’s heart and soul and is more important than any one person, even a record shattering first for America, even that must not be permitted to act towards destroying the definitions within that precious document. Lose that and it can never be restored, at least not for a viewable future which would be left to our children who have been denied an understanding of the importance and uniqueness of that Constitution. This is the time for restoring the balances defined by the Constitution and to reinstall the educational means by which that document and its importance in the history of man and the hope it provides all mankind into their educations.
Next to the Ten Commandments and the Bible, the Constitution of the United States of America along with their Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are together the definition of the human soul crying for dignity and freedom never before imagined. Just as the Ten Commandments and the concept of the limited power of a monarch, or of a governmental set of institutions, set to rule over a nation must be limited in their ability to gather wealth or absolute power making them a veritable god should be made impossible under any form of governance which will have any opportunity to be fair in its acts. The Old Testament has in place that idea that a sovereign, be that a king or a governance, must be limited and fear the people instead of the people fearing the governance. That is what is at stake in this Iran deal. We realize that by having the Security Council affirm the Iranian nuclear treaty and incorporating it to be enacted under Chapter Seven makes it an applicable law and that cannot be undone by Congress, but we can at least force the President to go through the actual motions and even attempt to enforce the will of the American public and their representatives.
We realize that there is really only one way the Iranian nuclear treaty can be undone at this stage, rejection by the Congress and challenge the President should he ignore the Congressional override of his veto. But that does not mean that the United States governance cannot use the actual methods and instituted channels to resist permitting the Iranians a paved highway to nuclear weapons capabilities and the methods and means of delivering such devices anywhere on the face of the earth and the ability of bringing any nation that depends on electrical systems to its knees. The Congress only need pass the legislation which is all but guaranteed at this juncture. This should be acted upon before the deadline as a statement that this is a strong belief and feeling by the Congress and that it was not just some token effort passed right before the deadline when the backs were against the proverbial wall. Let it pass the Senate with merely sixty-one or anything just short of the two-thirds which is required to override a Presidential veto. The same applies in the House of Representatives though it is highly likely that the House will pass the legislation with the necessary two-thirds which places the entire matter hinged on the Senate. Give the President the legislation such that he can answer with a veto before the implied deadline such that the override vote can be taken in each house of Congress. Assuming it has the votes in the House of Representatives, the Senate will be under the microscope. The crux of the matter is that Senators and Representatives are permitted to change their votes and vote anew on the override motion. The Democrats who are voting against the original legislation blocking the Iran Treaty will have passed their duty to vote as instructed by the leader of their party and can now be freed to vote their consciences. This could provide an overwhelming retort to the Presidential overreach by overriding the veto and declaring a line which the Congress had drawn and beyond which the President will have been refused crossing.
Then comes the difficult part as it will take immeasurable courage and intestinal fortitude as it is almost guaranteed that President Obama will not only step over that line but will obliterate the line and challenge the Congressional override vote. President Obama might even go so far as to address the nation directly and explain why it has come to the place where the Congress is to be ignored for the good of the country and the world and that the President acting under some form of war powers and the Commander in Chief will proceed ignoring the pesky temper tantrum of the traitors in Congress who question the President’s powers and ability to act where the Congress is too timid to go as somebody has to be the adult, act as the parent over the children, unruly children in the Congress who may have thought they had gotten the last word in this disagreement. Then comes the question of will the Congress perform its duty and rein in this President gone rogue on the Constitution and the Congress. This audacity by the President leads to the one place all his previous actions of overreach and abuses of power have been leading to from day one of his Presidency. All the rewrites and selective enforcement of complete sections of the Affordable Care Act which has proven to be anything but that, his tearing up treaties from previous administrations which had received the necessary support from Congress and the former President, his ignoring or refusing to enforce actual legal acts from previous administrations simply because of the President having a problem with the laws as written and passed, his complete refusal to accept legal limits placed upon the President as a part of his Presidency under Constitutional limitations and requirements and then comes the most grievous of the President ignoring his responsibilities, or perhaps the President had rewritten the President’s responsibilities to suit his political outlook. The President unilaterally killed the completion of the building of the F-22 Raptors claiming the inferior F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would serve the United States just fine. He then moved the United States Naval Fifth Fleet in order to surrender United States influence or ability to enforce or carry out obligations under treaties the fleet’s responsibility for assuring the commercial trade waterways remain open (especially the Straits of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, the Bab-el-Mandeb) and supporting the United States treaty obligations in the heart of the Middle East leaving these essential waterways to the protection and desires of Iran with the Fifth Fleet stationed in the western waters of the Indian Ocean.
Obama World and he can hold the whole thing like a basketball but just like a basketball he is clueless what to do with it
All of these and many more have led to this point and there is one last possibility which the Congress should demand exercising their oversight. It is vitally important to determine whether President Obama has acted in a manner completely counter to the ability of the United States to protect itself by presenting a credible deterrent to a nuclear strike against the United States. Should the President have cut personnel responsible for the upkeep of the United States nuclear arsenal, it is entirely possible that the majority of United States nuclear warheads are currently inoperable or questionable. The majority may be requiring an overhaul if not a complete modernization and upgrade. The forces responsible for this highly important and discreet task-force whose activities being necessarily kept so quiet that their concerns are likely have such a long chain of command that any complaint or warning would have been stonewalled before reaching the White House by arrangement of the White House. These forces have been cut by Presidential and Department of Defense orders making the upkeep in doubt. This would have been a backdoor manner by which the President could have kept his promise to disarm the United States nuclear weapons systems even if he was unable to get the other nuclear powers to also commit to such reductions. The President felt that if the United States disarmed then the rest of the world would follow suit and any nation seeking nuclear weapons would have a change of heart and stop their program. Somehow the Russian and Chinese must not have received the memo as both nations have drastically increased their resources poured into modernizing and restructuring their nuclear weapons systems replacing spent nuclear material and replacing the cores and upgrading their designs and the ICBMs which would deliver these weapons. The upgraded ICBM missile bodies have superior guidance and tracking enabling them to take a constantly seemingly erratic path to their targets to confuse and confound intercepting systems leading to a greater numbers penetrating through to strike said targets. What if the United States no longer possesses a functioning deterrent system which is capable, or potentially, even actually functional. We can trust that the world did not follow President Obama’s plans for a nuclear free world even if he managed to present to the world a nearly nuclear free United States, something repairable.
Such malfeasance might be permitted to go unanswered or kept from the public but is such something the nation desires continue? The Congress should finally act responsibly, at long last, and pass legislation and then followed by overriding a Presidential veto, thus forcing the passage of legislation denying United States complying willingly and preventing United States interests from doing business with Iran thus reducing their cash flow. Unfortunately, this is not how President Obama is likely to act. The President is more likely to pursue his preconceived views completely ignoring the Congressional actions. This should lead to at least the holding of impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives where the President will have forced the confrontation of President Obama against the Congress and the Constitution, both of which he has treated with complete contempt and arrogantly demanded that he would act and continue to act in complete breach of trust and unscrupulously. Once the House of Representatives has passed by a simple majority vote the Articles of Impeachment, the Senate is tasked with conducting a trial. Then should the Senate vote to convict by a two thirds majority, or sixty-seven Senators in favor of Impeachment, then Joe Biden will be sworn in as President and potentially running as the incumbent in the November 2016 elections. Below are the complete list of steps for Impeachment as laid out at The History Place – Presidential Impeachments.
Modern Impeachment Procedure:
1) Impeachment resolutions made by members of the House of Representatives are turned over to the House Judiciary Committee which decides whether the resolution and its allegations of wrongdoing by the President merits a referral to the full House for a vote on launching a formal impeachment inquiry.
2) The entire House of Representatives votes for or against a formal impeachment inquiry, needing only a simple majority (a single vote) for approval.
3) If approved, the House Judiciary Committee conducts an investigation to determine (similar to a grand jury) if there is enough evidence to warrant articles of impeachment (indictments) against the President. The Committee then drafts articles of impeachment pertaining to specific charges supported by the evidence. The Committee votes on each article of impeachment, deciding whether to refer each article to the full House for a vote.
4) If the House Judiciary Committee refers one or more articles of impeachment, the entire House of Representatives votes on whether the article(s) merit a trial in the Senate, needing only a simple majority for approval.
5) If the full House approves at least one article of impeachment, the President is technically impeached and the matter is referred to the U.S. Senate. The House then appoints members of Congress to act as managers (prosecutors).
6) The trial of the President is held in the Senate with the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court presiding. The President can be represented by anyone he chooses. He may appear personally or leave his defense in the hands of his lawyers.
7) The entire Senate may conduct the trial or it or it may be delegated to a special committee which would report all the evidence to the full Senate.
8) The actual trial is conducted in a courtroom-like proceeding including examination and cross-examination of witnesses. During questioning, Senators remain silent, directing all questions in writing to the Chief Justice.
9) After hearing all of the evidence and closing arguments, the Senate deliberates behind closed doors then votes in open session on whether to convict or acquit the President. The vote to convict must be by a two thirds majority, or 67 Senators. If this occurs, the President is removed from office and is succeeded by the Vice President. The Senate’s verdict is final and there is no right of appeal.
The events will be very interesting, especially the actual trial with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding over the Senate with likely all fifty members attending the entirety of the proceedings along with the majority of Americans as well as the free world. This would be the largest television audience since, or likely exceeding, the televised first man on the moon and the landing on the moon, the first steps and the iconic quote by Neil Armstrong, “One small step for (a) man; one giant leap for all mankind!” The modesty intended was accidentally left out in the actual speaking but such can be expected knowing what kinds of emotions must have been completely overwhelming and that fact he could speak at all is a small miracle. The references to Armstrong’s statement ever since usually include the skipped “a” in his short but poignant and historic statement as there can never be another first man to step onto the moon or step onto a body in space other than the Earth. We will have to be patient for the first person to step on another planet or other space firsts which will hopefully become a vision for the future sooner rather than later.
Beyond the Cusp
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Beyond the Cusp 