I think that the House of Representatives voting to sue the President is a fantastic and much needed development of the federal system. Our existing system has a well-known flaw. If a President takes a number of actions which are deemed by a large segment of the population to be in error or wrong, there is no redress to that grievance. The President can be impeached for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. But there is no written-in-the-Constitution process for dealing with a President that just makes bad choices. In most parliamentary systems the Prime Minister can be subjected to a vote of no-confidence. This is a process by which the executive leader of the nation can be disciplined WITHOUT requiring that that leader be shown to be a criminal. Nobody but the real fruitbats think President Obama is a criminal. But a lot of people think hes made a series of decisions which exceed his authority as President. Some of those people are the US Supreme Court, who have handed down a series of recent unanimous or close to unanimous decisions that roll back that overreach. Our courts do not want to get involved in a dispute between the Legislative and Executive branches of the government. Our system is designed for there to be tension between those branches and if every time theres a debate one side or the other runs into court, well have a government that is decided by litigation not negotiation. However, the courts have a long-standing role in determining when laws are unconstitutional or executive actions exceed constitutional authorities and they have been making such rulings for two centuries. The country did not plunge into chaos after Marbury v Madison. In order to litigate a court must agree that the plaintiff(s) have standing. That is, they have a right to be in court asking for a judgement. For a lot of the executive overreach of the Obama Administration, individuals and groups have been able to show that they have standing. However the courts have ruled that individuals, even elected members of Congress, do not have standing to litigate the question of the executive overreach of the President failing to faithfully execute the laws as written. This is a bug. The lawsuit the House is preparing against the President is a potential solution to this flaw. It is also a potential solution to the problem of disciplining (but not making a criminal of) the President. The suit will almost certainly be successful if the House is found to have standing. It is pretty obvious to everyone that the President has overreached in altering the terms of the ACA without Congressional action. The only real question is if the courts will drop their longstanding attempt to keep the legislative process at arms length and allow the House to be recognized as a legitimate plaintiff. I sincerely hope they are.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 21:02:36 +0000
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