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Posts Tagged ‘congress’
Most Members of Congress Are Some of The Least Informed People In America
Posted by M. C. on January 13, 2023
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: congress, Least Informed | Leave a Comment »
Hey Incoming Congress: Try These Three Simple Tricks for a Successful Start – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on November 8, 2022
First, Republican Party Leadership must vow to end the massive money spigot opened by the last Congress for Ukraine.
Second, Republicans can signal that they will de-fund the Department of Homeland Security.
Finally, the third task an incoming Republican House and Senate can take is maybe the easiest one: pass the Audit the Fed bill.
Fat chance, especially with warparty water carriers Kelly and Casey.
Tomorrow is election day and polls suggest that Americans are going to overturn Democratic Party control of the House and Senate. Politicians and the media always say that this is the most important election ever, but all too often once the voting is over and the smoke has cleared, not much changes. The Washington uni-party takes over and makes sure the status quo is maintained.
It doesn’t have to be this way. An incoming Republican House and Senate, for example, could take early steps to reassure their supporters that their votes weren’t wasted on Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum in Washington. Here are three suggestions to get things off to a good start.
First, Republican Party Leadership must vow to end the massive money spigot opened by the last Congress for Ukraine. By some estimates some $60 billion dollars have been authorized for Ukraine to fight a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia.
This would be a move strongly supported by the Republican base. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that only 37 percent of Republicans support sending more US aid to Ukraine. Republican firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene said recently that under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. While I am skeptical that her party leadership would support such a move, it’s clear Republican voters would.
Plus, ending this proxy war would carry with it the benefit of reducing the dangerously high possibility of global nuclear war. That’s not a bad trade-off.
Second, Republicans can signal that they will de-fund the Department of Homeland Security. At the time this monstrosity was created, I said this on the House Floor:
“The list of dangerous and unconstitutional powers granted to the new Homeland Security department is lengthy. Warrantless searches, forced vaccinations of whole communities, federal neighborhood snitch programs, federal information databases, and a sinister new ‘Information Awareness Office’ at the Pentagon that uses military intelligence to spy on domestic citizens are just a few of the troubling aspects of the new legislation.”
Unfortunately all of these things came to pass…and more. As we recently learned, the DHS has been colluding with social media companies to try and prevent Americans from being able to say or post opinions the government doesn’t want others to hear.
They promised that a Department of Homeland Security would keep us safer, but there is nothing that makes us less safe than the destruction of our Constitution.
Finally, the third task an incoming Republican House and Senate can take is maybe the easiest one: pass the Audit the Fed bill. Ten years ago the US House voted in a bipartisan manner to pass my Audit the Fed legislation only to see it stall in the Senate. With Republican control of both houses of Congress there is no reason a broadly-supported bill to open the books at the Federal Reserve cannot find its way to President Biden’s desk. We all support transparency, right?
Inflation is out of control and causing real harm to the American middle class. The Biden Administration seems determined to lead us to a potentially life-ending war with Russia. The Department of Homeland Security has turned into a weapon mobilized against the American people and our Constitution.
A Republican-controlled House and Senate can actually do something to fix these problems and thus make us more safe and more free. Will they?
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: audit the Fed, congress, Department of Homeland Security, Ukraine money | Leave a Comment »
Where Is Congress on Ukraine’s Membership in NATO? – The Future of Freedom Foundation
Posted by M. C. on February 4, 2022
What amazes me is that American parents of children who are 17 years of age to 24 years of age are so blasé about all this.
In any event, I wouldn’t bother with sending a letter to President Biden or your congressman to express your opposition to NATO’s absorption of Ukraine. You would only be wasting your time. You would be better off sending your letter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
https://www.fff.org/2022/02/02/where-is-congress-on-ukraines-membership-in-nato/
Given all those pious pro-democracy pronouncements by U.S. officials, I’d like to ask what might be considered a discomforting question: Where is the U.S. Congress when it comes to deciding whether Ukraine becomes a member of NATO?
The answer to that question might be even more discomforting than the question itself: In a country that purports to be a representative democracy, Congress has no role in making that decision.
And yet, the issue of whether Ukraine joins NATO necessarily involves the lives of American citizens. That’s because if someone attacks Ukraine after it becomes a NATO member, the U.S. government is is duty-bound to enter the war on behalf of Ukraine. That means that as soon as Ukraine joins NATO, the lives of American soldiers are automatically pledged to Ukraine’s defense.
Given that Ukraine’s membership automatically embroils the United States in such a war, why doesn’t the U.S. Congress have a role in determining whether Ukraine becomes a NATO member or not? Shouldn’t the elected representatives of the people be involved in any decision that involves war?
Indeed, where does the declaration-of-war requirement provided in the Constitution fit into all this? Our ancestors called into existence a system in which the United States could not go to war without a formal declaration of war by Congress. Yet, obviously someone has figured out a clever way to avoid that constitutional requirement. As a practical matter, the NATO system trumps that constitutional protection. As soon as Ukraine is attacked, the United States is automatically at war, declaration of war or not.
What amazes me is that American parents of children who are 17 years of age to 24 years of age are so blasé about all this. Wouldn’t you think that they would be organizing protests against Ukraine membership, given that it is the lives of their children that are being pledged for the defense of Ukraine? From what I read, most people can’t identify Ukraine’s location on a map. I’m willing to bet that most Americans also don’t personally know any Ukrainians.
Let’s say, for example, that Ukraine joins NATO and then Russia invades Ukraine. The United States is now duty-bound to wage war against Russia. In the event of such a war, it is a certainty that the Pentagon will issue an order for conscription, this time for both young men and young women. Those young people will be ordered to report to a military facility and trained to fight, kill, and die. Such a war would necessarily entail lots of casualties.
How can the parents of children in that draft age group be so blasé about the situation? Do they really place a higher value on Ukraine than they do the lives of their own children? That’s hard to believe. And yet, where are the organized protests against admitting Ukraine into NATO?
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the same principle applies to all the other nations in NATO, including the former Warsaw Pact countries. By absorbing them into NATO, the lives of young American citizens have been pledged to come automatically to their defense in the event they are attacked, without any congressional participation in the matter.
So, if it’s not Congress is who making the decision on when the country goes to war, who is making that decision? Once again, the answer is discomforting. My hunch is that many Americans don’t want to hear it. The answer is the Pentagon. The generals are the ones running the federal government, at least when it comes to foreign affairs.
The scheme works like this: Ostensibly, NATO bureaucrats from the existing member nations decide who will become a new NATO member. As a practical matter, however, it is the Pentagon calling the shots, given that U.S. officials provide the lion’s share of the money to fund this Cold War dinosaur. Thus, if the Pentagon decides that it wants to admit a new member into NATO, such as Ukraine, all the other NATO bureaucrats immediately fall into line and support the decision.
One of the most insightful books that has been written in the recent years is National Security and Double Government by Michael Glennon. Any American who isn’t afraid to confront reality about what is going on in America owes it to himself to read this book. Glennon’s thesis is a discomforting one. He says that it is the national-security segment of the government — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is actually running the government and that the other parts of the government are simply serving in support. Glennon is a professor of law at Tufts University and has served as counsel to various congressional committees.
An ominous aspect to all this is that in the 1950s and 1960s, when the president, the Congress, and the judiciary were still in charge of the federal government, there was nothing the Pentagon and the CIA wanted more than a war with Russia. One can only wonder whether that Cold War mindset still holds sway today.
In any event, I wouldn’t bother with sending a letter to President Biden or your congressman to express your opposition to NATO’s absorption of Ukraine. You would only be wasting your time. You would be better off sending your letter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This post was written by: Jacob G. Hornberger
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: congress, NATO, Ukraine | Leave a Comment »
Watch “7 into 28” on YouTube
Posted by M. C. on June 5, 2020
Smarter than Congress. The Fed will make up the difference.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Abbott, congress, Costello, Fed | 1 Comment »
Justin Amash Becomes the First Libertarian Member of Congress – Reason.com
Posted by M. C. on May 30, 2020
Pulling the old switcheroo
https://reason.com/2020/04/29/justin-amash-becomes-the-first-libertarian-member-of-congress/
After a half-century of existence, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) this morning wakes up to a situation it has never before experienced—with a sitting member of Congress proudly waving the Libertarian flag.
“I will be the first,” Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) told me late Tuesday* night, just after announcing his candidacy for the Libertarian presidential nomination. “And I’m happy to do that.”
Amash is not the only person smiling. In an email, Libertarian Party Chair Nicholas Sarwark said, “I’m happy to see that Representative Amash has come home to the political party most closely aligned with his views,” adding: “If more members of the House who are tired of being marginalized by the GOP and Democratic leadership joined him, we could see a caucus of legislators who are able to work for the American people instead of conflicting teams of special interests. My DMs are open.”
Amash, a persistent critic of President Donald Trump who left the Republican Party to become an independent last July 4, was facing a competitive reelection campaign in his 3rd District of Michigan, a state whose straight-ticket ballot option disfavors candidates outside the two major parties. Yet he says his seat could have been defended.
“That was one of the hardest parts of this decision,” he said. “When I’m looking at my polling, and fundraising, and other aspects with respect to the congressional campaign, I felt I was in the driver’s seat. I felt that I was in a very strong position to win it….But I just think this is too important.”
Amash, who is six-for-six in general elections (five in Congress, one in the Michigan House of Representatives), claims that the 2020 presidential contest is a “winnable race” for a Libertarian Party whose previous high-water mark, in 2016, was 3.3 percent of the vote.
“When I look at these candidates, I think most Americans see the same thing I’m seeing, which is these two candidates aren’t up to being president of the United States, and we need an alternative,” he said. The botched and expensive federal response to the COVID-19 outbreak only makes that clearer, he said. “Millions of Americans are seeing that the government spent trillions of dollars and still didn’t get it right. They didn’t get help to the people who need it most. Instead, most of the assistance went to people who have great connections, who run big corporations.”
I talked to Amash about his late entry into the Libertarian race, his policy objections to Joe Biden, his position on abortion, charges that he would “spoil” the effort to dethrone President Donald Trump, and more. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.
—
Reason: What took you so long?
Amash: Well, I’ve been spending time with my family, with friends; I wanted to spend substantial time thinking about it carefully. And up until the past month or so, let’s say, I couldn’t really think about it that carefully. There were a lot of things going on in Congress, there were a lot of things going on in life.
Around February I decided I would pause my congressional campaign and really focus on the presidential race. And that meant at the time just researching things, seeing if it was a situation where I could come in as a candidate and win the race. And then over the past few weeks, I really sat down to dig into it and got to the point where I was confident that this was a winnable race. Because I don’t believe you should just run for fun or for messaging. I believe you should run to win, and to make an impact at the ballot box.
So I’m at that place, and I’m in.
Reason: So you start in mid-February—that’s not coronavirus o’clock, but the coronavirus came up by the beginning of March. So explain a little bit how that affected your deliberations, if at all.
Amash: Well, it certainly extended the deliberations. So if not for the COVID-19 situation, I would have been able to focus on it more carefully earlier. In other words, the really aggressive focus on the campaign—where I could think “Is it time to get in or not?”—had to be put on hold a little bit. I was already in the process of researching things, talking to people, talking to family and friends. But when the coronavirus came up, I had to slow that down, because that obviously affects the entire race, and obviously it affects my job, too. I’m in Congress trying to help constituents, making sure that they are getting the resources they need, and so it affected my ability to move forward quickly.
Reason: I look at the coronavirus thing in particular, and you see a lot of 388-5 votes in the House about various phases of this happening. Do you look at a situation in which $3 trillion has walked out of Congress in the last, I don’t know, six weeks—and basically overwhelmingly, near-unanimously, despite Thomas Massie’s best efforts. Is that a fruitful backdrop from which to run a limited-government campaign?
Amash: I think so. I mean, millions of Americans are seeing that the government spent trillions of dollars and still didn’t get it right. They didn’t get help to the people who need it most. Instead, most of the assistance went to people who have great connections, who run big corporations. Those people, they got it really fast; [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin couldn’t act fast enough to help those people.
But for millions of Americans who are unemployed or struggling right now, they couldn’t get relief to those people, because they have a massive convoluted system, and they doubled and tripled down on it. They said, “Hey, how can we take our bad system and make it worse? Let’s add a whole bunch of restrictions; let’s add a whole bunch of qualifications; let’s try to get money to small businesses but then make it so that the money is not all that useful to them. Let’s put banks in the middle of it to slow down the process.”
And the banks are trying; they’re trying. I’m not blaming the banks. I blame Congress and the administration for creating such a system….The Los Angeles Lakers applied for relief as a small business, and you know, under the terms of the deal that Congress put together with the White House, that’s actually allowed. But they never thought through this thing, really.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: congress, Justin Amash, Libertarian, Republican Party, Thomas Massie | Leave a Comment »
Trump and Pelosi Ready to Spend Another $2 Trillion on Infrastructure
Posted by M. C. on April 7, 2020
Sadly, a large quantity of Americans seem eager to take the fast lane on this road to serfdom, even as the economic and civil liberties restrictions pile up under the guise of a public health emergency.
Who says there’s not enough bipartisanship in Washington? President Donald Trump is praising House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and urging Congress to follow her lead by passing yet another $2 trillion coronavirus bill that would “invest” in infrastructure.
What a sight to behold, a country in crisis inspires its leaders to come together for the common good. Even better, by forcing more debt and inflation on Americans, the economy can finally get roaring again!
That demented logic prevails in Washington, D.C., and the swamp-drainer-in-chief is no exception.
Fresh off signing the most expensive bill in American history, more than twice the cost of FDR’s New Deal, Trump is ready for whatever Pelosi throws at him next, as long as it also costs at least $2 trillion.
On Monday, Pelosi unveiled her wishlist for what she called “Phase 4” of Congress’s response to COVID-19. This fourth bill could very well be bigger than the previous three, setting a new price tag record.
The San Francisco Democrat listed “more direct payments,” “more opportunity for family and medical leave,” and an infrastructure megaproject.
“She wasn’t bad,” Trump tweeted after watching Pelosi’s press conference.
“With interest rates for the United States being at ZERO, this is the time to do our decades long awaited Infrastructure Bill. It should be VERY BIG & BOLD, Two Trillion Dollars, and be focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once great infrastructure of our Country! Phase 4,” Trump wrote, adopting Pelosi’s term for the forthcoming proposal.
Sadly, a large quantity of Americans seem eager to take the fast lane on this road to serfdom, even as the economic and civil liberties restrictions pile up under the guise of a public health emergency.
Economist Peter Schiff, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, has been sounding the alarm that another crash is imminent since the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to zero, promising to monetize debt without restraint or limit.
“President @realDonaldTrump thinks it’s the perfect time for the government to borrow trillions more to improve our infrastructure. That’s like a guy who just lost his job deciding it’s the perfect time to take out a second mortgage to put in the swimming pool he’s always wanted,” Schiff tweeted.
To extend the analogy, Trump is gaining support for the project by promising the biggest pool party ever. All politicians and special interests are invited.
There is no opposition to this profligate spending. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just wants to wait “a few weeks” to see how the other $2.2 trillion stimulus bill plays out first.
It doesn’t actually matter what happens in a few weeks though. When government policies go horribly wrong, a bureaucrat knows that just means the policy wasn’t enacted with enough gusto.
The coronavirus pandemic remains the sole focus of the country to the detriment of the people. Worse than the disease is the government’s cure.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Big Government, congress, coronavirus, Donald Trump, Economics, economy, News You Can Use, Pelosi, Peter Schiff, politics, stimulus | Leave a Comment »
Rand Paul Proves Once Again He Is Too Good For Us, As He Upsets All the Right People
Posted by M. C. on March 22, 2020
Paul’s amendment, according to NBC News reporter Julie Tsirkin, was officially summarized as: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require a social security number for the purposes of the child tax credit, to provide the President the authority to transfer funds as necessary and to terminate United States military operations and reconstruction activities in Afghanistan.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is notorious for being a principled voice for limited constitutional government. Even better, he amuses us with how swiftly he induces tantrums among the political establishment’s flunkies.
Aside from President Donald Trump, it’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is usually the face of evil for liberals. But on Tuesday night, an NBC News story, based on two anonymous McConnell-linked sources, redirected the ire squarely on Paul.
What did the libertarian ophthalmologist-turned-politician do to deserve this? He did his job.
Paul proposed an amendment to the coronavirus bill being rushed through the Senate after passing the House 363-40. For those keeping track, libertarian-leaning Republican Thomas Massie didn’t vote, and libertarian-leaning Independent Congressman Justin Amash voted present.
Paul’s amendment, according to NBC News reporter Julie Tsirkin, was officially summarized as: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require a social security number for the purposes of the child tax credit, to provide the President the authority to transfer funds as necessary and to terminate United States military operations and reconstruction activities in Afghanistan.
Twitter is littered with righteous indignation constantly, but Tuesday night, it was mostly directed at Paul. And it was mostly thanks to the NBC News story poorly co-written by Tsirkin.
Before getting into the catty tone of the article, let’s consider the actual concerns people have with Paul’s amendment.
First, isn’t there a national emergency going on? Now isn’t the time for nitpicking what’s legal under the Constitution or how Congress appropriates funds. There’s no time for delay, we’re led to believe.
The answer to this critique is short, because there simply is no delay in voting beyond a few minutes just because an amendment is proposed. All of this drama is just political theatre, with McConnell aides directing the show.
Second, and perhaps more reasonably, it may be asked what the war in Afghanistan has to do with this coronavirus. That almost begs the question though. Why is Congress leaping to this hot new political commodity known as a coronavirus when they’ve skirted their true duties for so long?
Beyond the deadly Afghanistan misadventure being a drain on financial resources, it’s worth investigating how human resources are wasting away, mired down in that desert. In Syria, most of the U.S. troops are from the South Carolina National Guard. Might be nice to have them here!
Here Paul is doing the job all the other senators are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t fit into the narrative most comfortable for the political and media elites.
As a result, we end up with junior high school level journalism weaponized against patriotic dissent.
“Paul is notorious for forcing votes on amendments he knows will not pass,” the NBC News story goes.
It concluded in a similar fashion: “He even briefly caused the government to shut down in 2018, using a procedural tactic to block the Senate from meeting the deadline to keep the government open because he objected to the price tag.”
Both of these statements are lies, though the authors probably believe them. It’s a sure sign of the deep divisions in the country.
Whether it’s the 9/11 Victims bill, the Ukrainegate impeachment failure, or foreign aid, Paul consistently upsets the right people by doing the right thing. This doesn’t mean Paul is perfect, but it does mean Americans should appreciate his special role in Washington, DC.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: congress, coronavirus, federal legislation, Rand Paul, Rep. Justin Amash, Rep. Thomas Massie, Ukrainegate | Leave a Comment »
Why Is Congress So Afraid to Use Its War Powers? – Rolling Stone
Posted by M. C. on January 16, 2020
The encounter, Wyden says, is a reminder that there are real and dire consequences to Congress’ inaction. “I’m always struck by how these debates that go on in Washington,” he says, “that seem so sterile compared to when a mom is in front of you in a small town in Oregon, crying because for her, what she wants to know, and what she deserves to know, is if her boy on the other side of the world is going to be safe.”
By
It was the rarest of sightings: Last week, a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives approved a resolution to restrict the president’s ability to go to war with Iran. The vote happened one week after the Trump administration assassinated via drone strike Iran’s top general. Government officials have offered only the flimsiest of evidence to justify the attack while putting the country on the path toward yet another conflict in the Middle East.
What’s so striking about the House’s symbolic rebuke of Trump is that Congress bothered to do it at all. For decades, America’s elected representatives have green-lit bloated defense budgets year after year, allowed Democratic and Republican presidents to wage endless wars around the world, and done little to assert the legislative branch’s authority when it comes to one of the most difficult decisions a lawmaker may face. The last time Congress formally declared a state of war was in 1942 with Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. In other words, they’ve all but abdicated their constitutional duty to decide when the country goes to war and with whom.
“Our system is not designed to have one person in charge of war,” Rep. Justin Amash, an independent from Michigan who quit the Republican Party last year, tells Rolling Stone. “But that’s the system we now have.”
How did this happen? Why is Congress asleep at the wheel?
On September 18th, 2001, Congress passed legislation authorizing the use of military force against the planners of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, paving the way for the Afghan invasion and hunt for Osama bin Laden. Almost a year later, on October 16th, 2002, Congress passed another Authorization for the Use of Military Force, better known as an AUMF. This one paved the way for President Bush’s war in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
But in the years that followed, the scope and meaning of the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs were stretched beyond recognition. They were used by Democratic and Republican administrations to justify interventions on multiple continents and against terrorist organizations and individuals that, in some cases, didn’t exist at the time the two AUMFs were enacted. Instead of pushing back, Congress went mute. With a few lonely exceptions over the years, elected officials from both parties stood idly by as different administrations ordered troops all over the world, often with shifting objectives and no end in sight, costing tens of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars. “We’ve let the executive walk all over this institution,” says Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
There’s a constitutional argument for Congress reclaiming its war powers; there’s also a practical one. Elected members of Congress are the voices of the people back home. Without real debate over whether to declare war, citizens have little say over one of the most serious and consequential decisions a government can make.
“I represent more troops than any other member of this body. I buried one of them earlier today at Arlington,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of Trump’s most ardent supporters in the House, in announcing his intention to vote in favor of the resolution. “If our servicemembers have the courage to fight and die in these wars, Congress ought to have the courage to vote for or against them.”
Interviews with the lawmakers who have resisted endless wars dictated by the White House shed light on why the legislative branch has been reluctant to step up.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a stalwart progressive, calls a vote to go to war “one of the most difficult votes anyone can make.” Foreign policy is a difficult and unpredictable issue that can sink the careers of politicians with an eye on higher office. Merkley says members of Congress see limited incentive to do their job given the potential consequences.
“There’s a collective group of senators and House members who are like, ‘Well, if we leave this with the president we don’t have to take these tough votes over the use of force,’” he says. “People look back at the vote to authorize the administration to go after Saddam Hussein. Biden probably thinks about that just about every day.”
In 2018, Merkley introduced legislation that would repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs and put a three-year expiration date on future AUMFs. The bill never got out of the Foreign Relations Committee. Still, Merkley continues to speak out about the need for Congress to challenge presidential war powers. “Presidents did not respect the actual language of the AUMFs,” he says, “so we need to explicitly slap them upside the head and restore the role of Congress.”
Rep. Amash, a libertarian who is a critic of runaway defense spending and interventionist foreign policy, says Congress’ silence on war powers is indicative of a broader abdication by rank-and-file lawmakers on most business…
The most recent debate over the Trump administration’s killing of Qasem Soleimani, who led Iran’s elite Quds Force, revealed another possible reason for Capitol Hill’s reluctance to reclaim its authority on war powers: a fear of looking weak. In one example, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the prestigious Judiciary Committee, ridiculously accused House Democrats of being “in love with terrorists” for daring to debate (as is their constitutional duty) President Trump’s authority to declare war and launch future attacks on Iran. Collins, who later apologized, wasn’t the only Republican trotting out this tired weak-on-terrorism soundbite…
Sen. Bernie Sanders cited the potential for such attacks as one reason lawmakers have gone silent on war powers. “I think perhaps the answer has been the fear that somebody will be seen as being soft on terrorism, not prepared to defend the troops or whatever,” Sanders says. “But the truth is we have seen under Republican and Democratic administrations Congress not utilizing its responsibilities under the Constitution.”…
The encounter, Wyden says, is a reminder that there are real and dire consequences to Congress’ inaction. “I’m always struck by how these debates that go on in Washington,” he says, “that seem so sterile compared to when a mom is in front of you in a small town in Oregon, crying because for her, what she wants to know, and what she deserves to know, is if her boy on the other side of the world is going to be safe.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: AUMF, congress, Iran, Justin Amash, War Powers | Leave a Comment »
Congress is Trump’s Co-Conspirator Against Liberty
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2019
This hypocrisy extends beyond foreign policy. Many Democrats who claim that President Trump is both a fascist and mentally unhinged are eager to ensure President Trump can continue to conduct warrantless surveillance on every American by reauthorizing Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.
Written by
Imagine that President Trump spent his phone call with the Ukrainian president threatening to withhold military aid unless the Ukrainian government agreed to use the money to purchase weapons from a US manufacturer. Does anyone seriously think that foreign service professionals and deep state operatives would be so shocked and offended by Trump’s request that they would launch efforts to impeach him? Would Congress view this as “high crimes and misdemeanors” or applaud Trump for carrying out one of modern presidents’ supposedly most important jobs — acting as salesmen for the American military-industrial complex?
This hypothetical shows that impeachment is not about President Trump’s abuse of power. Instead, it is an attempt to make sure President Trump, and all future presidents, confine their abuses of power to items that advance the agenda of the political establishment.
President Trump’s most consequential abuses of power have been met with the full approval of the majority in Congress, the mainstream media, and the deep state. For example, when President Trump launched military action in Syria without obtaining a congressional declaration of war there were no calls for his impeachment. Instead, most members of Congress were perfectly happy to let stand unchallenged President Trump’s claim that the 2001 authorization for use of military force —a limited grant of authority to act against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks — gave him the authority to launch military action against a government that had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. The only times Congress rebukes President Trump’s foreign policy is when he speaks favorably about pursuing peaceful relations with Russia or ending US involvement in no-win military conflicts.
This hypocrisy extends beyond foreign policy. Many Democrats who claim that President Trump is both a fascist and mentally unhinged are eager to ensure President Trump can continue to conduct warrantless surveillance on every American by reauthorizing Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.
Trump-opposing progressives in Congress are also eager to give President Trump new authority to violate the Second Amendment. Even those progressives who say they believe Trump is a deranged fascist did not object when he endorsed “red flag” laws that give the government power to, as President Trump put it, “take the guns first, go through due process second.”
Perhaps the most sickening example of Trump’s congressional opponents’ hypocrisy is how many of those fretting about the safety of the Urkrainegate ”whistleblower” are silent about, or supportive of, the Trump administration’s complicity in the inhumane treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. They are also silent about the US government throwing Chelsea Manning back into jail because she refuses to help the US prosecution of Mr. Assange.
All modern presidents have exceeded constitutional limitations on their power and thus could have, and maybe should have, been impeached. The reason they were not impeached is that a majority of Congress members support allowing presidents to wage war abroad and destroy liberty at home without being “hamstrung” by Congress. The only real dispute among the political class is which party should wield the levers of power.
Restoring constitutional limits on government power and thus protecting liberty depend on spreading ideas and building a movement. Our lost freedom will only be restored when presidents and members of Congress fear being “impeached” at the ballot box for committing high crimes and misdemeanors against peace, prosperity, and liberty.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: congress, Deep State, high crimes, Hypocrisy, mainstream media, misdemeanors | Comments Off on Congress is Trump’s Co-Conspirator Against Liberty
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