Jonathan Turley agrees to represent Congress in lawsuit against Obama’s usurption of power
I admire law professor Jonathan Turley. I’ve written about him before, and called him a principled liberal/libertarian.
Therefore it is extremely satisfying to read Turley’s announcement that he will be taking on a new challenge, on an issue he’s thought about long and hard:
…I have previously testified, written, and litigated in opposition to the rise of executive power and the countervailing decline in congressional power in our tripartite system. I have also spent years encouraging Congress, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, to more actively defend its authority, including seeking judicial review in separation of powers conflicts. For that reason, it may come as little surprise this morning that I have agreed to represent the United States House of Representatives in its challenge of unilateral, unconstitutional actions taken by the Obama Administration with respect to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
This case is being taken very seriously if Turley is being hired.
This is not, I repeat not, a challenge to whatever executive action Obama is threatening to take regarding immigration, although of course it is in the same general ballpark. As Turley writes, in his usual clear manner:
As many on this blog know, I support national health care and voted for President Obama in his first presidential campaign. However, as I have often stressed before Congress, in the Madisonian system it is as important how you do something as what you do. And, the Executive is barred from usurping the Legislative Branch’s Article I powers, no matter how politically attractive or expedient it is to do so. Unilateral, unchecked Executive action is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in our constitutional system. This case represents a long-overdue effort by Congress to resolve fundamental Separation of Powers issues. In that sense, it has more to do with constitutional law than health care law. Without judicial review of unconstitutional actions by the Executive, the trend toward a dominant presidential model of government will continue in this country in direct conflict with the original design and guarantees of our Constitution. Our constitutional system as a whole (as well as our political system) would benefit greatly by courts reinforcing the lines of separation between the respective branches.
Turley is one of the last of a dying breed: people who will act to defend basic overarching principle even if the result goes against their personal policy preferences. But perhaps I misspoke there; perhaps this breed isn’t really dying. Perhaps it never was all that common.
[Hat tip: Ace.]
He just got himself an very honorable mention in the history books, at least the ones that won”t describe Obama as the messiah.
Turley doesn’t realize something. The Leftist lawyer unions control lawyers, and the only judges that ever get to where they are, are lawyers.
He doesn’t even see the attack on that flank. And never will.
Without judicial review of unconstitutional actions by the Executive
The judicial review itself will become aligned, if it hasn’t already.
It’s pretty clear that about half of Americans are neither interested in, nor fit for self-government; whatever they may claim for publication.
Now I don’t personally care in the abstract, what kind of termite hell they wish to dwell in now; any more than I care what fiery kind they might actually be sent to later.
But it seems a psychological principle of the collective kind, that they cannot be happy unless all others are dragged along with them.
Most of the world is, and always has been, composed of societies led by elites and strongmen who dictate to a morally degraded, if on occasion comfortable and self-satisfied herd. You might think that the herd animals here would naturally and more reasonably migrate to these places, rather than laboring through endless social strife to make everyone just like themselves.
But I suppose the fact that they don’t choose that option, has something to do with the internal programming that makes them what they are, in the first place.
It’s the universalizing impulse that always seems to come to the foreground, and replace whatever ostensible aim per se it is that has been publicly touted as the justification for change.
After all, and referring here to health insurance and the supposed bending of the cost curve down through large memberships: there were more Democrat Party members to support a voluntary group plan of some kind, than the total number of citizens in some states having those socialized health care systems which were so highly praised by Democrats.
You might also think then, [unless you knew better] that 46 million adult American Democrats could collectively manage for themselves voluntarily in this country, what a couple 10s of millions of total population supposedly managed to do in other countries.
But then, once again, as we have seen from the Gruber materials, the plan was never to achieve the announced effect in the first place.
“perhaps this breed isn’t really dying. Perhaps it never was all that common.” neo
No, there was a time when nearly every American agreed with Voltaire; “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
Elected democrats once stood firmly on the side of first principles.
“The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum” Adlai E. Stevenson
“Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity – in short, of tyranny – and it is committed to making tyranny universal.”
Adlai E. Stevenson
“When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.” Harry S Truman
“When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.” Harry S Truman
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” John F. Kennedy
“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” John F. Kennedy
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” – Daniel Patrick Moynahan …
“The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.”
Camille Paglia
“And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the ‘mob’ – a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.”
Camille Paglia
According to a recent Pew Research study, 40% of those who self-identify as ‘solidly liberal’ take pride in being an American and believe that duty and honor are important qualities to embody.
It’s easy to focus on the 60% who do not because they are the loudest.
I remember what Turley said just before the O.J. verdict came in: “Simpson fought the law and the law won.” The guy lives in his head and has no feel for the real world.
And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.
Amazing, they thought the same thing in 1860, that it was State’s Rights and War of Northern Aggression and Tyranny.
Two guesses how that turned out.
The Civil War was never about ‘states rights’ and there never was a “War of Northern Aggression”. That is southern propaganda to avoid confronting what the civil war was really all about; the continuance of slavery, pure and simple.
When the southern states realized that they were not going to be able to enforce the ‘principle’ that for every free state there must be a slave state, they attempted to secede. The US Constitution’s Article I, Section 10 prohibits unilateral secession; “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance or Confederation“…
They also fired the first shots and attempted to through force of arms unilaterally abrogate their Constitutional agreement.
Lincoln had his ‘Charleston Harbor’ (akin to the Gulf of Tonkin) when he attempted to resupply Fort Sumter, knowing it would cause a reacton from the South. Lincoln actively sought the war by that point but he didn’t want to be the first to fire a shot in anger.
“when he attempted to resupply Fort Sumter, knowing it would cause a reaction from the South” RickZ
At that point Lincoln had three options: abandon the fort and essentially allow the south to secede or command the men to stay but not resupply, basically condemning the men to starvation or resupply hoping for restraint from the south, that they would not actually fire upon fellow Americans.
“Lincoln actively sought the war by that point”
That does not comport with either Lincoln’s words nor his actions, so specifics please, not unsupported accusations.
Geoffrey Britain,
Lincoln knew that by resupplying Fort Sumter, he was exacerbating tensions. Lincoln could have pulled the troops from the fort, but he chose a line in the sand.
I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it is what it is.
In pulling the troops from the fort, Lincoln would have in effect been conceding secession. The south had already exacerbated tensions, it had blocked resupply once and when Lincoln succeeded in resupplying the troops at Sumter, the south started the war.
It was a Union fort before secession, it was occupied by union troops and resupply was stating that the union did not agree that the south could unilaterally secede. To legally secede, passage of a new Constitutional amendment would have been required and would still be required today.
The decision to fire on Fort Sumter was in my opinion, an incredibly ill thought out, and perhaps even criminally stupid and unnecessary decision; one which seems to have been arrived at by letting the marginally competent but quarrelsome Beauregard decide for himself by when, and under what terms, the evacuation of Sumter was to be completed.
Had nothing been done for several more days at the most, the situation would have probably dissolved itself. But someone didn’t want to miss an opportunity to shoot off their canons.
If you read Chestnut’s account, among others detailing the back-and-forth between the Confederate government and Anderson, it’s plain that Anderson was only a day or so away from evacuating on his own. He said as much.
It is probably no coincidence that South Carolina fire eaters, the biggest talking and least performing of the side were responsible for igniting the violence in the East.
After all if they provoked a cascade of trouble, certainly Virginia would eventually ride to the rescue?
There is no one so contemptible, and dangerous to his supposed friends, as an emotional man who views the world as a stage where he can act out his dramatic urges. The North was filled with them, and the Secessionist South had its share as well.
Though a Yankee myself, after having read voluminous first hand accounts including material from letters and diaries, my human sympathies are almost entirely with the people of the South who wished to be rid of both slavery and their neurotic, transcendentalism spewing northern fellow citizens, of whom I estimate 20 percent must have been crazy in some way.
If the blowhard PT Beauregard were chained for an eternity in hell to the proto gender-subverting collectivist and male hysteric Wendell Phillips, it would be an example of ideal cosmic justice. Effen drama queens; they have always been with us.
McClellan might not have been much of a general, but he was right in his opinion of Massachusetts and South Carolina.
Since misreadings on emotionally charged issues are almost to be taken for granted, and potentially ambiguous phrases likely to be misinterpreted, I am not implying in the following passage:
… that the class of southern dwelling people as a whole wished to be rid of slavery.
Rather I am referring to “those” who so wished.
Thus, ” … my human sympathies are almost entirely with the (i.e. those) people of the South …)
Geoffrey Britain,
One more thing. I honestly believe Lincoln pushed the issue at Sumter because he did not want the US Government to be the first to fire a shot. That would have been a green light for Maryland and Kentucky, and possibly other states, to join the Confederacy.
Like I said, he pushed the issue as he had no choice. He couldn’t allow all the US bases in the South to be lost without a fight.
Lincoln faced a crisis like no other president. Although now, Obola is certainly doing his best to foment another civil war.
Given the remarks above, some may find this of interest. A lesson in how to piss away a moral advantage through an inability to wait “one more day”.
Unionist Anderson, replies to CSA Beauregard:
Beauregard, in a seemingly intelligent and flexible maneuver, addresses an unofficial indication made verbally by Anderson to the CSA emissaries who have been seeking the Unionists’ evacuation.
Anderson, seeing that Beauregard has taken his hint, replies, with a date – contingent upon only a couple of face-saving provisos – on which he will capitulate to the CSA demands and evacuate.
Snatching moral defeat from the jaws of a victory that was virtually his, CSA commanding replies:
WAR OF THE REBELLION: A COMPILATION OF THE
OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE ARMIES. SERIES I VOLUME I.
p 13, ff