I expect that he will tell many right wingers to take a hike.
It all depends on how much faith you have in Clinton. James Comey’s reputation is unassailable, so justice will be done here. If you are sure Clinton is innocent of any wrongdoing, then you should have all the confidence in the world that the FBI will determine that is the case.
Nope, we had this conversation before, you do not have any evidence from the authorities, only the spin from right wing media about what is being investigated.
Repeating what I told you already does not help your case.
Well, that depends, GIGO, on whether or not you worship the purely holy and innocent ground that She walks upon. I mean, that “she” walks upon. Damned Hypno-Toad!
At any rate, friend Addy is willing to accept that one who’s faith and whole devotion to her is unshakable and absolute, such a person might not actually see the clear signs as he does. Quite understands how someone blinded by a faith that surpasseth all reason…you, for instance…might not see the situation with the clarity that is his.
I’ve been skimming the SRIOTD thread and am now worried who will take over the lead from Trump if he gets raped by a bear.
It would have to be a yuuuuge bear…
Wouldn’t the bear be scared by Trump’s hair and beware?
The bear wouldn’t fare well to dare to leave his lair and scare Trump to make his hair stand up. Want some pear? I’ll share.
The Donald met an enormous bear.
The Donald, The Donald, didn’t care.
The bear was horny, the bear was ravenous,
The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, “Donald, since I can’t duck you,
Okay, Donald, now I’ll fuck you!”
The Donald, The Donald, didn’t worry,
The Donald didn’t scream or scurry,
He washed his hands and straightened his hair up
Then Donald quietly raped the bear up.
I get that this is just pure delusion at this point, but let’s try to interject a few facts.
Republicans currently control 30 state legislatures and 30 governorships (now that the effects of Republican governance has become clear to Louisianans.) This is basically a high-water mark. To imagine that you’d actually be able to expand state control in a year when Hillary wins the Presidency is kind of pushing it.
To bypass Congress and amend the Constitution, which has never been done, you need 2/3 of states to call for a Constitutional Convention. That’s 34 states. Once that convention is called, who the hell knows what they’ll come up with. The states don’t propose amendments in this procedure. The last time we did this, they came up with the Constitution, which is pretty much not what the states had in mind.
Anyway, let’s just assume they come back with the craziest, most right-wing sent of amendments you can imagine. Then what? 3/4 of states have to ratify the amendments. That’s 38 states! You really think you’ll get to the point where 38 states will ratify an amendment stripping the Presidency of all powers? Yeah, good luck with that.
You miss the subtlety here. You don’t have to strip the PResidency of all powers, just roll it back to the pre-Roosevelt days when the President was supposed to be a glorified clerk. The purpose of the executive branch is to implement the laws Congress passes. And while I’m not averse to Presidents expanding their power a little bit, it goes too far when Presidents decide they won’t do their core job, enforcing the law. Now we have it so that Congress has to come up with veto proof majorities to undo Presidential decisions. IT’s almost as if Congress now holds a veto power, a weak one, while the President makes the law. If you don’t think that will generate enough support to rein the Presidency in, just wait until a Republican President cuts taxes by executive order.
That would most likely have to wait for the ratification of the President For Life Amendment.
Where to start with this post…
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The purpose of the executive branch is not just to implement the laws Congress passes. In particular, the executive has pretty much carte blanche power in foreign affairs. The executive has veto power. The executive appoints all federal judges. And the executive has considerable rules-making authority, which has been statutorily granted by prior congresses.
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All executives decide which laws they are going to prioritize enforcement of. And therefore, by definition, which laws they will deprioritize enforcement of. (For example, Republican presidents have generally decided to enforce tax laws, regulatory burdens, and antitrust much more laxly.) This will never change.
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You didn’t say that states would force minor tweaks to executive authority. You specifically fantasized, here in public, about them turning the Presidency into the equivalent of Canada’s Governor General (a purely ceremonial position as the Queen’s representative in Canada.)
That was hyperbole. That would never happen. But the boundaries of Presidential and federal power in general could be more clearly codified through a democratic process, rather than relying on the courts to set those boundaries.
And yet in eleven months Hillary will be elected President.
Hey, maybe then we can get an amendment putting the words “a well-regulated militia” into the Bill of Rights and cut the power of the NRA to that of Canada’s Governor General.
You could, if you controlled more than the paltry state governments you do.
There has never been a constitutional amendment changing the powers of any of the branches since 1794 (Amendment XI) and talk of doing another one is somewhere between wish-fulfillment fantasy and breakdown delusion.
What, then, possibly be the source of a suggestion to cut the President’s powers while boosting Congress’s?
Simple. Somewhere out in right-wing land, the realization has hit home that the Republicans are not merely going to lose in 2016, they are faced with losing the Presidency for an entire generation. They can’t openly admit it, so they issued a set of talking points to their message board bots. Play up the temporary advantage in Republican electoral victories. Pretend that the Republican Congress has accomplishments rather than the utter failure to advance anything in the conservative agenda and the total collapse of order and leadership. Sidestep the Red State economic policies that are demonstrably ruinous in comparison to neighboring Blue States. Switch the conversation away from the enormous social issue losses that show that decades-long conservative red meat issues have lost their potency. Prepare a rear-guard action to make the conquering of their occupied territory as bloody and ruinous for the country as a whole as possible.
You can see how spreading bizarre fantasies about cutting a Democratic President’s power fits into this. A similar mindset crept into Confederate pronouncements in 1864 when they saw a future they could not entertain even privately becoming ever more inevitable. Trump’s march through their “deep bench” (remember that?) is like Sherman’s march through Georgia. It snuffed out the last deluded hopes of a turnaround. Unfortunately it also led to Jim Crow. A modern Jim Crow is all the right wing has to look forward to, and this time we have to fight it from the beginning and not allow it to fester for 100 years.
The 16th amendment added the power to levy an income tax. 1913.
Except there were income taxes prior to that, notably to fund the Civil War, and then an income tax in 1894, which was during peacetime, and in 1895 the Supreme Court held that an income tax (albeit in a somewhat restricted form from what we know now) would be Constitutional.
Those were usurpations.