Grandpa's Spells wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 9:23 pmDavid Frum here is very persuasive. The idea that "we didn't want to spark a constitutional crisis by invoking the 25th, so we just disobeyed orders left and right" is creating an actual constitutional crisis.
If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.
Totally.
The piece is convincing. (It also dovetails nicely with the Bob Woodward book.) But the author is a self-deluding sack of shit. He says:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.
Bull. Shit. No one wanted to miss the opportunity to enact massive tax cuts, take health care from millions of Americans, gut the EPA & Dept of Ed, and put a couple of crackpots on SCOTUS. You decided to shirk your duty to get partisan victories. And now you want to a pat on the back for it.
Fuck off and die.
If anything what we've really seen are the limitations of teh imperial presidency. If you set aside all the drama all we've really seen over the last couple years are: a rollback of regulations the Obama administration put in place in their last few months in office; the regular changes you expect when we get a president from a different party than the last one (like their stance on the Mexico City policy); backing out of the Iran nuclear deal (a deal which the Obama administration dragged their feet on implementing and Congress never approved); a relatively minor tax cut; and very real progress in filling judicial vacancies. Everything else is smoke but no fire up to this point-- it's hard to argue that the Trump administration has an ambitious legislative agenda relative to the last few presidents.
We may be seeing a return to the long term trend too-- that the American people don't really like it when one party controls both houses of Congress and the presidency.
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
Which one, Steve Mnuchin, Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump?
If The Don deserves to be criticized for anything, it's the fact that he married his lovely daughter off to that pack of brick and dirt merchants. Grandbabies will now be mixed species, and I am disappoint.
Kaz, I bet your 23andMe report reads like a United Nations roll call
Perhaps. If true, then by all observable metrics the third world DNA has been downgraded to recessive status and rides in the back of the bus where it belongs.
I don’t know, Kaz, having a 40” vertical leap and doing compound interest tables in your head while living off of nothing but seal blubber and the neighboring tribe, all done while being high as #$& on coca leaves and peyote, would be like having a superpower.
What's wrong, guys?
Is the economy faring badly? That's primarily what moves voters.
Is Trump pursuing a palpably ineffective & bloody foreign war? Afghanistan doesn't count.
I'm pretty sure most voters factored in Trump's porn star & playmate diddlings when they voted him into office. And his crass nature and hyperbole.
I've got $100 bucks that says Trump completes his full first term. And another $50 that he completes term #2.*
If I lose: Hail to President Pence.
*Barring health issues, like death. Or keeling over ala Hillary.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
the most likely author, based on the op-ed’s content and style, is the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman.
I know nothing at all about that guy.
Disappointing that it wouldn't be Pence, but this probly makes more sense.
“War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want.”
― William Tecumseh Sherman
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
