It doesn’t surprise me that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has formed an eight member senatorial Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of all pending business in the upper body, but I wonder what Dana Milbank and his man-friends must have thought upon learning that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is a member. Is this the final confirmation they need to realize that they were conned by The Maverick? He isn’t a maverick; he’s a chameleon. He used to pal around with Russ Feingold; now he is the color of tea.
Other members of the new High Holy Court: Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), John Ensign (R-NV), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Tom Coburn (R-OK).
A bloc of Senate conservatives, led by South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, flexed their muscles Thursday, pledging to block any bill they alone deem wasteful or unconstitutional…
…Beyond passing judgment on whether measures are constitutional, DeMint’s new group wants any new spending to be offset by other funding cuts and for duplicative government programs to be consolidated or eliminated.
The group also demands that all government programs be reviewed periodically and that the cost of every bill be made public before the Senate votes on it, along with the full text.
It’s going to take a long time to overcome this virus and get back to a government that actually can function.
This is off-topic, but when I say that Libya is Europe’s problem, I mean that Libya is Europe’s problem. Italy moreso than anyone else.
I don’t know that Italy wants to renew its colonial past, but if someone wants to go impose some order there, they are the ones who have the knowledge, connections, experience, and incentive to do it.
I can’t say how to best restore order there, but I know the United States doesn’t have the first clue about what to do, who to talk to, who should lead the country, or how to make that happen.
ICAM…..America should have nothing to do with Libya.
This is discouraging. I thought the Supreme Court determined what was constitutional. Guess I was wrong.
The Navy ships outside of Libya are for aid, not intervention. Obama has been quiet and that is good. The US isn’t involved.
The calls for no fly zones are insane.
I want to see if they’ll die down as time goes by.
Every branch has the right and the duty to determine Constitutionality. The members of the Senate and the House are not supposed to pass laws that are unconstitutional. The executive branch has the discretion to not defend laws that it feels are not constitutional (that’s the basis for Obama and Holder deciding that they can’t defend DOMA in the Second Circuit – because they would have to make an arugment that it’s constitutional to discriminate against gays in a Circuit where that’s not established precedent and they don’t believe that it’s actually a valid constitutional argument).
So it’s fine, actually, if members of Congress want to convince their fellow Congressmen to not pass legislation that they feel is unConstitutional – it’s actually part of the job. What is not fine is that the Senate is so broken that it takes a super-majority of Senators to decide that something is constitutional and pass it – and that a single Senator can put a hold on something and tie it up indefinitely. That’s a problem that the folks who wrote the Constitution didn’t forsee and it indicates that the Senate is completely broken.
Whatever it is, it’s great news for John McCain.