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John Nichols at The Nation writes—It’s Time to Put Some Muscle Behind the 25th Amendment:
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin appeared before reporters Friday and proposed a plan to evaluate the mental fitness of presidents, they were peppered with predictable questions about Donald Trump.
The president’s Covid-19 diagnosis, his increasingly erratic behavior, and concerns about his response to his prescribed medications, including the powerful steroid dexamethasone, made those questions inevitable at a press conference on legislation to clarify how the 25th Amendment works. The amendment was added to the Constitution in 1967 to establish contingencies for circumstances in which presidents die or are physically or mentally incapacitated.
Raskin, a constitutional scholar who was a law professor before Maryland voters elected him to Congress, has long advocated for the establishment of an independent and nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office. Now, the House Speaker is talking up Raskin’s legislation that would act on the section of the 25th Amendment that empowers Congress to establish a permanent “body” that, with the concurrence of the vice president, can declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
But in the era of Trump, everything is always about Trump. And with the presidential election less than a month away, the questions about whether Pelosi and Raskin were merely trolling a troubled president framed the discussion even after the speaker explained, “This legislation applies to future presidents. But we are reminded of the necessity of action by the health of the current president.”
So be it.
If Trump’s irrational presidency, and the politics surrounding it, have brought us to the point where we might finally resolve fundamental questions about presidential incapacity and succession, that’s a good thing for the future. This country leaves too many constitutional questions unanswered until crises develop—and that, Raskin reminds us, is dangerous. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—And the media played stupid: vicious harpy edition:
Let's get right to it. Michelle Malkin. Again.
We all know the long story. The short version here is that she's decided it's fair game to stalk the family of the 12 year old kid who had the temerity to use the SCHIP program and say he liked it, and that you might, too. This was evil, of course, because although Malkin's family faced pretty much the same predicament three years ago, her family is Republican and presumably has a lot of American flag lapel pins, while this kid's family is a bunch of Jerkoff Nazis from Planet Stalin.
But here's how, despite the outrage, the media insists on being dumber than Malkin. As emptywheel points out, when the New York Times finally takes note of the fact that Malkin is a corrosive bottom-feeder, they forget all about her syndicated newspaper column and semi-regular TeeVee appearances (including substituting for Bill O'Reilly) and she becomes...
Michelle Malkin, one of the bloggers who have strongly criticized the Frosts....
Yes, only an icky-poopie blah-grr would sink so low. Didn't you know?